AUTHENTICITY..
Early in the life of Love City around April 2016, a volunteer group showed up to help us paint the ballroom (one of many times the ballroom at the Mackin would be painted over the last seven years). It was a group of high schoolers led by a sophomore named Ethan Essex. Every Wednesday evening at his house out in J-Town, his family would host around 100 students for a weekly youth group. Ethan and the other co-leader of the group, Catherine, were looking for a place to bring the group to volunteer. Ethan had heard about Love City through some people at his church and decided to come down and check it out. He and his parents met with Shawn and came up with a plan to have about 40 kids come down to help with various projects. What we didn’t know at the time, was we were the only place that was crazy enough to say yes to 40, 15-year old’s coming to work for a day. A few weeks later the group came down and cleaned and painted the ballroom at the Mackin. Before they started painting Shawn talked to everyone about who we were and what we did. It was still early days of Love City, and we were just following the vision we believed God had laid out for us, no big plan, just love people.
Ethan and his youth group painting the ballroom in 2016.
A few weeks later we had our very first spring carnival, and Ethan and his family, along with some of the kids that had come to paint the ballroom came down to help run booths and games. The next week Ethan and his family came to help with the fish fry. Before long they were coming every Friday to work the fish fry. Nicole and James, Ethan’s parents, would work the line putting together fish plates, Ethan and Shawn would work in the tiny back room with 6 tabletop fry daddies, frying fish and fries. While they would stand in that back room frying fish, Shawn and Ethan would talk about life, God, how he viewed the world and everything in between. Ethan was naturally quiet and would just listen to Shawn, then go home and read his bible to fact check everything Shawn was saying, he had never heard about love the way Shawn talked about love.
Ethan's sister Katelyn and Dad James working the cotton candy machine at the first Spring Carnival in 2016.
Ethan and his family came every week to the fish fry. Weeks turned into months and before long it had been a year. Over the summer Ethan would intern at Love City, working every day alongside Shawn, helping to run open gym, getting to know the kids, mowing grass, cleaning bathrooms, whatever was needed, and on Fridays he and Shawn continued to fry fish and talk about life. Before long, Nicole and James came to us and said they wanted to be more involved in Love City as a family, they had decided to sell their house in J-Town and buy a house in Portland and move here to be a part of the community. They found a house about a block away from the Mackin building that was owned by the 5 adult children of the couple who used to live there. The couple had long since passed away, and the house had suffered a kitchen fire and was burned on the back. After a few months of talking with the siblings and waiting, they finally decided to sell to James and Nicole, happy that a family would be moving into the house again. James and Nicole started demo on the house, Love City pitched in by sending volunteer teams to help completely gut the building. Then they started the process of building it back. It took about 8 months before the house was ready for them to move in. Late 2017 Ethan and his family moved into the house on the corner of 26th and Griffiths.
Shawn and Ethan in Israel in 2019
Ethan was still interning over the summer at Love City. By now he was a senior in high school about to graduate. The fish fry had moved over to the newly purchased St Cecilia campus and he and Shawn continued to fry fish and talk about life every Friday. Nicole had joined the board of Love City and the entire Essex family became an integral part of both the Love City and Portland community.
After Ethan graduated, he went away to university for a year, but found that being away from home and studying on campus was not for him. He came back, became and full time “intern” at Love City and continued his studies online. By then we had seen that Ethan felt that his calling in life was to continue to build community at Love City. We started moving him into different jobs within Love City so he could see the full scope of what had become the operations. By 2020 there was a lot more going on with Love City than there was when he first showed up in 2016. He ran our internship program, we taught him how to keep the books and work with the accountants to maintain all our financial data and bookkeeping, he helped run Porkland, learning and running the register, he helped put on large events, he learned to do basic handy man functions as we kept up our rental properties for families in the neighborhood, and he learned to love the people in Portland.
Ethan working on one of the security cameras at the Mackin building.
Ethan graduated college in 2021 and came to work full time for Love City, although in reality he had been working full time for Love City for years. We started talking with him about what he felt about one day taking over Love City. He prayed and thought about it and agreed that he felt that was part of his destiny, to love and serve this community. A few months ago, we felt that the proper next step for Ethan would be to ordain him as a minister of this community. Shawn and I had both been ordained in January 2020 by a global ministry based out of Indianapolis called John 17 Ministries. We started talking with Susan the founder who had ordained us about ordaining Ethan.
Ethan and Shawn baptizing a member of the community.
Ordination for us is not about placing someone in a position of power over other people. It’s about laying down your life to love and serve a community. In our view not only does the person need to have an anointing, which just means a recognized desire to serve in a particular spot, they also need to be affirmed by the community in which they live/serve, which means the community needs to choose them as well. Over the years Ethan it had become obvious that Ethan had both of those items met. Not only did he feel called to love this community, but the community recognized him and chose him as a part of it as well. Just the way this community has recognized and chosen me and Shawn to love, and amazingly years ago unbeknownst to us until today, Susan also has a history of being a minister in Portland, and 45 years ago, this community recognized and chose her as well.
Ethan at his ordination today with his little brother Eli who he was getting ready to baptize.
Today we had the ordination service. In the service we had Ethan’s parents, James and Nicole, as well as members of the community get up a speak to him about what they see in him and pray a blessing over him. Then Shawn and I, Susan, James and Nicole and representatives from the community together ordained Ethan to be a minister in this community. It was a beautiful picture love on many different levels. One thing that Susan said in her remarks today highlighted to me the specialness of the Portland neighborhood. Portland recognizes and edifies authenticity. For all its reputation for being unwelcoming to outsiders, if you come with authentic love, this community in particular can do some amazing things.
We are excited to continue to live and walk with Ethan as he continues on this journey here in Portland.
PREPARING FOR SCHOOL...
People often ask how do things just happen at Love City? This week we had an excellent example of how things just happen. As we are preparing for school we needed to outfit our classrooms with new desks. We weren't sure what kind we needed to get, and we didn't have a budget line to get any new ones, so we were trying to figure out how we were going to make the tables and chairs we had work. Then on Tuesday we got a phone call. The facilities manager at the Virginia Chance school on the other side of town had gotten our number from the Principal of Portland Elementary and they wanted to know if we would be interested in 40 like new, and new desks. Some of them were still in the box, but Virginia Chance decided to use something else so they needed to get rid of them. They cost about $250 a desk, but they sold them to us for $12.50 a piece and brought them down to us on Friday. Now our kids have some excellent desks to use this year!
CLASSROOM SCHOOL SUPPLY NEEDS...
We do need help with specific school supplies for our classrooms to get ready for school. If you are shopping for back to school items and can grab some extra items from the below list, it will help us finish outfitting our classrooms.
Each of the items below will be used in our classrooms from grades Pre-K - 7th grade.
Ruler
Dry Erase Marker Sets
Jumbo Pencils
Highlighters
Wide rule loose leaf paper
Graph composition notebook
Wide rule spiral notebook
Pencil Box
Items needed
Green 2 pocket folders
Yellow 2 pocket folders
Blue 2 pocket folders
Re 2 pocket folders
Primary School Composition notebook Picture space at top
Wide rule composition notebook
MIGHTY OAK IS HIRING!
We are excited to announce that we only have one position left open!
We were able to hire a receptionist and our last teacher position this week, so the only thing left we need to hire is an Athletic Director. We are looking for someone that has experience in building a sports program from scratch, as well as coaching and it would be a plus if they also have education experience. If you know anyone who would be a good fit, please send them our way, we are actively interviewing for this position. You can find the job posting on Indeed by searching Mighty Oak Academy.
If you are interested in volunteering or to find out more information about supplies needed please email: info@lovecityinc.org or call (502) 272-078.
Please consider partnering financially with Love City. We are looking for sponsors for students at Mighty Oak Academy as well as partners to help fund construction of our new preschool. Click the button below to donate today.