Jeff Delp
Welcome to Jeff's Blog
Welcome to my blog. This will be an opportunity for me to share with you all the happenings in and around Mission Year Atlanta. My wife Katie (alum 2000/01), myself, and our son Sam enjoy being a part of Mission Year in Atlanta. Outside of Mission Year and my family, I spend my time watching soccer, riding my bike, and heading for the mountains to hike a bit.
Please join me on this journey this year!
Jeff Delp's Blog
Lasting or Temporary Relationships / Jun 15, 08:38 PM
Every September, Mission Year brings a new group of young people into roughly 20 neighborhoods across 4 cities in the United States. Over the course of that year, countless relationships are formed, some very meaningful ones, some very temporary ones. We have seen in the past that these relationships have been transformative for our team members and the neighbors that they are serving along side of each year. These relationships are at the very core of what Mission Year does, and the reason why I do what I do.
This past week, my family experienced our best friends in Atlanta over the past 7 years moving away. I have had plenty of relationships end in the past due to someone moving, but this one was more difficult because it is the first time that a friend moving away deeply effected myself, my wife, and my child (their daughter was born 3 days before my son, and they had an intense love/hate relationship, more love than hate though!). Lots of emotions and thoughts have gone into processing what their moving means for us as a family, and how we reshape are life in Atlanta now that a big piece of our life has moved away. No doubt, anytime a relationship comes to an end, you reflect on whether it was worth it or not. And I can definitely say that this one was worth the energy we poured into it.
Reflecting on our friends moving away had extra significance because this year many of our team members questioned whether or not establishing a relationship with neighbors for 12 months was worth it or not. Questions were asked like: “Am I doing more harm than good,” “I am moving away soon, is it worth it,” and “I don’t want to make the neighborhood my classroom.” These are all very good questions to ask and reasons to be concerned about starting relationships, particularly relationships that require a good bit of mistrust to be broken down before they can blossom
Had I known 7 years ago that this day was coming, I may not have chosen to invest in our friends as much as I did because there was a good reason not to. Having been through the past 7 years, I am glad that I did not know our friends were moving because I potentially could have missed out on a wonderful relationship that I am so thankful to God for. Did this past week hurt, yes. Was it extremely hard, yes. Am I mad at God for calling them away, yes. Am I grateful for the time we had together, yes. Would I trade it for anything in the world or do anything differently, no.
Relationship are temporary, even our most dear ones. Family relationships are temporary. Spousal relationships are temporary. Parent/child relationships are temporary. Yet most of us dive into those relationships with all that we got because they mean so much to us. Even though we know one day we are going to lose our parents or spouse we still love them and pursue them for the love, wisdom, and knowledge that they bestow on us. If we are willing to dive into these temporary relationships so much, why is it so hard to dive into other relationships that may be temporary? Is there a time frame that a relationship must last in order to make it worth it? 1 year, 2 years, 5 years, 10 years, 25 years? They are all temporary.
What I have learned over the past week, unwillingly, is that I need to trust in God for the relationships that aren’t family relationships and that are seen as temporary. My family supposedly cannot leave me because they are my blood family, whereas “my family” here in Atlanta is my family only because I have chosen them, and they have chosen me. There is no blood relationship that keeps us together, however, there is a spiritual relationship that keeps us together, and unfortunately for me, and many of us, that is harder to see and therefore harder to trust in. That is what is wavering right now. I am not sure how to trust in God that I will not be hurt again, that significant people that I care about will not be called away from my family here in Atlanta.
In order to follow Him, God tells us that we need to leave our father and our mother. This passage can be interpreted several ways, but in this moment right now this passage tells me that God calls us away from our father and mother, not to separate us from them, not to take children away from their parents, not because God is anti-family, but because God wants us to trust in Him for our relationships. If we live in fear of our relationships leaving us at any moment, we no longer concede control of the relationship to God, making it more challenging for that relationship to become what it could be if we trusted in God for it. God has a purpose for our relationships, no matter the length of time they are. We just need to trust in him for their purpose and not live in fear that they will be taken away from us or that they are doing damage to others.
I am so grateful for the time that I have had with each of the people that I consider my family in Atlanta, especially our friends that have moved away. I am so thankful to God for giving me, and my family, the wonderful gift of close friends. I pray that I will be better able to trust God for the relationships that I have here in Atlanta, and if other relationships come to an end, that I will see His wisdom and purpose for the time that I was able to have those relationships.
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Peace Like a River in the Neighborhood / Jun 8, 08:35 AM
Our faith tradition has a rich history of people “getting away” to places of refuge and quiet to reflect and connect with their God. There is indeed something serene and beautiful about placing ourselves in the midst of God’s creation without the hindrances of man’s creations all around us. A superhighway can be a beautiful thing, but it pales in comparison to the beauty of a mountain range, or a scenic river. As an outdoor lover for most of my life, I had no problem with this theory and often sought out times and places to go and get away from the city to reflect and be close to God.
A few years ago, I was sitting in a meeting and we were talking about having a board retreat for the organization that I was working for at the time. All the advantages of having the meeting somewhere outside the city were given, and you can guess what they were. One person on the board, someone that had grown up in the city and lived in the city most of his life, spoke up and talked about how he has had to learn how to hear God in the midst of all the noise of his life. And that as an organization that worked with people who lived in the city, many of whom who lacked the resources to be able to access the beautiful surroundings that are only an hour’s drive away, it would be good for us to learn how to be quiet and rest in the midst of the city. Too be honest, I agreed with his statement in theory at the time, but in practice, I was not there.
The past month has been a pretty crazy time for me personally and professionally. Lots of things have changed in my life over the past month: 4 babies were born to people that I care about deeply, some of my best friends in Atlanta for the past 8 years have moved away to Kansas City, our church is going through merger talks with another church, a community garden has started in our neighbor with a little but of struggle, a traumatic experience for one of our team members occurred, and, just regular life happened in the past 30 days. There has been a lot to process, and this type of month normally would push me to want to “get away” from the neighborhood to reflect. However, getting away has proven difficult due to the time demands on myself for my job, my family, and everything else I am doing.
What I have found this weekend surprised me deeply and brought me back to this meeting I had several years ago when we talked about being still and quiet in the city. This weekend I found myself sitting on the benches at the neighborhood senior center with my son and looking at the flower boxes they planted on our street, walking to the YMCA to sit in the hot tub (is it OK to use the YMCA just for the hot tub?), planting in our community garden, and best of all, sitting in a hammock on a neighbors front porch with a water feature drowning out the passing noise of the neighborhood, giving off the peacefulness of a mountain river. Several times during the week, in the midst of just doing life in the neighborhood, I found myself deep in thought and processing what has all transpired the last month and last night sitting in hammock I realized that I have learned how to be quiet in the city.
This was a wonderful revelation for me. If I was able to have these quiet moments on my street, and the streets around me, that means regardless of ability to get away, others around me have access to the same places. That is our biblical call as Christians, to love one another as we love ourselves. To encourage my neighbors to access and take the opportunities around us to reflect, be quiet, and get close to God is loving my neighbors as myself because being quiet and reflecting is important to me, and I want other to have that access. The reality is, if getting away and being in the mountains is the only way to connect to God, than no matter how hard I try to take people with me, more than half of our neighborhood will be left out for a long list of reasons. But finding these places here in my neighborhood allows me to encourage myself, and my neighbors to find God right around the corner. And there is something encouraging about knowing that God is a resident of our neighborhood and can be found just down the street! Thanks be to God!
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My passions meet the City / Apr 30, 10:06 AM
5:55 am. The alarm goes off. I haven’t set the alarm this early for work since my produce days at the supermarket! Ah, but this morning was a special morning. The Kimpson Park Community Garden in South Atlanta was finally getting off the ground, or maybe going in the ground is a better way of stating it! It was my job to go out and stake off the plots for our first volunteer group to come and help dig them out.
I am a morning person, so the idea of getting out and working the land while the sun comes up and the birds are singing is special to me. This time is a good time for me to connect with God. It is just a little different when you are doing that in middle of the city!! Who says you can’t farm in an urban neighborhood? It just helps to have the sun get your back (if you get the pun! I waited until about 6:20 to go out because it was still dark!).
A group of people in our community have gotten together to start a community garden in order to accomplish a few things: 1) provide fresh produce for our families and neighbors and 2) to help build relationships with neighbors . Both are equally important, and equally exciting. I have already met several people on the block that I did not know just by being out in the garden for less than 1 hour.
This has been a project that has been really exciting for me, and reminded me of the importance of passion! You have to be pretty passionate about something to get up before 6 am with a 3 month old and 2 year old, a time with sleep is seen as a most precious commodity. I have lived in my neighborhood for 8 years now, and feel really plugged in to stuff and really connected to the people and things that are happening in the neighborhood. However, I have never really found my thing, my niche. I think I have found that now. When I moved to the city, I knew I loved the outdoors. As I have lived here, I have grown to appreciate gardening. Now, I get the opportunity to share those passions with those that live closest to me, and that is extremely exciting.
Continuously I am amazed about how God uses our passions if we are open to His direction. When I moved to South Atlanta, I never would have imagined I would be starting a community garden, and yet, that is exactly what God has placed in front of me. And the beauty of it is that it has merged all of the things that I love about my neighborhood/life in South Atlanta: outdoors, gardening, community, walkability, and relationships.
My prayer as we move forward is that the garden will be a place for all of those in our neighborhood: young and old, rich and poor, white and black. We have a great community of people in our neighborhood, and I pray that garden can be a tool that is used to improve that community of people.
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A Neighborhood Joint? / Dec 17, 10:39 PM
In the past 9 months, several things have happened in our community that has enabled me to live life more locally. One of our cars has been retired, a coffee shop has opened, a new soul food restaurant has opened, we moved to a more central location in the neighborhood, MARTA has improved its service, and our church has become more planted in its building. I have thoroughly enjoyed my new lifestyle because it fits more closely with some of the ideals that I moved to Atlanta with: living life without a car and keeping the money I spend in my community.
However, there has been a problem that I have been wrestling with. In our neighborhood, there is a place called Harold’s BBQ. For those that are familiar with Atlanta, you have probably heard the name. It is probably one of the 2-3 most famous BBQ joints in Atlanta, along with Daddy D’z and Fat Matt’s Rib Shack, and it only sits 7 blocks from my new house. People such as Jimmy Carter, our current Governor Sonny Perdue, and Jeff Foxworthy have been known to frequent this establishment. This makes it an attractive place to visit. The problem is, while these famous people eat there, my neighbors do not eat there. The people who live closest to Harold’s rarely eat there. So here is this landmark that resides in our community, and yet, it is rarely seen as part of our community. Is Harold’s a community restaurant just because it happens to reside a few blocks from my house? Or is there something else that makes it a community location?
When I spend money at the local coffee shop, I know that that money is going to the people who work at the shop, the owners of the shop, and causes that the owners support. All of which are centered in the neighborhood in which I reside, so my money gets spent several times over in my neighborhood. I also see people that I know when I am there, and am able to build community with them. It feels like a holistic experience when I am at the coffee shop. That differs vastly from my experience at Harold’s, where everything other than the location is geared towards people outside my community. I saw no one that I knew from the neighborhood (I did see my server walking through the neighborhood later that day), I know that the owners do not support local causes (they have been asked several times, and they state they support causes where they live), and I felt like I was a stranger in a place that was only a few blocks from my house.
While I thoroughly enjoyed my lunch at Harold’s from a food perspective, I am unsure whether I will go back or not. What I am sure of, is that I desire for a place like Harold’s to be embracing of the community around it. Our neighborhood has enough eyesores and negative aspects to it (tow lots, recycling plants, chemical plants, etc..) that it would be wonderful if a positive element in the neighborhood was actually beneficial to our community. It is not hard to tell that Harold’s is not a community joint, but I wonder what it would take to get it there. How could our community embrace Harold’s? Often we expect elements in our communities to embrace the outside community, but what if the outside community embraced the elements inside of it. What if people from our neighborhood started eating there? Would they be more willing to support neighborhood causes? Sam (my son) and I are known widely throughout our neighborhood at the bank, post office, coffee shop, and soul food restaurant. What if we were as known at Harold’s? Could I convince them to be more supportive of neighborhood? I would hope so, and maybe that is my responsibility.
It is one thing to think about the “local” BBQ restaurant and talk about whether or not it is a local joint or not, but it is entirely different to talk about churches. While Harold’s is one restaurant in our neighborhood that is not local, there are at least 15 churches that have buildings in our neighborhood, but are not part of the neighborhood. As much as I would like Harold’s to be a neighborhood joint, I would love for the churches with buildings in our neighborhood to be neighborhood churches with doors open to our community. But just like Harold’s no one from our neighborhood attends most of these churches.
One day, my hope is that we will restore this community, and communities across our nation, to the type of communities that existed only 50 years ago. Communities where geographical place meant something. People were rooted where they lived, and places did not exist in your community that were not a part of your community. I hope we can have that in South Atlanta, with places like Harold’s, and with our churches. We have a long way to go, but it is an exciting road to travel on!
Sunday Stroll / Oct 13, 12:28 PM
Sunday afternoons in the fall in the Delp household are usually reserved for football watching (either American or the world kind which we call soccer). This Sunday, I was watching the Falcons play an amazing game against the Bears, only to seemingly watch them lose the game late. The Bears scored a touchdown with 11 seconds to play, and since I needed to pick a friend up from the airport, I left to walk and get their car from their house so I could pick them up. As I was walking through my neighborhood, I noticed several houses also tuned into the game which was not yet over. About halfway to the house, I heard an enormous roar come from multiple directions. Clearly something exciting happened in the game so I picked up my pace to get to the car and turn on the radio and find out what happened. Low and behold, the Falcons had won with an unlikely come from behind victory.
While I was sad that I had not been a faithful fan and stuck it out until the end, it was fun to listen to everyone be excited while i was walking the streets. I realized how routing for the local team (I am still a Philadelpha fan because that is where I grew up) can really bond and unite a community of people together. I felt like I belong to something greater, and it was fun to be able to talk with people about the game later that day and again the next morning. The Falcons game served as a way to unite us as a community, even if only for a brief moment in time.
Every Sunday evening my wife, son, and myself walk to our church which meets in our neighborhood, and this Sunday was no different, it just happened to be 1 hour after I had the prior experience. On the way to church, we walk by people we know, people we don’t know, and walk with people who are going to church with us. Our church intentionally tries to be a neighborhood church, meaning most of us live in the neighborhood. However, the vast majority of people that live in South Atlanta go to other churches, mostly outside our neighborhood. So while we our a community church, I would not call us “the” community church.
As I walked to church last night, I couldn’t help but wish that walking to and from church could serve as the same uniting factor for our community as watching a football game together. Where when we walked home the questions we asked to people we passed along the street were: Man, how about that sermon? or, Wow, dinner was good tonight, what did you think? or, the worship was really inspiring, wasn’t it?. I wish that these were the questions that I could ask my neighbors of I walked along Jonesboro Road instead of just talking about the football game.
I appreciate our community church, and I know that our little expression of what we believe church to be is much more of the community than most churches these days. But I still long for the days of the parish church, where people went to the church down the street from them merely because it was down the street and not because of the theology, worship, pastor, family programs, or whatever else. A day when you were known by your neighbors for being a neighbor, a church member, a fellow parent at the school, a co-worker, and a fellow patron at the local restaurants/coffee shops/stores.
Our little community in South Atlanta is slowly and surely becoming a place like I long for in my dreams. With the opening of a coffeeshop, our church building we have been in for a year now, more and more neighbors being intentional about living their lives in South Atlanta, and outside factors such as high gas prices and a bad economy, I feel like we have turned a corner in creating a healthy community to live in for our family, and other families in the neighborhood. We still have a long way to go, but it is getting better and I can’t wait for the day when our stroll home from church along Jonesboro Rd will be laden with conversations about how the service was today.
