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07560 September 6, 2007
Grand performance
Hot Metal Bridge Faith Community uses drama to build community
by Toya Richards Hill Presbyterian News Service
PITTSBURGH - It's unlikely the sermon at most Presbyterian churches last Sunday involved the pastor hoisting a soaking-wet blanket over his head and shoulders and pacing around in circles while worshipers seated in the round looked and listened.
But then again, most Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) services aren't like the ones at Hot Metal Bridge Faith Community, where things are done "dramatically different."
"What is it, then, that puts out our fire?" pastor Jim Walker called out to congregants as water dripped over his head. "A nasty, wet blanket."
A wet blanket of fear, rejection, self-pleasure, greed, pride and lust, among other things, is what snuffs the flame of our faith, he said, his T-shirt and blue jeans now soggy too. "The wet blanket of lies."
"Have you ever been walking around with a wet blanket on?" Walker asked the crowd.
The congregants, a hodgepodge of mostly young adults, appeared to be making a connection. The bulk of them, dealing with issues ranging from worries about upcoming college courses to personal health and well-being, came to Hot Metal Bridge to spiritually tap in, and to do it in community.
"Some of us come discouraged and weary. Some of us come joyful and excited. But we all come to worship the Lord," pastor Jeff Eddings prayed during the recent Sunday worship.
The brainchild of long-time creative partners and co-pastors Walker and Eddings, Hot Metal Bridge is a PC(USA) new church development that started in 2002 and began weekly services in 2004. It functions under the auspices of the Synod of the Trinity and Pittsburgh Presbytery.
Based in the city's largely blue-collar South Side, the church mixes drama and the arts with solid Christian theology to reach anyone wishing to come. A $90,000 mission program grant running from 2005 to 2009 helps run the operation, and the church just landed a 2007 Sam and Helen R. Walton Award, which recognizes outstanding new church developments and provides $50,000.
A glimpse inside the "sanctuary," which is normally the cafeteria in the Goodwill building when it's not Sunday, reveals everything from tattooed-up punk rockers to young couples with small children.
Bright stage lights circle above the appropriately set communion table and the space where the drama/sermon takes place, and some 250 to 300 worshippers feel the spirit ushered in with the help of the band playing off to the side.
Prior to coming to Hot Metal Bridge, "I'd never been to a service like this," said Kevin Doyle, a Point Park University student who has been attending three and a half years.
It's edgy and full of "a bunch of young people," yet traditional in that "they preach the gospel," he said. "I think they are stretching to every facet of how you can worship God."
Stretching is an understatement, based on the jam-packed schedule of happenings going on weekly at Hot Metal Bridge. Practically every day is filled with an event or ministry - everything from worship services to Bible studies to a social justice discussion group to feeding the homeless to a documentary series.
And, food is a huge component of what Hot Metal Bridge does. Each Sunday service is followed by a meal, "and literally communing with the people," Doyle said.
"There was just this life to the place that I hadn't felt before," Carnegie Mellon University student Matt Morris said of why he started attending Hot Metal Bridge. "There was just this feeling of family."
Morris, a sophomore at the university, regularly takes part in Hot Metal Bridge's Saturday homeless ministry. Anyone who wishes to can gather at the ministry's home base, In The Blood Tattoos and Rock & Roll shop, to make sack lunches and then fan out in small groups to talk to the homeless and give them a lunch.
The homeless "are ignored all week long," said Doug Stadnik, who leads the homeless ministry. "We're here to say, 'Hey, you still matter.'"
That means the street-worn transvestite wearing gobs of rings and perched under an umbrella in downtown Pittsburgh is worthy of a long visit from Hot Metal Bridge goers who think nothing of sitting casually on the ground around him.
"We are the hands and feet of Jesus Christ," Stadnik said of ministry participants. He estimates Pittsburgh has some 6,000 homeless people.
"Really it's the community that they focus on," said Melisa Leventry, one of the founders of The End Ministries, a local ministry that meets at In The Blood Tattoos. "It's really comfortable."
Hot Metal Bridge began collaborating with The End Ministries early in its formation, and now many End Ministries' participants also attend Hot Metal Bridge.
"Their mission was the same as ours," Leventry said. "It just meshed well."
Walker and Eddings, who came out of suburban Pittsburgh churches where they'd been leading worship and doing drama with youth groups for years, said they came to the city's South Side to minister to and help address the area's brokenness.
"There's a lot of poverty here," said Walker, a graduate of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and an elder in the United Methodist Church. "There's a lot of drinking and addiction on the South Side."
Hot Metal Bridge is "a place where you can come and be who you are," said Eddings, a Master of Divinity student at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary who is seeking ordination in the PC(USA).
Vera White, director of new church development, stewardship and the committee on ministry for Pittsburgh Presbytery, said the key to Hot Metal Bridge is that "they really pour themselves into the community."
"They are trying to break down the dividing line between us and them," she said. "They are really seeking the well being of that community."
She said Hot Metal Bridge has "contributed to our learning about what kind of ministry can work for the next generation of Christians."
"I really think they've taught me more than I've taught them," White said.
The ministry isn't without its troubles, however. And one of its biggest worries presently is where it will meet when the year ends.
The Goodwill building where Hot Metal Bridge meets is being sold - the value of the area's property has skyrocketed in recent years with gentrification and the onslaught of upscale restaurants and retail stores. Right now, the ministry has no place to go.
To accommodate its growing numbers the church needs a fairly large space, and an option of renting a banquet hall in the neighborhood has already been put on the table. Yet after much discernment, the membership decided the space was not fitting for their mission.
"Our people said that's not who we are," Eddings said. "It's a question of identity."
There might be massive growth and a bigger influence on the community by moving into a stadium-style space, but there's also the potential to lose intimacy, community and family, he said.
Another option is moving out of the community altogether, but "I feel like we're still called to be a spiritual presence on the South Side," Eddings said.
Still another possibility could be partnering with a neighborhood PC(USA) congregation that might also benefit from the assistance of a thriving, new church community. Not far from Hot Metal Bridge's office sits a PC(USA) congregation with a declining membership.
"We are trying every angle that we can think of," White said.
With the right space, Walker and Eddings said Hot Metal Bridge could blossom even more than it already is, expanding its services and ministries.
"If we got a space we could start doing things with children and youth," Walker said. And it could be a community venue where there might be art shows, theater classes and after-school tutoring, he said.
Ultimately, "we're just trying to love people on the South Side," Walker said.
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