Statement on Violence Against AAPI, from Sunday Morning, 3/21

Pearl Church stands with all Asian American and Pacific Island people as we collectively grieve the violent events–not only of this past week, but of past months, years, decades, and generations.

We want to name white supremacy and patriarchy, and the specific ways those forms of power get taught and normalized in Christian traditions. It is not okay and it is all around us.

To be clear, the recent violence is not an isolated act. Over 3800 acts of anti-Asian hate in the US have occurred since COVID began, including over 800 acts of violence toward the AAPI community in California alone during the first 3 months of COVID.

"Intersectionality" is when social identities like race and gender overlap to create unique forms of discrimination. We want to specifically lift up Asian women in this moment, as this impacts them in multiple ways. All women may relate to the misogyny in this violence. All members of the AAPI community may relate to the racism in this violence. But Asian women are processing the effects of both types of community trauma.

We want to call out Christian purity culture and its undeniable connection to the misogyny and racism that played a large role in Robert Aaron Long’s life, which prevented him from seeking consequential help beyond the tools of religious violence–shame and blame. 

Lastly, we want to say that women working in the sex industry adds another layer to the recent violence. Women who work in the sex industry have a 45-75% chance of experiencing sexual violence and they have some of the highest homicide rates among women. Women–children of God, with hopes, dreams, and precious lives, desperately need our attention and care.

Neighbors Update, November 2020

Church Family,

Over the years, so many of you have at one time or another, been a part of the faithful team who have invested in, loved on, and worked to build authentic relationship with our neighbors at Pearl Court Apartments. It is so hard to believe that it has been 9 months since we were able to physically hold a pantry or dinner. But despite the building being closed and our volunteers not being allowed in the building, we have continued to support our neighbors physically, spiritually, and relationally.

We opened access to our pantry three times in order for a few faithful neighbors to deliver much needed toiletries and canned goods to those in need. We've directed our monthly allocated budget to Lift UP, a local food pantry who has continued to deliver food boxes and pantry supplies throughout the COVID lockdown. We are happy to report that Pearl Court's Emergency Pantry is now fully stocked!

In September, we purchased a refrigerator for Pearl Court Apartments. With the fridge, Lift UP is now using our monthly donation to provide fresh food items for the residents. This is something our residents have been longing for but we never had a way to store.

This month, in coordination with Regina Rozier, Pearl Court's Community Service Coordinator, we helped to provide Thanksgiving meals catered by Elephants Deli. Two years ago, we started the tradition of cooking and serving a Thanksgiving dinner to our neighbors. Since COVID prevented our ability to do so this year, we were able to provide extra funds this month that we had yet to use towards our monthly Pearl Court Dinners to help purchase 70 dinners. Meal sign-up and delivery was possible only through the amazing assistance of four of Pearl Courts residents: Nancy, Jason, Sean, and Chyna.

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While the COVID-19 pandemic has caused us to pause so much of what our lives used to look like, our work in being good neighbors has not stopped. We find peace and joy knowing that we are still able to have an impact. As we enter the Christmas Season, we will continue our efforts to intentionally maintain relationship in new and creative ways. Thank you Pearl Church family for your continued support of this important work.

Leslie Barnes
Neighbors Ministry

Statement on Racial Justice

As a Christian community we imagine and desire the consummation of peace in a world integrated by Divine love. However, the last few weeks make clear that the peace we long for is far from being realized. The heinous acts of violence against people of color, the existence of prejudiced systems and policies that promulgate racism, and, in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, “… the white moderate who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action…’” are evidence that much change is desperately needed.

Pearl Church categorically affirms that black lives matter. Pearl Church categorically insists that police brutality is unacceptable, must be held accountable, and illumines the need for substantial change in policing policy and protocol. Pearl Church categorically recognizes that Christianity has been complicit in perpetuating ideas and in sustaining systems that harm, minimize, and dehumanize black lives, voices, and perspectives. 

As a faith community we are committed to demonstrations, conversations, policies, systems, and theologies that elevate and advocate for marginalized voices and perspectives. We believe that the marginalized are our sisters and brothers who have much to teach our world about equality and justice. Therefore, with renewed intention we stand in solidarity with the marginalized. We will listen carefully to their voices in order to learn and grow. And with hearts that break by today’s inequality and injustice, we will participate in effectual change that moves us toward that which we truly desire—the consummation of peace in a world that is integrated by Divine love.

Opportunities

Over the coming days Pearl Church will provide opportunities to more deeply engage issues surrounding racial inequality. On June 7th, Pastor Mike will begin a six week sermon series on the book of Lamentations, which will encourage us to see and to grieve the desolation all around us. Abby Coppock will facilitate a couple conversations to help us process our responses to the events of the past weeks. Pastor Ben will offer a vigil that makes space for naming, grieving, and committing ourselves to participate in necessary change. And later in the month Pastor Mike will lead a book discussion on a resource to help us engage this conversation more deeply.

Resources

Although many resources related to current events are widely available, here are a few that stand out to us:

ONLINE

• In a recent Instagram post by President Obama, he provides very practical steps that we can take, on a local level, and he highlights two relevant websites. The first site leads to a report and toolkit developed by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. It’s based on the work of the Task Force on 21st Century Policing that he formed while in office. The second site is for those interested in taking concrete action. It’s a dedicated site at the Obama Foundation to aggregate and direct you to useful resources and organizations who’ve been working at the local and national level. 

• “Scaffolded Anti-Racism Resources” This extensive collection of activities, articles, podcasts, and videos provides prompts for people at various stages of engaging racism in themselves and the systems surrounding them.

BOOKS

• White Fragility, by Robin D’Angelo

• How to Be an Antiracist, by Ibram X. Kendi

• The Cross and the Lynching Tree, by James Cone

SERMONS FROM PEARL

• A Biblical Theology of Listening

• Voices from the Wilderness I, Race: The Witness of Black Theology

• Voices from the Wilderness VI: The Witness of Womanist Theology

• Pentecost Fire

• A Criminal Justice Sabbath

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

• The Racist History of Portland, the Whitest City in America – The Atlantic, 2016. Portland is known as a modern-day hub of progressivism, but its past is one of exclusion. This article dives into the history that created the whitest city in America. 

• Oregon’s Black Pioneers – Oregon Public Broadcasting. A 30 min video, February 2019. For decades, Oregon legally excluded black people from settling in the region. Despite racists laws and attitudes, some came anyway. “Oregon’s Black Pioneers” examines the earliest African-Americans who lived and worked in the region during the mid-1800s. They came as sailors, gold miners, farmers, and slaves. Their numbers were small, by some estimates just 60 black residents in 1850, but they managed to create communities, and in some cases, take on racist laws — and win.

• Bleeding Albina: A History of Community Disinvestment, 1940-2000. By Karen J. Gibson, Transforming Anthropology, 2007, volume 15. Portland, Oregon is celebrated in the planning literature as one of the nation’s most livable cities, yet there is very little scholarship on its small Black community. Using census data, oral histories, archival documents, and newspaper accounts, this study analyzes residential segregation and neighborhood disinvestment over a 60-yr period.

• Communities of Color in Multnomah County: An Unsettling Profile. A 2014 report from the Coalition of Communities of Color. This report centers the experiences of communities of color in Multnomah county, and the disparities that exist for our people. It includes a brief history and outcomes across a variety of social, health, and economic indicators. 

Donate to Pearl Using Your Fred Meyer Rewards Card

If you shop or buy gas at Fred Meyers and are looking for a simple way to support the work of Pearl Church, consider connecting your Fred Meyers' Reward Card # to Pearl Church. Simply visit fredmeyer.com and once you're logged into your Fred Meyer account, search for "Pearl Church" either by name or by QR407 and then click "Enroll." New users will need to create an account, which requires some basic information: a valid email address and a rewards card. Moving forward, all shopping at Fred Meyers when using your Rewards Card will result in a donation to Pearl. Questions? Contact info@pearlchurch.org

Our Response to COVID19: A note from the Oversight Team

UPDATE: Per Governor Brown’s order, our services are now suspended until it is safe to gather again. Our Oversight team will follow the direction of local and federal authorities to determine when we can safely meet again. Until then, beginning Good Friday (April 10) and Easter Sunday (April 12), we will be transitioning to live-streaming Sunday worship services. Links to the service will be at our homepage just before the service starts each week.

Dear Pearl,

As our Oversight Team met last night to discuss the life of the church and the spread of COVID-19 we returned again and again to the question, what does the animation of love look like in this situation? Our answer, as difficult and strange as it may seem, is to suspend our corporate offerings for the next month, until our Good Friday service on April 10, at 7pm. This decision allows our community to participate in the much larger societal decision to be proactive in not passing along or contributing to a spike of COVID-19, which in this moment, is the expression of love. 

Connection
Before getting into the logistics, a word about connection. Right now it is good, wise, and loving to physically distance ourselves from one another. However, this is not the same thing as socially distancing ourselves. Our connection to one another is invaluable. Meeting, talking, sharing a meal or a cup of coffee, telling and listening to story—these are deeply human activities that ground and support our daily lives. Thankfully, through technology, many mediums for connection are available to us. Over the next few weeks please consider sending that extra text or email, making that phone call, and/or setting dates to FaceTime. These are just a few ways that we can remain connected to one another as opposed to being isolated. Although these mediums aren’t the same as meeting in-person, they are options that can help to keep us relationally connected and physically healthy until we’re able to begin meeting together, in-person.

Sunday Worship
Some churches are choosing to offer their services live but we think it best to provide you with Sunday content instead. Rather than allowing our staff to self-select whether they feel safe meeting together to provide a live, virtual service for our church, we have decided to make the decision for them, as an expression of our church’s love. We don’t want our staff to have to make a difficult decision about their involvement nor do we want to expose them to unnecessary risk.

With this in mind, each Sunday at 10am we will send an email that will include links to the bulletin, the sermon, content for children, and as we are able, music. Due to copyright laws we are limited in the way we go about providing music, but we’ll do our best. Then, on Wednesdays, we’ll send a second email that will include a Lenten devotional as well as sermon questions to consider, if you’d like to dig deeper into the sermon. 

Other Ministries
Besides cancelling Sunday worship, we’re cancelling our other in-person offerings:

• Home Groups: We’re cancelling our winter term for Home Groups. Next week was the last week that they were supposed to meet. The plan is to begin offering electronic sign ups for spring term in a couple weeks and when we are able, we will launch those groups. 

• Neighbors: We’re cancelling our monthly meal during March and April and our pantry for March. We are currently working with management at Pearl Court Apartments to give them access to our stored pantry goods, in case that is helpful for the residents.

• Formation: Pastor Ben will be in touch about potential formation offerings that may be able to happen virtually. If you aren’t on his email list for formation but would like to be, please contact him.

• Other ministries: Over the coming days we’ll be sure to clarify what will be happening and how things will be happening via email and on our website.

Resources
We encourage you to regularly keep updated from the CDC, World Health Organization, the Oregon Health Authority, and Multnomah County sites. Also, there is a Disaster Distress Helpline 1-800-985-5990, which is a crisis hotline for people experiencing distress during COVID-19.

As time passes we may be able to offer our services or ministries in-person sooner than expected. Or, we may need to delay our offerings beyond April 10. We are committed to asking again and gain, “What does the animation of love look like in this situation?” and we will keep you apprised of all decisions moving forward. 

Please be in touch with questions.

Sincerely Yours,

Pearl’s Oversight Team