There's hope for the church, but I'm not real.

I have learnt that I am not, as I had previously thought, a human being, but am in fact a very advanced and detailed mannequin.

This weekend the Wesley foundation, which is the student bit of the United Methodist church  that I go to, had a trip to Detroit. I’d heard lots of different things about Detroit, so I was quite looking forward to this. I remember when Detroit was all over the news in 2008 when the American car industry collapsed, but I had very little idea of what happened since.

In a word, Detroit is empty, or more accurately, abandoned. In the 1950s it was the fifth largest city in the USA by population, with over 1.8 million people. Now it has less than half that. The suburbs and city centre are relatively affluent, supported by the still strong car industry.  The inner city, on the other hand, looks like the set of a post apocalypse film. When the people moved out the buildings were simply abandoned, with practically every other building derelict. The roads, big six lane streets which in any other city would have cars all over them, were empty.  There was almost nobody around. The only people who live there now are, for the most part, those who cannot leave. The poor, the homeless and the ill.

There’s no way near enough help for them from the government, and it’s easy to see why: No amount of social services can cope with the sheer scale of the problem. Which is why we went to visit the Cass Community.

The community, based around the local Methodist church, does a huge amount of work with the homeless and poor around it. We stayed across for the church at a centre where they provide free healthcare. With no equivalent of the NHS nearly 50 million people in the US don’t have healthcare, and that number is rising all the time, so this is a really important service.

 During the day we went to a homeless shelter they run, where they provide a place to sleep for those who most need it and try to provide food for others coming through. We were set to work in their garden, which was in dire need of a tidy up. I‘m fairly sure it was better when we left it… except for the fence we were meant to be fixing, which is now less a fence and more two very secure posts with a fence lying on the ground in front of them. Oh well, we got it ready for someone else.

We had a (very nice) lunch with the homeless, then went to the kitchen and made some sandwiches (I don’t know exactly how many, but I heard “two thousand” said a lot) that would be taken to local jails and handed out.

Our next job was to going and hand out flyers for what we were doing in the evening (you’ll find out). Riding around Detroit we came across two things of interest. One was the old Michigan Central Station, known as the Depot, which I’d really wanted to see. It’s a huge building, with fantastic architecture- check out the photo. And completely abandoned, all its windows broken. Now it sits there, with no one quite sure what to do with it. The other thing was Occupy Detroit. I’m fairly sceptical about the whole movement, but there, having just come from an area of complete poverty and looking up at the headquarters of GM, complaining about wage inequality seemed quite appropriate.  Found it quite funny when the random guy we found there asked us “do you know Jesus?” No, we just put the church logo on the side of the van for fun…

But on to the main event, and an explanation of the first line! Halloween is big here, as in really big, so every year the Cass Community turn part of the church into a haunted house to raise money. And on Saturday night the house would be host to the most terrifying creatures of all…students.

My costume was roughly a cross between V (carrying on the occupy Detroit theme…) and a clown. I had a coffin to stand in and people would walk past me for me to…do nothing.  This meant every group that met me would have a debate over whether I was real, to which I made no reaction. A couple of people, who were scared of clowns, had real trouble passing me, sacred that I would jump out on them. But the best moment came when one person tried tickling me (breaking the don’t touch anyone rule) only to conclude: “No, it’s a mannequin.” Wow. I’m not real.  That explains a lot.  

They would then go on through another part of the house, where two other people would chase them through a maze and back in my direction. At which point, of course, I did move. I didn’t say anything, just took one step out of my coffin. I had one group cowering in the corner crying…not real indeed!     

Suffice to say it was great fun, and we rose a lot of money for Cass. The next morning we went to the Sunday service at the church, which was like no church service I’ve ever been to before. I was trying to think of a way to describe it and the best I could come up with was “conversation.”

There were maybe fifty people there, a good chunk of whom were homeless or ill in some way. There was no flashy technology or clever worship styles. Instead everyone had their say, talking about things they’d done that week, or people who needed prayer. Passing the peace, which in  most churches takes about thirty seconds, had to be called to a halt after maybe ten minutes.  

The sermon was hilarious. Rev Faith Fowler, who runs the community, preached on masks and personas, using the costumes form the night before. I’ve been putting a sermon together on that myself, so it was very useful (I steal most of my ideas). The funniest moment was when she held up our masks, reminding people that we were the professionals of the future. A succession of skull and ghost faces, accompanied by “lawyer…banker…CEO…and my favourite one…” she held up my clown mask.

“What do you want to be?” She asked. “Astrophysicist.”

“Astrophysicist?” she shouted.  “What! How does that make sense! Astrophysicist! Do your parents know what you’re doing here!?!”

Apparently astrophysicists shouldn’t be clowns.

I often think about the future of the church, alternately planning how to save it and how to destroy it. But there, in the middle of poverty, the church was doing exactly what it should be doing.

I was quite sad to leave that community. Detroit is one of the worst places I have ever been, and one of the best. I'll be back.