It's not just the wedding planning, which for the most part we have found enjoyable. It's not just that we have a lot of things to juggle on top of that, like a part time job and a growing ministry.
It's not just any one of those things. No, our single, most stressful thing at this moment is dealing with gentrification, especially as we are starting to look for a place to live together.
The Bay Area is ground zero for the issue of gentrification. Housing costs are rising to ridiculous heights, with San Francisco being the most outrageous. It is not unusual for a 2 bedroom apartment in the used-to-be-latino neighborhood of The Mission to go for $4,500 a month.
We now live and do ministry in East Oakland among the immigrant population. Our neighborhood has been a somewhat affordable place to live. I started to see signs of gentrification in this neighborhood three years ago. At that moment, I thought, it would take a lot to gentrify this place. Now I realize I was mistaken.
Rent prices are going crazy high here. A 2 bedroom apartment used to cost around $1,000 3 years ago. Today, the two most recent ones we saw were $1,700 and $2,000. This is way out of our budget as missionaries.
I was supposed to move out of my place in August. In order to do that, I'd need to find an affordable place in East Oakland in one week.
The Advantages and Disadvantages of Incarnational Ministry
My fiancé and I belong to InnerCHANGE, a missionary order among the poor. We adhere to a philosophy of ministry called incarnational ministry, which pretty much means we live among the community we serve.
This sounds like a romantic ideal of ministry, but in practice, it is anything but romantic.
Incarnational ministry means that you are limiting your options of where to live. Friends and family often ask me "why don't you look in this area? Rent is cheaper and more available there". My explanation that, I choose to live here because of ministry, doesn't really seem to clarify matters.
It also means that it limits the lifestyle that you can have. In InnerCHANGE, we take a commitment of simplicity, where our incomes are comparable to those of our neighbors.
All of this can take a lot of sacrifice, but it is a great way to do ministry. With Incarnational ministry, our lives become ministry.
Incarnational ministry also help us to share in the sufferings and disadvantages that people on the margins suffer. I no longer have the luxury of seeing the injustices done to them from a distance. Their injustices often become our injustices. Their pain often becomes our pain.
Gentrification is no longer an abstract idea of injustice. It is no longer something we can relate to and be angry intellectually, from the safe distances of ideas and imagination.
Gentrification is now our issue. We are feeling the invisible and yet tangible forces that are trying to push us out. We now know what it feels like to be wanted away, to be asked indirectly and yet deliberately to leave and make space for someone with more resources.
We feel angry.
Gentrification is now personal, and the next time you see me in a rally, a city council meeting, or a vigil in East Oakland, you'll know that I'm fighting not just for the needs of the poor, but also for my own needs.
May you join me in this struggle.
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