What does it look like to respond creatively to the needs of your community? What does the Gospel look like smack dab in the middle of a broken community? Some friends of mine in Seattle are setting a beautiful example.
If you take Aurora and head north of downtown, you are swiftly slapped in the face by the countless cockroach motels, run-down storefronts, adult entertainment venues, prostitution “Watch Area” signs, and the Aurora Bridge, where over 200 hundred people have jumped to their deaths since its construction in 1932.
If you were to drive this lovely stretch of road these days you might notice something new - bed sheets flapping about in the misty Seattle rain.

A local porn shop, in an effort to boost traffic, recently put a few ladies out front holding a sheet that read, “Sex is Beautiful.”  In response, a group of students from my alma mater, Mars Hill Graduate School, decided to display some sheets of their own. Theirs read “Life is Beautiful,” and “Aurora Means Dawn,” which they hung from the infamous Aurora Bridge and on an overpass welcoming drivers to the neighborhood.
In addition to the sheets, the group I listed the other day, Urban Hymnal, created a music and performance art experience they called, The Bridge, the Corner, and the Dawn, which focused on themes of sexual exploitation, addiction, suicide, and hope.

As I read about the story, I was struck more by what my friends didn’t do.
With a blank slate and a captive audience, they could have responded however they pleased. And yet, instead of a Christian music concert, they created an experience that spoke specifically to their context. Instead of messages of condemnation and contempt, they wrote messages of hope and redemption. 

May we all take note: THIS is how you respond to your community.

Some thoughts to consider:
Are you aware of what it is your community needs?
Do you know where it is hurting?
Do you have a process for gleaning this information?
Once you know, how will you respond?




Images via the Aurora Artists

(via blainehogan)