A More Greening Mission: St. Leo Church Tacoma

A Church’s Journey in Living out a Dynamic Mission in Solidarity with a Changing World. 

St. Leo's L'Honey Project.
Photo: Courtesy Franciscan Volunteers

For those who know of St. Leo’s, they will say that it is an interesting parish and has a unique flavor in the expression of liturgy and the mission of its congregation. Like all congregations we have our own history and expression of what it is to be Church. As it states in 1 Corinthians, the church is one body with many parts. We come together in love and faith to worship our Creator in unique and wonderful ways. Collectively, we all are all called to be the Good News to our world by living out our faith in God.

All of our congregations give expression to that faith we hold in common but express it uniquely! How we “do church” is our faith response to the working of the Spirit in our world. Our faith is expressed dynamically and responds to the needs of our time. We are an expression of the living Body of Christ in the world and in each other’s lives. Because faith is dynamic and the Spirit of God works in and through us becoming that Good News - we have to be open to change. We have to be open to the shifting needs of a suffering world. If our expressions of faith become static and incrusted by routine and habit, we may miss the moving of God’s Spirit. In the Papal Encyclical written by Pope Paul VI in 1965, it states that we have the “duty of scrutinizing the signs of the times and of interpreting them in the light of the Gospel.” This call to duty has been echoed by Popes Benedict, Francis and other church leaders in various ways in more recent times.

Change and keeping up with the needs of our world is difficult, energy sapping and overwhelming. It takes faith. A faith that can build upon our past to address the issues of today and that of future generations. 

St. Leo Church has grown and changed over the years. In its earlier days the focus was on providing a faith home and quality education to the local population of arriving immigrants and their children. As the needs of providing parochial education to the community waned, the emphasis shifted to address the growing social concerns of the poor and displaced as the community struggled with urban decay.

The need to provide a place to nurture a healthy faith-life, educate our young and care for our most vulnerable remain a concern we try to address. We continue to build upon the good works of the past, but our understanding of mission and what it is to be church has changed and has grown. We now know that we are called to be Stewards of Creation. We are sisters and brothers with all of Creation. Our God is understood as the God and Creator of All.

With this new understanding we are compelled to broaden our Mission by bringing good news to ALL of Creation, not just the human family! This year, 2018 St. Leo Church is making a commitment to stand in Solidarity with all that God has created. If we are to understand the world as it really is, we need to embrace the concept of solidarity with all that God has made. This understanding does not cheapen or lessen the value of humankind; it gives us a deeper richness to that understanding of what it really means to be human!

Totem Pole Journey at St. Leo's, 2013

As a parish, we really began to be more receptive of the needs of God’s Creation by supporting a cause made known to us by our Lummi Nation Sisters and Brothers in 2013. Master carver Jewell James of the Lummi Nation brought a colorful 22-foot healing totem pole to St. Leo as part of a 1,700-mile journey from Wyoming to British Columbia. The trip was a rolling protest against the potential export of Wyoming coal to China via Northwest ports. This very moving and spiritual event captured the hearts of many and helped continue to weave threads of connections with the created world and all of God’s people. It awakened concerns for the need to end the use of fossil fuels and to find alternatives. Coupled with the parish’s growing honeybee program and this awakening stirred by the Lummi People made clearer our call to environmental stewardship and advocacy.

Since 2013, the parish has greatly expanded its educational/community outreach on care for Creation with its honey bee program – The L’Honey Project. We have instituted parish recycling efforts, improved energy efficiency (a work in progress) and are planning to create a parish greenspace for young and old alike on our church campus! The parish has become more active in clean energy promotion and legislative advocacy in Olympia as well as at the federal level. We are continuing to work in partnership with our Sisters and Brother at Earth Ministry and Intercommunity Peace & Justice Center.

Truly we are entering into a different understanding of our relationship with each other and the created world. We are all knitted together, in solidarity and we will not be pulled asunder.

Peace,

Rick Samyn

Rick Samyn is the Pastoral Assistant for Social Justice at St. Leo Church in Tacoma, WA. St. Leo is an Earth Ministry Greening Congregation.