Welcome to Praxis

Praxis, now that’s a funny word! Google it and you’ll get results ranging from a math skills learning system to a planet that was destroyed in one of the Star Trek movies. It is a word that we are reclaiming for the church, because it perfectly fits what a group of us feel called to. Praxis means that we are putting our theories into practice. We love others, not just in word, but in deed.

Pastor Brad invited (or challenged) a couple of us to start some sort of ministry that would comfort those who are suffering. Specifically it would be directed towards people who are not part of our church (CrossRoads in Cottage Grove, MN). The form it would take would be up to us. We immediately thought of the homeless, of women’s shelters, crisis pregnancies, and about a dozen other teams. We very soon had too many ideas for the number of hands. What would we select? How were going to launch this?

During many coffees at the local shop, we realized that the current forms we were talking about, like the standard hierarchical ministry, were just not going to work. We decided to experiment with what could be called a node-and-hub ministry (my term for it, more on that later.)

We decided that a couple of us would get something going, something small, and people who were excited could join us. People who were interested but had different passions, well, we would support them and help them launch something.

With that, a couple of us started to walk through downtown St. Paul, talking with the homeless (“our friends”), and offering them water, cereal bars, coats, hats, gloves, blankets and hand-warmers. We’ve done this now every Saturday for five months. We’ve set up a table at our Sanctuary service to collect donations, and our friends downtown have been blessed by some very tender-hearted people at the church who have donated new and almost new clothing and blankets (I’ll talk about these beautiful blankets in another entry…)

Before going on, I want to talk about why I’m even writing any of this. A couple of us talked about this, and Pastor Brad pointed out that in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:16, specifically) Jesus said that we are to let our lights shine before men so that they would see our good deeds and praise our Father in Heaven. Brad said that it’s also valuable to let people know the kind of things that could be done, to energize them to join in.

With that, future entries will be about the people that have touched us, made us laugh, and broken our hearts even while we’ve been serving them. As well, as we launch other teams in our network, others will join in with their stories of love, pain and redemption. What will hopefully emerge is the big story. I’m catching glimpses of how this is more than a ministry (in fact, I don’t call it a ministry at church anymore…), how it is a transforming spiritual practice that becomes a way of life, a way of walking humbly with our God (i.e. Micah 6:8).