VUSA: So tell us the story of the Harvest Vineyard, and the “Picnic in the Park”.
JM: Well, The Heartland Vineyard had a vision to plant a church in downtown Waterloo in the urban community. In order to do this, they knew that they had to establish relationship first. So, in the 1990s, Heartland had launched “Picnic in the Park”, a free meal in Lincoln Park, a downtown city park, with broken neighborhoods all around it.
After George and I got married, we were put in charge of “The Picnic.” So we were a part of that, and ended up leading it for four summers. Well, during the first year, you’re feeling pretty haughty about what you’re doing, “Oh, yes. We’re feeding the poor, and we’re doing all this.”
Then the funniest thing happened, about midway through that season, a girl came running up to me and she had bruises all over her arms. She just looked at me and said, “You’ve got to help me! My boyfriend just beat me up. I don’t even live here. I need $40 to grab a bus ticket and go home. Can you help me?” She had no place to stay. I just looked at her, and at that moment I thought, “Oh, my goodness!”
[bctt tweet=”..there is so much more to doing ministry than just serving a meal… – Judy Marshall” quote=”All of a sudden I had the reality check that there is so much more to doing ministry than just serving a meal and thinking you’re doing the Lord’s work.”]
All of a sudden I had the reality check that there is so much more to doing ministry than just serving a meal and thinking you’re doing the Lord’s work. Granted, that’s an entry point, but I knew no places to network, I knew no places for shelter, I knew nothing of what to do with people like that. I realized that I needed to know more about how to really serve the poor and the broken.
One day, during our first year doing “Picnic”, my husband and l looked at each other and said, “Man, there’s a church down here. Somebody ought to plant a church.”
The irony of it was that WE were supposed to plant the church. I was in my second year of VLI when I realized that I was being called to plant a church downtown. I knew I had to come up with a two year plan. I set up a meeting with Dan Paxton and I said, “OK, Dan, here is my proposal.” I did it just the way you’re supposed to do it. He read through it and said, “Looks great. Go start a Bible Study in somebody’s house downtown.”
I looked at him and I said, “Really?” He wanted me to go into somebody’s house. I remember thinking to myself, “But everybody is still using!” I mean, we’re talking alcoholics, and drug addicts. I just remember thinking, “How impossible is this?” I could envision going into a neutral zone like a vacant building downtown… but somebody’s house? I remember leaving the meeting so heart-broken, but I thought, “OK, I’m going to do this.”
The very next picnic I asked a couple, that I knew God was drawing me towards, if they would consider letting me start a Bible Study in their house. They both looked at me and said, “Oh, yeah, that would be cool. That would be great!” Well, I never saw them the rest of the summer!
So, I couldn’t get into anybody’s house, and so at the close of Picnic I said, “OK God, we’ll try next year. We’ll lose everybody again for the winter like we always do, and I’ll have to rebuild in the spring.”
A while later, I get a phone call from the girl, and she is crying. Her boyfriend had been thrown in jail for public intoxication, and her cousin had died in prison. She was so broken up and wanted to know if I would go over to her house.
So, I took my Bible, drove over to their house and started going through the Bible and reading to her, and telling her about the love of Jesus. We just started going through the Scriptures. I remember going from from Old Testament to New Testament.
I was probably there about two hours, and prayed over her, and prayed over him. Then I asked them if I could come over on Wednesdays and share the Bible with them some more?” Then she said, “Oh, would you really?” I said, “Yeah, I would!” They were in the ‘hood.’ I walked out of that house, got in my car, and prayed, “Oh, my Lord, you are so good!”
That was the start of it. So, I started coming over there on Wednesdays, and it was a hoot! I never knew what to expect. One time in particular, they were drinking beer (and who knows what else they were doing). I knocked on the door, and I remember somebody said, “Hey, you guys! It’s the church lady.” Some of them fled, because they didn’t want to be there, and others set down their beer, and we had a Bible Study and it was awesome!
Before long, we had this little gathering of people out of the ‘hood.’ So that spring we went back out to Lincoln Park and did the Bible Study outdoors. We had our little cassette player with Vineyard worship songs, and we had a Bible Study. If I had to write anything or draw examples, I would just write on the sidewalk with chalk.
You cannot imagine the people that we would meet in the park! Some people would throw their hands up and say, “Ah, no way,” and other people would wander on over.
So Picnic In The Park began once again and people were coming for the food. But this time we wanted to see if they would stick around for an outdoor service. So after each picnic, we would do these outdoor church services, and those who lived in the neighborhood, and had come out of their addictions, would give their testimonies.
At the end of that season, we started meeting in a small building on East 4th Street, across from the park. The first day that we got into the building, we had 43 people. That’s how it began.
You know what? Naivety can get you a long way. You get bumps and bruises that way too, but you learn from it, and you keep going.
VUSA: Where are you now? What does the church look and feel like?
JM: Well, within a year and a half, we outgrew that little rental space. We found a vacant building that the City didn’t know what to do with. It was right next door to the strip club. Behind us was a high rise (everybody living there was using) and next to that was a tattoo parlor, we also had a gay bar down the street. Very colorful! The streetwalkers would walk in front of our building all the time. But God knew just what He was doing. So, we ended up in there, and just kind of kept adding on a few here and there from the neighborhood.
Within a year, we were booted out of that place. The City turned it into a wrestling museum, and we ended up back on the east side of Waterloo, and rented space at a Senior Center. They wanted to sell, and we tried to buy that building three times. Every time we put up a bid, they would turn it down.
[bctt tweet=”God led me to a place I didn’t want to go, and that’s the beauty of it. – Judy Marshall” quote=”God led me to a place I didn’t want to go, and that’s the beauty of it.”]
The building that we’re in now was vacant for seven years. It was the building I never wanted (there I go again!). It’s a little bit deeper in on the east side, which means it’s in gang territory. I didn’t really know the neighborhood behind it that well and I didn’t care for it. There was no foot traffic (or so I thought). God led me to a place I didn’t want to go, and that’s the beauty of it.
I remember walking in there the first time. It was a pit, the ceiling tiles were down, there were beer stains, and junk everywhere. All of a sudden I looked at the mess, and I looked at the building and I could see it! I could see where the sanctuary would go, I could see what rooms would be the kids’ rooms, I could see where the offices would be, I could see where a kitchen could go – I mean it was like God gave me back my creativity.
A week later, I decided to jump in my car and drive through the neighborhood to see what it was like. I remember going by all these abandoned houses and run down places, and I wept as I drove through the neighborhood. God really did break my heart and I thought, “OK, Lord, this is it. This is where you want it.”
VUSA: Give us a picture of what life is like at Harvest?
JM: Life in church – Wow! I’ll have to say church is messy. We don’t have this put together, refined looking church. I would call it messy, raw church. But, I love it I’m spoiled for messy, raw church. I don’t think I could go back to a traditional setting anymore.
I mean, there’s a lot of shootings around us, and we’ve been keeping track of that. During the summer, we have been prayer walking with a group we partner with. We’ve learned to network, and we’ve learned to partner with other organizations and other churches.
On Sunday mornings, we have people from the correctional facility and people that are recovering from drugs or from alcohol. When I very first started church downtown, we had a lot of people that were coming out of the occult like Wicca, and Satanism. I didn’t realize that we had that many people that were in those kinds of cultures. There are also a lot of people that live downtown who are mentally ill. They already have a bad shake at life. A lot of times the mental illness may be due to some sort of trauma that happened in their life early on. Another issue was prostitution; that one really surprised me. I don’t think people really realize that people resort to prostitution in order to support a drug habit. Our church has an open door policy. As long as you’re not disturbing the public, you’re welcome to come.
We have seen chronic alcoholics go through recovery and actually get recovered. They make the best leaders. I tell you, the ones that have come the furthest and have overcome by the blood of the lamb. They’re the ones that end up being some of our best leaders in the church.
It’s very culturally diverse. There’s a saying, “We all mix at the bottom.” That’s the beauty of urban church. We didn’t have to be so intentional to make it diverse because economics pulls people together. So, we have blacks, whites, native Americans and Hispanics. It’s just a beautiful mix.
VUSA: What does ministry look like? In a lot of churches this kind of ministry is a program of the church. With Harvest, it is the church.
JM: Right. It is the church. It’s taking people from out of charity into development. I am learning this more as I go. I am still a student of what’s going on. The first year, I was thrown for a loop when I had all these people coming in from the park. They were giving up their drugs and they were giving up their alcohol. And six months later when the winter months hit, they were back in jail. I began to see there is a cycle. You’ve got to really live with the people. It’s not a program. In order to make an impact downtown, in any city, it’s like you have to relocate. You have to be with the people. So that it’s not an “us and them” type of thing. It’s a “we” thing.
And so you struggle along with them. You live life with them. Right now, I don’t live close to downtown, but I wouldn’t be surprised if God doesn’t send me, one of these years. I do like my peace and quiet. But, you never know what God has in store.
It’s reconciliation too. I love the five core values of the Vineyard that have just come up recently. Those are exactly what we’re about. We are a reconciling community. It’s not only reconciling people to God, but you have to reconcile people to people. And that is so huge. So, when you have a culturally diverse congregation, you have to be mindful of that as well. We do Vineyard music, but I’m learning there’s more. As we’re experiencing more of the black culture, that’s changing our leadership style. We’re a little more flexible, and we’re a little more open. This weekend I’m going to be gone at a Pastor’s Retreat, and this lovely young lady, Chassidi Ferguson, is going to be teaching. She’s an African American gal, 27 years old. She comes out of the black culture and has this fire in her when she’s up there teaching. She’s learning about Vineyard, and she’s hungry for that style of ministry. I’m learning from her on how to put more fire into what I do, more passion into ministry.
We have things that are charity, but we’re trying to develop people as well. We have a clothes closet. Every other week, Heartland Vineyard comes and helps us put on a breakfast inside our church. That’s been going on for the last few years at our different locations. It’s a free breakfast meal. I kept thinking we’ve got to give them more than just a free meal. That’s how you gather people, but there has to be more. That’s just charity. Now we need development.
This fall we started classes called “Breakfast and Beyond.” We wanted to give them life skills, something that would be of value in developing a person. So, we’ve done workshops like “Budgeting on a Shoestring” or “Stress and Conflict Management.” Or “How to Apply for a Job.” “How to Make Your Application Shine.” Those types of things that would help them get employment and help them with life.
You realize that people downtown just don’t know any other kind of life. It could be because mentally they have never been capable of getting the good jobs, or they dropped out of school.
I have learned so much from the Christian Community Development Association (CCDA). They have eight key principles, and we’re beginning to put those into play. They talk about the importance of relocating into the neighborhood that you’re really going to serve. You make more of a difference when you live among the people than just jumping in, doing the kind act and then jumping back out again. And they say you have to be church-based. There has to be a church in the neighborhood if you really want to make a difference, because once you save somebody, they have to be discipled. And so many people that live in the urban communities don’t feel comfortable in a suburban church, because it’s not what they’re used to. They would feel like they stand out too much.
Reconciliation - Huge! The first step is learning to listen to the community. I’ve been getting involved with the Walnut Neighborhood Association, that’s the neighborhood association that’s in our area, to just find out about the community more, and what their needs are.
It’s a holistic approach. It’s not just spiritual or just physical. You need the both combined together. Solving the housing problem doesn’t really solve an emotional struggle. You have to marry both Jesus and justice with everything.
Then there’s empowerment, of course. That’s another one of the principles. And that’s really taking people from charity to development. You want to empower people, and not just have them be dependent on you.
VUSA: What does the future hold, five, ten years on?
JM: You know, when you go into a place of brokenness, that’s under-resourced, you have to know that you’re going to invest, I would say, a minimum of 15 years to really make a difference in a neighborhood. It’s a slow process, it really is. You can get the parents turned around, but to turn their whole household around is difficult.
So people may come to you homeless. If they can get in a place and be a renter, that’s going from relief to betterment. Perhaps we’ve helped them to get their Social Security if they have lost it and get them on their feet. Now, to get to development would mean, helping this person finish off their GED so that they can get a good job. From there, they could even become a homeowner. We are still exploring our new neighborhood, but we know of nine abandoned houses. We’ve got some old buildings that are vacant as well. It has been really hard for businesses to even get off the ground in our neighborhood because of the violence and the crime.
But we have some wonderful assets in our neighborhood. There is a House of Hope, which is a place where women can come with their children. They get housing there, while they work and get their education. It is a safe house for them. We’ve got the Boys and Girls Club behind us to. So, there are wonderful assets in the neighborhood. I would love to see us partner with these agencies that are already in existence. Then, maybe do some shelters. We are so hurting for shelters; especially long-term shelters.
That is what I consider development to be – helping revitalize the area that we are in. Maybe tear down some of these old abandoned houses or maybe buy up some and start them up.
So many people, especially the young men coming out of jail, haven’t had a good upbringing to learn skills. Development is helping people and walking along side of them.
Our leadership team is just crazy. The gal that runs our front desk is the most valuable as far as information and resources for people. She came right up out of the neighborhood. She had gone off to prison three times. And on the third time, realized that she needed God in her life and wanted to not fake it. She found us a week after she got out; walked into our little church and she really hasn’t left. Sometimes the people you don’t think have a lot to add to your ministry, are the ones that actually add the most. She was a wealth of information. She knew the welfare system. She knew where to get rental assistance and where to get food. So, she became our most valuable resource. The same can be said of the people who lead our recovery program.
[bctt tweet=”Development is taking somebody from the street and seeing them lead the church. – Judy Marshall” quote=”Development is taking somebody from the street and seeing them lead the church.”]
Development is taking somebody from the street and seeing them lead the church. A lot of times, people think if you can leave the neighborhood and flee poverty you have succeeded. Success in God’s eyes is so different. Success is staying put right where you are at, and being salt and light to others. That is success in God’s eyes.
VUSA: Any final thoughts?
JM: I think sometimes people glamorize working with the poor. Sometimes when I hear people get a little lofty, I say, “You know what? Why don’t you come down and hang with us for a couple days?”
But boy, I tell you what, those who have been forgiven much, love much. That is what I love. When the leadership team prays, we look at each other and we say, “Don’t you just love our church?” I mean, we love our church. You love your people and it is infectious. You don’t always get that.
