Collaborative Voices: Mayflower Congregational
In our Collaborative Voices for July, we talk to one of our longstanding congregations in the collaborative, Mayflower Congregational United Church of Christ in Minneapolis. Mayflower has long been a leader on social justice issues ranging from climate change to housing. We talked to Belle Scott, a member of Mayflower for over 50 years and active in the Collaborative.
“Mayflower is a member of the United Church of Christ, a non-creedal denomination that reflects our history from the Reformation to a progressive, active expression of Christianity today. We acknowledge whose and who we are, celebrating the Creator’s creation, following the Jesus path. We are an Open and Affirming church, a Just Peace Church, an advocate of immigrants and responsible stewardship of earth. We believe ‘God is still speaking’ so, we include the spiritual practice of listening in our worship as well as prophetic preaching and joyous music.
“Mayflower has been involved with Beacon since 2007. We had 2 lots north of our parking lots, one vacant and one that held an old rambler house we used to house newly arrived refugees. The house was in poor condition. One of our members was aware of then-Plymouth Church Neighborhood Foundation housing program and suggested we talk with them about our little house. This led to joining with PCNF to build a work-force apartment building with 30 units. We had to overcome local opposition to the building. We invited several other congregations in our neighborhood to help us door knock, hold informational meetings and work with the local neighborhood government groups to gain permission for what-would-become Creekside Commons. All that effort paid off: we built the building with Beacon, welcomed the new neighbors and have had a rich relationship with them ever since. We reconfigured our nursery school into an early childhood learning center, expecting the children in Creekside would avail themselves of this opportunity. Currently, nine children are enrolled on scholarship. Mayflower members provide after school tutoring, computer lab and ESL classes.
While it required us to raise money for this venture, I don’t believe there was any doubt at Mayflower that this effort was exactly what we as Christians are called to do. We sing a hymn that proclaims, “We will build a house where all may dwell and all may safely live”. Our collaboration with Beason enabled us to do just that.”
“Before becoming a Beacon collaborating congregation, we really weren’t as aware of the chapter and verse of the sorry state of housing in Minneapolis. While we generally knew people were homeless or spending way too much for housing, we did not have so much information as we do now. We have been informing ourselves about the racism in our community, so learning more about housing issues was not a surprise, it just makes us more determined to remedy the situation. Our faith tradition of the United Church of Christ has been involved with justice issues from its birth. Our Pilgrim ancestors came here for religious freedom; the 19th century Congregational churches, our predecessors, advocated for abolition of slavery, established education for freed slaves in the South after the Civil War, we have been active in the civil rights movement, settling refugees from war torn countries, supportive of Women’s reproductive rights, demanding justice to the GLBTQ community, resisting voter ID laws, etc. We do tend to stick our necks out!
When you consider the imperatives of our faith to “Feed the Hungry, House the Homeless, Visit the Imprisoned” and so on, the collaborative is a golden opportunity to actually and finally put flesh on the bones of those calls for action.
This collaborative not only provides a strong advocacy within our larger community that garners careful attention from our elected officials, the collaborative itself is a well governed effective organization.”
