According to the Isthmus, any similarity between the church steeple in their cover illustration and Grace Church is purely coincidental. What do you think?
Here’s the cover illustration:
Here’s a random image of Grace Church:
Any comments?
If you follow this blog, you know that Grace got some negative press in February over conditions in the shelter that is housed in the basement of our education wing. A couple of weeks ago, there was an article in the Capital Times that mentioned there is no air conditioning in the shelter. I am more than willing to accept criticism when it’s valid and appropriate. Conditions in the shelter are not ideal, and it’s true there’s no A/C in it, but then there’s no A/C in our sanctuary either. What I don’t appreciate is criticism, even implicit, that focuses on Grace.
So in tomorrow’s Isthmus, the cover article concerns the Roman Catholic Bishop of Madison, and growing criticism from progressive Catholics about his leadership. For some reason, the Isthmus thought it appropriate to include in the cover photo Grace’s steeple. The image is here. Now, I suppose one might argue that the steeple of Grace Church is an iconic image of Madison, indeed of Christianity in Madison. But so far as I know, Bishop Molino has never crossed the threshold of Grace, although he’s welcome any time he would like to visit.
More importantly, Grace is not a Catholic church. Far from it. We are Episcopal and we represent much of what Bishop Molino and traditional Catholics oppose. We ordain women. We welcome any baptized Christian to our services and to receive communion, including those who have been divorced and those who might have remarried. We welcome gays and lesbians. We welcome all who seek a closer relationship to God through Jesus Christ.
Don’t misunderstand me. I am not criticizing Bishop Molino. He and I may have very different views, but we are both seeking to live out our faith in Jesus Christ and to share that faith with others. My criticism is with the Isthmus.
I suppose I wouldn’t be so annoyed by Grace’s steeple appearing on the front cover of the Isthmus if we hadn’t bought an ad, welcoming people to Madison area Episcopal churches, that includes in it the image of Grace’s steeple.
Today was the Madison Marathon. Other than a great deal of confusion leading up to the day concerning access on W. Washington (turns out, there wasn’t any), the Marathon had relatively little impact on Grace. Oh, numbers were down, of course, because people couldn’t get to church. And people were late because of the struggle with parking, traffic pattern, and crowds. And there was the noise, of course. But it was a good day. We blessed the new coolers and freezers in the Food Pantry. There were visitors, as well as a few St. Andrew’s folk who couldn’t get there from downtown.
And the epistle reading was appropriate for the occasion:
Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. (Romans 5:1-5).
I’ve only lived in Madison for ten months, but I don’t know where Greyhound stops to drop off and pick up passengers. It turns out, almost nobody else does, either. Just before I arrived, the old Badger Bus station was demolished to make way for a new development. At first, Greyhound moved their drop-off to somewhere on Stoughton Road. Fine, but there was no Madison Metro bus access. People either had to walk, or take a cab.
At some point, they moved.
Today, a guy stopped by, looking for bus fare. He had been able to get from Milwaukee here, but needed more to reach his final destination. He told me that the bus driver–the bus driver mind you–didn’t know where he was supposed to drop off Madison passengers. He tried one place which obviously wasn’t correct, so he finally had to call the dispatcher in Milwaukee.
If the bus driver doesn’t know where he’s supposed to go, how is anyone else?
Does anyone in Madison care about this?
This post is directed primarily to residents of Madison, but it might have some wider interest. For over a year, there has been enormous controversy in the city over the redevelopment of the Edgewater hotel. Madison’s city council had an all-night session last night, debating the merits of the proposal and tax-payer financing. There’s more info here.
I’ve not been following the debate in much detail; there seems to have been rather more heat than light in the whole process. But I will make several comments. We live downtown, only a few blocks away from the site in question. There are things about downtown life I love–being able to walk to work, to concerts, and to restaurants. But there are also things I dislike intensely. For example, sleepless nights every weekend because of the drunks who whoop it up after closing time. The city seems not to take any interest in the quality of life in this neighborhood. We are surrounded by students who live in substandard housing, and treat their residences and their neighbors accordingly.
Quite apart from the merits of the proposal, and I’m not at all certain that the Edgewater is situated to attract any guests except those interested in enjoying the delights of UW’s fraternity row, what bothers me is the use of taxpayer money, $16 million, to support a small project with limited impact.
At the same time, I think about this. While the city spends $16 million to support this boutique project, Grace Church hosts a homeless shelter that in the winter serves upwards of 150 guests each night. In 2008, according to Porchlight, Inc’s annual report, the city provided $0 toward supporting the shelter. It’s clear where the city’s values are, and where the city council and the mayor stand on quality of life in Madison.
I’ve been in Madison for over six months now, and one of the things I’ve learned is that agencies, organizations, even communities of faith don’t talk together. For example, there is apparently no structure for clergy to meet regularly and share information and support one another. Presumably, this is done on the denominational level. Certainly we Episcopalians meet regularly. But even though Grace is within three or four blocks of two Lutheran churches, a United Methodist church, and a Catholic church, I have met only one other member of the downtown clergy.
What that means is that it is difficult to find out what other churches are doing, especially in terms of social services. Are we duplicating one another’s efforts? Are there ways we might cooperate on larger projects? Such questions can’t be asked because there is no one to whom one might ask them.
Take homelessness for example. It turns out there are conversations going around all over the downtown area, that involve homeless men and women, clergy, social service providers, and advocates. At these conversations many of the same topics come up: conditions in the drop-in shelter, the availability of social services, etc. People want to mobilize to do something, but the first thing they think of is to develop a new program or organization. It might be better to broaden the conversations and above all, gather the data about programs and problems.
To that end, we at Grace have done something fairly simple–compile a list of meal programs in the downtown area. Sure, such lists exist, but when we began to compare the list with the programs that homeless men and women actually know about, the list suddenly became much longer. So here’s what we’ve come up with: Free Services.
What surprises me most is that more than 25 years ago, when I was doing Field Education at a downtown church in Boston, one of my jobs was to create a roster of services provided by downtown churches, and to develop a way for those churches to communicate what they were doing with one another. Perhaps such efforts took place in Madison’s past, but today, we churches are the proverbial “left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing.”
To be honest, I have reached out to other clergy and most of those whom I have contacted have been welcoming and gracious in their response. So perhaps we have the opportunity of turning things around.
One of the first things I did on arriving in Madison was to join Downtown Madison, Inc. Grace Church is the only church on Capitol Square, and as such has higher visibility than any other church in Madison. Because we are home to the Drop-In Shelter, we are also in the center of conversations surrounding homelessness and quality of life issues downtown. So I joined, in part to make our presence more than a matter of stone, mortar, and stained glass, but also because I believe that we have an important voice to bring to the conversation about the future of downtown Madison.
We also live downtown, in the Mansion Hill neighborhood, and are members of Capitol Neighborhoods.
I attended my first DMI Quality of Life committee meeting today and realized how important my place is at the table. Of course there was discussion about the Edgewater development. If you’re not from Madison, don’t bother trying to understand it. It’s a project that wants plan to redevelop a hotel on Lake Mendota that was originally built decades ago and expanded in the 1960s. Other than an office building monstrosity next door, it is surrounded by single family houses and student apartments. It is an enormous controversy.
Later in the discussion this morning, the topic turned to soliciting membership from among the downtown condo associations and residents. That’s where the disconnect hit me. Here’s an organization, DMI, that basically exists to promote the downtown. Someone in the meeting said that we (DMI) is are perceived to be the “developers” organization, and it seemed to be an open question whether soliciting membership from downtown residents was useful. I’ve only lived in Madison for five months, but my experience is that the loudest boosters for downtown are people who live here, and that more than anyone else involved in the conversation, they are concerned about quality of life issues.
Sometimes, I just don’t get it.
I saw a side, or sides, of Madison that I hadn’t yet encountered. Wednesday night was the Porchlight Inc annual dinner and awards presentation. Grace Church was very well represented to support our own Russ Boushele who received one of the achievement awards. We met some people, who were often introduced to us, or introduced themselves to us, as former members of Grace. It was a wonderful opportunity to make some connections with people, from across the spectrum. There were people who volunteer at the shelter who made a point of introducing themselves to us.
Thursday night was another banquet, this time Downtown Madison, Incs, annual affair. I went as a guest of Home Savings Bank, our neighbor across W. Washington, and where we do our banking, both as a church and personally. I had a great time getting to know some people and the presentation by the head of Portland, OR’s metro council was very interesting. He focused on the relationship between transportation and urban planning. It reminded me of how very different life is for us here than it was in Greenville. We only have one car, and there are usually several days in the week when it doesn’t leave the garage. Living and working downtown has made an enormous difference in our lives. We have gotten to know other downtown residents as well as people who work and own businesses on Capitol Square. It’s a neighborhood in ways the subdivision we lived in was not.
Friday night, we went to the Symphony concert, thanks to tickets passed on to us by friends. It was great fun, and something of a surprise. We had heard the Nashville Symphony, Spartanburg, and never made it to Greenville’s because, well, we didn’t think it would be worth the trouble. But Madison’s orchestra is quite good and they played a couple of interesting pieces (on the other hand, the concert opened with “The Fountains of Rome”). Afterwards, we went to the cafe on the top floor of the Art Museum for snacks and drinks, and again were pleasantly surprised by the quality of the food.
We recognized a few people at all three events, and again, had interesting conversations with random people we met. A vibrant downtown is a wonderful thing, and I keep wondering how we might make Grace an integral part of that vibrant scene, not just scenery that people walk past.
Preaching Grace on the Square 