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DiggA Case Study in the Spirit of Hope
By Herb Gunn
If there’s a canary in the coal mine of the U.S. economic crisis, it is Spirit of Hope
Episcopal/Lutheran congregation in Detroit. Worshipping at a six-way intersection in the city that has been devastated by the collapsing auto industry, parishioners of the church — formerly Trinity Episcopal Church — and its pastor, Matthew Bode, note that the neighborhood is so hard hit by decades of neglect, the implosion of the mortgage and financial markets is scarcely felt.
“Detroit has been in economic decline for as long as I can remember,” said longtime neighbor and new member of the church Kate Devlin. “Now new people are facing the challenges that poor people have known all along.”
“The decline of so many in southeast Michigan has awakened a new awareness of the plight of the poor,” agreed Bode.
As result, some of what the parishioners of Spirit of Hope do for survival’s sake is now called innovative ministry, and it’s catching on as an alternative economic model during hard times.
Entering a third season, Spirit of Hope has launched an urban farm project between the Sunshine Community Preschool playscape, which has been located at the church for twenty-five years, and an empty lot where a drug house burned down. Under the direction of Devlin, a master gardener and local artist, the church cultivates a variety of vegetables on the raised beds that are necessary because the plot sits near the former site of an old gasoline station that leached toxins into the neighborhood topsoil. The beds were built from the flotsam and jetsam of urban life: junked tires, discarded milk crates, scrap chicken wire, and brick.
“One thing Detroit has a lot of are tires. Mountains of tires,” said Devlin, who constructed a labyrinth-like spiral with them. The church also does composting and maintains an orchard of small fruit trees.
Bode explains that the project’s goals are three-fold: to be an evangelical and visual presence on a desolate corner of the city; to help supply the church’s food pantry and once-a-week soup kitchen with healthy food; and to teach people how to grow their own food.
“It is easier and cheaper to get a bottle of beer than an apple or tomato in this neighborhood,” Bode said.
Bode explained that another goal of the urban farm project is to acquire an ice-cream truck, retrofit the vehicle for biofuel, and then “drive around the city and sell vegetables, baked goods, or whatever other kinds of income-generating nutritious foodstuffs that local residents want to sell to make extra income. We call it an ‘alternative economy.’ The idea seems more cooperative and Jesus-centered than the corporate economy we all depend upon too much.”
Bode acknowledges that while the economic impact may be modest, the project makes a social justice statement as well. The Detroit streets surrounding the church are littered with liquor bottles that the gardeners pick up to decorate a Bottle Tree. An African tradition which crossed the Atlantic with the slave trade, holds that colored bottles strewn in trees capture evil spirits that then dissipate during the night. While the folktale may not square with Christian theology, Spirit of Hope’s Bottle Tree does attract attention to the garden and the church’s vitality on an otherwise blighted block.
The Bottle Tree and the hardscrabble garden stand in stark contrast to the silhouette of the Motor City Casino that towers on the urban horizon above the church as a beacon of false hope. Promoted two decades ago as a linchpin to the city’s economic revival, Detroit’s casinos are not unlike the church’s Bottle Tree and lead-laced yard — containers of evil spirits, all — but without a redemptive release.
Pastor Bode said that the Parable of the Sower comes to mind. “We have seeds that are falling on rocky and contaminated soil. If they found soil like this in affluent neighborhoods, they would scrape and carry it away and make it someone else’s problem. But we can’t move people out. So how do we make it healthy and livable for people here? How do we use soil that has been unjustly contaminated for God’s purpose? That’s the challenge for the Spirit of Hope.”
Herb Gunn is director of CREDO Institute, Inc. and was formerly editor of The Record, the newspaper of the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan.
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