The Slate Project (interviewed by Elyse Milligan)

The Slate Project: Christianity without the Crap's vision is to create an ecumenical, Christian community that is both face –to- face and online by asking "What if we had a blank slate?" How could we connect to our sacred history, the biblical narrative and the arts so that radical transformational experiences can be experienced then embodied. Their inspiration came from The Great Emergence by Phyllis Tickle and the Book of Acts. The ministry team, of three, targeted de-churched people within the arts community in Hampden, a borough of Baltimore. This progressive and emergent Christian community became the Slate Project. 

            The churches of Charles Street, which encompasses about a 5- block span were already gathering together on special events or high holy days, such as Vacation Bible School and community Thanksgiving meals. So it was no surprise that two progressive clergywomen immediately approached Rev. Jason Chesnut when he arrived to do a Partner/Parent Church plant with First English Lutheran Church (E.L.C.A.)of Baltimore, Maryland.  Jennifer DiFranesco, minister at 2nd Presbyterian, and Sara Shisler-Goff, priest at Trinity Episcopal in Towson had talked before about seeing if they could assist Jason in ministry or at least spy on him to see what his ministry strategy would be.

            Jason’s first church did not embrace his skills in puppetry, biblical storytelling, as a guitarist and singer, and excellent online communicator. His synod could not find a place that would accept his attention to emergent worship, so he sought a move to an urban area on the east coast. Friends from his seminary days pointed him to the direction of Baltimore. Jennifer has excellent skills for church planting, but the most exceptional is that she knows people in basically every sphere of life in Hampden and all of the city of Baltimore. She was the main networking source for the Slate Project team. Sara has a musical background and a heart for using art as a way to promote emotional, spiritual, and mental health, therefore her initial main contribution was to find venues for the face-to-face gatherings.

            Jennifer and Jason met in Charmington’s, the same coffee house that I met with them to do the interview. Initially they shared contacts and networked together. Then the three of them began to pray weekly together at Jason’s apartment. After a month or so both Jennifer and Sara’s denominations had given them special initiatives to help engage the community. Sara’s came in the form of a five thousand dollar grant for music ministry to connect with Hampden’s art’s community. Jennifer’s was a charge to gain new leadership in an entirely new model.

            For three years, the Presbyterian churches in Baltimore had been hemorrhaging money on “doing church in bars, playing frisbee, and no worship services” without any continuity or sense of community, much less anyone collecting a regular offering. Her presbyters decided to allow her to be a formal partner with Slate Project to do just this as part of Spiritual Thriving 1001 the denominational push for church revitalization and leadership training. In this new paradigm leaders and worship is highly accountable, consistent, and more sustainable. Her denomination granted the Slate Project $7500 to be used in whatever way they wanted, since it met with their criterion. Sara and Jennifer serve their home churches part time while they both wish for Slate Project to engage and pay them full time.

            Jason has only a brief presence with 1^st English Lutheran and preaches there on- supply occasionally. His synod is funding all of Slate Project, with the other grants Jennifer and Sara are able to pay themselves a bit while still having enough funds within the projected three year plant. To stay vested, Sara must serve her location parish 25 hours a week and Jennifer serves the same number of hours within her own church. Jason serves as lead pastor, full time, at Slate Project.

            While Breaking Bread, Monday nights’, face-to-face gathering has between 40 and 60 in attendance regularly at their John Hopkins location, their online following is more than double that. Breaking Bread, dinner party model (worship, love feast, and full meal), Wake-Up/Word Up Wednesdays (Bible study or current events discussion), and A.I.R. (artist in residence at various locations) are all in-person gatherings. Wednesday’s Bible study has between six and twenty people gathering regularly. A.I.R features an artist of any medium, performance or visual, that engages the liturgical season in some way. A local canner applied for and was chosen for Slate Project’ A.I.R. for the fall. She led canning tutorials and portions of worship at Breaking Bread and had a presence at Wake-Up/Word-Up. She was able to engage a larger community on Tuesday night’s Twitter forum, Church of Social Media. Most compelling is how their online and face-to-face communities intermingle and often constituents participate in both arenas.

               Slate Project’s ministry team produces 4 online gatherings per week and is working their way up to seven days a week to create a continuous, disciplined online culture. Their online ministry is less like uploading worship to an online following, but is more like short blogs or videos, compilations from YouTube that exemplify a Christian ethic or, more often a re-teaching of assumed Christian ethics. Christianity without the Crap (C.W.O.T.C.) helps debunk biblical myths, poor theological teaching that is harmful for people. C.W.O.T.C. comes through in several forms online during the week. Including, Jesus Coffee Monday (#jesuscoffee)
kick-start every week with a relevant topic connected to the Jesus Movement, Throwback Thursday (#tbt) ancient/amazing quotes from ancient/amazing sources, Slate Project Saturday (#tsp) video updates from this new community.

             For this reason, most of the online community is de-churched people, spiritual, but not religious, and local church leaders that connect to Slate Project’s ministries. Local church leaders go to Slate Project to fill himself or herself to, in turn, serve their own local congregations. Slate Project’s original niche group expanded from the art’s community of de-churched people to encompass religious leaders in search of a place where they do not need to lead. Since the community is online it has a permanent and shareable quality.

            Social media allows for many people to interact in a safe way, when an institutional church would be off-putting, with the Divine through art forms. The initial postings serve as free “Gospel,” to 150-200 hits per posting, each week. Because the religious community finds spiritual “fuel” from the online musings and digital conversations, the Slate Project’s ministry team is considering selling these as sermon series supplements. They intend these to be a way that the plant may be financially self -sustaining after the three years that have been allotted. The other thing they wish that they had done differently was to not have wasted time trying to network with local established churches and, on the other extreme, speaking with total strangers in bars and libraries. Instead, the team wishes they had sought out a public relations and media person to advertise to the arts community, since they did not have enough time to advertise and produce artistic online submissions. They also identified that they need a group of people to give them feedback and input on ministries as a way to grow and inspire them to new ministries.