Melissa Reed

While in seminary, Melissa O'Keefe Reed did her contextual education assignment at Resurrection Lutheran Church in Oakland, under the supervision of Rev. Lucy Kolin.  

There she came to understand the methodologies and promise of community organizing (the same thing Barack Obama did in Chicago).  The process of community organizing is to cycle through one-to-one conversations, communal strategizing, taking specific actions, and evaluating their effectiveness.  This virtuous circle can be brought to bear on intransigent social problems as well as congregational planning.

For her year-long internship, Melissa went to north Portland, Oregon, where she was then supervised by another veteranPLTS grad, Rev. Terry Moe.  Terry was leading his congregation through a discernment process of their future.  Their numbers were diminishing and they were thinking creatively.  Eventually, that process eventuated in a decision to allow something new to happen.

So after Melissa's graduation in 2008, Redeemer Lutheran Church called her as their Outreach Pastor.  Her job, in collaboration with the congregation, was to envision a new way of being in the neighborhood on behalf of the gospel.  By a community organizing process, the congregation, in Melissa's words, decided "to become vulnerable for the sake of the community."

The upshot is that a new non-profit was formed, named the Leaven Community, within which would be located the congregation, newly named Salt and Light Lutheran Church.  Leaven (called for short) would have the governing board of all activities, including Salt and Light.

Leaven organized activities around re-investing in the local community through financial investments, advocating for local schools that were on the chopping block, and making initial steps toward a micro-credit lending pool.  Leaven is described as "a membership-bed nonprofit focused on spirituality, community and public life.

The congregation continues to offer services of Word, sacrament, fellowship and service.  Other Leaven members take part in Buddhist meditation, yoga, running a tool-lending library.  A women's gathering is called Bras, Bible and Brew, and a men's group, MenSummit.  Leaven has just hired a specific community organizer.

Pastor Melissa says that Salt and Light has one of the ELCA's simplest constitutions, in order to allow it to be nimble.  One third of Leaven's board must come from the congregation, one third from other folks, and the rest can be a combination of the two.  The hope is that Leaven and Salt and Light will become totally self-sustainable in three to four years.

The Lutheran magazine has already done a few stories on the mission re-start.  Pastor Melissa gets calls from others who want to duplicate what Leaven is doing.  She tells them, "the model is not in our outcomes, but in the process of discernment."

That is certainly something that requires the constant attendance of the Holy Spirit.