Sponsored Projects
BCM has provided fiscal sponsorship for Word and World, the Beloved Community Fund, and the work of Body Wisdom, a ministry of Quaker eldering, spiritual accompaniment and healing touch by BCM co-founder Elaine Emily. They have also provided support for various forms of Hospice and Hospitality.
Word and World: A People's School
Word and World is an experiment in alternative theological reflection for activists. It is a “popular school” that moves among different areas of the U.S., hosted and organized by local/national collaborations. Our vision draws inspiration from such historical precedents as the underground seminaries of the Confessing Church in Germany, the Freedom Schools of the Civil Rights movement, the “womenchurch” experiments of Christian feminists, the base communities movement animated by liberation theology, as well as political models of popular education such as trade union schools, the Highlander Center and the Center for Popular Economics.
Word and World seeks to build capacity for movements of faith-based witness and work of service, advocacy, solidarity, justice, peace and social change. Focal points for building competence include: biblical literacy and relevance; political, social and cultural analysis; Sabbath Economics; Movement history; spirituality of praxis; and alternative community and institution-building. Pedagogical practices are ecumenical, contextual, inclusive, popular, applied, and holistic, integrating the insights and experience of the “seminary, the sanctuary and the streets.”
Schools have been held in Greensboro, NC, Tucson, AZ, Philadelphia, PA, and Rochester, NY. BCM was instrumental in the conception and creation of Word and World, and served as fiscal sponsor from its inception until the summer of 2004, after which the organization moved its office to Greensboro, NC, and became an independent non-profit. Ched Myers and Elaine Enns continue to serve on the national Board. For more information visit the Word and World website.
The Beloved Community Fund
BCM encourages people to think about alternative ways of giving from the perspective of Sabbath Economics. A group of persons from the Pacific Northwest were challenged to experiment with “communitizing” their decision making process around charitable giving, and founded the Beloved Community Fund in 2003. The group describes itself as follows:
We are a small group gathered to explore the journey from philanthropy to discipleship—a journey from charity to economic justice—in a context of love and freedom. We have become clear that now is the time to experiment with a corporate “pot” of money for giving, and trust in listening for the Spirit’s guidance concerning all of the details. Our process is to gather, move into common silence and contemplation, and then proceed as the Spirit directs. We are discovering that this circle of honesty and compassion is allowing much of our personal brokenness and pain to become known, experienced and healed. From a process surrounded by touch, movement, play, creativity, worship and sharing has emerged transformation. Money (and much else) is beginning to flow with more freedom. We trust the Spirit to “tap” us all and open the way to where this money is to flow in the world.
The Beloved Community Fund has gifted money to different organizations working on a variety of issues including health, women’s shelter, housing, development work in Haiti, foster parenting and nonviolence. In late 2004 the Fund moved its fiscal partnership arrangement to our colleagues at Harvest Time.
Hospice and Hospitality
In the Spring and Summer of 2002 Elaine Enns and Ched Myers were part of a community that provided hospice for their mentor and friend Ladon Sheats. You can read the story and view pictures of that remarkable journey here. BCM provided fiscal sponsorship and administrative support for that effort, which was centered at the Guadalupe Catholic Worker (GCW) in Central California. Through the end of 2003 BCM continued to provide some fiscal sponsorship support for the GCW, which offers hospitality, a medical clinic, a food program and English classes to farmworker families in the central coast. We continue to hold a special relationship with the GCW, and with the Catholic Worker movement generally.