Park of grace THE REV. GEORGE SCOTT'S message from St. Paul's letter to the Romans was about the many members, as different as a nose from a foot, who together make up the "body of Christ."
and praise
A weekly Central Union Church
program reaches out to fill the needs
of Ala Moana Park residentsBy Mary Adamski
madamski@starbulletin.comThe congregation illustrated his point. There were successful business and professional people who found the cool breeze and vibrant sunset at Ala Moana Park a respite from the workday. And there were homeless men and women, some already wrapped up against the evening chill, who would sleep in the park.
But first there was the warmth of the shared Thursday night worship, topped off by a spaghetti dinner cooked and served by volunteers from Central Union Church.
Scott was the preacher this week, but if anyone is the "pastor" of this church, it's George Harris, a layman who was hired by Central Union Church three years ago to begin a neighborhood outreach ministry. Harris greeted the regulars by name as about 60 people gathered for the 6 p.m. weekly service under a tarpaulin.
The idea of a ministry in the park came from youths in the church, said Harris, who started by walking the park with a thermos of coffee to share and a willingness to listen, and he continues that walk two or three days a week.
"George gives the homeless their names back," said Rick Lamb, a park resident when he met Harris last year. "I fell into a bad rut; I was drunk 24-7. George told me, 'You're going to die in this place.' He's a good listener."
Lamb, sober now for a year, employed and taking flight-instructor training, is one of the regular volunteers who haul tarp, tables, chairs and food to the site mauka of Magic Island every Thursday.In the steamy church kitchen on this particular evening, manager Charlene Lorenzo directed the family life committee as they chopped salad and fruit and stirred mega-batches of sauce over pasta.
"I have friends in the food service industry," she said, whose donations help enhance the meal beyond her $100 budget. Last month, her friends provided ice cream for sundaes.
"They deserve as good a food as anyone else," she said of the crowd in line.
Each week, a different Central Union Church committee prepares a meal -- usually sandwiches, with a hot dinner at the end of the month when welfare checks and food stamps have run out.
"This is just astonishing," said first-timer the Rev. Marcia Eveland as she counted the crowd who lined up to collect heaping platefuls and emptied them in a fraction of the time devoted to the worship service.
The aim of the outreach is "to call our church people out in the community, to get involved in a substantive way," said Harris. "To stand behind a table and hand over sandwiches is not enough. The table enforces the barrier that is between my middle-class self and the person in need. If all that it does is allow us to go home and feel good, there's something missing.
"Worship is the great equalizer. We sit together, all equal before the altar, before God.
"We all get fed in this," said Harris. "People have dedicated a lot of time, and it's changed them."
Harris came to Hawaii while in the Navy, and also has worked for nonprofit agencies serving homeless youths in Waikiki and AIDS victims. The park ministry, he said, "gives me a chance to do the kind of work I like and to express my faith at the same time."
ON HIS WALKS, "what I hear is a lot of people who want to work," said Harris. "There's carpenters, cooks and fishermen out there."
The next plateau of service is in the planning stage by Central Union members from the business community who are exploring an enterprise to help people find jobs.
"Some of us feel we have a certain destiny, a certain lot in life," Harris told the gathering, "but we never know what horizons will be opened to us."
He said that is the message in the prayer of Jabez, a one-sentence exhortation from the Old Testament book of 1 Chronicles. He distributed copies of the prayer, provided by the Rev. Ted Robinson, Central Union's senior pastor, and urged the Ala Moana flock to bring it back so they could recite it together each week. It reads: "Oh, that you would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory. That your hand would be with me, and that you would keep me from evil."
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