Church Seeks Lessons From Neighbors

On Sunday morning in the Pico-Union district of Los Angeles, Father Jarlath Cunnane made the rounds. At a two-story apartment building with barred windows and peeling paint, Cunnane knocked on a door and cheerfully called out a greeting in Spanish to the Salvadoran immigrant who peered out.

“Good morning,” the Roman Catholic priest said. “I’m Father Jay from St. Thomas, and I’d like you to tell us about your experiences in the neighborhood.”

The immigrant cracked a welcoming smile. He told the priest about a recent murder nearby and about the nightly gatherings of men drinking beer and littering the streets with broken bottles.

By morning’s end, after visiting several other neighbors, Cunnane had heard tales of families struggling with high rents, bad schools and scarce jobs. Then he invited all of them to a community meeting later this month to tackle the problems.

“We’re trying to re-imagine church,” Cunnane said. “Often we’re focused on getting people into church, but it’s also about getting church into the streets.”

On Sunday, Cunnane and his flock did just that -- in a large way. In a street operation planned for two months, more than 450 St. Thomas members fanned out to meet their largely Latino and Asian immigrant neighbors. They were instructed not to preach but to listen and learn.

Sometimes, however, little more than smiles could be exchanged: Salvadoran immigrant Daniel Bernal said he visited mostly Korean neighbors who spoke neither English nor Spanish. But, Bernal added with a grin, he ended up learning how to say “good morning” in Korean.

The St. Thomas street walk was part of a broader campaign by more than 100 religious congregations, labor unions, schools and other nonprofit organizations to revive the Los Angeles region’s civic culture and organize neighbors to improve their communities. The network, known as the Greater Los Angeles Metropolitan Strategy, began organizing in Los Angeles in 1999 and plans to formally launch itself with a founding convention next February.

In July, the network began a campaign of street walks and other ways to find neighbors interested in leading community action. So far, the campaign has inspired planning for projects ranging from crime reduction at First Presbyterian Church of Pomona to improved health care at St. Anthony Church in San Gabriel.

“The most radical thing to happen today is organized neighbors talking to neighbors,” said Sister Judy Donovan, an L.A. Metro senior organizer. “Neighbors don’t talk to each other. The are afraid of each other and are divided racially and ethnically. This breaks down barriers. We practice the politics of solidarity and serious deliberation about issues affecting families.”

For St. Thomas, the street walk also represented a kickoff event for its centennial year and a way to increase evangelization, a renewed priority in the Los Angeles Archdiocese.

Personal visits from priests and other parish members have declined in recent years, as congregations have ballooned beyond manageable numbers, Cunnane said. His own parish includes 8,000 families, most of them immigrants from Mexico and Central America.

“In our centennial year, we’re trying to see how to create a community of the plaza, not one behind closed doors,” he said.

Judging by Sunday’s event, church members seemed to make headway on their vision. In testimonies shared after their street walk, several said their neighbors unlocked their doors -- and their hearts.

Jesus Franco said she was able to comfort a woman isolated and afraid to venture outside her home for fear of gangs. Manuel Rivera encountered a sickly man who seemed surprised and touched by the St. Thomas visit and said he would return to church after a long absence.

Lolita Chavez said the neighbor she visited was initially suspicious, then opened up after hearing that she was there to listen, not proselytize. The neighbor agreed to bring several of her neighbors to the church’s community meeting to talk about ways to solve their problems with poverty, trash-filled streets and gang crime, Chavez said.

As cheers rose from the crowd with each testimony, Cunnane asked how many people would hit the streets again. Nearly all of them raised their hands.

“We don’t want our centennial to just be a celebration,” Cunnane said. “We’ve inherited a gift of faith from those who came before us, and we want to leave something for those who come after us.”