The Franklin Center Update

I have written about the Franklin Center in Former posts (Click here if you haven't gotten to read them) but wanted to give you an update on how progress is going.

We have gone through the legal process to reform the board of directors of the Franklin Center Inc. - the non-profit that owns the building but dismantled and left the building abandoned. We are now filing out the necessary papers with the state for the board to be reinstated and then we will be able to begin the process of restoration of this building.

We talked to about 60% of the houses in the neighborhood and found 99% of them to be excited about the project. 75 different neighbors have expressed specific interest in taking part in this process of restoration. Some are carpenters, painters, plumbers, electricians, and cooks.

We have also identified 10-12 individuals from the neighborhood that have shown excitement and passion and want to take a leadership role in this process.

We are having our first meeting with this group of leaders tomorrow night!

Also we are planning on April 30th to have a party/neighborhood meeting to kick off this process of restoration. Because who wouldn't rather come to a party than a meeting?

If you have been wondering - here are some pictures of the current state of the Franklin Center.

My friends Coop and Linda

Coop and his wife Linda probably fit most stereotypes. They are a white couple who live in a run down trailer park. They are heavy smokers, probably consistently drink too much and usually have the TV on too loud. Linda and Coop like many others living poverty have been taught through experience that they don’t have much to offer. I met Linda and Coop as we were talking to folks about the Franklin Center, a beautiful historic yet rundown and abandoned building near where we live. We were asking people what they remember about the Franklin Center from the time when it was a vibrant community center. We asked what they would like to see done with the building now. As we began talking to Linda and Coop the excitement within them began to visibly grow. Coop talked about playing football with the kids in the trailer park and how he wishes that there were somewhere for them to play and have fun. As with all of the conversations we had we didn’t stop with asking their desires for the Franklin Center. If we stopped there we would only further reinforce the idea that they are in need of someone else’s service, that they do not have much to offer. So instead we then began to ask how they could join with other neighbors to see these dreams that they have for the Franklin Center become a reality. Linda and Coop as with many other neighbors were a bit surprised by the question and needed a moment to think. But in their case it didn’t take long for the ideas to start flowing. Soon Coop was talking about the ways that he is skilled in remodeling and how he would love to help in the process of fixing up the building. They talked about wanting to organize meetings and helping us talk to everyone else in the trailer park.

When I went back to talk to them to see if either wanted to take more of a leadership role in this process I was met by a friendly Coop who began to tear up as I invited him to meet with us. He went on to tell me how much this means to him and how he is wasn't going to drink any alcohol on tuesday because he wants to be fully sober for our meeting. As I talked to him I began to realize how dignifying to Coop this offer of leadership really is. To him this is much more than a meeting, to Coop this is an opportunity to show that he has worth.

As we move forward in this process of bringing life back to the Franklin Center we are beginning to realize that many in this neighborhood are just longing for someone to ask them to help; desiring for someone to believe that they have something to offer. However we also realize that this is messy. We realize that these folks bring baggage. We realize that Coop and Linda even with all of their enthusiasm may not be reliable or dependable. But we also realize that the only goal here is not the completion of the project. The point is the process - the process of seeing new life emerge from the mess and the brokenness, the process of reconciliation and of the formation of community within this neighborhood that are all a small taste of the Kingdom of God. Because if we fix up an old building without this messy formational process then what have we really accomplished?

This semester.

We finished a great semester here with five students the week before Christmas. We had a semester full of growth and learning for both the students and those of us leading the program.

This semester, however, looks a bit different for us. We are not having any students this semester in order to better prepare ourselves for the fall. We are working with Midamerica Nazarene University to expand the academic offerings available to the students for college credit. This in turn would give students more choices and allow for a larger number of students to take part in the program. We are also working to form a long-term community in the neighborhood which can last year around, not simply when students are here. We currently have six families living in the neighborhood, meeting together and partnering in ministry. Some of these families are staff of Youthfront specifically working with the Youthfront School of Formation and others just moved into the neighborhood to be part of this Christian community that is forming and to take part in life and ministry together. The formation of this community comes with real sense of excitement as we think about being able to invite students each semester into a community that already exists instead of attempting to create something new each semester. In addition, we are working to make our neighborhood involvement sustainable so that not only can the students join in our community but they also can join us in the relationships and work that we are doing throughout the neighborhood. We believe that this leads to a much more faithful and transformative model in which relationships can be built and nurtured that last longer than a single semester.

Christmas twenty-ten

Here are some pictures from amanda and my trips to Iowa to see her family and California to see my family, also a couple from her brothers wedding in Texas.

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.

September!

Hello friends and family!

I am excited to say that we have students moved in to our house and we have officially begun our semester. The first few weeks of this semester have been busy but exciting as we got started. The students moved in the last weekend in August and the next day we left for a week long camping and hiking trip in the mountains of Colorado. This was an important trip for us as we attempted to remove ourselves from our normal day-to-day life in order to begin to form relationships have discussion about living together in community this semester. We have a great group of five students that are committed to this program but more importantly committed to each other for this semester. Our trip to Colorado was a great opportunity to talk through some of and the issues that come as a part of living with others; not just in the physical sense but in a sense of honesty and vulnerability to one another.

Following this trip we went to Chicago for the annual convention of the Christian Community Development Association. It was a great time listening to stories of people who have been doing community development out of a Christian framework for decades. It was exciting to see the way that the students were challenged and stretched as we listened and learned together. These first two weeks were a great opportunity for us to build relationships one another and think theologically about what it looks like for us to live as a community and also what it looks like for that community to live in our neighborhood and amongst our neighbors. I really enjoyed these times of traveling and learning together but now we are back in our home in the Argentine neighborhood of Kansas City to put the thoughts and dreams that we have discussed into action. Having now been home couple weeks it has been amazing to watch the students grow together as we read and discuss books like Dietrich
Bonheoffer’s Life Together and spend times in spiritual formation reading scripture together and asking how that will take shape in our community and in our neighborhood. I would ask that you would continue to pray for us and specifically as we plant ourselves in this neighborhood and begin to build deeper relationships with our neighbors. Pray for the interaction between all of us living in the house that we would be able to love and forgive one another as we have seven people living together in one house.

Thanks you again for all of your supportand prayers, I am blessed to
have all of you as partners in this ministry.

Nate Howard