At The Row, or the “Church Without Walls,” members congregate on the corner of Wall St. and Winston St. in the middle of DTLA’s Skid Row every Friday night. Though church members prepare and serve meals after the weekly worship service, it is a church. Some congregants live on the street, others in the SRO apartments scattered throughout downtown and others commute from Orange County to attend the weekly Friday night services and worship together.
Pastor Cue Jn-Marie started the independent congregation in August 2006. He is an alumni of the USC Cecil Murray Center for Community Engagement and is using the training he received to build a structurally sound organization and to engage with city leaders about the future of the Skid Row neighborhood. “I learned civic engagement from the Cecil Murray Center. I have also been coached by Rev. Frank Jackson on setting up everything from a 501c3 to organizing a board,” he says.
The Row holds Bible Study indoors on Tuesday nights and is thinking about renting a permanent space to host education/training programs, but the church has no plans of leaving the corner of Wall and Winston on Friday nights.
This video is part of CRCC’s “Reimagining Religion: Stories of Religious Creativity in L.A.” series, part of the Religious Competition and Creative Innovation project. The project was made possible through the support of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.
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