Our Community’s Commitments

The following are a few of our ongoing commitments in our neighborhoods. These are the things we’ve discerned God calling us toward as we’ve moved into the neighborhoods and made our homes among those alongside whom we serve. If you, or your group, would like to partner with us in one of these commitments we’d love to talk with you about how to do that. Contact us with any questions or ideas.

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Hospitality

We engage in the Christian practice of hospitality both as a community and as individuals by inviting people into our lives, homes, and work as the Spirit directs us.

Open and Community Meals

Grace and Main hosts six evening meals every month. Our big, “open” meal is on the 4th Thursday of every month at Ascension Lutheran Church (314 West Main St). People start showing up around 6:00 p.m. and the meal kicks off at around 6:30 p.m. Four of the remaining five meals are scheduled to happen in houses and public spaces and are smaller to enable us to focus on being more hospitable and personable. We try to have no more than 20-24 people at each of these meals, but we’re glad to find a place for you if you’ll contact us and let us know–we almost always have a few open seats at these meals, so don’t hesitate to reach out. These are family style meals and you don’t need to bring anything unless you really want to. The remaining meal of the month is a meal just for our leaders and the people who are committed to the long-term work of our community.

Tool Library

On the Northside of town, we have a “tool library” where anybody can come to borrow lawnmowers, trimmers, hand tools, power tools, and other equipment whether it’s to go make a living doing landscaping, yard work, and other spot work, or to volunteer around their neighborhood or at their congregational home.

Prayers and Worship

The houses associated with Grace and Main keep their own schedules of prayer on a daily or weekly basis, whether that’s morning, midday, evening, night, or some combination of those times of prayer. If you’d like to join us in a pattern of prayer or are interested in learning more, you can get a copy of our community’s Prayerbook.

Our Urban Farm

The first — and still largest — Urban Farm in the city of Danville. Half of the growing space of this sustainable, chemical-free, permaculture guided garden is grown by neighborhood leaders to give away or to be eaten at our shared meals. The other half of the growing space is plotted out for individual gardeners to grow what they want to grow and do what they want with it. We grow a lot of different produce, flowers, and trees, as well as keep a small flock of chickens and (upcoming) a hive of bees. But more than plants, we also grow new gardeners, new leaders, and new gardens. A number of other community gardens have sprung up around the city after we worked to get local zoning changed to allow for our work and the work of others and some of our community’s newest developing leaders have their roots in the Urban Farm.

Tenants Rights and Housing Justice

We continue to be involved in a number of neighborhoods and apartment communities throughout Danville. We are working with tenants and neighbors to make sure they know what their rights are when it comes to state and city regulations concerning renting and housing. We believe this is an extension of our work for secure and stable shelter and we believe in prayerful, faith-based organizing around justice issues like this one and others.

We partner with Third Chance Housing, a nonprofit born out of our community, to provide affordable housing solutions in Danville.

Hosting Retreats, “Mission Trips,” and Visitors

Grace and Main hosts visitors, retreats, and mission trips several times per year and would be glad to discuss what that might look like for you. We prefer smaller groups because of the intensely relational nature of our work, but can accommodate some larger groups. Individuals seeking retreat or to visit our community are invited to stay in one of our hospitality rooms around the city (pending vacancy) and participate in the life, prayers, work, and meals of our community whether it be for a weekend, a week, a month, or longer.