Tuesday community meals
4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. - Home-cooked meal and occasional household goods.
Take-out only at this time.
A People’s Place
At our core, we are a mission congregation. Before anything else, we are dedicated to people, especially those who have been on the margins, and to a vision of God which proclaims this as being of actual importance. God’s table is for everyone. We’re here for people who give and need Grace.
The Enormity of the Possible
If we do indeed claim to be empowered to welcome all, it means that we must place value in all sorts of voices, with a special emphasis on those who often go unheard. We are always called to create a space in which young people can flourish. It is not only our duty but also our joy and delight to engage with and learn from those who are young and who have many possibilities ahead of them.
“hear. I am.”
what is this?
“Hear. I Am.” is an entrepreneurial, grassroots art collective of Central City youth based out of the North End of Toledo, Ohio. It began in response to a need and blossomed into a humble but powerful movement of inspiration. All T-Shirt sales benefit the teenagers of the collective and pay for the costs of the program; sales of all other pieces of art benefit the actual young artist who produced them. Proceeds from collectively-made pieces are shared in a common pool that benefits the program and all participants equally. And, finally, all donations are welcome and will be used to further the program and benefit the students, once again, equally.
The story
In the Fall ofl 2018, young people from Toledo’s North End were involved in an art program with Yusuf Lateef, a famous local artist. That program eventually came to an end, and it then became apparent that we were called to continue working with Yusuf, taking our time in art-creation and not being reliant on grants and grant-based organizations alone to do it. We began, in a way, to head out on our own. In this way, our collective, “Hear. I Am.,” was born. Since that time, many have welcomed our humble but mighty movement of teenage artists in. “Hear. I Am.” belongs ultimately to teenagers from the Central City area of Toledo. It is ultimately their project.
Where We Have Been…
We have held art shows and have been welcomed at:
Show 1: The Paula Brown Shop in Downtown Toledo, Ohio (May 2019)
Show 2: Downtown Sandusky, Ohio (August 2019)
Show 3: Maddie and Bella’s Coffee Roasters in Downtown Toledo, Ohio (October 2019 - March 2020)
Show 4: Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in the Harvard Terrace Neighborhood (February 2021 - Online)
And more to come…
A Message from Pastor mike on behalf of salem
Salem Lutheran Church is the oldest Lutheran congregation in the city of Toledo. Started in 1857, Salem was originally a joint Lutheran-and-Reformed parish. It has a Catholic altar in its sanctuary because it would not fit in the church for which it was originally ordered. I say these things because they are early demonstrations of how spacious and expansive Salem’s ministry has always been. From helping to start the Lutheran Home of Mercy in Williston, OH, to birthing many fine congregations out into the city to being a beacon and bastion of inner-city Lutheran ministry practices, Salem has always been an epicenter that has tended to the North End of Toledo and the city as a whole. None of this is to say that we are better than anyone else, but rather, it is to say that we have a long and proud tradition of being a church for others, never perfect but always striving and serving.
We believe first and foremost in belonging. We want people to belong as people, even if they do not ascribe to everything that we ourselves do. Perhaps it is that we can still work together to do those things which we know to be right regardless, such as offering food, building up young people, providing home goods and clothing, offering helpful, community-oriented recreation, and tending to the environment better. We are a place, primarily, of up-building others, especially the people of our North Side neighborhood. The only requisites for this are an honest heart, a willingness to learn alongside of us, and the ability to try to love people, just as we try everyday. Here, we do our best to care for our neighbors and partner with others in hopes of sowing seeds for a better future for all people.
Our congregation is amorphous in many ways. Centered as we are around serving, we include Sunday worshipers, friends of various beliefs, people who attend other congregations, our direct neighbors, and our neighbors and supporters from afar. With that truth being stated, it should also be said that, for many generations, many fine families and people have paved the way for us to have this special location out of which to serve; as my seminary advisor, Dr. Walter F. Taylor, Jr. once said to me, “We stand on the shoulders of giants.”
Our neighborhood is the most economically poor in the city of Toledo, with most families living at or below the federal poverty level. With that being said though, acknowledging the good work of Ruby Payne, there are more resource categories than just money. We have many good neighbors. We have a lot of opportunity around us. We have many good friends. And we have Grace (which around here often feels like luck). It is by the good graces of Others that we are able to accomplish what we do. It is not about me, and it’s not about any one person. It is about this Grace, it is about recognizing that life is a gift, and it is about seeing yourself as well as others as a valuable human being who is placed in this world in order to bless it and grow something larger than just our single selves alone. It’s about giving into the greatest adventure ever known, Grace divine.
Thank you for visiting our page; I hope something really awesome comes from your online visit, and if you give it and us half a chance, something probably will come of it. Who knows what we can have happen together! Thank you, and best of wishes!
In Gratitude,
Pr. Mike
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Lutheran/Reformed Pastor and Theologian.
Jose Miguez Bonino, one of the initial Liberation Theologians of the 1970’s and one of the few Protestant ones.
A CRASH COURSE IN THEOLOGICAL UNDERPINNINGS FOR A MISSION CONGREGATION
While our main goal remains serving and loving our neighbors, it may be helpful to explain our faith background and the theological underpinnings that form who some of us are and what we believe as disciples of Jesus. We are not everything that some people say or suggest. We are influenced greatly by many fine theological threads, from theologians such as Dorothy Day, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Jose Miguez Bonino. The following pieces provide a simple and succinct crash course in material that is meaningful and formative for us:
From Dietrich Bonhoeffer:
“What I mean is that God, the Eternal, wants to be loved with our whole heart, not to the detriment of earthly love or to diminish it, but as a sort of cantus firmus to which the other voices of life resound in counterpoint. One of these contrapuntal themes, which keep their full independence but are still related to the cantus firmus, is earthly love…Only this polyphony gives your life wholeness, and you know that no disaster can befall you as long as the cantus firmus continues.”
From Gustavo Gutierrez’s “A Theology of Liberation”":
“To paraphrase a well-known text of Pascal, we can say that all the political theologies, the theologies of hope, of revolution, and of liberation, are not worth one act of genuine solidarity with exploited social classes. They are not worth one act of faith, love, and hope, committed - in one way or another - in active participation to liberate humankind from everything that dehumanizes it…
From the World Council of Churches’ Nairobi Document, Section 6: “Human Development”:
“The participation of the Christian community in the struggle against poverty and oppression is a sign of the answer to the call of Jesus Christ to liberation. When this happens, the churches can no longer be considered as unconditional allies of the rich. On the contrary, they can be instruments of the renewing work of Christ whose strength is made known in weakness. The sufficiency of the Church to participate in tackling problems of such magnitude is based only on the sufficiency of the grace of the one who is the crucified and risen Lord.”
From the Ecumenical Dialogue of Third World Theologians in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania:
“…The churches mission is for the realization of the wholeness of the human person…We call for an active commitment to the promotion of justice and the prevention of exploitation, the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few, racism, sexism, and all other forms of oppression, discrimination, and dehumanization. Our conviction is that the theologian should have a fuller understanding of living in the Holy Spirit, for this also means being committed to a lifestyle of solidarity with the poor and the oppressed and involvement in action with them. Theology is not neutral…It has to be seen in relation to the need to live and work with those who cannot help themselves, and to be with them in their struggle for liberation.”
From The Kairos Document:
“In the first place, the church cannot collaborate with tyranny. It cannot or should not do anything that appears to give legitimacy to a morally illegitimate regime.”
From Luz Beatriz Arellano’s article “Women’s Experience of God in Emerging Spirituality”:
“Out of their participation in the suffering of our people while also battling through their own struggle, women discover a new image of Jesus - a Jesus who is brother and sister, in solidarity on the journey toward liberation, the people’s journey and their own journey; a Jesus who is a companero in building the new society. Jesus’ face is present in all the men and women who endure weariness and give their life for others. Jesus is identified as God, man and woman, standing in firm solidarity with the struggle. This is a God who is sensitive to suffering, a God who goes along with the people incarnate in history. The discovery of, and faith in, a God is in pilgrimage with the people…identified with the cause of justice, is a discovery that gives meaning to their struggle and makes everyday life bearable in the midst of oppression…”
From Chung Hyun Kyung’s Struggle to be the Sun Again:
“Our struggle is a struggle for wholeness.”
From Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Discipleship:
“Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a person will go and sell all that he or she has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a person will pluck out the eye which causes stumbling; it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves the nets and follows him. Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a person must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs people their lives, and it is grace because it gives people the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner.”
“But for me, and I think for most of the men and women who have been my companions in this work, it has not been drudgery. None of us would say that we take pleasure in all of it all of the time, but we do take pleasure in it, and sometimes the pleasure can be intense and clear. Many of my dearest memories come from these times of hardest work.”
On “Hear. I Am.” Work
https://toledocitypaper.com/art/a-brilliant-presence/
On Tuesday Community Meal and re-entry work
https://www.13abc.com/content/news/Resource-distribution-Tuesday-to-help-those-re-entering-society-570013951.html
For a tour document on our rain garden work with Sacred Grounds
https://www.tlcraingardeninitiative.org/uploads/1/3/0/6/130641668/sacred_grounds_tour_sites_booklet_2019.pdf