Recently Street Psalms Press announced  the arrival of our first book, Geography of Grace – Doing Theology From Below by Kris Rocke and Joel Van Dyke.

This project has been several years in the making. It has gone through five major edits, countless rewrites and a change in publishers. We are eager and a bit nervous to see it finally hit the streets. We have no illusions that this will be a New York Times best seller, but as a community, we hope it is a useful tool for those who are hungry to see God at work in hard places.

Authors and leaders like Bob Ekblad, Richard Rohr, Shane Claiborne, Phyllis Trible, Ray Bakke and others have given the book a warm reception. To see what these and other leaders are saying about Geography of Grace go click on the book highlight to the right of this page or go  here.

Fair warning:

We did not set out to write a controversial book, but this book is not without some controversy. We wrote it to honor those who work in the context of poverty and violence, which often pushes leaders to the edge of their faith, and ours as well, if we are honest. As a result, we have taken the “road less traveled,” in our book. Such a road is fraught with danger and all manner of ways to get lost, but as Robert Frost noted, taking the road less travelled “has made all the difference.” We hope it will make a difference with our readers and the communities we serve.

Several who have reviewed the book have recognized and appreciated the risky nature of our journey. One such review comes from Stephan de Beer in Pretoria, South Africa, who writes,

Grace is shared abundantly in the poetic beauty of this book: a grace located in the deepest trenches of human suffering and global urban fractures; a disarming grace, meeting you on every page, robed in profanity, steeped in the incarnation, erupting in surprising, awe-inspiring transformations.

This book offers all of us who sense an invitation to be on the urban margins, some superb handles for the journey – it is not your typical travel guide, but one written for the connoisseur of urban and human marginality, and, if we read carefully enough, a guide book for opening us up to the poetry and profanity of God’s beautiful grace, a grace more than able to make us over, and also the cities in which we live.

 Stephan de Beer, CEO, Tshwane Leadership Foundation, Pretoria, South Africa

To purchase Geography of Grace: Doing Theology From Below in either paperback or e-book format, go here. (Amazon will have the print version of the book available within the next month or so, but for now the paperback edition is available directly from Street Psalms Press in an equally safe and secure process that actually provides more income for our work.)  

Continue Reading…

This week I’ve been at Mt. Angel Abbey in Oregon, which is a place for work and prayer. Following the rule of St. Benedict (480-547 A.D.) that “all are to be welcomed as Christ,” I have been welcomed into the daily prayerful rhythm of this place as I take a working retreat. The monastery is on a hilltop flanked by giant sequoia trees, overlooking fruit orchards in the Willamette Valley. Most mornings, heavy fog hangs among the trees and buildings. Yesterday it burned off for a view of snow-capped Mt. Hood against the blue sky. Needless to say it’s hardly a rough place to work, and I’m thankful for friends who provided the opportunity.

The primary work of the Benedictine monks at the abbey is prayer. Six times a day, summoned by the loudest bell I have ever heard, they scurry to the abbey church for the liturgy of the hours, which are prayers sung beautifully in unison (Gregorian chant style). Their prayers consist primarily of the psalms and other portions of scripture, as well as theologically-rich ancient hymns. A few are in for a temporary period (simple vows), but most are lifers (solemn vows). Table-talk among visitors inevitably surfaces the question, “what if your son or daughter decided to make a life of this?” I suspect that’s quite a dim possibility for my own kids, but it does make you consider whether “the work of prayer” is something worth devoting an entire human life to.

We applaud people who devote their daily lives to brilliance as violin players or baseball pitchers or countless other pursuits, but prayer? Is the world a better place because a very few hold it in prayer with singular devotion through the hours of each day? Are such lives well-lived?

Continue Reading…

Last month CTM training associates, Scott Dewey and Jeff Johnsen (from Denver) spent a week in Nairobi. They were teaching a class for the masters program that Center for Transforming Mission offers in partnership with Bakke Graduate University. There are 23 students in the program. Here is a reflection from Scott…

Having just returned home to the USA from time with friends in Kenya, I want to offer just a few verbal and visual snapshots of the fruit of CTM and the Street Psalms Community. Namely, that grassroots leadership is flourishing in challenging contexts, in a dynamic process of theological reflection and social action.

The setting for this shutter-click is the Inspiration Center in Mathare. Mathare is an “informal settlement” in Nairobi, sometimes called Nairobi’s oldest slum community. It’s basically a ravine with a river at the bottom and a half-million people making a go at life together, crammed into shacks perched all the way from the top rim down to the chocolate-colored stream. One companion’s comment was that it looks like a big hole in the ground–a mudhole teeming with people. Of course there are layers and layers of description and meaning to any place, including this vibrant place of resourcefulness, exuberant beauty, and great struggle. Jeff Johnsen and I peeled back just a few layers in our time there with Kenyan friends, and it helped us listen together with them for what good news might look like in the very hard places of our world.
Continue Reading…

The high priest carries the blood of animals into the Most Holy Place as a sin offering, but the bodies are burned outside the camp. And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore. For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come. Hebrews 13:11-14

At the Center for Transforming Mission we use this text from Hebrews in conversations with grassroots leaders located within the street culture to ask meaningful questions about posture and place. The text reveals an invitation from the author that suggests a posture of humility and a place outside of what is known as the camp. We use this text in an attempt to explore parallels that grassroots leaders can identify with in their own stories and to place their endeavors in context. Once amplified, we begin to ask about the location of Jesus and about the camp. It does not take long for these leaders to see from within their context that they themselves, and Jesus, are located outside of the camp. They then quickly identify the camp as the church. This becomes the perfect place for grassroots leaders to hear good news about their posture and place either already present, or yearning to be present in life outside the gates of the camp. I am one of those leaders.

I learned a lot about faith growing up as the son of Mexican pastors who had committed their lives to serving predominately undocumented communities on the streets of Southern California. I learned even more about love when I began rejecting their religion, giving myself to a life of street culture at the early age of nine. Keep those two statements close as I invite you to peer through a small window of my journey back into the street culture of Denver, Colorado and why I am beginning to understand the choices made by many in the Hispanic Church.

Continue Reading…

I want to invite you to subscribe to Geography of Grace. Whether you have just discovered us or you are a long-time reader, you are warmly invited to enter into the stories, articles, reflections, and poetry written by and for those who serve in high-risk communities. It doubles as an online library for students enrolled in our masters program in partnership with Bakke Graduate University.

Geography of Grace is the visible work of a rather invisible group of people. For the past five years this group has quietly been discerning its call and identity. The group transcends organizational boundaries, but it is nurtured within Center for Transforming Mission and is the DNA of our work. This community of friends has discerned that we share a common call – the call to develop grassroots leaders who teach and preach Good News from below. Our task is to see God at work in the world and to celebrate what we see God doing. We are committed to a life of Action, Reflection and Discernment with and for those who have been labeled the least.

Continue Reading…