Detroit

Ryan Torma (minister of community life at Spirit Garage in Minneapolis) and I spent the last two days in Detroit. The Bishop's office there is looking at the possibility of an emerging church plant near Wayne State University and wanted our input. First of all...heaps of praise to these people (synod staff, local clergy, outreach board, Episcopal and Lutheran campus ministry) for casting a vision for something they are new to and are only in the begining stages of learning about! There's a good scene there that would lend itself well to postmodern Christian community.

Jack Eggleston from the Bishop's office drove us around downtown Detroit and I still don't quite know how to process what I saw. It was like a bombed out war zone. There were large areas with more abandoned buildings than occupied, including neighborhoods with large victorian homes which hinted at their previous beauty but are now burned up, decimated and raw. These are truly the abdandoned places of empire. Detroit never quite recovered from the race riots of the 1960's and the "White Flight" from the inner city drained the area of needed resources and infastructure. Today in Detroit, one block will be abandoned and another will hold a row of new lofts. One block will have only a run down liquor store with barred windows and the next will host a new gallery and hipster bar. I guess it felt weird to say to them that yeah, there's a happenin' arts and music scene and the creative class are moving back to the city, and then have nothing to say about the death and hopelessness surrounding the "hip scene". The whole experience was darkly and unavoidably punctuated by a reality I would rather not know about...but don't have the option of ignoring anymore.

I don't even have a prayer for this. Do any of you?

Comments

[Lutheran Zephyr]

I'd love you hear your comments about Emergent in general (or, please refer me to any previous posts). A year ago I wrote a series of posts about Emergent (tag: Emergent on my blog) with a mixture of admiration and scepticism. A local Lutheran church doing redevelopment ministry in the emergent mold just closed its doors near me, and I know of the struggles of some other (non-Lutheran) emergent churches to sustain themselves. Particularly in a poor, African-American neighborhood (a demographic in which I've lived, worked and worshipped in Philadelphia), I wonder what Emergent has to offer. I admire and appreciate Emergent, but I also have my questions. Please share with me your insights, if you have the chance . . .

[towanda]

I have a prayer: God forgive us, because we pretty much know the shit we're doing...

[Buddha Baby]

I'm probably your only Buddhist reader, so I'll add my two cents and hope it's closer to being a lotus in the mud than just mud. At the end of prayer, meditation, mantra, etc., we dedicate any merit we may have earned to all sentient beings. This might seem like an unmeaningul blanket statement to make sure you've covered your compassionate bases worldwide. Then again, with the right intention, it's a practical way to pray for those in the middle of widespread suffering, like what you've seen in Detroit. Why not pray for everyone on the planet every time you pray? Can't hurt!

[Dave]

I had a similar experience in St. Louis, where the Urbana Student Missions Convention was held. The downtown area is like a ghost town, with redevelopment monies invested only in isolated pockets, overshadowed by decaying vacated buildings. The long train ride from downtown to the airport is a study in abandonment; I kept waiting for the new growth and never saw it. A police officer there told me that if you count the outlying areas, there are upwards of 3 million people in St. Louis, but there are only something like 300,000 downtown. St. Louisians need money, they need prayer, they need jobs, they need resurrection.

[Pastor David]

Can there be any other prayer than

Kyrie Eleison

[Jan]

My prayer is that you go for it -- whatever "it" turns out to be.

[DaveMorin]

Hi Nadia,

It's interesting to read your perspective on this situation. I was part of the group that you met with in Detroit and, yes, your observations are all very true. But, what's interesting to me is that, it is my reality and has been for my whole life so I don't feel the "shock and awe" of the situation and find myself now absorbed with the small yet positive change going on in the city.

Do we have a long way to go? Absolutely yes, the issues are still large and overwhelming. But, that can't lead to a sense of hopelessness. If an emergent church can find a small way to be a part of this small, positive change, I can't think of a better way to move forward.

We simply need every prayer we can get and we need the Holy Spirit to give every single one of us in metro-Detroit the energy to want to affect positive change.

[Nadia]

Thnaks to everyone.
A Buddhist reader...that makes me feel so cool!
To the folks who asked me to respond to them, I'll do that directly and not here.
Thanks for your participation

[The Aesthetic Elevator]

Wow, a lot of potential in that facade . . .

[Brent Link]

Okay. So I was browsing the internet looking for some breathe taking city images to put into my computer when I came across your blog. I know I am a year or so late in posting this comment, but since you were writing about something I am very familiar with, I felt compelled to remark.
I live and grew-up near Detroit and have lived periodically within the city limits itself a few times. The whole "death" of Detroit disturbs me, not only because its my local metropolitan area, but because of its broader implications.
I do know that one of the major contributors to the decimation of the city is that most of the burnt out and abandoned buildings you see are totally unowned. Very few city documents exist stating who owns what. After the "white plight" in the 70's and 80's many house's and small businesses were simply abandoned and the city was unable to keep up with the paper work. Toss on top of that a corrupted bureaucracy and its no wonder that no one can sell any property or justifiably claim ownership of the land.
The city itself is so cash strapped with all of its community outreach programs that no money is spent on clean-up and restoration to anything in the city. Private owners have to take up that burden, but how can anyone buy anything when no proof of ownership exists to begin with?
A person could actually buy whole blocks of the city by simply paying-off the back taxes owed on the home's. Only problem with doing that is if a person spent the money to buy and then either restore or redevelop the land, the city wouldn't be able to provide proper infrastructure services (like education, police and fire, but also Detroit's water and sewage services are far lagging). Who would want to live there?
Our only hope is that we pray that the people directly affected by the cities demise can survive through it.
My own personal opinion is that Detroit needs to reduce its land size and allow some of its more abandoned area's get claimed by its neighboring suburb cities. Or rezone the entire city to accommodate new businesses. Most of all it needs to lower taxes and axe out most of its wasteful programs. Any one of these suggestions could lead to a recovery.