MANA - Spiritual Life Center

Observations from an outsider….

Across the street from the Community Center is the Women’s Crisis Center. Not only do they provide a place for women to get away from their abusers, but they are also a center that helps women who have been rescude from the sex slave trade. This women’s center is excited to have such a place as ours next door to them. They often have times when they have to rent a hotel for the women who come in because their available rooms are full. The hotel rooms are expensive and too far away from the safety of their center. They are excited at the potential partnership that they can have with the community center for these women who are in desperate need of thier help. It is quite possible that when the community center is completely renovated that a portion of the building will be availble for them to use. This center is not only building bridges with other church but also with public crises centers as well………

Observations from an outsider…..

Thinking differently…….

Community Centers abound in the States. And because they do sometimes we forget the way they impact the community. Community Centers do not exist in the same way here in Lithuania and neither does the word “community” mean the same thing here as it does in the States.

Front of the Building

Being a foreigner from the States, my family has been well treated and even treated better than locals seem to treat each other. The opposite seems to be true in my experience of the States. IWe seem to have a tendency to treat those we identify with much better then the foreigner who dares to treat upon our soil.

As I speak to the Lithuanians about this issue and my experience, i am surprised to hear that they expect each other to get it together and take care of ones own self and if you can’t, then tough luck for you. The compassion is felt for ones own self and ones own family and maybe even for friends but beyond that it is a “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” mentality. I have heard it said many times, a saying that is said with a sheepish smile,”A lithuanian is most happy when his neighbors’ house is on fire.” And though you can tell it is not really the way they believe you understand that this saying is so common and has been woven into the fabric of the cultural heritage they live in today.

View from the Back

So in my observation “Community” here means; me, my family and a few select friends. The whole idea that we seem to be able to take for grantid in the states is that you can easily go to a place or meeting where you will find acceptance and belonging. Where people will care for you when you are experiencing the ups and downs of life. Where people from all walks of life can come together with similar interests and bond together like family in just a few weeks. For a culture like this one, that doesn’t reach outside it’s family for connections like that, this community center is unheard of, but very much needed because many people don’t have family and friends to turn to and deparately need a community to belong to. Many are seeking……..

Observations from an outsider………

Why do we need a church run community center in Lithuania?

View of the front out the upstairs window

Recently I have had the opportunity to visit many social services provided here for the people of this country. There is much available to them in the way of resources to meet physical needs. Social welfare, children’s homes, homeless shelters, psycological care, elder care etc. All the things you would expect to find in any developed and developing country. All during this time of visiting “centers” my mind kept going back to “What is the basic problem here?” One organization works to fix the individual while another works to fix the family, yet another helps to keep family members apart if necessary. Was it more education in prevention that was needed? Better availability of recsources? More resourses? Better structure of the resourse already provided? These questions pervaded my mind.

To me the main point was that the individual needed help. As I visited each place I began to take a mental step back and see that maybe it was the family who needed to make major adjustments in thinking in order to make a difference in the individual’s life and the next step back was the culture who might need a shift in its thinking and actions if any real change were to take place and then it all made sense. We can continue to provide a bandage to this oozing and festering wound by providing counsiling, shelters and homes for this country’s people, but the healer is what is really needed here. Yes, the physical is very important, but this country needs God. And not just any god. They need the loving power of Jesus Christ. What better way to combine the physical needs of the people of this country with the God who is the only one who can bring the peace being desparately searched for here by opening a community center run by Christiains willing to pour their lives into those who will come and recieve such a thing. This country needs this community center……..and City Church is willing to run it!