Goodwill Church Livestream Recap

This past Sunday morning the Goodwill Missionary Baptist Church held a special, Beloved development Service. The Church, with members of the Nehemiah Initiative, launched an inspirational endeavor to empower the African American community by re-developing community land owned by the Church for affordable and sustainable housing. Black churches combined are the largest African American community landowners in Seattle. The epidemic of displacement has often forced them to sell their assets. The Nehemiah Initiative is a Beloved and inclusive initiative helping advocate for the retention and renewal of land owned within the African American community.

On behalf of the Nehemiah Initiative and the Goodwill Baptist Church, we would like to say thank you to those of you who joined the Facebook livestream of the Service! If you would like to watch the full service you can do so here. We have also recapped the service below.

Sunday Service at the Goodwill Missionary Baptist Church

The morning was a moment of wholeness and coming together on behalf of the African American community and Goodwill Church. The service began with the Praise Team soulfully lifting our spirits in preparation for a message of empowerment and purpose (Facebook Live minute 2:26)

Nehemiah Initiative Members each shared their perspective on the importance of the work

Donald King, president and CEO of Mimar Studio | FB Live minute 23:34 | Full Text
- Spoke on the Black church as “key to building our community and empowering and sustaining it.”
Dr. Mark Jones | FB Live minute 30:27 | Full text
- Spoke about Beloved Community and the importance of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s words.
Kateesha Atterberry, CEO Urban Black | FB Live minute 37:30 |Full text
- She shared a deeply powerful story about a Black woman leader and the role of the church.
Aaron Fairchild, CEO Green Canopy | FB Live minute 46:02 | Full text
- Made the invitation to join this inclusive effort, to take one step towards wholeness, and asked for contributions to the pre-development planning effort (x2!)
Bishop Garry Tyson, Pastor | FB Live minute 1:15:00
- Gave a Sermon on Purpose

Thank you to everyone who was able to join the Sunday Service and to those of you who have already contributed to the pre-development planning efforts. We are pleased to share that as of today, we are just over halfway to our $50,000 goal!

If you haven’t already, we would like to invite you to join us by contributing to the Goodwill Church’s Building Fund.

We will continue to share more about this project and the work to regenerate our communities in the weeks and months ahead. Thank you for joining us on this journey!

With Gratitude,

The Members of the Nehemiah Initiative that spoke at Sunday’s Service.

Bishop Garry Tyson, Donald King, Dr. Mark Jones, Kateesha Atterberry, and Aaron Fairchild*

*Green Canopy is grateful for the opportunity to join members of the Nehemiah Initiative in advocating for Goodwill Missionary Baptist Church.

For Contributions by Check or Donor Advised Funds:
Name: Goodwill Baptist
Purpose: Building Fund
Attn: Bishop Garry Tyson
EIN: 91-1249502
Address: 126 15th Ave, Seattle, WA 98122

For further recommended reading:

- McKinley Futures Nehemiah Studio Book (download PDF)

- Learn about the importance of the Black Church in the African American community and the reason the need is profound.

- Building Beloved Community While Working to Decarbonize Buildings

- Green Canopy’s blog on Wholeness.

Full Livestream Recap Text:

Donald King:

First meetings with Bishop and Aaron and the founding of the Nehemiah Initiative – it was more than a project opportunity; this is bigger than that

Project goals and guidelines – to be designed on this nearly blank canvas thru participation of the Beloved Community to embed these qualities:

HUMILITY – Modest , but elegant

HUMANITY – An example of being a shepard of God’s people and stewards of their environment

HISTORY – Expressions of our African origins and our people’s resiliency

Primarily, the design is about the juxtaposition of traditional and contemporary. Green design as a spiritual responsibility and representative of Bishop Tyson’s declaration that:

“Goodwill will no longer be just a church in the community, it will be a community church”

The design of the structures and provision of spaces is and outward manifestation and integral with the mission of the church for Beloved Community.

In closing, I’d like to say that:

All lives matter

All communities matter

All churches matter

However:

Black lives have been in jeopardy and under threat in this hemisphere of the world since 1619 – Black lives matter

Black people didn’t build communities to be separate from others, they were legally segregated for over a century – Black communities matter

The traditional Black church was key to building our community and empowering and sustaining it – in these challenging times, Goodwill, with these projects is delivering on that legacy of the community church and we seek your support to help us do that

Thank you and God bless you.

Mark Jones:

Genesis 4:1 [Cain and Abel]

God asked him where his brother was. Cain answered, “I know not; am I my brother's keeper?”

When you build Beloved Community, the answer is “Yes you are."

Matthew 40 (NIV)

"The King will reply, 'Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.'"

In June 1957, in a speech on Beloved Community entitled “The Power of Non-Violence” Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King replied:

The aftermath of violence is bitterness. The aftermath of non-violence is the creation of Beloved Community, so that when the battle is over, a new relationship comes into being. The end is reconciliation. The end is redemption. This is the love that may well be the salvation of our civilization.

Nehemiah Initiative

Nehemiah Initiative is not just about erecting buildings:

It is about Building Beloved Community(s) that transform oppressive behavior (“Othering”) into “Belonging”

It is about Building Beloved Community(s) that create safe and supportive environments within organizations, neighborhoods, and communities.

It is about Building Beloved Community(s) where YOU are Consumer-Producers as residents, property-owners, business owners, and investors — not renters and wage-based employees, and customers

It is about Building Beloved Community(s) where YOU can depend on your Brothers and your Sisters to create and sustain a just economy that allows you to thrive

It is about Building Beloved Community(s) where YOUR life overflows with Mercy, Love in the form of Joy, and deep Compassion for yourself and for others

Conclusion

Let me repeat Dr. King said:

Research Briefings

Kateesha Atterberry:

1. Importance of Black Institutions

1.1. History of Black Church

1.2. Institution of Faith, Fellowship, Healing & Hope, and Economic Safety Net

1.3. Dismantling of the Black Institution; loss of Legacy

2. Black Leadership & Black Women in Leadership

2.1. Black Women are at the helm of change and innovation

2.2. Showing up in 90%+ in voting, leading Seattle Police depts, building corporations, or ascending to the highest position in the land as Vice President.

2.3. We make things happen. But it’s not easy

3. Story of a Black Woman in Leadership

3.1. Horrific car accident Thanksgiving week of last year;

3.2. Underwent brain & skull surgery, along with face reconstruction; 20 neurosurgeons, plastic surgeons, ENT doctors, nurses, and physical therapists.

3.3. It was the church that saved her and these kids. The Body of Believers. An institution.

3.4. That woman was me. Now, let me return the favor.

“Behold! I will do a new thing

Now shall it spring forth; do you not perceive it?

I am making a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert

The beasts of the field honor me, the jackals, and the owls,

Because I provide water in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert

To give drink to my people, my chosen, the people I formed for myself

That they declare my praise.” – Isaiah 43:18

Aaron Fairchild:

My Name is Aaron Fairchild and I am so honored to be up here to make an ask. But before we get into that all the rest of it I have a couple, few people I would like to recognize and thank.

Thank you to the Goodwill Baptist membership. While our first meeting down in the fellowship hall was at times tense and uncertain, what has never felt uncertain since is your commitment to living into your faith on those Sundays when you open your arms to my children, my wife, and me to join you in this sacred house of worship; the very beating and living heart of this community. You have opened your hearts to me and I am so grateful and humbled and I will be forever blessed. If it weren’t for all of you, I would not be here today advocating for your pastor and this community. None of us would be here. You have blessed me and all of us, and in so doing we share a blessed space.

I would also like to thank the members of the Nehemiah Initiative. You have been steadfast and committed. Meeting Tuesday after Tuesday, month after month and year upon year. The Pastors! Thank you for your participation in this journey of renewal – Pastor Noble, Broughton, Ransford, Maize and so many more, thank you. Without all of you we would not be here today.

I would like to thank the folks at the UW, starting with Renee Cheng the Dean of the CBE who caught the vision of the Initiative and its potential and championed it within the University creating the Nehemiah Studio. Al Levine, Rachelle Berney, Brandon Borne and of course Donald King thank you for your inspiring energy and passion for the effort you put into curating an amazing quarter of field work and discovery. And of course the students who poured their hearts and minds into the work that we are now building off as the catalyst development project at Goodwill begins to come to life. You all have been so inspiring to me and certainly without your efforts none of us would be here on this stage today. And of this Nehemiah family, I would especially like to recognize, Anne Stadler, our soul sister. You are an amazing force of positive energy and a well of deep wisdom. When you speak, everyone stops what they are doing and we listen, because what you bring adds so much value. Thank you Anne.

I would finally like to say thank you to Bishop. Bishop Tyson, my pew walkin’ preacher friend. What to say… what to say? I have been thinking about this conversation a lot over the last few days and my mind and my heart continue coming back to you. Over the last few years I have known you, you have demonstrated amazing courage and humility and at times the gifts of a fighter. But more often I see on displayed the gift of grace, love, and patience and understanding for those around you. You have trusted and remained open to me, your congregation and your community, and to our Nehemiah members - never forcing things. Rather you allow a heavenly energy to flow and guide you in a methodical and meditative manner. You are following flow my friend. With love and acceptance you invited me, all of us on this stage and many others to join you on this inclusive journey, and we will do whatever we can to not let you down and to be deserving of your love, patience, trust and understanding. Thank you, brother.

So now we can get into who I am, and all the rest of it…

So, who am I? My name is Aaron Fairchild and I am a PnW boy, and I run a company called Green Canopy. I came to my work through an earnest and sincere desire to help resolve the dichotomy between our civilization’s behaviors and the environment of which we are called to steward. However, along my journey I continue to learn more, and become more aware of the multitude of issues our civilization is facing that perpetuates this dichotomy. The most significant of these I believe is our inability to compassionately come together and to be whole.

In this historic year as we look out into the world it can often seem so dark. Recession, illness, voter suppression, death, and hardship seem to abound. This makes us feel anxious and at our worst, helpless. The system we live in is so massive and can feel crushing. In our little corner in the PnW, I know many of us are asking what can I possibly do that would have any impact on the unrelenting and often cruel march of world events? And so often the answer that we come to is, nothing. “How can I change the course of history for the better?” And so we reside back within ourselves and our privileged ability to join the largest majority in the world; those that acquiesce. Believing we are helpless and unable to positively change the world for the better, we hand our power to the powerful and the structures they control that then go on to act in our names. And so the world continues its brutal march, with those of privilege and power putting their beliefs into action – and more often than not those actions are destructive and designed to maintain powerbases of privilege and they work to separate us from each other.

We live in a time that the call to vulnerable, active, and critically aware citizenship could not be more urgent! A time where much needed inspiration has the ability to invoke in us the courageous, yet powerfully simple act of that little child who yells out in a mind numbed multitude, “but the emperor wears no clothes!” Often when a simple yet courageous action such as that is taken, it can have transformational power. However, when we yield to that feeling of helplessness, and say or do nothing, we conspire with cynicism and despair. When we yield to helplessness, we strengthen the hand of those that seek to hold us down and separate us for their own power. But when we take back our power and choose to see the healing possibility for renewal and transformation, we open up with greater clarity and our creative energy swells up and flows outward as an active force for good in the world. In this way, we, in our small and tucked away lives here in the PnW, can become powerful agents of transformation in an American culture that is broken and in a dark time. We need to counter this current culture with a movement of wholeness.

One of the counter-culture gurus of the 1950s and 60s – Gary Snyder, who is still alive today in his 90s, once said…

To resolve the dichotomy of the civilized and the wild [the environment we are called to steward], we must first resolve to be whole.

Gary Snyder

This is what I am talking about! This is what Black Lives Matters is talking about. The simple and courageous desire to be whole. When we know that something isn’t right, and we feel helpless, we aren’t whole. But here is a pathway to wholeness… Luke Chpt 15, the parable of the lost sheep! Jesus says, when you have 100 sheep and you lose one, don’t give into helplessness and say, “well at least I got my 99!” No, he instructs us that it is really quite simple. It requires just one foot in front of the other and the courage that true compassion inspires to take that step and walk out into a dangerous world and lift up the sheep that has been left behind. Not because the 99 don’t matter! But because the one life left behind matters. And we are not whole until we come back together.

The story of how Bishop and I met is for another time. But I will share that when we met, he invited me to join him on a journey that is counter to this current ‘gotchya’ culture of separation; I would like to invite you as well. It is a journey that Bishop Tyson began 27 years ago when he answered God’s pastoral calling, to go from one coast of this country to the other with love, compassion, patience and tolerance and to inspire within all of us, and those that have been left behind, the courage, born from compassion, to have faith and to not give into to our sense of helplessness, but to join him in a Beloved journey of empowerment.

Within the broad and inclusive approach the Bishop has taken to develop this community’s land is an opportunity for us to share wholeness. It is an opportunity for all of us, to take one compassionately courageous step and join this effort by committing ourselves and our money to see this vision through. So please, this is important, projects like this are important for healing. And they don’t come around very often! When they do, they point the way for others to counter this current culture. When a great body of people such as us come together in love and compassion to demonstrate what we can build together, it has the ability to create a great wave of love to wash over others and inspire them to throw aside their helplessness, to take that first courageous step forward, and to lift up those that have been left behind and be whole. Please join us by contributing whatever you can afford… X2! J Go to the Church’s Givelify site and give. Write a check and mail it to the church. Call me or Bishop or someone you know associated with this community and take one step closer to being whole by giving to this community. Thank you.

Social Equity, EventsAdmin GreenCanopyAugust 20, 2020Batch 5

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