Many churches struggle with creating meaningful church community service initiatives that authentically connect with neighbors. In this episode, Nancy Dyson from St. John's Episcopal Church in St. Cloud, Minnesota shares how a simple cup of coffee led to "Laundry Love" - a thriving ministry serving 80-100 people monthly at a local laundromat. Nancy reveals how showing up consistently, listening deeply, and allowing ministry to emerge organically transformed both her congregation and their community relationships.

Discover a refreshing approach to church community service that prioritizes presence over programs and relationships over results. Nancy offers practical wisdom for congregations wanting to move beyond their walls: start with no agenda, embrace the "beautifully messy" nature of neighborhood engagement, and remain open to how the Holy Spirit might surprise you. Whether your church is large or small, rural or urban, this conversation offers inspiration and practical steps for connecting with neighbors in meaningful ways.

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

• Laundry Love: https://laundrylove.org/

For more about the four pivots churches need to make in the 21st century, visit https://faithlead.org/.

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Hello everyone, welcome to the Pivot Podcast where we explore how the church can faithfully navigate a changing world. I'm Dwight Zscheile and I'm joined by my co-host, Terri Elton.

Many congregations today are struggling to sustain their institutional life. Well, outside their doors, neighbors face different kinds of struggles, struggles for hope, for meaning, financial security, and even the basic necessities of life. How might congregations join in these spaces? How might they discern what God might be up to or how to love their neighbors in the name of Jesus? How might they find

New life together along the way.

Today's guest, Nancy Dyson, is a lay leader who's been helping her congregation take just that kind of journey. Nancy is a member of St. John's Episcopal Church in St. Cloud, Minnesota. It's a smaller congregation with a committed group of faithful members, and she's drawn on her own training in social work to help the church connect with neighbors in some powerful ways. We found her story inspiring and her approach very doable, which is why we wanted to share it with you.

So Nancy, thanks for joining us on the Pivot Podcast.

I am so happy to be with you. Thanks for inviting me.

So Nancy, I'd love to hear a little bit more about your story and specifically, like, tell us a little bit about the ministry context of St. Cloud, Minnesota.

So

St. Cloud is a community of about 60,000 people. We are situated between three colleges. And so we've got a lot of young learners and professors in the city. Our church is located pretty much in the middle of the community. And like Dwight mentioned, it's a smaller community. It's about 50 or so people on an average Sunday. yeah, so that's the city and the church.

And when you think about the needs of St. Cloud, I know a little bit about it because it's not too far from here. We've had students serve there in many different ways. What are you seeing outside your doors in the community and what particularly kind of resonated with your community? What of those needs that you saw?

So homelessness is a huge need. That's probably no surprise. is across the country. St. Cloud's poverty rate is a lot higher than a lot of Minnesota, so we're dealing with that. Housing is an issue, again, not a surprise. But homelessness and poverty are probably the two biggest challenges that we have.

Tell us a bit about the story that led to the launch of your Laundry Love ministry that you've been doing now for I think 10 years. tell us about that journey. How did that get going? I just And how did you find your way?

Yeah, so I had a daughter who was taking piano lessons in a neighborhood not too far from the church and she mentioned that there were some people living in one of our parks that's surrounded by a little lake and I had no idea and she said, you know, we're going to be taking some blankets and some food out so if you want to help us out that would be great. So that following Sunday I took one of my daughters to Lake George before church.

And I stopped at Caribou Coffee and got a few coffees and walked around the lake to find these people who were living there. And it was extremely awkward and weird because I didn't know what I was doing. And I eventually found some people. And I just said, would you like a coffee? And they were so gracious and said, yes. And that was pretty much it. And then we went to church. And we just kept faithfully going back week after week after week, bringing coffee.

After about a month or so, that coffee turned into a big breakfast. We were showing up, pulling our van up, and people were coming out behind dumpsters and bushes where they were living and unloading the back of my van. And we shared bacon and eggs and toast and coffee and got to really know one another. And it was there that I found out that some of these folks were doing their laundry in the fountains down at Lake George. And I had no idea.

that laundry was an issue for folks and just ask the question, is that a really big deal for a lot of people? And they said, yeah, it really is. And I had heard of this thing called Laundry Love in Another Community. And I said, what do you guys think? Do you think this would work in our community if we would start something? think people would come? And they said, yeah, I think it would. So together, we launched this Laundry Love program, which is different than me coming up with an idea for them.

We did it together and we had a whopping three people show up the first time. And we had a jar of quarters sitting on the counter, quarters that I'd collected from my car and couch cushions and wherever. And we had a meal and it went well. And I said, you know, what about doing this in two weeks? They said, yeah. said, well, you're to have to invite people because I don't know anybody else. And so then we had 10 people.

And then we had 20, and then we had 40, and 60, and 80. And then we had 100 people. at about 100 people, we said, we've got to find another laundromat. So anyway, so that's kind of how it got started.

All right, so I come to this. What happens? Walk me through the day.

Yeah.

And tell us about that. Like, how did you find the laundromat and when do you do it? All those things.

So the laundromat was kind of funny. When I looked up Laundry Love, they said, call up a local laundromat and ask them one question. Ask them when their slowest time is. And so I did that. There's a laundromat not too far from the church, kind of in our neighborhood and in the neighborhood of Lake George. And so I called up Dan and I said, you know, what's your slowest day? And I'm sure he wondered why I was asking, but he said Tuesday mornings. And I said,

Would you like it to be busy on Tuesday mornings? And as any good business person would say, said, yeah, I would love for it to be busy. that's the time that we picked from 10 o'clock to 1 o'clock. We said, you know, let's have that as a sweet spot. And he's been very gracious in letting us bring in food and doing barbecues in his parking lot and all that good stuff. But finding a time that works with the laundromat was really key. And that Tuesday morning has been.

the time for the last 11 years that we've been doing this.

So where do the quarters come from now? I'm assuming your couch doesn't have any more.

Our couch does not have any more quarters, and that's been really interesting, too. Our church sort of pledges $250 a month, and it costs about $400 or so a time that we do it. So that pays for part of it, but we've got partners all over the place. We've got a little tiny church in Kimball, Minnesota, a little Methodist church that heard about us, and we went and

and talk to them. And they have a bucket in their entryway that says Laundry Love on it. And that's one of their biggest missions. And it's just because they heard about it and wanted to be a part of it. Came and visited and saw it in operation. So, so yes, you walk in, if you were to come to Laundry Love, you walk in and you will be greeted by three, four, five, 10 people who will show you the ropes, put your washing or your clothes in a washer and we'll bring the quarters over to you and.

Ask you if you'd like a meal.

There's a fine line, I think, for folks, but listeners are wondering about this. Where's a good community outreach and what's church, right? Or where's the spiritual component? So talk about where that connection happens for you with this ministry.

So I know for me personally where it happened. Like I said, we were going around Lake George on Sunday mornings and I was heading over to church right after that. And I was sitting in the front row. No, I'll take that back. We don't sit in the front row. Second row. Second row. Yes, yes, yes. We don't in the front row. I don't know who I was trying to fool there. I in the second row and I don't remember what the gospel reading was, but there was something about it when the deacon was reading it.

These are fiscopani.

that made the story come so alive to me. It wasn't something that was happening in first century Palestine. It was happening at Lake George. And that's what something just a light bulb moment for me. And so that's where the spiritual component came in for me. Now, the people who are circling around laundry love and loving the people that come all have that sort of spiritual spark.

But because we're Episcopalians, we were too afraid to share that with others lest we be pushy, right? So a lot of people knew that we were from churches, and a lot of people knew that I was in formation to become a deacon even. But we just didn't go there until I met Blair Pogue. I've heard of her. Yeah, have you heard of her? anyway, so she sort of started asking these other questions about

these spiritual add-ons or how we might introduce something in a really gentle way that's just an offer to people. So about 10 years in, don't rush it, we're gonna make sure that we weren't gonna be pushy, I said let's put out a prayer box. Let's just put out a prayer box with little sheets of paper where people could write down prayer requests, put their name on, put big bold optional, really big bold optional for the phone number.

And we'll just see what happens. And I work at a youth shelter that's not too far from the same neighborhood, not too far from the laundromat. So I went back to work and I called after Laundry Love to some of the folks that were there. And I said, so how did this prayer box thing go? And the first thing out of her mouth was, well, we need a bigger box, that's for sure. And I said, well, did anybody write their name? And she said, everybody wrote their name. And we have a lot of phone calls to make. And I was like, I was blown away. I really was.

I didn't think anybody put their name down. And we weren't prepared to make phone calls. Then it's like, what's the plan to call these people? When we called people, we were afraid, I think, that it was if we needed something, if we needed rent money, we needed clothing, that we were sort of going to be this spiritual vending machine that was going to somehow give them these things. They wanted us to pray for that, but they didn't want us to do that. They wanted to talk.

They wanted someone to listen. And that's it, you know?

I think church people, many of the church people that I know, I'll just say it that way, I'll own it, people that have grown up in the church are hesitant to talk to neighbors about spiritual things. And yet, I will say personally, every time I've talked to somebody, can I pray for you for that or whatever, nine times out of 10 or more, it's yes. And I think we underestimate this treasure, this spiritual practice of praying.

And it doesn't surprise me, right, that when you asked, they could maybe find another place to get a thing, but maybe not somebody else to pray for them. That's so powerful. I love that.

You know, one thing I heard at convention, and I don't remember who said it this last convention that I went to for the Episcopal Church in Minnesota, a gentleman said, you know, a lot of us were taught how to run a church, how to keep the doors open, how to clean, how to do all the things in the church, but a lot of us weren't formed as disciples of Jesus. And so when we do these sort of

innovative things outside of the church, our tendency is to want to take that and squeeze it back together and put it back into the church and make it a program of the church. And then it becomes this really church thing rather than a relational based outreach, if that makes sense.

So tell us a little bit more about the team from the church that's involved in this, because if you've got 80 or 100 people coming, it's more than one person can call through and listen to and engage all those folks. So who's involved in actually leading this with your serving?

Yeah, that's been really neat to see too because we started a couple of other things at our church. have, we call it the starfish dwelling. It's a home that's in the back of our backyard and it houses one homeless person at a time. And when people found out that that was happening, a lot of people were drawn to the church and so had this sort of mindset of service. And so a lot of these new folks that came,

were really, really interested in helping Laundry Love when we got, started to get a lot bigger. So, and at that time I wasn't working outside the home. So when I got a job, I'd I can't be there all the time, but these faithful people who that there's probably a half dozen that are really, really committed to this. I can leave and they can, they can carry it on.

But more than that, the whole community is providing food, like I said, dollars. The church is pledging their, you know, their bet, but other people are collecting quarters all the time and then letting their friends know, hey, this thing is happening. We've had banks show up saying, we heard about what you're doing, we want to support it. We've had Girl Scout troops, Social Work Department at St. Cloud State, just numerous other things that sort of fans out.

What about the relationships that have developed then? I'm curious, how has the church team been changed by these neighbors as you've gotten to know them over the years?

I think it's no surprise that the most transformed people are the people that have stepped forward to say, want to engage with this population of people. They're the ones who are really transformed. And so you can see it, I think, in the dedication. This is hard work. It's a laundromat that gets really hot in the summer and really cold in the winter, and it often floods.

It's the perfect place for us, but it's tough work and it's crowded and people are clamoring for a lot of different things at one time. So it really takes someone who sees the beauty in that of just this sort of beloved community coming together every couple of weeks. It's not for everyone. you can tell the people who come in and it's just, they're drawn into it, right? And so,

They're the ones who are transformed and they're the ones who can come back to church. And I don't often stand in front of the church anymore and talk about this. They've heard my voice for 10 years. Now we have these other people coming up and saying, I've been helping for a year now and this has just made all the difference in the world to me. So if you can come along and at least come visit us.

So if some congregation is like, this is awesome, I bet we have neighbors we could serve. What would you tell someone? Because my guess is you're not saying just repeat what we've done. How would you have them start?

We get asked that question a lot. in fact, we struggled with that question at our own church. When we first started Laundry Love, I came back and started talking to people at church, and right away there was this need to make it a program. Now this is a program of the church, and we're going to make a file folder for it and put it on the calendar and start a little fund for it. And I had to sort of...

push back against that and say, you know, this is different. This is going to be beautifully messy and we're going to have to try to roll with it. I'll just tell one more thing and then I'll get to your question, We had people showing up at Laundry Love and when they walked in as somebody who maybe wanted to make a donation, they said, you know,

When I came in, they found the right person. said, when I came in, I couldn't really tell who was the volunteer and who was there to do their laundry. I wonder if you guys could wear name tags or put some sort of t-shirt on or something that says that you're a volunteer. And I said, well, that would really distinguish a lot of people and that would be helpful on one hand. said, you see that guy over there? He's doing his laundry, but he also brought this hot dish today to share. This woman here is doing her laundry.

but she just shepherded three other new people through this whole process of doing their laundry. So who gets the t-shirt? That would be the hard part, right? Who gets the t-shirt? So it's this blurred line of I'm helping you, but you're helping me. And when you walk in, you can't really tell who's who. so churches that want to do this type of work, I think,

Now you've probably said this a thousand times, Get out of the walls of your church with no agenda. with no agenda. Go someplace, go to a park, anywhere, go to the grocery store. We have a little grocery store across the street from ours. And just walk around and just observe who's there, who's showing up. Go with a friend and get some coffee afterwards and just talk about who did we see, you know?

I guarantee that if you go with that sort of, I'm just showing up, the Holy Spirit will nudge you in some direction. You know, whether it's, maybe we should talk to this woman. We've seen her twice in here already, or maybe she wants to come and join us for coffee. There'll be something. And I know that's not the answer people want to hear. They want a manual that people have asked me to write this out for them. And I said, I can't, because it won't work for you. You have to find what's working.

We're not trained up to do that. We're trained on how to clean the carpets at the church, which is a whole other thing. I think all churches should have dirty carpets because that shows how much they're being used, but that's for another podcast.

Well, here's here's a whole variety of things that I love that answer and It means not only is it messy But maybe there's something in the neighbor That touches a vulnerability or a sweet spot in us people that we have been are worried about

have relatives, like it connects with us for some reason, right? And to be gentle enough to say, I don't have to fix it, but to be curious enough to be, what would that look like? Would it help to have laundry? Would it help to have coffee? Would it help to have breakfast? Would it help to have prayer, right? And be curious around that.

It might have a life, right? I think there's your initial story, but there's also the story of community coming around. Are there others? If this doesn't have others, maybe this is the beginning of something else, or maybe this is gonna pivot, maybe, you know, what is that to always hold that a little bit loose, which we're super uncomfortable with.

We are. And I think the first time you do it, it's like the first time you do it anything. It's tricky. It's scary. But the payoff is so great. And the really nice thing about doing it this way is you're not sitting in the church library coming up with a plan and you go out and you find out you weren't successful and you have to say, I failed. Yeah, probably lots of times, You don't have to have the meeting. And

You don't have to fail because you don't know what you're doing. You don't know what the thing is. You're just showing up. I mean, we can all show up. And I think we need to give ourselves some credit because we do show up for our next door neighbor, for our brother-in-law, for our coworker. We do that, right? This is just doing it with people we don't know yet.

I love that. I'm thinking about Samuel Wells, who's a theologian in the UK, talks a lot about just Christian mission is about being with. Like that is like kind of the core of it. And there's things that we can do to help people in various ways. But ultimately, it's that incarnational presence with people. And I just love how from the start, your spirit was, let's follow kind of the lead of the neighbors and how God's working in the midst of that and co-create something.

rather than I've got it all figured out ahead of time. So I'm just curious for you spiritually, like, what in your life, how did God work in your life to get you that kind of freedom to be vulnerable in that way and to take that journey? Because as you mentioned, it's not something that every church person

No, it's not. I was truthful the first time that we did this. It was when I used to wear high heels all the time to church and dressed up. so we walked around like George, literally in high heels, of tiptoeing around and saying, excuse me, sir, would you like coffee?

one point I asked somebody if they wanted breakfast in bed. I don't know where that came from, and the guy was least gracious enough to laugh and say, yeah, that'd be nice. So it's awkward. It's weird.

I, and Dwight, I think It's in only retrospect I can look back and say, you know where I think the Holy Spirit was? I think the Holy Spirit was in the piano teacher who said, I think Nancy might be a person who would help us with this. You know? So she was nudged and said something to me, invited me into that. And then I said, well, I don't know what to do, but I know how to buy coffee.

church is right there. I'm going to go right before Sunday so I can get the heck out of there and have an excuse to go to church. And so all of those little steps along the way, think, and then the graciousness of the people that I met, again, for another podcast, but they're the ones who taught me what it meant to be vulnerable, what it meant to be loved in spite of the not so great things about you, because these are people who

had their life on their back. They weren't fooling anybody. There was no mask to wear where I could show up in my high heels and pretend like I had it all together when I didn't. And so they're the ones who taught me that, which was really cool.

If you were to give advice to yourself at the beginning or to someone else that are feeling like, think I'm going to try something, what would you say?

do it, just go and do it with, don't have any expectations other than to be surprised when the Holy Spirit does something, you know, because it will happen. But just be surprised, you know, and then take that next faithful step.

Holy Spirit has a way of surprising us.

What are some next steps for this ministry and for your church as it continues to take this journey? What seems to be emerging?

I will tell you a funny, quick little story. So in our social justice team meeting, we have all the list of things that we're involved in. And I just laid them all out on the table and I said, let's play a game. Let's figure out what spiritual thing we could add to each of these things that we do. And then some of the things weren't even social justice related. One was our annual rummage sale. And they all kind of like,

What are we going to add on to the rummage sale? And I said, I've got one idea. I'm just going to throw this one out to you. What would happen if instead of putting tables in front of the doors of the sanctuary, we moved those tables and opened the doors to the sanctuary and let people go inside during the rummage sale? I know. And I said, and just to ensure that no one walks off with the candelabras, I will sit

my god.

in the back of the church and we'll put some candles out and we'll just say, hey, if you want to come in and light a candle with the joy that you have or something that's troubling you, you can light a candle. And everybody said, you know, the doors. So we sort of opened the doors. We opened some side doors and the people who thought we should open more doors said, you know, we should really. I said, no, we've got one side door open.

That's a win, right? That's a win. So we did that one small thing. So we're training ourselves to say, are some ways that we can introduce some spiritual things and do something a little crazy like opening the doors of the sanctuary? From laundry love, from this prayer box that we had, the next step would be seeing, is there a group of people who might want to meet together?

And so of course we ponder, ponder, ponder, ponder. And I said, you know, enough pondering. I on a piece of scratch paper, we're going to be meeting at the library. Anybody interested? Question mark and just set it down. Of course, nobody read it, but it wasn't for anybody to read. was for me to make that commitment to do it. So I called our library and said, do we have any rooms that we could do this thing? And they said, sure, go online. So I did that. So I went online and I.

picked a room with a kitchen and we were going to do a meal. The very last line says, what is this group called? I said, I have no idea. So this is just between us. I AI'd it. I said, what should I call this group? It came up with a whole bunch of terrible ideas. One of the ideas was Bread and Blessings. I said, that works. We'll call it Bread and Blessings. So we show up with our food on the first day and we've told people about it. And I go to the desk.

And I said, I'm here to open up the room. She said, what's your group name? And I said, she said, is it Bread and Blessings? I said, yeah, that's it. so people came. People came. We told a Jesus story. We had some wandering questions. We sang a song with me playing the guitar very poorly, because I don't play the guitar. And we lit a fake candle, because you can't have candles. And that was it. And people said, I want to do it again. So we've been doing it.

I actually love when we have to call it something and then it becomes a thing,

That's completely...

AI spoken into it.

Yes. So I just want to kind of underscore something that it's so wonderful that you're talking about, which is, you know, a lot of congregations have some kind of quote unquote outreach, sort of meeting some physical needs in the neighborhood. But often, whether it be because the church people have their name tags or their shirts or they're behind a table serving, they're not mingling or forming community. And then so often they get paralyzed around how can we actually engage people spiritually in some explicit way. So this idea of

kind of adding a spiritual extra or the spiritual component that's optional that people can opt into if they want or go more deeply. It's so important. And there's really no one size fits all for that. It sounds like you're just kind of experimenting as you go.

Yeah, and it's neat because we've had, because it's in a public library and in the library, if you're in that meeting space, it's open to anyone. It has to be open to anyone. And so we would have people that would sort of show up at the door and say, what's going on? I said, we're having food. I said, we're going to talk about Jesus later. You can stay for that part or you can just come eat with us. And they're like, can I come eat with you? I'm like, sure. And that alone, sharing a meal with people who are hungry.

And there was a guy that showed up and he had his hood up and he had his head down the whole time. He just didn't really want anyone to really see him. But the moment I asked him if he could pass me the salt and pepper, where he got to do, you know, he got to give something, was just a very profound moment. And then he didn't want to stay for the rest of it. We're like, that's fine. We're so glad you came and come back next time. We'd love to see you again, you know? And that's okay. And that's not being pushy.

So we don't have to be afraid of being pushy. We're so far from being pushy.

Well, and I also think, I don't know how to say this well, everybody can be a minister. Whether you have a place to put your head down, whether you have a know where your next meal is coming from. And I love kind of woven into this story is we're all people in need and we're all ministers. And your ministry, as I'm hearing it, starts with relationally seeing each other.

holding lightly whatever vulnerability there might be, and inviting conversation and seeing where that would go. And I think the attentiveness to the Spirit, right? The sense of maybe the nudges, somebody there washing their clothes, helping a new person come and wash their clothes is a nudge of the Holy Spirit. And community, think, gets formed out of that. And I think our job as leaders is to set

the place to organize the get a room call it something be inviting and then see what happens right set the table cultivate a space and and not hold it too tightly

Yeah, it's really neat when you let go of expectations of how many people have to show up for this to be successful. I have decided, and the team that comes along have decided if nobody shows up, that's okay. We'll have a conversation about Jesus together. We'll have nice, quiet time at Soin, too.

Even just people walking by being invited in and them saying no is still a win. All of it. So it's freeing in that sense that you don't have to, there's not a metric that has to be met or anything like that. that's kind

So last question for you. What is meant for your own calling as a leader? You're in the process of becoming a deacon in the Episcopal Church, I understand. But how has it changed you as a leader?

I'm thinking about the people who will be listening to this. And I know that some people will say that I have become more gracious to people who don't think the way I think about how we should be doing this. This isn't for every single person to go out and do this work. There's people who stay behind to do some really important work as well. And so...

I think I've been tempered by listening to others in the church as well. I'm really good to listening to people outside of the church saying what the needs are, but you know what? People in the church also have needs and talents and gifts and callings as well. And so I think this process has, walking this path with others outside of the church has made me understand.

that people inside the church are not that much different. I'm not that much different than the people outside the church.

Well, Nancy, thanks for sharing your wisdom, your insights, your stories, and for inviting us into consider what God might be up to around us and inviting us into. It's been really cool.

Thank you so much, I really enjoyed my time with you both.

And to our audience, thank you for joining us on this episode of Pivot. To help spread the word about Pivot, please like and subscribe if you're catching us on YouTube or if you're listening. Head to Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening and leave a review. It really helps.

And the best compliment you can give us is to share an episode of Pivot with a Friend. So for this week, it's Terri and Dwight signing off. See you next time.