Embracing Authentic Evangelism: Hyaets Ministry An online interview with Greg and Helms Jarrell and Jason and Joanie Williams of Hyaets Ministry In the previous newsletter, we featured Hyaets ministry in the West Charlotte neighborhood of Enderly Park as one who personifies the CBFNC General Assembly theme Embracing Authentic Evangelism. The mission of Hyaets is to inspire, enrich, and embody Christian community, and they do so by offering their own homes to their neighbors as a place of rest, food, shelter, and friendship. Hear from Hyaets partners, Jason (blue) & Joanie (red) Williams and Greg (black) & Jennifer (pink) Helms Jarrell from an online interview. In layman s terms, what exactly is Hyaets? Greg: We are a small community of faith - consisting currently of six adults, one youth, and four children who have committed our lives to one another and to humble service to our neighbors. Four of us adults live adjacent to one another in the Enderly Park neighborhood of Charlotte, sharing our lives with those around us. We gather four days a week to pray and eat together, and we share our food and our homes with those in our neighborhood. In some ways, we're just an extended family our brothers and sisters stop by at all hours of the day to talk, rest, eat, and to share their lives with us. We also run a couple of small ministry programs with our neighbors. These are more relational than programmatic, and are driven by the needs we see in our neighbors' families. We spend a lot of time with kids and youth, and are working on birthing a transitional house that will seek to meet the needs of the chronically unemployed in our neighborhood. Helms: We are two couples (plus outside neighborhood supporters) who have moved into an at risk neighborhood who practice Christian hospitality with neighbors by offering our homes and our lives as a gift to one another. We offer hospitality by offering meals, companionship, shelter, prayers, and a listening ear. Jason: Hyaets is a community building organization which branches out in several directions, including an urban ministry, an intentional Christian community, and retreat experiences. The ministries of Hyaets are based upon a holistic, relational, need-meeting model. At the core of Hyaets is an intentional Christian community that lives in a low-income, high-risk area of Charlotte, North Carolina to minister with and learn from those that society would call the least of these. This community partners with individuals, families, churches, and parachurch organizations to provide a number of ministries to the poor, marginalized, and forgotten of Charlotte. Through these ministries and partnerships, Hyaets seeks to inspire, enrich, and embody community by building bridges between the poor and the affluent. Why Enderly Park in Charlotte? When we were looking for the neighborhood we would be settling in, we asked folks we knew in Charlotte, "If you were going to move your family to a neighborhood to raise your children, what area would you not go to?" A couple of places, including Enderly Park, came up several times. We landed here about four years ago. Enderly Park is one of the most fragile neighborhoods in the city - we have had very high crime rates over the past several years. There are relatively few homeowners, many neighbors are on some kind of public assistance, there are obvious signs of blight here - boarded up houses, lots of litter, etc. Our conviction was not to live in a dangerous, economically depressed place just for the adventure of it, but that we wanted to be next door to the poor. We think that we should take Jesus seriously when he says that the kingdom of heaven belongs to them, and we want to place ourselves in a position to be able to learn from the poor about what Jesus meant. We wanted to be in NC because we wanted to reconnect with NC Baptists after having been gone for a few years at seminary. We chose Charlotte after narrowing down a few city options. After looking at a Charlotte-Mecklenburg demographics map, we knew we wanted to live in one of the neighborhoods marked "fragile, indicating a neighborhood with significant social and economic challenges. So, we began our search. Enderly Park is one of the "fragile" neighborhoods. We never actually saw the first house we lived in. A friend took pictures of it and
sent them to us. Our first viewing of the house was when we arrived on the property in the moving truck. Enderly Park is listed as a Challenged Neighborhood, meaning it is a low-income, high crime neighborhood. In 2005 E-P was a neighborhood which had one the highest number of social service cases in the city of Charlotte. In sum, it is a poor, often forgotten, ignored, and marginalized area of Charlotte. When Hyaets set out to begin in an inner-city area of North Carolina, conversations with local Charlotte folk led us to several areas, including E-P. We sought housing in several different areas, but as we were unable to secure housing by the time of our move, we had a friend find a house for us in one of the areas we were looking at. We rented it sight-unseen. It happened to be in E-P. We believe this was, in part, God guiding us to E-P. How did you come up with the name Hyaets? (and please explain the name) Hyaets roughly translates to 'tree of life' from the Hebrew. The image of a tree was important to us as we formed. Trees are stable, they provide shade, they sow seed, they experience seasons of growth and of rest. They need to be pruned on a regular basis. As such, trees make delightful metaphors. The biblical images of the tree of life were formative as we came together. We see ourselves as both the birds flocking to God's great tree of life for rest and care, as well as a little tree planted hoping to help others find a little rest. The image of the Tree of Life has been very significant for us. It came to mind many times in our initial visioning process. After tossing around several ideas, we landed on using the Hebrew words for "Tree of life" and thus, Hyaets is our name. Hyaets is a Hebrew phrase that means tree of life. Actually it is very poor Hebrew grammar (the words should be in reverse order aets-hy but that didn t flow off the lips as easily as hyaets, so we flipped the word order!! sorry to the Hebrew grammarians!) hy (hi) life aets (eights) - tree Although we fudged the Hebrew a little to make it more accessible, the image we are striving for is the image of the tree of life that bookends the bible in Genesis and Revelation and is referenced in several Psalms. The word hy can also mean community depending on the exact spelling and pronunciation. Through the phrase hyaets, we actually intend the pun so that the phrase could mean community tree. The fact the Hebrew word for life is so similar to the word for community (coming from the same root word) is instructive for us. Though we need to do more research, we believe that this is no coincidence, that life and community are related, that life is about community, that community is about life. We live rightly in community. That is, in large part, the core of Hyaets. Since we are a community building organization, the tree imagery fits us well. The image guides our thoughts and our direction. A tree is an image from God s creation that is a microcosm of community it is a habitat for animals, it is a source of life, it is a message of growth. We pray that we can be like a tree of life and that we can help to inspire, enrich, and embody community that looks like a tree of life. What about your own journeys led you start this ministry? We all came to this from a bit of a different place, and we have tried to incorporate those areas that each individual feels strongly about into the work that we do. For me (Greg), I spent a couple of summers in college living and working in the 'projects' in East St. Louis, Illinois. For that time I actually lived in a rec center right in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the country. I felt right at home. While I was in seminary, I did my best to locate myself in places that reminded me of East St. Louis. As I was leaving seminary, I wanted relocate - to really be home in a neighborhood that had been abandoned by the powerful of our society. In plain terms, I wanted to live in the inner-city as a neighbor, and not to travel in during the day and leave after work. Others of us have significant gift or passions towards congregational ministry, towards retreats and camps, towards writing and speaking. We have tried to incorporate the gifts that each person brings to the work that we do.
Gosh, each of us could probably spend an hour answering this question. Things that brought me to this place: My experience growing up at FBC Raleigh helped to disciple me and made me want to work hard to build the kingdom. The Baptist Student Union at ASU taught me a lot about community and about listening for God. My experience as a Student Summer Missionary every summer made me want to serve and do so in radical ways. Seminary at BTSR challenged me to question and practice what I believe. Joanie: I felt particularly called to local church ministry and wanted to find ways to connect the local churches to an urban area and the people of that community in hopes that we can learn from each other. That answer is different for each of us. For me (Jason) it is about a call from God. It is in large part about trying to follow a savior who calls us to crazy things, like selling all that we own, giving it to the poor, and following him. That sounds crazy to our world and we tend to spiritualize it so much sometimes that we don t really hear the call to actually sell the stuff we own and give it away. Jesus hung out with the poor, the marginalized, the sick, the outcast, the prostitutes, the widows, and the demon-possessed of the world. And then he calls us to follow him. So, call us crazy, but we believe that hanging out with the same folks is pretty significant to following Jesus. I think that the mission trips, the church experiences, my relationship with God (both personal and corporate), and my study of scripture have all formed me into being a part of the life and ministry of Hyaets. Finding an authentic way to close the gap between ministry and everyday life has been important to me throughout my journey and Hyaets is part of the response to that struggle for me. Many folks live out in nice houses in the suburbs and travel to an urban ministry center of some sort to do ministry that often never really impacts the lavish, extravagant life that we affluent Americans tend to live. Too often ministry is separated from everyday life such that it becomes a job. We become removed from those we minister to and never really find an authentic way to minister with them. On the whole ministry remains an us-them work that we engage in often to feel that we are doing a good and right thing so that we can sleep easy at night. We can go home after a long day on the job and relax in our comfy homes while the poor continue life in the ghettos of our cities. Hyaets is a response to this type of ministry that points to the importance of ministry as a way of life, a way of shared life, a way of community life. We live beside those that the urban ministry center minister to and discover that we are not just their ministers but that they are our ministers as well. We learn about the 24/7 life of those whom many forget about once they travel back to their suburban homes. We follow Jesus by dining with the forgotten each day, by caring for the addict at 1am when he is high and forgotten to take his diabetes medicine, by becoming guardians and family to the 16 year old whose mother is unable and ill-equipped to provide him the basic necessities of life, and by being a neighbor to each of God s children in the Enderly Park community. CBFNC is diving deeper into conversations about evangelism, wealthy and poverty, and racial reconciliation. Can you speak to this conversation in relation to Hyaets? Our strong conviction about these areas is that our lives and behaviors more than our words will bear out how serious we are about them. Folks who care about the poor ought to be friends with people who are poor. Folks who care about racial reconciliation should know people of other races, and love them. In doing so, we can learn to see with a different set of eyes, so that our preaching might actually sound like - and our lives look like - good news. How to become completely converted to that new way of life, or to seeing the world in a new way, is a constant struggle for us. So, this is an ongoing conversation with us as well, and we are glad to be a part of that conversation with CBFNC. Another of the important lessons we are learning is that our approach to these conversations has to be one of humility and of intentionally letting go of our power. As Baptists, mostly white Baptists, in the South, we have been in charge - politically, economically - for a long time. To be serious about the lives of the poor or about racial reconciliation, we are going to have to put other folks in charge of the conversation and be willing to follow their lead. This kind of humility is difficult to learn, but it is basically evangelism as we have practiced it in Baptist circles in the South in reverse. Those folks who will need to lead us in conversations about wealth and poverty
and racial reconciliation have some good news that we need to hear. This is a vulnerable place, but a place we must visit if we are to know the truth about ourselves. The good news of the gospel is that once we know the truth about ourselves, God welcomes our repentance and is quick to forgive. I must say that this is still not easy for us sometimes, as we learn about ourselves from the people around us. Hyaets branches into each of these areas. Too often we separate these areas into various issues, concerns, or problems, when in practice these are complexly woven together within everything we say and do as ministers and children of God. We cannot talk about evangelism without talk about wealth and poverty. We cannot talk about wealth and poverty without talking about racial reconciliation. And, most importantly, we cannot talk about any of these without knowing and having relationships with those who are rich and poor, those who are black and white, those who are Christian and Muslim, Hindu, or other. Hyaets is about relationships. It is about not just participating in the conversation, but about finding an authentic, relational way to engage the conversation. We cannot simply dive deeper into the conversation without diving deeply into the lives of those the conversation implies and bringing them and their stories into the conversation as well. That is much of what Hyaets strives for within our efforts to reach out and connect with churches, congregations, and parachurch organizations. At the CBFNC General Assembly you were able to lead a workshop on simple living. Share a few of your thoughts on this. Our first thought we shared was that we wish we were better at living simply. This is where I need one of my neighbors to teach me. We think of simple living basically as a Christian response to the perversions and excesses of our modern lives. There are numerous ways to talk about this, but I think that the most compelling is in terms of scarcity versus abundance. We have been taught that the way the world works is through the invisible force called the market, and the basic principle behind the market is scarcity. There is not enough, this logic says, and so the way that we negotiate the fundamental scarcity of the world is through the market. We have been trained by our culture to see the world around us through this lens. The problem is that this way of seeing our world is not true. God has created a world where there is more than enough. God's model for the distribution of the abundance of creation is found in the early church of Acts - they held their goods in common and shared with one another as any had need. Living simply is a response to God's abundance, knowing that by sharing based on each person's need there is more than enough. On a practical level, two of the things that came from the discussions in the seminar were about keeping a garden for food - which is good for you, good for the earth, and helps us to learn to live within the natural limits of the world - and about sharing. Think of those things that you have but don't need or use all that often, or that you could easily share. Maybe a lawnmower, power tools, a sewing machine, an extra car, time for babysitting or helping with chores. Start a co-op in your neighborhood for those things. Why should every person have a mower at the cost of hundreds of dollars when several people can share one for far less, and with a little planning, all of them use it easily? These little practices teach us to be content with what we have and to share what we have with one another as any has need. The CBFNC General Assembly was a wonderful gathering of clergy and laity connected to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina. It was an honor to be able to share our modest thoughts on simple living with fellow Baptist, particularly at this place and time in history. Simple living has always been sort of a catch phrase at Hyaets. We hold it as a traditional Christian practice. We strive to live simply as examples from the Christian faith, such as Jesus, John the Baptist, the Desert Fathers, and various monastic communities throughout the history of the Christian tradition. At a point in time where living simply has become a fad to reduce clutter, make life easier, achieve balance in life, find ways to do more with less, and discover the important things of life, we quickly forget that such efforts are more oriented towards self-help and economic prosperity than following Jesus. If simple living is significant for Christians as a faithful practice (and we believe it is), then it must be rooted in the life and teaching of Jesus and scripture.
At Hyaets, we don t claim to live simply. But we do believe simply living is a Christian practice that forms us as disciples and Christ-followers. So we discern simple living within the context of our Christian community for community formation and discipleship. And we have come to discover within our context that simple living is about responding to the excesses and perversion of our society and culture. Our working definition of simple living is a contemporary response to contemporary perversions and excesses of society based on God s word for Christian living. For example, in a world where materialism is so rampant that life tends to be about what thing will I get next, God exhorts us to be content with what God provides and learn to live without some things, particularly those things which are not needed that we might instead live for the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven. How does being a CBFNC Baptist relate to a ministry like Hyaets? For one, a little community like ours needs the Church, and needs churches, to make our existence possible. We need the friendships of CBFNC people. We need partnerships and supporters. We need the reminder that we do not work alone in the work we do, and that a great cloud of witnesses stands with us. We also think that CBFNC churches (and many churches) need little communities like ours as points of connection. Martin Luther King, Jr., pointed out that Sunday morning at 11 is the most segregated hour in America. That remains true 45 years after he said it. Communities like ours can be places to help people connect and build those bridges that we so badly need. So we relate in being members of one body, and of being a part of an ongoing conversation about how best to serve our neighbor and our Lord. If you're interested in that conversation, come sit on the porch with us one evening. Many of the people who informed, influenced, and helped me hear my call to ministry and particularly to Hyaets are part of CBF and that is very important to me. We believe by being Baptist within the ministry of Hyaets we are a unique voice amidst the many Baptist voices of the world. We feel that we have an important perspective to offer to our fellow brothers and sisters. Hyaets has come out of the lives of 3 North Carolina Baptists who all associate with CBF. Our Sunday School teachers, pastors, parents, youth leaders, and mentors were CBF folk. In other words, it was really CBF, and CBFNC in particular, that birthed Hyaets by forming us throughout our youth. We only hope that Hyaets and CBFNC can deepen our relationship over the coming years such that CBF might claim us as their (your) own. We fervently desire to be deeply connected to CBFNC, to be a strong resource for the churches and congregation of CBFNC, to be a place of mission and retreat for members of CBFNC, and to be an avid voice for the poor, marginalized, and oppressed at the CBFNC table. Any other words to share with us? Contact us or arrange to come and visit. We would love to introduce you to some really beautiful people! Visit www.hyaets.org to learn more.