“It’s how I know the Holy Spirit is present in our service: that people can tell the truth about their lives,” says Ericka Henry, pastor of the Holy District Network.
Holy District was born out of Pastor Ericka’s own dissatisfaction at the distance between who she was calling others to be and the reality of who she was. In traditional church settings, she had spent years encouraging people to serve their communities, eat with their neighbors, and love their enemies.
“But I didn’t have time to go eat with my own neighbors!”
Over time, the Lord met her in that dissatisfaction and called her to something different. She launched the Holy District, an experimental, non-traditional approach to being the church, especially in under-served or under-estimated communities. Starting in Allentown, Pa., the experiment has multiplied to four locations throughout Pennsylvania
“It’s everything I ever wanted, and it’s harder than I could have imagined,” Pastor Ericka says with a laugh. “But it’s also better than I could have expected.”
Transcript
I had come from a multi-site mega church, and there was something inside me that felt hypocritical. The way that I was engaged in ministry, I was inviting people week after week to engage their neighbors, to eat with people, to serve people, to love their enemies. But if I looked at my own life, that is not what I was doing because my whole life was absorbed with running the programs of the churches that I had been involved in. I didn’t have time to go eat with my neighbors.
I felt that distance between who I was calling others to be and who I was. And I remember saying, “God, why are you asking me to do this?” And Jesus said, “I never asked you to do this.” Of course, my next question is, “well, what are you asking me to do?”
And that was the moment that I started to understand that Jesus was calling me to try something different.
Holy District is an experimental, non-traditional approach to being in the church, especially in under-served or under-estimated communities. Holy District communities have a worship gathering in a community gathering. And we structure all of our ministry around these priorities: that in the worship gathering disciples get to participate and learn and grow, and in our community gatherings that we are building meaningful relationships with our neighbors.
We met a couple, Hector and Vanessa. Hector approached me and he said, are you a pastor in the community? And I said, yeah. And he said, I want to come to your church. And I told him, well, you’d be more than welcome to.
One Sunday morning, he showed up and then he found me afterward. And he said, “I’ve never experienced anything like this. This is the first church I’ve been in that doesn’t make me feel afraid of God. He said, I feel safe here.”
It brings tears to my eyes because it’s in that safety that they can tell the truth about their lives. It is one of the things that assures me that the Holy Spirit is present and active in our service, that people, when they’re with us, can be messy.
And when I talk about safety to be messy, I really do mean that. Because our approach to being the church is so embedded in our community, what happens is that the conflicts of our neighborhood become the conflicts of our worship community. And when there are fractures, when there are tragedies in our community, we feel them. My husband has deescalated a near fist fight that that erupted from a, from a dialogue where someone was sharing and someone offered feedback and they didn’t like it and they were gonna take it outside.
Pastoring in the Holy District is one of the most humbling, challenging things that I have ever done. Before planting Holy District, I was suffering, but I was suffering in an environment that made it hard for me to follow Jesus, even though that’s what I wanted to do. And I didn’t know how. And in the Holy District there is suffering, but it is suffering that produces fruit. It’s co-suffering love.
The demands of following Jesus are costly. But I’m not waiting for Heaven to get to experience radical generosity. I’m not waiting on Heaven to be sitting at the table of Jesus eating delicious food with people from all different parts of the world. I live this way every week, every day.
It’s everything that I’ve ever wanted. And it’s harder than I could have imagined, but it’s also better than I could have expected.
