In Search of Progress
For the Rev. Man Leemhuis, vicar of St. Luke’s of the Mountains in La Crescenta, California, leaning right into a message of affection means mixing an Episcopal ethos with a handful of recent and unexplored traditions. For Leemhuis and his management crew, there’s a willingness to do what hasn’t been achieved earlier than and be current to the group round them.
Because of this, St. Luke’s has skilled explosive progress since Leemhuis took the part-time function in 2024. With weekly attendance averaging 80 to 100 in the beginning of 2024, regular progress resulted in a mean of 212 lower than three months later.
Leemhuis cites music and meals justice as the most important drivers of the expansion.
“Music is big. In an effort to supply each Episcopal and non-Episcopal music, we’re not a giant organ-playing church. As a substitute, we sing just a bit little bit of every part. We’ve acquired a number of Southern gospel and bluegrass, however we’ve additionally expanded our musical choices to incorporate salsa and concrete up to date gospel music,” he instructed The Residing Church. Throughout companies, texts are projected onto screens and printed in bulletins to fulfill the assorted wants and wishes of various members.
However music is just not restricted to Sunday mornings alone. When native musicians, who play for the mission, prompted St. Luke’s to host free group concert events all year long, it supplied 16-person flute concert events, Sacred Resistance music concert events, and Saddler Periods, that includes salsa and kumbaya music. The music drew a whole bunch of individuals by the doorways of the church, a lot of whom would haven’t in any other case been discovered there.
The sentiment is comparable with the assorted branches of the meals justice program. What began out with feeding seven households per week, on common, has grown to incorporate feeding over 100 households in want, each single week. The Rev. Deacon Dina Fulgoni helps coordinate the church’s ministries of justice.
“It’s a must to be prepared to work with different individuals and never at all times reinvent the wheel,” Leemhuis stated. “It’s a must to be prepared to collaborate with different teams.”
After figuring out households eligible for the meals program, the church started to work with numerous distributors and like-minded organizations to offer households with contemporary vegatables and fruits, dairy items, and herbs from a group backyard. By figuring out those that have been food-sensitive or susceptible due to their immigration standing, the rising mission met a right away want in Crescenta Valley.
The church is situated in La Crescenta, and borders quite a few different cities within the Diocese of Los Angeles. Crescenta Valley is wealthy with racial and cultural range, together with giant pockets of Korean, Armenian, European American, Latino, and African American communities.
Though St. Luke’s primarily serves a inhabitants of Latino, Black, and white churchgoers, when the priest in cost gazes upon the faces of the younger individuals current at his church, “they’re all the colours: Black, Latino, pan-Asian, together with East Indian, Chinese language, and Korean, and white.” It’s vital to him that the mission take note of and finally replicate the demographics of the encompassing group.
In additional methods than one, the will to replicate Crescenta Valley finally offers Father Leemhuis hope. Simply because the church lately began working with a younger man who’s serving to launch a 3rd area for younger adults, full with non-religious occasions that promote “no alcohol, no smoking, no xenophobia, and no hate,” Technology Z has responded by exhibiting up in droves, with over 100 twenty-somethings attending one occasion. Likewise, quite a few households have began to name St. Luke’s residence. Even when they don’t come each single Sunday, these households proceed to stroll by her crimson doorways recurrently, a couple of times a month.
Many individuals have began coming to the church as a result of they see it as a spot of affection. Teams like Indivisible, a grassroots motion that stands towards authoritarianism, meets at St. Luke’s recurrently. Further progress has occurred by a rising on-line group, with common streaming of bilingual companies on YouTube and different social media. Livestreaming has confirmed useful for immigrant households who’re afraid to return to church due to ICE raids in higher Los Angeles.
Though St. Luke’s feels the consequences of mass deportations, Leemhuis stays undeterred in proclaiming a message of welcome.
“We’re unapologetically evangelical Episcopalians in that we unabashedly let individuals know that each one of God’s kids are welcome,” he says, additional applauding how lay management actively proclaims a message about Jesus’ response to immigrants, ladies, and LGBT individuals.
“I’ve the privilege of claiming I’m one of many leaders, however because of their management, the love church has it occurring all day, every single day,” Leemhuis stated. To him, the lay management is what monks dream of: they’ve possession and are deeply engaged in each the sensible and religious work of the church.
For Leemhuis—a bisexual African American particular person with a incapacity who additionally works as a civil rights legal professional—loving neighbors, providing hospitality, and creating secure areas is strictly what the church must be doing.
Cara Meredith, a contract author and postulant for holy orders within the Diocese of California, lives within the San Francisco Bay Space.
