Pastor's Notes--November 2010

In mid-2008, I offered a pastor’s column entitled “Building Ministry” (Baptist Window, June 2008, p.2).  The play on words was deliberate.  First Baptist has been building its ministry while making our building part of our new way of ministry.  It was a new concept we were committed to exploring, though we knew that we were entering into new territory and an unmapped terrain.   Our building was just starting to attract attention, our first long-term tenant (Family Time) had moved in that month, and we decided to upgrade facilities to make our building more accessible and up to code.

In November 2010, I look around and see the “new normal” has settled in.  We have four long-term tenants and an impressive number of organizations who use our facilities on a per-diem basis.  Our staff and lay leadership has become accustomed to surprising phone calls, as non-profit organizations have started thinking of “First Baptist” as a place to partner and deliver needed community services .  Here are some examples:

Easter Seals, a long-term tenant organization provides family support services in coordination with the Department of Children and Families (DCF).  Recently, they reserved use of the Della Whittier Lounge to conduct mediation services for families in the court system.  A participant shared with me that the Lounge created a welcoming space to have the sometimes difficult conversations necessary at these meetings.   Likewise, the Family Time office is providing supervised visitation for families seven days a week.

The Vermont Center for Independent Living (VCIL) has been a key player in local efforts to discuss health care as a human right.  The VCIL staff also used our fellowship hall for their “Halloween Hoedown”, a party for VCIL consumers to gather in a friendly and accessible space.

The Greater Bennington Interfaith Community Services (GBICS) is offering Thursday night clinics of 20+ persons a week, plus occasional other clinic days as medical providers are available to volunteer.  The GBICS fund-raiser “Empty Bowls” event netted over $6,000 for the Food & Fuel Fund.  Ongoing conversations are happening with the GBICS board and the Interfaith Council to ensure greater access to food is made available to our neighbors in need.  GBICS’ on-site location allows our church staff the opportunity to keep in touch about emerging community needs to help our congregation stay active in our own local missional work.

On a per-diem basis, our facility is offering increasingly diverse organizations the opportunity to provide events and services:

Effective this month, the Walloomsac Farmer’s Market will make Colgate Hall its winter home.  Once a month (Nov 2010 to April 2011), the Farmer’s Market will convene in our fellowship hall, providing local farmers and producers year-round presence.  Farmer’s Markets strengthen communities, and our local one is quite exceptional.  The board of trustees is pleased to welcome the Market to First Baptist, especially as a non-profit organization that helps people meet a basic human need: access to good, healthy food. 

The Tutorial Center has been hosting a number of events in partnership with “Let Me Tell You a Story”, a children and family literacy program administered by retired educator Jan Bopp.  This organization uses church facilities to provide a downtown presence for these programs.

Interestingly, all of these organizations have connected to First Baptist by an important, powerful common thread:  word of mouth.  Congregants have helped connect First Baptist with these organizations.  Together, we have made these connections possible.  Through our connections and circles of friends, we have strengthened the ministry of First Baptist, expanded our missional footprint in the community, and helped organizations find affordable, accessible, and welcoming space to meet basic human needs.  

In recent months, the story of First Baptist’s missional work and missional facility use model (aka a “non-profit charity mall”) has gained notice.  Wayne Kachmar and I have offered workshops for interested local congregations, two webinars with students at Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, and a workshop at the ABC VNH annual meeting.  Others are awakening to this sort of “building ministry”, and First Baptist is planting seeds in mission fields near and far. 

As I said back in mid-2008, let me share it once more:

Sometimes when we think of First Baptist, we think of the church building as the place we go Sunday to Sunday to receive the spiritual nourishment to get us through the week. Perhaps during the week, we might pop in for an event, a committee meeting, or something else that causes us to drop by the church. Know that as the congregation is rethinking its ministries and we are working together to bring about a new day, your building is also doing new things as well. Indeed, the tenets of faith are being lived out as we share our space and allow many good things to flourish through partnerships with community groups looking to improve the social, cultural, economic, and spiritual life of Bennington through time spent at that wonderful place we call “First Baptist”.

Keep our ongoing efforts in your prayers as well as the staff of the congregation as they help coordinate this work. Say a word of thanks to the hardworking trustee board, and give yourselves a pat on the back, too! Our desire to share the building is doing great things. It is indeed building ministry!

—The Rev. Jerrod H. Hugenot, Coordinating Minister

FBC Missional Work Highlighted in Local Newspaper

Tenants fill church with good works

by MARK E. RONDEAU, The Bennington Banner, March 8, 2010, p. 1A and 6A

BENNINGTON -- In the year after the first non-profit tenant moved into the Nichols Education Building at First Baptist Church in January 2009, three more tenants moved in, filling up the available space.

First, Project Against Violent Encounters' Family Time opened up on the second floor of the building, located downtown. Next, the Bennington Free Health Cilinic moved into the building, and the Vermont Center for Independent Living and Easter Seals later followed suit.

The offering of the previously unused building space is the result of a deliberate decision by the First Baptist congregation to reach out to the community as a form of mission.

"We’ve pretty much taken on as a missional church the goal of providing the missing components for basic human needs in the area here. We’re too small by ourselves to tackle any one of these things," said Wayne Kachmar, a member of the church board of trustees. "But this collaborative model of missional church has given us the opportunity to partner with many different groups and to use what we bring to the table: open space, visibility on Main Street -- accessibility, we’re flat, we’re level -- accessibility to transportation."

In addition to providing easy access for those in need, the use of the space by human services non-profit groups also frees up commercial space downtown for economic development, he said.

Tenants filled the available space faster than anticipated. "It’s sort of amazing when a plan comes together that quickly," Kachmar said. "We think that it was obviously (something) that was needed and the affirmation seems to be that our tenants are thriving, the activity levels are high."

Tracy L. Dorman, peer advocate and community outreach specialist with Vermont Center for Independent Living in Bennington, said that it promotes independent living for individuals with disabilities.

"Many VCIL peers are living on limited, fixed incomes and experience overwhelming financial, physical, mental, or emotional challenges," she said. "VCIL working as their partner helps to build their confidence to face those challenges through accessing services in the community, and to their developing and managing their well-being."

Being located in the building next to the Bennington Free Clinic allows VCIL a closer connection with Free Clinic executive director Sue Andrews and the free clinic on behalf of the people VCIL serves, Dorman said.

"In addition, VCIL endorses the Health Care Is A Human Right Campaign," she said. "VCIL’s location in the First Baptist Church allows the local organizing committee and campaign members a more visible presence."

Another advantage is accessibility. "Being located on the Green Mountain Express route going east on Main Street allows VCIL peers to utilize the bus to attend our events, meetings, and appointments," Dorman said. "Our peers enjoy the autonomy that the church location provides.

"It is a welcoming, friendly, supportive environment. This location provides VCIL the ability to accommodate large and small groups that include support groups, community meetings, trainings, and also one-on-one meetings," she said. "The kitchen space has allowed us to offer cooking classes to our peers without having to find alternative space."

First Baptist has helped offer healthy cooking and basic sewing classes and hopes to collaborate in presenting more such activities. "The idea here is it’s not necessarily the First Baptist folks completely doing it. We really seek out partnerships," said First Baptist coordinating minister Jerrod Hugenot, adding that one does not have to be a person of faith to participate. "Collaboration is key. So we work fairly fluidly with folks within the faith community and with others within the larger community."

The church has received a $6,000 grant from the Vermont Community Foundation. "What they were specifically interested in was the collaborative model we’ve put together and the governance structure we had to put around it," Kachmar said.

The grant was for basic support, and part of this is to update some of the infrastructure for common use, such as Internet access, a more energy-efficient heating program, and setting up a hall in the church for interactive conferences, he said.

Though the Nichols Building is full of permanent tenants, "We’re not done, Kachmar said. "We may be full for the time being. But we’re looking at the other options: people who need a temporary facility, people who may need an office for a month or two and being able to come in here and support an activity.

"Finding that in town is not very easy and at this point that’s perhaps the next step that we have to look at," he said.

Hugenot, who is originally from Kansas, said that in studying the history of Baptists in Vermont, he has found that First Baptist in Bennington a century and more ago was always prominent in mission work.

"There’s certainly precedent that mission is very much a strand of the DNA that has made this place tick and thrive and grow over the years," he said. "So in some ways we are reclaiming our roots while also casting out for a different day."