Theology of Placemaking - The Church is not a building, but it does have a place.

"But churches do have a place. And that is what has been true for my church for the last over seventeen years even throughout all the different places we've worshiped. I think we counted between all the different situations we faced. I think we were, like, worshiped in eight different places in the last seventeen years, sometimes by choice, sometimes by force. But but we've been in the same place, meaning the same part of Minneapolis and Northeast Minneapolis, invested, caring about that, caring about the people, caring about the roads, caring about the buildings, caring about the schools, caring about the infrastructure. And, like, what does it mean that even though we are a a spiritual group of people, a physical or bodies, we're people that live in lots of different places. But together, we're called to care about a place no matter what type of structure we worship in or if we're in a park outside like we sometimes are. The the place in which we worship is is the geography, not the building or the structure only. [00:07:12] (56 seconds)

"from when we started, if it it comes down to, like, the questions you're asking if you ask me. The beginning questions that we had coming into this part of the city was not how can we bring god to the city, but what is god already doing here, and how can we be a part of that? And so when you're asking that question and you don't even have a place to have your worship service yet, where what are you asking about God, and where is God doing such things? Well, in the park and the houses and the businesses and the schools and the other churches. And so to to answer the question, our guiding question, we had to be in those places. And because we didn't even have a building, it kinda helped. Right? You're like, well, where else are we gonna be? So we were meeting in people's houses, and I remember we would, like, walk the streets, helping out with, like, cleanup days. And people would be like, oh, talking to us. And we're like, oh, so we're connected to this church. And, mostly didn't even have a worship service yet, but we were like, you know, we were a community of people, [00:20:17] (52 seconds)

"and we had a name, and we were meeting in houses, but we didn't have any place public yet. And people would be like, well, where is your church? And we'd be like, well, we're here right now. Like, here we are on Central Avenue picking up trash with you. So that's it. You know? And so, like because it's our place. Like, Northeast is our place. And so, really, Mill City Church is wherever the people of Mill City Church are is our place, but our gathering is in the Northeast. So that's our core place that we serve together as a community. Right? And so it's been like the guiding question. Well, what's God doing, and how do we join into that? We started worshiping in a school. And so then it was like, well, what's God doing in the school, and how are you a part of that? And now even though we don't worship there, we're still asking that question and are very involved. [00:21:09] (42 seconds)

"communities of of people living together, roommates struggle with this, like, right next to me neighbor thing Totally. neighbors, meaning there's houses, obviously, like, by our church. There's also a huge park and a building in which people work as their job for this park. There's also a lot of businesses. There's also schools. There's also other churches. So this is our area, and this is our neighborhood, and these are our neighbors. And, like, how how terrible if we were to care about the neighbors over there, almost like jumping over the ones that are right here. And so then how we invest ourselves relationally, economically, physically in that place really does matter. So for instance, I mean, a little thing I mean, I think oh, big thing, little thing. In the summer, we just say, hey. Our focus is to love Logan Park, this huge park. It's like our front yard. It's massive. [00:14:55] (67 seconds)