The Franklin Center

The Franklin Center was built in 1897 as the elementary school in Argentine Kansas, which at that time had not yet been consolidated as part of Kansas City. For years Franklin Elementary School did well in the neighborhood; however, after the silver smelter closed leaving hundreds in the neighborhood unemployed, things began to change. The community began to change from a middle/upper class neighborhood to a rundown neighborhood. However, years later after becoming part of the Kansas City Kansas school district, the school was renovated and enlarged. The school flourished once again for decades until the neighborhood slowly decreased in size and wealth and the district was forced to close the school in 1972. After being vandalized and broken into, the school district sought to sell the building. A number of neighborhood organizations began to discuss the idea of making the building a community center but were unable to pay the $52,000 that the district was asking. After discussions the school district agreed to sell the building to the newly formed Franklin Center Inc. for only $5,000. The sole requirement was that the building be only used by non-profit organizations and if it was not it would be sold back to the school district.

The Franklin Center quickly became a thriving community center that housed a coffee shop, day care, Spanish speaking office, adult education classes, food coop and a General Store. We recently met a kid named Max who grew up around the Franklin Center who said that all the kids hung out there and that it was the place where they all had their first job. However the leadership of the center began to slowly decline and finally about a year and a half ago all of the non-profits in the center left and abandoned the building. Because of the contract it cannot be sold to a business but the school district does not want to deal with it either. As a result it was left sitting empty, which led to thorough vandalism. This then is the current state of this beautiful and historic building.

YSF has began the conversation with other groups in the neighborhood to ask the question of what could we do to revive this building to once again be a community center. As this conversation is in process, we have begun by thinking of tangible ways of bringing life and excitement back to the building so that this can be a project that the community embraces and makes their own. We have for the last two weeks been projecting movies on the outside of the building on Friday nights and have had as many as 30 kids and parents show up. There is a “Vive Franklin Center” float in this weekend’s annual city celebration. These are just small things but they are beginning to get the neighborhood excited about owning this as their own.

You may wonder why is YSF involved in this? It is not going to be a church or a ministry center, but just a community center. It has been said that the worst part of poverty is not the loss of money but the loss of hope. I believe that this is true in this neighborhood. The people here are not the poorest of the poor but many just have the idea that there is no hope of progress in their lives or in the community. So I see this not just as a community center but a place that can begin to bring hope and opportunity back into this community. True, this may not be a church. But this could be a place that kids can experience love and acceptance and be given an opportunity to succeed. If this becomes true, then I believe that the Franklin Center could become a place where people in this neighborhood see a glimpse of the Kingdom of God.

Conflict

I don’t naturally seek conflict. I think that most of us generally don’t. We try to stay where it is comfortable and not get into disagreements with one another. But you have probably realized that conflict is natural. If we spend any significant amount of time with someone or with a group of people there will inevitably be conflict. We often think of this as a bad thing, as something that we should try to avoid. I think that this is more because of what conflict mishandled often leads to. Emotions like anger, frustration, betrayal, or resentment may come to mind as we think of conflict. Does this have to be so?

A central part of the formation process of YSF is to begin to learn to see conflict in a new way, to get beyond superficial relationships and frustration that we experience with one another and learn to lean into the tension of conflict instead of shying away.

At the very beginning of YSF we talked about how once the newness and excitement wore off there would inevitably be conflict. Now about six weeks into the program this is true. As we live together we realize we have different expectations, desires, preferences, and personalities. If we choose to bottle up the frustrations that come from those differences or let them explode then our relationships are hurt because of it. Instead when we approach the conflict in a healthy way we are able to understand and learn from each other even when we disagree. This week we sat down together for a few hours and put these tensions out on the table. It was not an easy time listening and sharing on a very honest level about what frustrates and confuses us about one another, but it is the beginning of something beautiful. In Ephesians 2 Paul says:

For he [Jesus] himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of
hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself
one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the
cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those
who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.

Paul states that in Christ a new humanity has been born, one that is defined by peace and reconciliation with and among one other. He has created a humanity that embraces Jew and Gentile; African American, Asian, Hispanic, and Caucasian. This is good news for us, and good news for our neighborhood. But it has to start in our house. If we cannot be reconciled from disagreements that we have over small things that stem from living together, then how can we possibly preach a message of reconciliation to our neighborhood? If we are not willing to sit down and do the hard work of talking through our differences, of growing deeper in our love for one another then how can we possibly ask our neighbors to? And so that is why I believe that the time we spent this week learning to see conflict in a new way is as formational to each of us as anything we will do; because as we are able to understand that we are a new humanity created in Christ to be at peace with one another then and only then are we are able to authentically live this message out in our neighborhood.