The Outdoor Church
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Outdoor Church is an outdoor ministry to homeless men and women in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It offers prayer services and pastoral assistance outdoors in all seasons and all weather in order to be accessible to men and women who, because of shame or embarrassment, hostility or illness, cannot or will not enter conventional churches. It takes the church to those who cannot or will not reach it on their own.
It is the mission of The Outdoor Church to reach most of the homeless men and women in Cambridge who live outdoors – approximately sixty to eighty people – and to provide them with spiritual and material sustenance. Like conventional churches, The Outdoor Church offers a broad array of pastoral services to its congregants, including prison and hospital visits, memorial and other services and pastoral counseling.
The Outdoor Church regularly holds short prayer services in Porter Square, under the mobile sculpture near the T station, at 9:00 AM and on the Cambridge Common, near the tall Civil War monument and directly across from Christ Church Cambridge on Garden Street, at 1:00 PM every Sunday, throughout the year. Following the services, its lay and ordained ministers carry sandwiches, pastry, juice and clean white socks through Porter Square and into Harvard Square and Central Square, where a meal and communion are offered to any homeless people they encounter. In addition, The Outdoor Church offers an outdoor Compline service every Thursday night following a meal served to homeless men and women at Christ Church.
The education and training of students and seminarians is an important part of the work of The Outdoor Church. The church is a field education site for the Harvard Divinity School. Students and seminarians from schools within the Boston Theological Institute as well as area school undergraduates regularly accompany and assist its clergy and lay volunteers.
Churches and individuals throughout the Greater Boston area and foundations across the country support The Outdoor Church. It is modeled on Ecclesia Ministries’ Common Cathedral, an outdoor church for homeless men and women in Boston that has since 1998 each Sunday afternoon on the Boston Common. Like Common Cathedral, The Outdoor Church intentionally reaches out to sheltered as well as unsheltered people and encourages members of its supporting churches to participate fully in its work.
The Rev. Jedediah Mannis, a minister of the United Church of Christ, the Rev. Pat Zifcak, a vocational deacon in the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, and the Rev. Jean Chapman, a minister in the American Baptist Churches USA, are the ordained staff of The Outdoor Church. Clergy from churches throughout Cambridge regularly preside at its services on a rotating basis.
The Outdoor Church is non-denominational and ecumenical, using an accessible but recognizable liturgy that is based on the Book of Common Prayer.
Rev. Mannis, who is also an attorney, provides pro bono legal services to homeless men and women both outdoors and at shelters throughout the Cambridge area. Since 1999, he has represented or advised more than two hundred homeless men and women in Boston and Cambridge.
