Gift of Grace Lutheran Church

Information may not be reliable

Worship with us every Sunday at 10:30 AM and stay for a delicious, divine, GraceFeast. (GraceFeast photos by Matt Mason of MTM Photography)

The Wallingford Community Open Forum met on Saturday, September 18 to hear multiple viewpoints on how to proceed with the indoor SHARE Shelter hosted at Gift of Grace Lutheran Church. Another meeting is set for Saturday, October 23 at the Mosaic Coffee House from 10:30 AM to noon.
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Dear Wallingford Neighbors,
There has been some anxiety generated in Wallingford by the decision of Gift of Grace Lutheran Church to host a SHARE (Seattle Housing and Resource Effort) coed shelter for 15 or fewer homeless persons, which opened September 15th . The reason Gift of Grace made this decision is because, to us, it is an act of love, which our faith in Christ demands of us, and because we consider it trustworthy stewardship of the property God has entrusted to us. God has called this congregation to serve the Wallingford neighborhood since the ministry moved here in the late 1940s. We have not always been good at it, or faithful. But God is faithful to us, and by grace we have been allowed to continue.
There are many ways to serve the neighborhood. We offer several ways to which any and all are invited and welcomed: public worship and opportunities for learning and celebration. And for those who have no interest in our religious life we created GraceFeast: a weekly, non-religious, free meal at noon on Sunday intended to encourage neighbors to engage with each other over fresh, homemade food. This congregation is constantly discerning ways we might serve the neighborhood. Given the number of homeless persons in our neighborhood and the opportunity SHARE provided us to host a covenanted community of homeless persons, we decided it was within our means to provide a safe, clean, warm place to sleep.
This is not a radical move. Our five nearest Lutheran neighbors host or have hosted SHARE shelters. It is consistent with the stated identity and mission of the 5,000,000, member Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The ELCAs social statement on our economic life has articulated it like this: we commit ourselves as a church and urge members to:

provide counsel, food, clothing, shelter, and money for people in need, in ways that respect their dignity;
develop mutual, face-to-face, empowering relationships between people who have enough and people living in poverty, especially through congregational and synodical partnerships;
advocate for public and private policies that effectively address the causes of poverty;
generously support organizations and community-based efforts that enable low-income people to obtain more sufficient, sustainable livelihoods;
continue working to eradicate racism and sexism. (A Social Statement on Economic Life: Sufficient, Sustainable Livelihood for All p. 15 Adopted by a more than two-thirds majority vote (872-124) as a social statement of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America by its sixth Churchwide Assembly on August 20, 1999, in Denver, Colorado.)

Located in the lower level of the Discovery House building, the entrance to Mosaic is on the corner of 2nd Ave and NE 44th St.

The first Wallingford community meeting regarding the recently opened SHARE shelter at Gift of Grace Lutheran Church will be held at 10:30 AM Saturday, September 18 at the Mosaic Coffee House on 44th Street, off Second Ave N.
The meeting follows the opening of the shelter this week amidst community concerns regarding the preschool that also operates within the church. The SHARE shelter is scheduled to operate only in the evening hours when the preschool is not operating. Some parents expressed deep concerns not only about the safety of their children, but also about the lack of community notification for the SHARE shelter. Most of the neighbors around the church were notified days before a September 12 meeting, and less than a week before the shelter’s September 15 opening at Gift of Grace. Gift of Grace leaders say the school knew of the shelter plan earlier but did not inform parents regarding plans for the shelter.
Saturday’s meeting will be the first of two scheduled meetings at Mosaic and will be moderated by Woody Pidcock, a member of the Gift of Grace congregation. The second meeting on Saturday, October 23 is designed to be a community feedback session after the shelter’s first month of operation.
For more on the shelter controversy, read the following:
WallyBlog, the official blog of the Wallingford Community
http://www.wallyhood.org/2010/09/share-homeless-shelter-coming-wallingford-gift-grace-church/comment-page-3/#comment-24431
Seattlepi.com City Brights, a blog by Gift of Grace member, Barbara Sehr
http://blog.seattlepi.com/barbarasehr/archives/221436.asp

The Rev. Jami Fecher, pastor of Gift of Grace Lutheran Church in Wallingford

A note from Pastor Fecher regarding initiating communications regarding the SHARE shelter at Gift of Grace…
Dear Friends and neighbors,
As promised I am (barely) meeting my deadline to communicate with you. This initial communication is purely an effort to set up further communication. The thing we are communicating about is presence of the SHARE shelter at Gift of Grace. At the informational meeting with SHARE last Sunday, hosted at Gift of Grace, among the many thoughts expressed, I am lifting out two things that can help us move forward: 1) an open and broad public forum 2) a team of people who more or less monitor any impact the SHARE shelter is having on the Wallingford neighborhood.
Since there have been many concerns raised there is a lot to sort through. One articulate neighbor suggested that we proceed with public conversations in a two-pronged way, 1) an immediate public forum to hear and understand concerns 2) a forum planned further out that considers how those concerns are addressed after a reasonable period of time, like 6 weeks or so.

Pastor Jami Fecher leads his regular Xploring the Foundations class beginning Tuesday, July 13 at 6:30 pm. The class is an opportunity to explore the historical Christian thought from which the Gift of Grace community was sprung.
The class continues Wednesday night at 6:30 pm, and meets again at the same time, the following Tuesday and Wednesday (July 20 and 21). Take this opportunity to get to know the history of our faith and share a fellowship with others in the congregation as well.

The ecstasy begins anew. The agony of Web crashes, spam attacks and interruptions in our Web presence are over for the moment. We have put together a brand new site at a new host, and hope youll keep coming back to www.giftofgrace.org.

To invest our whole selves in lifting up Christ for our neighbors, inviting them more deeply into the Life of God.