Recovery | “Hope at Mercy Street” with Melissa Maher

 
 

Show Notes:

In this episode, Eddie and Chris are joined by Melissa Maher, Lead Pastor at Mercy Street in Houston, Texas. Mercy Street is a sister church to Chapelwood United Methodist Church in Houston and began out of a ministry of love. Mercy Street seeks to create a safe harbor of hope and transformation so all may experience the radical grace of God. Put more simply (and boldly at mercystreet.org): Hope. Everyone needs some.

The ministry of Mercy Street is to reach folks who are in recovery from almost anything in life--whether that’s an addiction, a bad marriage, financial difficulties, or wounds from a different religious setting. As Melissa says in the podcast, everyone is in recovery from something, and the doors of Mercy Street are wide.

Melissa’s journey into ministry began by way of a degree in finance from Louisiana Tech. She then went on to graduate from Asbury Theological Seminary with a Master of Divinity and has been the lead pastor at Mercy Street for seven years. Melissa has a lot to say about the work of recovery and how churches, church members, and pastors can come alongside those in that journey with humility and love, sharing in the grace of God that is extended to all.


Resources:

Books:

Breathing Underwater by Father Richard Rohr

Addiction and Grace by Dr. Gerald May


Mercy Street:

Website

Facebook

Twitter

Instagram

YouTube


Transcript:

Chris McAlilly 00:00 I'm Chris McAlilly.

Eddie Rester 00:01
And I'm Eddie Rester. Welcome to The Weight.

Chris McAlilly 00:04
We're talking to Melissa Maher today, who is a lead pastor at a church called Mercy Street in Houston, Texas.

Eddie Rester 00:13

It's a part of, or launched out of Chapelwood United Methodist Church, which is a very large church. But it was founded with a specific purpose: to reach folks who, as she says, are in recovery from almost anything in life, whether it's a bad marriage, or financial fallout or recovery from alcohol abuse or substance abuse of some sort. And so it's a church that has a very distinct lens in how it does its work. And one of the things that she said, that I found that just captured me, was, "We keep a really wide front door."

Chris McAlilly 00:50

And side door and back door and all these different ways in to the community. And she talked a lot about truth telling, storytelling as a way to build community. And I love when you go to their website, it says, "Hope. Everybody needs some."

Eddie Rester 01:07
Right and what's their website?

Chris McAlilly 01:09
Uh, you're gonna have to tell folks the website, I don't have it up.

Eddie Rester 01:11
I think it's mercystreet.org.

Chris McAlilly 01:13
I think that's right. I'm going to look it up real quick. Everybody... You stall while I get this up.

Eddie Rester 01:16
I'll stall while you do internet.

Chris McAlilly 01:19
mercystreet.org. So you didn't even have to stall.

Eddie Rester 01:21

mercystreet.org. I was sharing with her after the podcast that oftentimes churches and recovery groups, recovery ministries, just kind of coexist beside each other. And churches provide space, maybe for recover ministries, and gripe, maybe, about the smokers outside the door, but feel good, want to feel good about providing space. But what they found is a way to really begin to weave the work of recovery, the work of Jesus, the work of the church together, and I think that's part of the hope and the calling for the people, which is how do we bring truth, that kind of truth telling, back into the life of the church?

Chris McAlilly 02:00

Yeah, we've been talking about it around our local congregation for a while, but I think this might be the first time we've really had a conversation.

Eddie Rester 02:06
A deep dive on this, yeah.

Chris McAlilly 02:07

On this topic, and we're gonna keep pushing in this direction. The question is, what can the church learn from communities of recovery? And what can, what does the ancient Christian spiritual resources offer to the recovery community? And there's a lot of great work in this direction. And this is a fun conversation.

Chris McAlilly 02:30

If you have ideas of other folks who you think we should talk to, you can reach out to us on our website. We also hope that you think through, you know, who are some of the other people in your life that you think would enjoy this conversation, send the podcast to them. Like it, share it, leave us a review helps other people find the podcast.

Eddie Rester 02:51
Thanks for being with us today.

Eddie Rester 02:52

[INTRO] Life can be heavy. We carry around with us the weight of our doubt, our pain, our suffering, our mental health, our family system, our politics. This is a podcast that creates space for all of that.

Chris McAlilly 03:06

We want to talk about these things with humility, charity, and intellectual honesty. But more than that, we want to listen. It's time to open up our echo chamber. Welcome to The Weight. [END INTRO]

Eddie Rester 03:15
We are here today with Melissa Maher. Melissa, thank you so much for being with us.

Melissa Maher 03:25
Oh, it's a pleasure to be with you both.

Eddie Rester 03:27
Well, give us a little background. We know that you are the lead pastor at Mercy Street there in

Houston, Texas. How long have you been there?

Melissa Maher 03:34

I have served as the pastor of Mercy Street since the summer of 2015. So closing in on on seven years. What's interesting, and this isn't always the case, as a United Methodist pastor, I was a young adult at Mercy Street when I was working in the corporate world, in the early 2000s. And so when I came to serve as the pastor in 2015, it was like coming home.

Eddie Rester 04:00 Yeah.

Chris McAlilly 04:01
What did you do in the corporate world?

Melissa Maher 04:04

My first career was in finance. It's what my undergrad degree is in. And so I could bore you with details, but essentially, the bank that I worked for, we lent money to large corporations and our customers, banks diversifying our risk and the liabilities that we were taking on, so.`

Chris McAlilly 04:26 Wow, that's a different path.

Melissa Maher 04:28
Not related at all to the mortgage crisis.

Chris McAlilly 04:32
How did you find your way to Mercy Street?

Melissa Maher 04:36

You know, when I was a young adult, brand new to Houston--I grew up in Louisiana, in Baton Rouge, went to Louisiana Tech, was active at the Wesley Foundation there. So when I moved as a young adult to a brand new city, didn't really know that many people, I knew that finding a home church would be an important kind of place of connection. And like most folks, I church shopped for quite a while. And I had a mutual friend that knew the pastor at the time, actually the founding pastor of Mercy Street, Matt Russell, from the Wesley Foundation days at Texas Tech.

Melissa Maher 05:14

So these circles of Methodism, and especially Wesley Foundations are small. So I found it. And, you know, guys, to be honest, I grew up in the church. Church has always been, and a spiritual journey, has always been a part of my life. When I went into the room in Mercy Street, I had never heard that many people in church tell the truth that much about themselves and about God. And I was just blown away by the courage that was in the room.

Eddie Rester 05:53

Let's talk a little bit more about Mercy Street because it's a very different--for most mainline churches, it's a very different expression of church. Share a little bit about the history and the focus and what's Mercy Street really about.

Melissa Maher 06:11

We started officially meeting every week in 1997. So we turned 25 this year. We are joking around that now we'll be old enough to actually go and rent a car and go place. So we're excited about. It began in 1997, but really the substance, the community of Mercy Street began the year prior. The founding pastor set up a bunch of coffee appointments to meet with people, honestly, who had left the church. The conversation was not to try to win them back or even ask why, but it was just to get to know people who had walked out, sometimes the front door of the church, but a lot of times the back door, and just have conversation.

Melissa Maher 07:03

And there were two common threads. One, a lot of these folks were in recovery. In the mid 90s, there was still quite a bit of stigma related to AA, NA. There still is today. One of the things I'm excited to visit with you all about is how churches can be a part of reducing that stigma. But what he found in those conversations was folks had left the church and they were finding a deepening spiritual connection. They were finding formation in the rooms of AA, SLAA, you know, all of the Al-Anon and the different programs. And really after almost 90 to 100 of these appointments, it became really clear that there was a vibrancy going on within the back rooms and the basements of churches.

Melissa Maher 08:00

... Just lost my microphone... in the back rooms of churches and realizing that the church didn't need to start a program to address these folks. The church needed to show up to these conversations of persons in recovery with an attitude of openness, of learning. And so Mercy Street started meeting on a weekly basis, it began, the second thread through all this was it began in prayer and realizing people needed a space to be vulnerable, honest, to speak the truth about themselves and about God.

Melissa Maher 08:43

And so here we are 25 years later. Our mission from the beginning is very much the same: to create a safe harbor of hope and transformation so all may experience the radical grace of God. So we keep a really wide front door. We want anyone, no matter what your journey has been. We say that everybody at Mercy Street is in recovery. And we'd find it pretty broadly. They're in recovery, maybe from an addiction of a behavior or a substance. Or there in recovery from a bad church experience. So we want to keep the front doors wide open, and then we want to make sure that we're posted at the back door and the side door and all the different ways that people enter into this conversation with God.

Chris McAlilly 09:38

I love the way that you describe it as if, I mean, it is a building and there's a front and back, a side door. My brother-in-law was given an opportunity to lead a nonprofit out of a church and we had him on the podcast last season, I think.

Eddie Rester 09:53 Last season, yeah.

Chris McAlilly 09:54

And it's basically a dying Methodist Church. Everybody in the neighborhood had shifted demographically, and one of the ways in which he conceived of his work, there wasn't really a worshipping congregation anymore. It was just a building. And, you know, the district, the area was trying to figure out what is the use of this, you know, dead United Methodist Church building in this neighborhood. And he started conceiving of his work as really creating paths of access. And what I hear you saying is that for you, it's not just through a building, it's a community. And there are a lot of different ways that people find their way in. And so it's not just having a wide front door, but just as many paths of access as possible into the conversation.

Melissa Maher 10:39

Yeah, that's it. It's so true. And you know, when the pandemic hit, and we had to stop our weekly, kind of community corporate gathering, weekly worship, in many ways, we were... It was hard. It was difficult. And we were equipped. Mercy Street is a part of Chapelwood United Methodist, a large Methodist Church here in Houston. We're located, interestingly enough, in one of the richest zip codes in Houston, if not the state of Texas. And so we meet for Saturday night worship in this space, but Sunday through Friday, not a lot of folks are coming up here to the church building. All of the work that we do is in coffee shops, treatment centers, jails, and prisons.

Melissa Maher 11:35

And so, you know, when I talk about these kind of, we go out into the highways and the byways, that's part of what we feel like we're called to is wherever God is leading us that we're creating a safe space right there. We can provide hope, and hopefully bring the message, which is our message of salvation, of healing, of shalom, that we are being transformed from one degree of glory to the next.

Eddie Rester 12:04

You know, I heard of Mercy Street, gosh, it's probably been 10 years ago when I was at another church, and we were looking at starting some recovery work. And one of the things that we found in our first steps, is that we tried to do this work, we didn't even understand addiction and what it really is, and how it functions, not just in the person who is struggling with addiction, but how it, you know, bleeds out into the family as well. So how do y'all begin to understand what addiction is and how it works and how you come alongside someone who's struggling in addiction, and then in recovery, as they move into that phase of life?

Melissa Maher 12:53

When I became the pastor in 2015, I did not come from working a recovery program, a 12-step program. Since becoming the Pastor, Al-Anon has been a part of my journey. And so I had a steep learning curve, because the only thing I understood about addiction was that it took place in my extended family. But like most families, we just didn't talk about it. And in the church too many times, addiction gets placed within this category of a moral failing or a choice. So I think the the first thing is, for us as pastors, and in the congregation, to have persons in the pews who are in long-term recovery, because every single congregation that has folks has to make a space where they can really help and educate.

Melissa Maher 13:57

So addiction is a chronic and worsening disease. The science is improving year by year. And it's chemical imbalance. It's genetic. It's, I mean, it's listed in the DSM-5 as a disease. So a lot of folks now instead of using the term "addiction" will use "substance use disorder "as the... what's the word I'm looking for? You can edit this part out. Use it as the actual diagnosis.

Eddie Rester 14:32 Diagnosis. Yeah.

Melissa Maher 14:33

And so even the word "addict," you know, for someone in recovery, they're very comfortable to say, "Hello, my name is Barbara and I'm an addict." Others have begun to use the language, "Hello, my name is Barbara. I'm a person in long-term recovery, and what that means for me is I have not used my drug of choice in seven years," or fill in the blank. So I think becoming students and understanding what is addiction. I'd be happy to throw into the show notes afterwards.

Melissa Maher 15:12

You know, we've started using in some of our, we call them Saturday School classes, because we don't meet on Sunday, but Sunday School classes, small groups, just short little videos about understanding addiction and that it's not just to a substance. It can be to people. It can be to work. My goodness, our smartphones. And then, you know, there's so many great resources out there. Father Richard Rohr has written a book called "Breathing Underwater." And we regularly have small groups that use that curriculum. I love that book, because it is a great theological lens on recovery and substance use disorder. Another book by Dr. Gerald May is a bit more clinical, but it's called "Addiction and Grace."

Melissa Maher 16:08

So I think, you know, first and foremost, having people who are in recovery, in long-term recovery, in our congregations, for us as pastors to say, "Teach me. Help me understand." And to realize addiction knows no socio-economic status, no ZIP code, no educational background, doesn't matter what your life experiences have been.

Eddie Rester 16:38 You know, you talk to...

Melissa Maher 16:39 It's a cruel disease.

Eddie Rester 16:41

It is, and you mentioned a few minutes ago, you talked about the stigma of it, and for so long, and still now, I mean, there's so much stigma around it, that there's just this brokenness that you should have addressed or you should have fixed on your own or your son should have fixed on their own. And yet, what we see over and over, is that there's this thing for parents and brothers and sisters and children, who feel like they cannot be honest within the walls of the church, the one place where they ought to be honest. They can't be honest. And so maybe, as you think about the theological lens you were talking about a second ago from Richard Rohr, what's a good theological lens for us as followers of Jesus to think about addiction and recovery?

Melissa Maher 17:35

The Big Book basically says, what the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, basically says what the program of AA offers is a spiritual journey. And so, at Mercy Street, we've made a very conscious choice that we don't offer any program around specific Christian recovery. Those have been helpful and have had a place of legacy within the church. We've said to folks bring whatever your program is, and bring it alongside your spirituality and let the two have a dynamic and sharpening conversation with each other.

Melissa Maher 18:21

So if the big story of our journey as followers in the way of Jesus is we were created in the image of God, brokenness, sin, is a part of our story. It's something we turn to or use to cope or numb or whatever, that God's grace is redemptive, and then we are sent out on mission. When you begin to talk about theologically, what is our role as the church, anyone in recovery would say, "Yeah, I know exactly what that is." The image of God is the sunlight of the spirit that is placed within us. Our brokenness, though it's the disease of addiction, there is something that is causing us to want to attach to something other than a power greater than ourselves.

Chris McAlilly 19:11
Right. You mentioned that. Oh, sorry to interrupt you.

Melissa Maher 19:15
No, go ahead. No, go ahead.

Chris McAlilly 19:16

You mentioned that, you know, your posture is to bring your program with you and alongside your spirituality. And I think that kind of is a good segue into kind of the question of what are some of the practices that you've seen are that are best in churches, and what are some that are hurtful? You know, you mentioned, I think, quite kind of diplomatically that, you know, Christian recovery has a place and a legacy. But what are some of the things that you see that churches maybe don't do so well, in their interaction with the recovery community?

Melissa Maher 19:57 I'm thinking diplomatically.

Eddie Rester 20:00
[LAUGHTER] You don't have to think diplomatically here.

Melissa Maher 20:01

Oh, yeah, I do. I'm being recorded. You know, I think it's anytime that the church or that I, as a pastor, try to claim any sort of wisdom or certainty about something that I know nothing about. We look at the times when the church, when she's been doing exactly what God has created us to do, which is speak to the present moment, be present in current events that are going on. We don't have a great track record as it relates to that. Just look at the pandemic we've come through and the war between faith and science. I had people who left our church over the last two years, because we wore masks for too long. I'm getting us off on a total other tangent. But it was like, we need to have faith in God, not be fearful and wear masks.

Melissa Maher 21:07

And as it relates to substance use disorder, I think sometimes as pastors we can claim a certainty or a wisdom or we lay down a law that we have no idea what we're speaking about. Or we try to see something good that is going on in the quote world, and then feel like we've got to bring it in and, you know, sprinkle some Jesus on it and make it our own. No. We can bring wisdom from the outside along with the way of Jesus. And so...

Chris McAlilly 21:47
Sprinkle some Jesus on it. I'm gonna use that. That's hilarious.

Melissa Maher 21:51 What's that?

Chris McAlilly 21:51
Sprinkle, just sprinkle a little Jesus on it.

Eddie Rester 21:54 Make it our own.

Chris McAlilly 21:55 Yeah, just a little Jesus.

Melissa Maher 21:57

Brand it. Now we made the decision that for us at Mercy Street, because that's what our congregation decided. It wasn't the pastor didn't decide it. We didn't have a church council that said, this is how we're going to do recovery. That's just how our congregation has experienced transformation.

Melissa Maher 22:20

It's the same thing with, a big focus for us is around mental health and mental illness. I think Christian counseling is good. I think there are plenty of other great counselors, as well. Whoo, guys, I have us off on such a tangent here. What's the original question, Chris? Things that are helpful and hurtful.

Chris McAlilly 22:44
Yeah, just helpful and hurtful.

Melissa Maher 22:45

So yeah, I think so many 12 Step groups appreciate the church and that we can provide space. And so do that. I'd say pick one of the nicest, most comfortable rooms you have in your building and give the group that. Through what you're communicating, say, "We're glad you're here. We'll welcome that you're here. You're not ending up in the Sunday School classroom that we haven't cleaned since 1975."

Melissa Maher 23:15

As pastors, one of the things we can do that's really helpful is just be a student of the city where you are. What are the recovery resources that are around you? What are the options for treatment? It's harder and harder to find quality treatment at affordable prices. But as a church, be knowledgeable, be resources. Again, and don't try to, you know, learn this on your own as the pastor or as a committee. Ask the folks who are in recovery in your congregation.

Eddie Rester 23:53

I think that's been one of the hard shifts for us and I know other pastors I've talked to and church leaders I've talked to about coming alongside the work of recovery, is that often we think, "Well, we should just potluck. We should throw them a potluck." or "We should do this," or "We should somehow programatize them in the way of the church." That we've always done these things, so wouldn't they like us to do things? But oftentimes, and rightfully so, I find when I talk to folks in recovery, that there's some healthy skepticism about why the Church wants to do some of these things for them. What does the church want back from us?

Eddie Rester 24:41

And you know, I think some of that is earned by the church over time, just the ways that again, we've attached stigma or we've talked about, you know, the things that break people and the way we talk about those things and sometimes even the way we actively exclude people from the community. And so I think what you talked about just listening, becoming a student is one of those ways that shows love and care and compassion, and actually leads sometimes to places you may have never thought of going. You just have to remember, we're not the wise ones in the room, on the subject matter, I think.

Chris McAlilly 25:22

I love the idea that the church should be a student of the place where it is, you know, and that, you know, all the things that are interesting may not be happening inside the building. And that there are resources. And, I don't know, the church as a connector network of resources in the community, I think is a really cool idea as well. I love what you guys have on the website: "Hope. Everybody needs some." I just think that's so awesome. So it's like, how do you connect people? How do you stay curious enough about your community to know what is there? Like, who is there? And what is out there that might be helpful? And then how do you tell enough stories of hope, you know, speak enough truth and tell enough stories of hope that people kind of stay with the journey?

Melissa Maher 26:13

Yeah. We have what I often call our third sacrament--Holy Communion, baptism, and then a time of celebrations. And we actually celebrate that tangible sign of God's grace every Saturday. It's right in the middle of the service, the microphone is open and anyone is welcome to come forward and celebrate where they've experienced grace in the last week. And it's, man, it is the part of the service where if you doubted if the incarnation is real, you can actually see it unfolding before your eyes. If you wonder if resurrection is possible, you hear someone speak it into the microphone.

Melissa Maher 27:03

So everything from "I've got 30 days clean," to "I have two weeks without self harm," a brand new job, a good grade on a test in college. So I think, you know, we are a people of hope, that we grieve with hope, that we are out on mission and sent by God with hope. And you know, good old Hebrews, which reminds us what hope is, it's the things that we can't yet see. It's this thing that, like, we welcome from a distance.

Melissa Maher 27:44

But I love the Apostle Paul's definition of hope in Romans 5, you know, that we face all these trials and tribulations. It develops character. Character of produces perseverance. And then hope never disappoints us.

Chris McAlilly 27:58 Come on!

Melissa Maher 28:01
Listen, that's got to be true, or I quit.

Chris McAlilly 28:07
Amen. Me, too. We're taking it to the house. If that doesn't pan out.

Melissa Maher 28:13

Yeah, yeah. The community that I am just so damn lucky to get to serve here in Houston is amazing, and I've done more funerals in seven years than some of my colleagues have done in 30 years of ministry. And you know, this disease of addiction is not going anywhere. And if anything, two years coming out of a pandemic, the alarm bells are sounding even more. And so now I think really, particularly we as a church, we're trying to figure out who is God calling us to in this new day and age, and let's--now I'm gonna get to preach--and let's stop bemoaning worship attendance declining. And really the amount of spiritual hunger that I think people have right now... The opposite of addiction is this connection and we're coming out of a time of being isolated.

Melissa Maher 29:21

So I love that you all are highlighting this, that you're kind of amplifying the need for it right now. I think as churches, we need to have this expertise on our staff. I serve as pastor here at Mercy Street. I have another woman who is co-pastor but also an LCSW [NOTE: Licensed Clinical Social Worker] who brings her experience in 20 years of mental health and social work. We have a gentleman in long-term recovery on our staff and another gentleman who's reentered and rebuilt life after incarceration. And so there's a wisdom we need right now in our churches, on our church staffs, but it's there in our pews. It will give people permission, peel back this layer of stigma that the worst day of your life is something you have to hide. That people would feel comfortable to tell the truth, and at times tell their truth about God, you know, "I don't think God cares. I don't think God's there. I don't believe in God."

Melissa Maher 29:29

We work in a residential treatment facility every Thursday. And a woman last week was telling my colleague, she said, "Can you stay after class? I want to talk to you. I no longer pray to God, because every time I prayed to God, something really bad happened to someone I love or I just couldn't stop doing what I was doing." And, you know, to be able to create a safe space, then to say to this woman, to say to the image of God, "That's okay. That is all right. There is a connection that you can trust that is safe." And you know, it's interesting. My colleague asked this person, "Well, who are you praying to?" And she said, "Well, don't tell anyone, but I'm praying to Mary."

Eddie Rester 31:27
Mary the mother of Jesus? Or Mary...

Melissa Maher 31:34
Yeah. Mary the mother of Jesus.

Chris McAlilly 31:36 Yeah.

Melissa Maher 31:37
You've got about two thousand years of church history on your side.

Eddie Rester 31:41
Yeah. Easy to affirm that one.

Chris McAlilly 31:45

Yeah, I think, what about if there's someone listening who is not on the inside of the church, who's not listening from the perspective of, you know, trying to think about how to intersect with folks beyond the church, but maybe a person who is beyond the church, and who is perhaps struggling right now to kind of stay connected to hope and hasn't found a community yet. What would you say to them?

Melissa Maher 32:16

Don't give up before the miracle happens. There are places that for decades were safe spaces where people could go and connect, and a lot of those have changed. Used to be students could go to school, and that was a safe space, or to enter into houses of worship. That there are places where hope is alive and living and breathing, and you, in the midst of your despair, can sit with you in the midst of your questions, can actually walk with you towards someone who is very comfortable with your skepticism or unbelief or anger or whatever it is.

Melissa Maher 33:11

And I think for us as pastors to be confessional within all of this, that at times, the church and we by proxy of being servants of the church have caused harm. And so just to be able to create space to hear that from folks.

Eddie Rester 33:42

I wonder, a minute ago, you talked about the connection between addiction and connection, you said that the opposite of addiction is connection. And I know that we saw a huge spike in folks relapsing during the pandemic. And you know, I think it's directly related that loss of connection, the inability for a lot of folks in recovery to get to meetings regularly. Zoom meetings happen, but weren't, weren't quite the same as being in the same physical space with people. Coming out on the other side, as people began to come back to worship, did you notice any changes in kind of people's desire for connection or the weight, the shape of that connection, as people began to return to Mercy Street and the different groups that y'all are part of there across Houston?

Melissa Maher 34:37

Yeah, it's like water for the weary soul. And so the people that are coming right now and connecting are thirsty. They're hungry. They're starving. And for many folks, you know what the pandemic revealed were these small little kind of cracks and fault lines within their faith, their marriages, their ability to parent. And so what we're focusing on this year in 2022 at Mercy Street is just this sense of friendship, of connection, of belonging, and wanting to create those spaces where we can tell the truth. You know, I feel like I keep kind of returning to that, but as it relates to addiction, we think that the truth is going to be the very thing that just does us in, and it's actually the thing that sets you free.

Melissa Maher 36:01

So, yeah, I see a high level of folks that are just hungry right now for connection with one another, connection with God. There's a rawness, a realness where I think folks also feel permission that nothing is off limits in kind of testing their faith and their understanding of God. So with that is really exciting times. I feel like we are seeing fruit over the last couple of months here at Mercy Street. And, you know, it could be that we were in such a barren place for two years that a green shoot looks like a feast, but I'll take it.

Eddie Rester 36:41 Yeah. Yeah.

Chris McAlilly 36:43

Yeah, I feel that, too. I feel that, too.

Eddie Rester 36:45

How do y'all continue to tell the stories of hope? How do you make sure that the word is getting out there, that the miracle will happen, that they don't have to give up on hope? How do you help folks push in that direction?

Melissa Maher 37:07

A lot of our small groups are kind of built around a framework of storytelling. So you know, whether that's beginning with scripture first and then saying, how does the Scripture relate to your own story and your journey? And not just on an individual basis--how does this relate to us as a collective story? And that, again, there have been a lot of people that come to Mercy Street every week, I meet somebody that says, "I haven't been to church in 10 years, 20 years. And I don't know what that was that I just participated in, but I liked it." And so I think building within those smaller gatherings, small groups around storytelling.

Melissa Maher 37:58

So we started something actually right before the pandemic. It's called the In All podcast. We were late to the podcast game. But we've recorded people in our community, their stories, and then these groups in person have been slower to come back online, after the pandemic. But we have an In All podcast where you have members of our community that tell their story, and where they found hope along their journey, and then I write meditations, devotionals, from Scripture around different kind of narrative telling of the story, of the Bible. But as I mentioned earlier, every week on Saturday night, that's part of our service. It's a part of our our liturgy is to have these moments of hope spoken into the room.

Chris McAlilly 38:56
Why Saturday and not Sunday? Was that going back to '97? Or how did that... was that a choice that you guys have recently made? How did y'all decide to do that?

Melissa Maher 39:07

Yeah, Saturdays at 5:30 has always been the time that we met from the very beginning. It was discerned that that is the point in the weekend where you are getting back into stinking thinking, where you begin to make choices about how to spend your free time, particularly folks who are in recovery. So it was great midway point in the weekend, to come to church. We have coffee and cookies. And then afterwards, we have Spirituality and Recovery meeting, which takes the sermon of the topic and has a 12 Step meeting around it. So it was very intentional. Also, for people who had been away from church for a while they would be invited to something on a Saturday evening and they thought, "Yeah, okay. That doesn't sound too intimidating." Yeah, I feel that, too. I feel that, too.

Eddie Rester 40:01
As a grown adult now I find that, yeah, Saturday nights are not filled with a lot of stuff.

Chris McAlilly 40:07
Yeah, that's kind of been the case for you for a long time.

Eddie Rester 40:11

For a long time, I've been a boring guy. But I think that's right, you kind of get to this midpoint of the weekend, and if your option is you're gonna go out to bars or clubs, or you're gonna stay home, or you know, there's not a lot of other options out there. So I can see that how, particularly for those in recovery, who are looking for something, as you say at the midpoint of the weekend, it becomes just a vibrant option.

Melissa Maher 40:38

I will say that, true confession, you can keep this in the podcast or not. I started July 2015. Come September 2015, I didn't do the math on college football and us having church. So I should have written that into my contract here. "There will be no sermons from September to November. Your preacher is watching college football."

Chris McAlilly 41:08 Yeah, I can imagine.

Melissa Maher 41:10
We're all addicted to something!

Chris McAlilly 41:12

That's funny. Yeah. But that's also part of the cost. I mean, I think on the church side, if you're a church or pastor looking to deepen this, I think part of it is thinking about how do you do that in a way that's sustainable? And what are the true costs if you want to meet the need, and I think it's cool that you guys are doing that, at...

Eddie Rester 41:36 At the cost of.

Chris McAlilly 41:37
At the cost of watching a little college football.

Melissa Maher 41:41
Oh, gosh, that's generous. Chris, that was a nice pastoral word.

Melissa Maher 41:46

You know, the other things that have kept us going for 25 years, it has been essential that we are part of the Chapelwood family here. Not only do we meet on the campus, you know, our senior pastor at Chapelwood when Mercy Street was founded, and for much of her existence, is in recovery and would introduce himself from the pulpit occasionally as a friend of Bill W, a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. And so that relationship, that Chapelwood, we're, as a church family, that's what unites us together is that God's grace is far more than we can imagine.

Chris McAlilly 41:46 [LAUGHTER]

Melissa Maher 42:34

The work that we do at Mercy Street and the folks that we meet, you may be sitting next to someone who went to Penn State and the state pen, you'll be sitting next to someone who is CEO of a major oil and gas company or someone who is currently homeless, living in their car. And so Chapelwood, just the stability of having a mother church, now kind of a sister church, that gives us the space to be creative and innovative. They financially support us. Over the years, Mercy Street has become more financially sustainable and we've gotten creative, writing grants. But I just didn't want to leave the conversation today without saying this has been done in community, this church, Mercy Street.

Chris McAlilly 43:30

Well, thank you so much for all of the ways in which you're leading that community and serving it and giving your life to it, giving up college football for it. I mean, but yeah, I mean, I think also casting a vision for what it could look like, you know. I think that we continue to kind of think through the right relationship between the church as it has existed kind of conventionally on a Sunday morning, you know, families and youth and children's ministry and all the rest, and then also how do we continue to open the door? In our case it's the back door and the side door to the recovery community in our town and then what does it look like to create paths access into spiritual conversations and then into deeper life together. So thank you for continuing to help stir the imagination and give us hope that there's deeper work along this path

Melissa Maher 44:32
I'm really excited for you all and the folks that--you guys call yourselves OU for short, right?

Eddie Rester 44:40
OU for short. Just like Oklahoma University, yeah.

Melissa Maher 44:45

I know in these parts. Well, I'm so excited for what God has already been stirring and just what OU has been about, in a college town and in a place where there's literally the collision of worldviews and ideas and what an exciting context to be in.

Eddie Rester 45:09
Melissa, thank you and God bless you and your work as you keep the really wide front door

there at Mercy Street.

Melissa Maher 45:17 Thanks so much, Eddie.

Eddie Rester 45:18
[OUTRO] Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed the podcast, the best way to help us is to like, subscribe, or leave a review.

Chris McAlilly 45:25

If you would like to support this work financially or if you have an idea for a future guest, you can go to theweightpodcast.com. [END OUTRO]


Previous
Previous

Recovery | “The Opioid Crisis” with Brett McCarty

Next
Next

Reconciliation | "The Legacy of Desmond Tutu" with Michael Battle