Pine Street Baptist Church Helps The Homeless

The Religious Herald newspaper has an article on the 160-year old Pine Street Baptist Church’s efforts to help the homeless.

Excerpts:

Home is where your mailbox is and for some homeless residents in Richmond’s historic Oregon Hill neighborhood, that’s now Pine Street Baptist Church.
The recent addition of 50 lockers and 25 mailboxes is about more than a safe place for the homeless to keep belongings and a mailbox with their name on it, said Jennifer Turner, director of the Oregon Hill Baptist Center. It may be the first step in transitioning to a more stable lifestyle.

“Over the past couple of years, Pine Street Baptist Church entered a ‘Pursuing Missional Faithfulness’ process to help the church identify who we are in light of where we are, and the theme of hospitality continued to rise up in our gatherings,” said pastor Philip Turner, Jennifer’s husband.

“The homeless population around our church has increased — along with the number of students attending Virginia Commonwealth University,” he said. “The church felt that a ministry of hospitality to both the students and homeless needed to be part of our mission.”

Folk Festival and Not Just the Folk Festival

RVANews.com and Richmond.com have good previews of some of the artists who will be at this weekend’s Richmond’s Folk Festival.

Speaking of which, one of the most disturbing things about the Venture Richmond theater proposal is how Jack Berry and others have been suggesting that its just about the Folk Festival. What’s even more exasperating how local media has gone along with this suggestion (The original title for this linked article was “Explainer: Amphitheater Project Will Decide The Folk Festival’s Fate”). As with VCU in the past, sometimes all I can do is post the truth.

The transcript of Silver’s recording of Berry’s presentation to OHNA has some important quotes:

“Thought about using the War Memorial Amphitheater …”

[Good idea. Why not??]

“We’re going to have a tented, new tented venue very large tent over on Tredegar on top of the steps..”

[Great. Why not put the large dance tented venue that needs to be on a level surface now on Brown’s Island in the new very large tent on Tredegar on top of the steps?? This would open up Brown’s Island for the large stage.]

“We don’t have any plans to add parking resources …”

[Parking requirements required by the current M-1 zoning are not met for the Venture Richmond property. Why not put the large stage on Brown’s Island where parking is not a problem??]

“I think we would probably be open to the idea of renting it.”

[This is not the same story that was told to the Planning Commission. This is not about the Folk Festival. It seems like this is more about Venture Richmond making money from renting this venue than anything else.]

As the Folk Festival (and Venture Richmond’s propaganda push) gets closer, expect more information and history to be shared on oregonhill.net. Why not use Brown’s Island and two smaller stages instead? It’s important to recognize that Oregon Hill is not against the Folk Festival, but the neighborhood association is strongly against the current ‘Tredegar Green’ plan that Venture Richmond is wrongly insisting on and arrogantly pushing upon our historic neighborhood.