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Ministry in the Fields

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Each month, we post a series of blogs around a common topic. This month, Susan Young Thornton is curating a series highlighting ministry on the Pacific coast — a diverse, rapidly changing, and dizzyingly complex part of the country, and home to our upcoming 2019 National Gathering. We’ll hear from individuals serving in a variety of ministry settings about the struggles and blessings of living into God’s call on the West Coast. What is it really like to serve in this region? We invite you to join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter!

by Suzanne Darweesh

Did you ever wonder how fresh food and produce appear in your grocery store? I confess as a young woman, graduating from Union Theological Seminary in 1959, I didn’t. I took a summer job with the California Migrant Ministry (CMM) and was assigned to Sebastopol. We visited camps and showed films with religious themes as well as nutritional and public health messages. As summer came to a close, I was offered a permanent job in Corcoran doing similar work.

Rev. Doug Still, CMM Director, applied for a grant to train us in community organizing skills. Our staff learned the techniques of community organizing from Fred Ross, Cesar Chavez, Delores Huerta, and others. We learned through house visits what farm workers really wanted: safe, affordable housing; good education for their children; health care; to put down roots in a community and not be forced to migrate from town to town. A campaign for low-cost housing was launched and incredibly, we won! Almost immediately, the Presbyterian Church of Corcoran withdrew its support of the Migrant Ministry. The church membership included growers who did not relish the responsibility of providing education and health care for farm worker families. Presbyterian minister Chris Hartmire, then of CMM, spoke to the Session, but could not persuade them to change their decision.

Shortly thereafter, I accepted a job with Church World Service in Algeria. While I was living abroad, Cesar Chavez and Delores Huerta, aided by Fred Ross, established the United Farm Workers, launching the grape and lettuce boycotts. Returning to the US in 1975, I found many of the same conditions persisted. The most noteworthy change was the presence of portable bathrooms in the fields.

Farm workers have long lived at the bottom of our socio-economic scale. Even today, their pay is abysmal. Farm workers are usually paid by piecework, meaning they work as fast as they can to make as much money as possible. They do backbreaking work under a hot sun for long hours; injuries are frequent and pesticides are often sprayed in the fields while they work. They are excluded under the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 because FDR needed southern votes to pass this legislation and most farm workers and domestics were African-Americans in the south. California recently enacted overtime pay for farm workers, the first state in the nation to do so.

Fifty-three years ago, the Orange County Interfaith Committee to Aid Farm Workers (OCICTAFW) was founded – the oldest support group in the nation. Today, we advocate for farm workers around the country, for overtime pay, pesticides protection, safe working conditions, and we fund raise for the UFW and the National Farm Worker Ministry. Orange County supporters were actively involved in the Coalition of Immokalee Workers struggle with Taco Bell. The coalition asked growers to pay a penny a pound more for tomatoes and to sign the Fair Food Agreement, establishing guidelines and an enforcement mechanism for decent working conditions, specifically to eliminate sexual harassment and violence. Over the years McDonalds, Burger King, and other major fast food corporations plus large catering companies have signed on. Wendy’s has not, precipitating a boycott of Wendy’s and a letter writing campaign in support of better working conditions for farm workers.

The work continues. A struggle is being waged against the Reynolds Tobacco Company for exploiting tobacco farm workers in its supply chain. Ruby Ridge Dairy Farm in the Northwestern US is accused of allowing pay theft, unsafe working conditions, (two men have drowned in manure ponds), and sexual harassment. Workers who protested were fired. Ruby Ridge is part of the Darigold Cooperative, which has refused to get involved in the dispute. The UFW is asking Starbuck’s and Costco, two of the largest purchasers of Darigold products, to intervene on behalf of workers.

A majority of farm workers are undocumented. The threat of deportation and loss of work is a constant concern. OCICTAFW does not support the proposed expansion of the H2A program to address farm labor shortages. Workers would have no power to negotiate working conditions, leaving them at the mercy of their employers.

The establishment and expansion of the Equitable Food Initiative (EFI) marks progress in the Farm Worker Movement. Growers and large corporations such as Costco are concerned about exposure to pathogens in the food products they sell. The premise of the EFI is to achieve better working conditions as well as food safety. The number of participating farms is growing and is cause for celebration! You can support this effort by looking for their certification logo.

Being informed consumers is one of the best ways we can impact the lives of farm workers. Exploitation needs to end. Farm workers deserve dignity, respect, and justice in the honorable work they do feeding us.

Suzanne Darweesh is a ruling elder and chair of the board of directors of the Orange County Interfaith Committee to Aid Farm Workers.

A Ministry of Listening to Stories

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Each month, we post a series of blogs around a common topic. This month, Susan Young Thornton is curating a series highlighting ministry on the Pacific coast — a diverse, rapidly changing, and dizzyingly complex part of the country, and home to our upcoming 2019 National Gathering. We’ll hear from individuals serving in a variety of ministry settings about the struggles and blessings of living into God’s call on the West Coast. What is it really like to serve in this region? We invite you to join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter!

by Robin Clardy

Ministry takes different forms. As a Presbyterian pastor in a validated ministry, I provide pastoral counseling, spiritual direction, and church consultation on end-of-life issues. In my elected position as moderator for the Presbytery of Los Ranchos, I moderate business and committee meetings, install pastors, and represent and speak on behalf of the presbytery at ceremonies and special meetings. In all of this I am called upon to preach, teach, and present at workshops and retreats. No matter the setting I find that people desire to be known, accepted, and loved. We want to know that our actions serve a purpose and our lives have meaning.

I am grateful to listen to people tell their stories, which can be messy, disorganized, or in transition. They can be filled with pain, tragedy, longing, and loss. They come from people who have known great wealth or scrape to get by. They come young and old alike. How we tell our stories and own our stories matters. How we are allowed to have our stories matters. It takes time to unpack our stories.

I hear many stories. Los Ranchos just celebrated 50 years of stories in grand style at one of our churches. We worked hard to tell stories of our successes and challenges. We invited churches to tell their stories. They highlighted where we’ve been, where we are, and where we are going. These many and different voices told our collective story.

Photo from Los Ranchos Presbytery Facebook page

I also visit our churches and new worshipping communities, where I hear the stories of their hopes and their challenges. I have found faithful 90-year olds who still serve and care for others in the congregation. I have discovered deacons who maintain relationships with members long past their ability to attend church. I have heard from pastors challenged by their aging congregations and saddened by the continual stream of memorial services they officiate. I talk with pastors, elders, and members who are committed to rolling up their sleeves to pitch in and build houses for those needing sustainable, affordable housing. I’ve listened to those who are doing jail ministry, refugee resettlement, shower ministry, after-school programs, working on behalf of farm workers’ rights, ending gun violence, rights for the mentally ill, #me-too movement; this is just scratching the surface.

I let these stories inform me as I help lead the presbytery. I learn from those who live a different life, speak a different language, have a different culture, and face different challenges. I hear, and I learn. I‘ve learned that we are the same: we need to be respected, listened to, appreciated, equipped, resourced, and allowed to do what God has put in our hearts. I’ve learned the importance of stepping aside so that someone else can step in. I have learned to be silent so that someone might speak up. I’ve learned to slow down and consider that which I see with my eyes, but have no understanding of. I’ve learned to let people tell their stories in their way and to speak up when it is helpful and needed.

I pray that we all take time to listen to the stories of those around us, those in our church, presbytery, community. Listen for people’s longings, hopes, desires. Listen to how they want to belong. We all can do this, pastor, moderator, elder, layperson alike. And may our horizons be broadened by our understanding and learn from these stories. May we build bridges to cross the divide that separates us.

Robin Clardy, a pastoral counselor, spiritual director, and former hospice chaplain, is moderator of the Presbytery of Los Ranchos.

Ministry from North to South

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Each month, we post a series of blogs around a common topic. This month, Susan Young Thornton is curating a series highlighting ministry on the Pacific coast — a diverse, rapidly changing, and dizzyingly complex part of the country, and home to our upcoming 2019 National Gathering. We’ll hear from individuals serving in a variety of ministry settings about the struggles and blessings of living into God’s call on the West Coast. What is it really like to serve in this region? We invite you to join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter!

by Karen Claassen

More than 2 decades ago I said to my spouse, “How could we not raise our daughter in a place that talks about bald eagles like city people talk about pigeons?” This sentiment sums up my experience of ministry in the West. Alaska, Washington, the greater Los Angeles megalopolis…these have been my stomping grounds. All are larger than life.

The communal faith life in these places is tenuous. Sometimes demographics just don’t fit denominational goals. Sometimes the local way of life works against the imposed model of church. Sometimes the flaws in the context undermine engagement. What do I mean?

Six months after ordination, at my first COM meeting, I asked, “Why are you considering closing that church?” The conversation that ensued shaped my next twenty-plus years in PCUSA ministry. Why this church and not that church? Did numbers matter? Which number mattered more: people in the building on Sunday morning or churches in the community?

If a PCUSA congregation was the only faith gathering in a small place, why would the presbytery close the church? (Or really, shut down the building? No outsider can “close” the church; it would just move to someone’s living room.) Because some city person says the town or congregation is too small? How small is too small to deserve an organized, connectional gathered community? What happened to “Where two or three gather in my name, I am there with them”?

The little church we discussed at that first COM meeting was in an Alaskan village whose population fluctuated from 200 to 350 people, depending on the season. Five years after that conversation, 80 attended Easter worship. 25-40% of the town was in the worship service. How many churches can say that? How do we measure success and viability in such a situation? That is ministry in much of the Western half of the United States: small congregations serving remote communities, often as the only organized representative of Christ.

Then there is the challenge of always meeting on Sundays. In the Pacific Northwest, subsistence or recreation or work consume the weekend. How is a congregation to gather if the people are scattered? Perhaps the answer lies, as one PCUSA church found, in running a Thursday night service during the summer that exactly mirrored the Sunday morning service. It was so successful for three summers that it became a permanent, year-round offering. Washington hunters deserve to gather for worship too.

Imagine my surprise my first three-day weekend after moving to Los Angeles. I planned for low numbers, constructing a beautiful, intimate, interactive experience that could not be done on a Sunday with the regular attendance. But the context had changed. A three-day weekend in Southern California offers time to get a lot of chores done and light traffic, so the worship service becomes a priority. There were MORE people than usual. It wrecked my plans and reminded me of the importance of understanding where I minister.

Each place I served is different. And yet, all my Western service, regardless of the locale, the communal faith life has proven tenuous. None of those areas could boast even a 30% church rate among the population. Each is a mission field that requires creativity and tenacity — and the ability to not lose one’s temper when someone from Louisville or Philadelphia calls at 5:00 or 6:00 AM, “the start of the business day.”

Karen Claassen has served congregations in four states and six presbyteries for the past 20 years, helping people encounter and love the Spirit more intensely. She constantly explores changing modes of discipleship and outreach in the 21st century in order to live her zeal for equipping Christians and encouraging congregations into a brighter future.