Today we’d like to introduce you to Kristina Kaiser.
Kristina, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
The River in Quincy began almost a decade ago as a small group of people meeting together for prayer and dinner. We knew that we were excited to start something south of Boston that would offer a spiritual experience where all people could feel welcome to pursue things they felt called to, or put another way, things they felt passionate about. We were excited about trying to find new ways of engaging the many types of different people in the world. And so with those goals in mind, we began meeting publicly in September of 2010.
After we had begun meeting publicly, we started trying all kinds of things. We tried Exercise Services, Art Services, and Pub Conversations. In those experiments, we were specifically thinking about ways to help people feel comfortable given their various personalities and interests. Some people feel most alive when their bodies are active, some when they are doing something artistic, and some just really struggle to feel comfortable at all in a formal church space. Ultimately, these things didn’t specifically stick as “services.” But we did discover that we loved having a way to engage, not just spiritually but also socially. And so many of these things live on in various forms, often thanks to The River South Center (www.theriversouthcenter.org) which is an inclusive community center that exists to influence culture towards innovation, social justice and FUN!
Also around that same time, we started experimenting with using short films in our services. This turned out to be a total winner. Our culture loves watching movies, and the fact that movies are so story-based makes them very memorable. They’re pretty much like parables, which were a huge part of the way that Jesus talked about issues in his day. So to this day, we love using short films as a way to talk about all kinds of topics. We even ended up forming Stories by the River (www.storiesbytheriver.org) where we partner with other local filmmakers to produce films that tell meaningful stories and open up the possibility for conversations that might not be had otherwise.
Most recently, we partnered with Fair Trade Campaigns (www.fairtradecampaigns.org) helping to form the Quincy Fair Trade Task Force. Our goal is to see Quincy join Boston in being declared a Fair Trade City. Our next event is at the Thomas Crane Library on Tuesday, June 5th from 7:00 – 8:30. On that day, we’ll be hosting an event called “Quincy Fair Trade 1o1,” which will be a chance for people to learn more about how Fair Trade purchases sustain farmers and producers, are better for the environment, support communities, and empower women in the workplace. Obviously, we’ll have Fair Trade foods available for sample, and we’ll be sure to include ways that people can get involved.
Overall, our church is part of a new movement called Blue Ocean Faith (www.blueoceanfaith.org) which operates on this idea that life is all about connection – to God, to ourselves, to others, and the world at large. And so the many and varying focuses we have tend to exist because of this strong sense that everything is connected. Faith in God shows itself in loving our neighbors – even the ones we may never meet that harvest the coffee beans that we use for our morning coffee…okay…all-day coffee. Some of us are very tired!
But also, we offer things like Coaching, which allows people a chance to meet one-on-one with a trained coach who helps you walk through questions like: where you are now, where do you want to go, and how are you going to get there. It’s great to have support in walking out our personal life journeys, and coaching is one way we’re able to do that.
And then, of course, there’s the church service on Sunday mornings as well as other spiritual offerings that exist to help us find that connection with God. 🙂
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
In the sense that we’re always having fun, sure. The road is basically smooth. But in terms of what it’s like to start something new – oh gosh!
First of all, in addition to all that stuff we’re doing, my husband and I have 4 children. The oldest was a 5-month old when we started a small group in our home. And the baby is currently about 19 months old. It’s not like I even need to elaborate on what sort of busy-ness that adds to life.
Also, the work we’re engaged in is all about partnership, and we aren’t an organization with a ton of funds. We do a lot of stuff through the work of volunteers who have caught the vision and have very graciously offered their time, energy, and expertise to the endeavor. But when life gets busy, sometimes that means we have to stop doing something that we otherwise thought was a good idea.
Sometimes you do a lot of work, and you don’t get the attendance you were hoping for. Sometimes you cast vision for something that you’ve gained a lot of personal excitement for and then nobody else is really interested.
And trying new things, as exciting as it can be, is also hard for those who don’t like change. We have a motto: Try fast, fail fast, evaluate fast, try again fast. We have to constantly remember that if we try something, we can always change it back, take the good stuff and leave the stuff that didn’t work, etc. But it takes developing a culture as a group where your mindset centers around aiming to help the largest possible number of people connect to God, to themselves, and to others.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into The River story. Tell us more about the business.
I think what I’m most proud of is that we are a reasonably diverse community. Our church operates on a Centered-Set model where we’re not saying that everyone needs to believe and do exactly as we do in order to be a part of what we do. We recognize that we’re all starting from different points and that each of us probably even deviates from our larger goals multiple times a day.
But just to give a concrete example, some people have a strong need to talk things out in order to feel at peace. Others prefer to work things out internally. In a centered-set model, both people are just trying to figure out what they feel called to. Neither of them is right or wrong. There can be space for both people.
And this can be applied to oh-so-many things. It takes a little bit of humility because the model requires us to admit that it’s highly probable that none of us have everything right, even if we really like what we’ve decided is our own mode of preceding. But within the model, we acknowledge that our own tendency to judge is a really big problem, and we then work to become aware of how we are predisposed to want to judge, and then we work in connection with God and others to let go of judging and do our best to follow the Holy Spirit into the things we feel called to.
Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
Ha! Ummm….well, I will say that I love our location. We’re a 2 block walk from the Quincy Center T stop. We’re in the Lower Level of an office building that has a parking lot behind it that is completely full and unavailable on weekdays but is very available when we tend to be open, which is nights and weekends. So that has been fortunate.
When we were looking for a space that we’d be able to rent 24/7, many of the spaces we could afford were not in good locations. So I do feel very fortunate that this space was available when we were looking for space.
Contact Info:
- Address: 1150 Hancock St, Lower Level
Quincy MA 02169 - Website: www.theriversouth.org
- Phone: 617-934-1094
- Email: kristina@theriversouth.org
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheRiverChurchSouth/
- Twitter: @TheRiverSouth
Image Credit:
Film Set: Melt
Outside with strollers: 2017 5K Walk/Run to End Human Trafficking
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