La Mesa Presbyterian Church
Today we look at Interview #1 with Rev. Trey Hammond of La Mesa Presbyterian Church in Albuquerque, NM. I found Trey’s experience fascinating. He (and the church he pastors) face the adaptive challenges of a predominately white, middle-class, educated congregation which longs to have a ministry within their changing community context.
The church has discerned three “strands” within the community that they seek to connect with: Native American, Hispanic and refugee immigrants from Somalia. Therefore, this is the first of three interviews (this one being the longest, 6 minutes). See my comments below after watching the video.
I’d like to highlight a few things I found noteworthy in this first interview.
I was struck by the spiritual discernment the church had done to name the three strands of community context in which they wanted to intentionally build relationships and ministry. This may sound simple, but naming an intended direction is critical to getting traction on the adaptive challenge of connecting with a neighborhood different than the make-up of the church.
I was also struck by how Trey described the church’s movement in their intended direction. He describes their ministry as relational. They first attempted to build “social capital” in the neighborhood, through opening up their building for celebrations like Quinceañera, partnering with the elementary school across the street to offer a music and arts program, and sponsoring a neighborhood multi-cultural street festival.
Social capital is a term with many definitions, but I offer two expert definitions here in conjunction with Trey’s use of the term. As Trey used the term, it connoted to me building relationships and connections which produce goodwill and partnerships between the church and local community. According to Robert Putnam, social capital “refers to the collective value of all ’social networks’ and the inclinations that arise from these networks to do things for each other.” Nan Lin offers another definition: “Investment in social relations with expected returns in the marketplace.” For a church, a good working definition might be: Investment in social relationships with individuals and institutions in the community toward cooperative efforts.
Lastly, I was struck with how the church had invited a leader in Hispanic ministries in the RCA to consult with them on their intended direction of connection with the Hispanic community. Trey quotes the leader as telling them, “You’ve earned the social capital of the neighborhood, now it’s time to move into making spiritual connections, not just cultural, political and social connections.” (approximate quote) This invited expert affirmed the church’s direction of building three kinds of social capital: cultural, political and social. Then the expert pushes them toward what is perhaps a later and more difficult step of making spiritual connections. Often churches might start one type of connection, say political for example, but never take the risks to make a spiritual connection. Or conversely, a church may want to start with a spiritual connection, but doesn’t have the social capital sufficient to make that spiritual connection.
In light of Trey’s experience, good questions churches can ask of themselves are:
- What would be our “strands” of direction in which we build social capital and relationships in our community?
- What kind of “social capital” and how could we go about building this? (cultural, political, social, spiritual?)
- If we’ve made cultural, political and social connections, is it time for us as a church to make spiritual connections as well?
If you would like to use this Interview clip and questions for discussion in your church, you could access this interview via this website, or the YouTube link is:
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