Experiment: Community Discernment

RantWoman is absolutely clear publicly to post the following item and the comments / questions as an experiment.  Is anyone else besides RantWoman interested in seeing comments from other Friends, not just routing everyone's comments to the Campus discernment Committee?

If interested, please post comments. RantWoman moderates comments but very minimally and aims to publish comments as quickly as possible.

RantWoman will also send the blog link to the campus discernment committee email address.

First the text of the intro email.

I’m sharing this message on behalf of the UFM Committee on Campus Discernment. The link shown below leads to a website with a 16 minute video about Gethsemane Lutheran Church’s decision to develop their downtown Seattle property. This is one story about one faith community’s decision to redevelop. We are sharing this video with the UFM community because we think it is a well-presented depiction of the decision-making and development process for Gethsemane Lutheran.

As we continue our research we look forward to finding and sharing stories about the property stewardship decisions of other faith communities and non-profits.

http://www.sacredlandcommonground.org/

Sacred Land | Common Ground: Interfaith Housing Forum<http://www.sacredlandcommonground.org/>
www.sacredlandcommonground.org
Bringing together people of faith and nonprofit housing providers to meet our community's needs for more affordable housing
(...)
Thank you,
Nancy Helm

[RantWoman: if you would like to share comments or questions with the whole community, please leave a comment. RantWoman moderates comments but will aim to post as soon as possible.]

RantWoman notes:

--The video about Gethsemane talks about how the church worked with different issues, deciding to work with a partner, having to regroup when one of their financing options did not pan out.

What stands out to Friends about the video?

Question: RantWoman is wondering how management of the parts of the structure where ownership is shared is working out.

--There is also a downloadable PDF which lists all the projects mentioned on the website, their organizational structure, financing, target populations, and other info. The PDF is well worth the read just to get some ideas, though there is also a mountain of possibly unfamiliar terminology.

Technical note: RantWoman has successfully downloaded the guide and read it with interest.
However, the download link behaves weirdly for RantWoman. RantWoman somehow suspects her assistive technology and advises readers just to look on the page above near the bottom for the download link.

Questions for after reading:
                      
--What more would Friends like to know about any of these projects?

--Do Friends understand the significance of building different sizes of apartments?

--RantWoman suspects that contact info for some of the churches / projects may be out of date.

--RantWoman wonders about the current funding capacity of some of the financing options mentioned.

--RantWoman is not posting thoughts which came up at a retreat about financing

--The website is kind of half-done, like the developers ran out of resources. Lots of links do not work. One link that does work is the downloadable resource guide. RantWoman is being careful not to make assumptions about whether the umbrella group that  created the website is or is not functional.

In Light and Faithfulness