church without walls

At 2 PM yesterday, Pentecost Sunday, ecclesia began here in New York.

ecclesia is an ecumenical movement that started about a decade ago in Boston. A smart minister realized that people who are homeless don't tend to walk freely into large churches. Into any church, really, unless there's something they need there.

So churches have long been in the "business" of providing for the human needs of homeless people.
But isn't a spiritual life and a worshiping community as essential a need?

The Common Cathedral takes worship out of the churches an into the places where people who are homeless spend their days--parks.

For about a year, I've been serving on the board of ecclesia nyc, trying to bring this movement to our own city. Finally, humbly, yesterday, we began.
We rolled our custom-built 2x4' granite-topped altar down from its home in the chapel of my church at 29th St. and 5th Ave all the way to 23rd St., just inside Madison Square Park. The sidewalk proved too bumpy, so we rolled it down the street instead. A nice image--an altar rolling down 5th Avenue in New York!

ecclesia supporters have been doing outreach for several weeks. It's going to take a while for the homeless to claim this space as their own. Yesterday, we had about 35 volunteers from many Manhattan congregations of all denominations. There were 8 homeless people.

I was the officiant. The service is short--the Sunday liturgy, gospel, a short interactive homily, prayers, and eucharist. Karen, a wonderful woman from our church, played guitar and led music. It was really wonderful. At the end of the service, the altar becomes a common table. Our church's high school youth prepared 45 meals to be given away to anyone in the park who is hungry.


This kind of thing gives me hope. It's not the solution to every problem--but it is the creation of a new social space in which homeless people and housed people can be together, all of us in the dignity and integrity of honest worship.