Hub pics.

Group shot

Jordan Hogue & Josiah Mariano

Thom Wise & Erik Foss

Elliot Cavale & Raul Zamora

Director: LJ Mariano

Group din. Lasagna, bread, salad and lots of Sriracha.
Join us sometime!

The Hub: Koinonia

By Elliot Cavale:

“The communities that are thriving are ones who are disciplined about being in the world”

– Tim Otto (Church of the Sojourners, San Francisco)

“If you love the vision you have for community, you will destroy community. If you love the people around you, you will create community”

– Dietrich Bonheoffer (from his book Life Together)

Community has played an immensely significant role in my life and faith in the last four years or so. I have had opportunities to experience community in different forms: to live it, to see it, to love it, to fail at it, and to learn from it. Now it is something I have grown to rely on. It is an essential aspect of my faith.

            As one reads scripture it can be seen throughout that it is about God forming a people.  There are numerous examples starting in Genesis through the New Testament that illustrate this. In the Gospel of John, for example, Jesus’ last prayer on earth is for all believers: “that all of them may be one” and “that they may be brought to complete unity” (John 17:20-26). Jesus’ final adjuration before being crucified was for community: oneness and unity among believers. I say all that to provide a glimpse of the immeasurable importance of community in our lives as Christ’s disciples. What can/should community look like in our own lives? And how can it be played out? There are several answers to those each unique to one’s own circumstances. In our experience in the Hub, community has emerged in a number of ways.

            Mother Teresa was once quoted as saying, “if you judge people you have no time to love them”. I believe this is a good foundation for what community should look like and how community has grown for us in the Hub. We have found that the basis for the growth of community begins with replacing judgments, preconceptions, and differences with love. Perceiving someone with love is seeing them as made in God’s image; loved and valued equally by Him. It is not seeing them as their race, socio-economic status, or differences. We have to move beyond those barriers we put between us and them. This can and should be applied to your neighbor down the hall as well as next-door.

            My roommate Raul and I, for example, come from completely different backgrounds. He is Hispanic and I am white. His Mexican culture has influenced who he is, contrasting with my upper middle class white suburban upbringing. These differences come out in a number of ways: in our interests, how we interact with others, deal with conflict, handle finances and even how we approach modesty. Based on our respective backgrounds, society tells us that our relationship as roommates/friends can only achieve so much and go so far. But what if I view Raul as a brother in Christ, God’s child, an additional perspective that strengthens the whole instead of a contrasting one that diminishes it? How far could our friendship go then? When you view another person this way everything changes. It is then that one can move toward reconciliation.

            In the Hub, we try to cultivate community growth through sharing our lives together. We eat together, pray together, worship together and minister together. Sharing and embracing our differences instead of hiding or ignoring them allows us to go much deeper. If there are differences, instead of letting them irritate us or make us uncomfortable to a point of conflict (which is sometimes very necessary to most past differences) we address them, discuss why we are like we are through sharing our stories. When you get to know the person behind the differences and understand what influences their dissimilarities, true community begins to form.

The other night, one of our normal group meetings moved from a discussion about the church and its influences in our lives to a time of sharing of how we can be a better/deeper/more meaningful “church” or “community” within ourselves and eventually ended with an unintentional time of affirmation and vulnerable truthfulness that turned out to be so intentional. It took us first being ok with vulnerability and candid honesty to be able to open up share with each other how we can be better loved.

            This reconciliation can also be achieved with those outside of our apartments, those living right next-door. That same night right in the middle of our time of sharing there was a knock on the door. Our neighbor Diane was standing there out of breath and in pain. She was trying to move out of her apartment to another apartment down the way and had no help and her knees were giving out. Out of the relationships some of us had formed with her and her children and grandchildren she was led to our door to ask for help. Without hesitation we all stood and offered whatever assistance she needed of us. We were able to help her moved a significant portion of her apartment in less than an hour. This led to an open invitation from both sides to come by whenever and for whatever reason. We made ourselves available to her and she to us. That is community. That is reconciliation. Our group, which is made up of three white guys, two Filipino guys, a Mexican guy and one multiethnic guy was able to be approached by and share our time with an African American family. 

The Hub Blog: Where I Serve/ What God is Refining in Me

Erik Foss: 

I am serving at the Stone Pine afterschool program as my agency site. We open our door to the kids from the apartment complex and neighboring area around 3:00 when they get home from school. Many of the kids who participate in our program have parents who aren’t home to help them with homework after school or just don’t have a good safe place to hang out when they get home, that’s why we want to be available at those times. We operate the program between 3:00 and 5:30 Monday through Thursday and kids can come to get one-on-one help with their homework. Fortunately our interaction with the kids and their families isn’t confined to the times we are doing homework.

We believe that the homework program is good for the grades of the children but serves a greater purpose than just that, our program is ultimately about creating relationships with our neighbors in the community. At the Hub we are committed to taking seriously God’s call for us to “love your neighbor as yourself.” Creating and sustaining relationships with the people we have decided to live near is step one in living out God’s call to be good neighbors. We have had many great opportunities so far to interact with and serve our neighbors here in Highway City, and we are always seeking God’s direction in how to best embody Christ’s love among the joy and pain of our community.

Right now the after-school program is in the process of making some transitions, with the constant change in residents. We’ve been working to get the word out about our program to families that are new to Stone Pine. We are also planning on moving our headquarters across the street to the Gloria Aldama Community Center in the Sierra Mobile Home Park. At our new location we’ll enjoy better facilities and more room. We’re excited to join our friends who are already working their afterschool program in Sierra Mobile Home Park and we’re excited to continue working for the Shalom of our neighborhood.

Jordan Hogue:

It seems to me like God has some pretty weird plans for people that go through The Hub. It is not a normal day for me if I am not pushed to the edge of my own my comfort and understanding of others. I often feel like I have nothing to offer the people around me but in those times of emptiness is when God really shows up and some words come out of my mouth that I didn’t think I had the courage or capability to say and I find out all to often that God really can speak out of the mouth of a donkey. It is weird that we want to live so close to danger and even weirder that we want to befriend those that are causing it. It is weird that my car was stolen but I was more worried about my family holding it against my neighbors than actually getting my car back. If this is all weirdness then I will pray that God will give me the weirdest life possible because I feel for the first time like I am starting to follow so close to my Rabbi’s footsteps that I am getting dust on my feet.

I have had the refining pleasure of getting to live in community with 6 other awesome men who challenge me to love God and love my neighbor in every way I can. I said refining because living in community is an experience that will quickly show you how selfish you are. I have never before realized that my life is a set of scheduled events. I create these events and pursue them so that I can accomplish my goals of going here, doing this, and reading that but when you open up and start to live life with other people that whole idea gets jacked really fast. At first I was upset saying things like, “Why wont these guys just let me do what I have to do; they keep interfering with my day.” As if I owned the day. The writer Donald Miller said it best when he said that so many people just think they are the star in a movie called “Life” and everyone else is just there as supporting cast, but you can only live in community when you realize that we are all within the same movie of life with equal roles and here to support each other. So now I have started to quit planning and trying to fix my brothers around me to my plans and now started to take part in the richness that is in sharing your possessions, time, and life with other people.

Jesus was not supposed to be at the well in Samaria and I guess culturally we are not supposed to be in Stonepine, but God is not bound by cultural expectations and I refuse to isolate the needy because culturally I am too privileged to be living in this neighborhood. Every day I am hit in the face with situations of poverty that I know breaks Gods heart. What do I do? I make a decision to remind myself that I do not know these people and cannot know anything about them unless I step into their lives and form real relationships. I view my situation here often as the end of religion within me. This is because it is within religion that you work to gain God’s favor by doing things, there is no personality or relationship in it, you do not need to get to know God he is just a means to your end. It is when we throw off religion and say that I have nothing to bring to God but repentance that you start to form a lasting relationship with God that produces incredible fruit. Here in Stonepine there is no set of rules for how we gain our neighbors favor or we don’t want to do things for them so that they will be in debt to us and have to talk to us, but we meet people exactly where they are and accept that they have so much to offer us and all we want is organic and real friendships that lead to fruit in both of our lives. This is the situation I want to be in everyday. 

Hello, my name is...

August 25, 2010

Tom Wise:

My name is Tom Wise and I am now part of “The Hub!”  I am from a little town in the Bay Area called Benicia and living in this environment is somewhat new to me.  The area I grew up was a predominantly white, upper-middle class neighborhood.  I did not see much variety in the people around me other than the style of clothes they wore (Hollister or Abercrombie).  As you can imagine it was quite the culture shock moving to Fresno to go to school at Fresno Pacific University.  I saw so many different people groups almost every day when going to the grocery store and especially at Sunnyside high school where I did volunteer work with Young Life.  I loved it!  Having such a melting pot of people all together and getting to know all sorts of different cultures.  I did not even know what who Hmong people were before moving to Fresno.  As it turns out, our Young Life club was predominantly comprised of Hmong students.  This was an incredible experience for me and an eye opening look into some kids who are living in impoverished neighborhoods.

            This is what led me to seek something more.  I have many friends come in and out of the Pink House and I knew that was something I wanted to try.  My long-term goal would be to live in inner city Berlin, Germany because of my experience on a mission trip their a couple years back.  When talking with the pastor of my church however, he instructed me that before I jump into full-time overseas urban ministry, I need to know what it will be like living in an impoverished area in our own culture.

            So with my late entrance into the group at The Hub I have only had a few days of experience but I enjoyed every bit of it so far.  Even walking around with Josiah who has ran the after school program there for a while now I see how responsive the children in the neighborhood are.  It seems like the whole apartment complex knows him by name and each of the kids is excited to see him.  Even when my roommate Erik and I took a bike ride as we were leaving, I discovered people are much more friendly than I have felt my neighbors back home usually are.  With a “buenos dias” to some ladies having a conversation in the parking lot they smiled back and all said in unison, “buenos dias” right back.  Along having a reputation of such high crime rates and drug abuse all throughout these areas, there is an incredible amount of community between the people living together here.

            My biggest struggle so far has been coming in late, I feel like I have not been able to get to know anyone yet.  I have heard the guys being able to call each of the kids they walk by through the complex by name.  Since I had to finish up at my summer camp I could not move in until a week after everyone else.  There is a fear I sense of not being able to relate to people here since I have not grown up in the same environment.  Despite this fear, I feel that no matter what my background may be, I will do my best to be relatable, relational and stand in solidarity with those around me.

Erik Foss:

My name is Erik Foss I grew up in Fresno and spent my childhood on the north side of town going to school and church, just like a normal kid. A year or so out of high school I began to discover the issues concerning poverty in Fresno, along with the serious call in scripture to work for love and justice among society’s ignored and neglected people. I felt God wanted me to spend my life doing something radical for him but I didn’t know where or how, I had no idea about where to start. When I was accepted to be an intern at The Hub I was so excited to immerse myself in a new place and dive into urban ministry.

 Now that I’m here I’m even more excited because I’m learning from great and experienced mentors, growing in community with some awesome roommates and getting a chance to share Christ’s love in a challenging and exciting new context. I’m looking forward to the next ten months as a learning and experiencing adventure that I’m sure will equip me to more effectively share the gospel wherever God leads me.