Season 13: Church Property: Imagining Good Futures | Episode 10
How Can Church Property Bring Repair?
Overview
This week, Shannon Hopkins and Rev. Mark Elsdon continue their takeover of the Igniting Imagination podcast with guests Rev. Chris Dela Cruz and Rev. Melissa O’Keefe Reed. They discuss the transformative project, Barbie's Village, where a Presbyterian church in Portland, Oregon, took a groundbreaking step by giving land back to indigenous leaders as a form of repair and restitution. Chris and Melissa delve into the significance of acknowledging the land’s history and the meaningful relationships built with the Indigenous community. They share how this work has rejuvenated the church’s mission and deepened their faith.
Listen this week as Shannon, Mark, Chris, and Melissa explore the power of understanding our land stories and cultivating a spirit of generosity and belonging for true transformation.
In this conversation, you’ll hear:
The church's economic models are evolving, prompting innovative uses of property for community benefit.
Barbie's Village exemplifies how churches can engage in reparative acts towards indigenous communities.
Transformative relationships are essential for churches to address their land and property issues.
Community organizing can foster meaningful change.
- Leaders in the church must confront their historical ties to the land and its implications.
Meet Our Guests
Rev. Chris de la Cruz
Rev. Chris Dela Cruz, a Presbyterian Pastor/Community Organizer currently serves as Director of Youth Initiatives with Together Lab, overseeing the Youth Solidarity Movement in Oregon. Previously, Rev. Dela Cruz served as Associate Pastor with Westminster Presbyterian Church Portland, the sponsor congregation for Barbie's Village with the Presbytery of the Cascades. His background includes newspaper journalism, youth and college ministry, congregational pastoral ministry and community organizing.
Rev. Melissa O’Keefe Reed
Rev. Melissa O’Keefe Reed was born in Goettingen, Germany while her parents studied theology. She was raised throughout the New England Synod, the daughter of two Lutheran pastors, where she learned the power of community to nurture active, curious, relentless faith in an incarnate, relational God. This faith would agitate her at Boston College (BA in English), through work in a Lutheran Community Services group home, and at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in Berkeley, CA (MDiv, 2008) where she encountered faith-based community organizing in Oakland. Suddenly, the resurrective power of this relational God who dwells most profoundly in the world’s wounds came alive in flesh and blood.
In Portland, Oregon, among her internship congregation, Redeemer Lutheran, she personally experienced the liberative power of the gospel lived out among a congregation who intentionally shared their stories with one another and their neighbors, listening and responding to God’s call stirring in their collective woundedness. Melissa was then called back to work with a team that would midwife the intentional death of Redeemer into a new community and organizing Body — Salt & Light Lutheran Church and Leaven Community where she served as a mission developer and then pastor, community organizer and co-executive director until September 2019. Leaven teaches Melissa what it means to be fully human and to move together in the eternal. She’s currently the lead organizer of Reckoning with Racism.
Melissa is married to Deacon Matt Smith, a hospice chaplain, fifth grade basketball coach, and backyard contemplative gardner. They have two children — Jack Francis (16) and Brigid Clare (10), and two dogs — Mookie the chihuahua and Gracie the pitbull.
Melissa leaps out of bed in the morning to accompany, resource and bless beloveds, particularly those on the margins of the church and the world, to come alive in the discovery of the power of their stories in relationship and in their response to their call. She sprints to develop the leadership of teams to lead their people in developing and enfleshing vision and action that grows from shared vulnerability. She dances to co-create process that weaves faith communities and neighbors to do the work of Life. She is a strategy wonk, recently fell in love with 90-Day Plans, and loves to prepare liturgy that is public action and public action that is liturgy. Her spiritual practices include kitchen dancing, relational one-to-one conversations, and friendship. She trusts our trickster Seamstress-Spirit to mess with any irrelevant or vicious line we humans draw and to thread our lives in ways beyond expectation. And, she trusts such Spirit is present and at work throughout the Oregon Synod.
Show Notes
Rev. Chris Dela Cruz, a Presbyterian Pastor/Community Organizer currently serves as Director of Youth Initiatives with Together Lab, overseeing the Youth Solidarity Movement in Oregon. Previously, Rev. Dela Cruz served as Associate Pastor with Westminster Presbyterian Church Portland, the sponsor congregation for Barbie's Village with the Presbytery of the Cascades. His background includes newspaper journalism, youth and college ministry, congregational pastoral ministry and community organizing.
Rev. Melissa O’Keefe Reed was born in Goettingen, Germany while her parents studied theology. She was raised throughout the New England Synod, the daughter of two Lutheran pastors, where she learned the power of community to nurture active, curious, relentless faith in an incarnate, relational God. This faith would agitate her at Boston College (BA in English), through work in a Lutheran Community Services group home, and at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in Berkeley, CA (MDiv, 2008) where she encountered faith-based community organizing in Oakland. Suddenly, the resurrective power of this relational God who dwells most profoundly in the world’s wounds came alive in flesh and blood.
In Portland, Oregon, among her internship congregation, Redeemer Lutheran, she personally experienced the liberative power of the gospel lived out among a congregation who intentionally shared their stories with one another and their neighbors, listening and responding to God’s call stirring in their collective woundedness. Melissa was then called back to work with a team that would midwife the intentional death of Redeemer into a new community and organizing Body — Salt & Light Lutheran Church and Leaven Community where she served as a mission developer and then pastor, community organizer and co-executive director until September 2019. Leaven teaches Melissa what it means to be fully human and to move together in the eternal. She’s currently the lead organizer of Reckoning with Racism.
Melissa is married to Deacon Matt Smith, a hospice chaplain, fifth grade basketball coach, and backyard contemplative gardner. They have two children — Jack Francis (16) and Brigid Clare (10), and two dogs — Mookie the chihuahua and Gracie the pitbull.
Melissa leaps out of bed in the morning to accompany, resource and bless beloveds, particularly those on the margins of the church and the world, to come alive in the discovery of the power of their stories in relationship and in their response to their call. She sprints to develop the leadership of teams to lead their people in developing and enfleshing vision and action that grows from shared vulnerability. She dances to co-create process that weaves faith communities and neighbors to do the work of Life. She is a strategy wonk, recently fell in love with 90-Day Plans, and loves to prepare liturgy that is public action and public action that is liturgy. Her spiritual practices include kitchen dancing, relational one-to-one conversations, and friendship. She trusts our trickster Seamstress-Spirit to mess with any irrelevant or vicious line we humans draw and to thread our lives in ways beyond expectation. And, she trusts such Spirit is present and at work throughout the Oregon Synod.
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More From Season 13: Church Property: Imagining Good Futures
Are Taxes Distracting Us from Bigger Church Property Issues?
With Rev. Dr. Patrick Duggan
What Can Partnerships Unlock for Church Property?
With Brenda Halverson and Rev. Staci Maurice-Wheeler
Besides Housing, What Are Other Ideas for Re-Imagining Church Property?
With Rev. Chrisy Ennen