Episcopal Church Foundation Vital Practices - Vestry Papers - Answering Jesus' Call

November 2013
Answering Jesus' Call

Laundry Love

Nancy Davidge

Sometimes the way to get people ‘back to church’ is by starting a different kind of church. Better yet, offering individuals or small groups the freedom to design their own form of worship.

For Christian Kassoff and his wife, Shannon, church is Laundry Love and Thom’s.

Their journey began 10 years ago.

Broken and ready to find God, they found the Episcopal Church. Christian loves theology, the Episcopal liturgy (although not the stale manner in which it is sometimes presented), and being part of a big family on Sundays. Over time, what he became uncomfortable with was the model of church that so many Episcopalians treasure: gathering inside a beautiful sanctuary on Sunday mornings.

Often this story ends with people leaving the church. God had another plan for Christian and Shannon.

Discovering What God had in Mind

Missionary work in Tanzania changed Christian’s life, making it clear that his faith life needed to center on serving God through service, worshipping in the street with others who also feel called to what he calls “more of a 1st century expression of Christianity.

Returning to California Christian and Shannon began visiting other Episcopal Churches. Once again, the experience of worshipping while sitting in a pew helped him to understand that this was not a model of church that worked for him. The call to go out, to be part of a different expression of church, one that might draw in people who, like him, were uncomfortable in a traditional church. Christian joined a team of Orange County clergy meeting regularly to explore new ways of being church.

Thad’s Episcopal Church in Santa Monica was the next stop on their journey; yet just too far away to make it their church home. This congregation describes themselves as: “…a movement of missionary people who’ve made a choice to leave the relative safety of the established church and take the love of Jesus ‘to the streets.’ Our calling is to bring this transforming love into people’s lives in positive, transformative and practical ways. In church-speak, we’re a ‘mission station,’ an experimental community of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles.”

Thad’s held the key.

Thom’s and Laundry Love

By late September 2011, Christian and Shannon were part of a small group gathering in an empty restaurant and beginning the process of creating a church. Calling themselves Thom’s, short for Thomas, as in The Apostle Thomas as in, Doubting Thomas, they quickly discovered was that they knew what they did not want their new faith community to be. Discovering what they did want proved to be harder.

What they knew was that engagement with the community was essential. Worship was secondary. They looked around for opportunities in the community. They collected ideas. And quickly, one rose to the top of the list: Laundry Love.

Christian explains, “We began Laundry Love because it was a simple idea that we could quickly enact and that stood to assist a lot of people, which it has. As our regular volunteer Remy observed after his first evening, it's not just the laundry. It's the hope it provides when people know that someone cares. I guess that's why laundry and love remain connected in the title. We see this as month after month the same people return. They become part of our lives and we theirs. This also happens with volunteers as we share experiences and ourselves. This month we shared our project with two groups of people from churches in Los Angeles and Silver Lake. They wanted to know how we do it so that they could start an event as well. An idea spreads.”

Worship at Thom’s

Christian describes Thom’s as a “messy house church that is lay led.” Intentionally without a permanent physical ‘home,’ Thom’s holds services in restaurants, homes, and occasionally in other churches. Thom’s has no budget; no paid staff. Any money collected goes to support the monthly Laundry Love offering.

Their website offers this description:

“A gathering of people helping each other to move in what our collective conscious feels like the right direction, having fun wrestling with religion (faith too), growing together, recognizing god in all things, abandoning self, seeking to serve, digging Jesus' message, questioning deeply, and trying to walk the talk.”

Worship is simple and participatory, following the 1st century practice of being built around an actual meal. Christian shares liturgy preparation with one or two others; meeting on the first and third Sundays of each month, the order of service often includes secular songs, opportunity for silent mediation and prayer, readings from both secular and religious texts, and a form of the Eucharist which, without a priest often involves preparing and eating a meal together.

Next Steps

Two years later, Thom’s remains a small worshipping community, with 3-12 regular members. Their Laundry Love ministry is thriving, providing assistance to people struggling financially by assisting them with doing their laundry as well as opportunities for people in area congregations to offer tangible help and begin to get to know those in our communities who are often dismissed, seen only as a problem rather than as children of God.

Having the freedom to try a different form of being church is one of the hallmarks of the Episcopal faith. Throughout The Episcopal Church, a variety of emergent worshipping communities have formed. Tom Brackett, The Episcopal Church’s missioner for church planting, ministry redevelopment, and fresh expressions of church, offers online resources and networking opportunities for people engaged in, or interested in, as he puts it “learning together the disciplines of midwifing the new Spirit being birthed in our times.” Learn more about these networking opportunities here. http://5marks.org

Nancy Davidge is the Episcopal Church Foundation’s associate program director for leadership resources and editor of ECF Vital Practices.

Resources