Our Mission

Leaven Community ignites the power of our relationships in our shared stories and spiritual wisdoms by acting collectively with our neighbors for more equitable, diverse, thriving neighborhoods.

Our Values

Diversity

We honor the experience, creativity and imagination of all generations, genders, ethnic and racial groups, sexual orientations and the broad fabric of our community.

Story

We relate, listen and act through spiritual practice and the telling of stories.

Action

We respond to cultural, economic and ecological inequity through the arts and practices of organizing.

Justice

Leaven Community trusts in the sacred interconnection of all, and is committed to transforming ourselves and taking action to resist, disrupt, and heal broken systems. Our community has roots in Lutheran traditions of grace and justice while embracing complementary spiritual expressions.

What We Do

We organize Leaven members and our neighbors to share our stories, make meaning of our collective stories, and respond out of our spiritual wisdoms and shared stores to take social action for the common good.

We interact with varying spiritual paths and experiences, making meaning together through story, discernment and ritual.

We provide organizing education around the arts and practices of relationship-based community organizing.

As a secular 501(c) nonprofit, Leaven also provides a home for the ELCA congregation, Salt & Light Lutheran Church, and supports them in living out their values and faith in public life through organizing for the common good.

Become a Member

Members of Leaven Community commit to one another through community organizing practices interwoven in all aspects of our community life.

Leaven members commit to these practices through:

• Deepening relationship - engaging in relational one to one conversations with three or more people per year.

• Cultivating community agency and capacity - participating in the life of our community by attending at least one Leaven Community event per year (such as a BBB gathering, a Land and Housing action, or a workshop at the Collab).

• Contributing our skills, energy and resources - Leaven members contribute their skills, energy and at least one financial gift of any size to Leaven once per year, including to the Land and Housing Coalition.

Interested in learning more about membership at Leaven? Fill out the form below.

OUR HISTORY

In 2010, the members of Redeemer Lutheran Church, a historically multicultural and multiethnic congregation with roots in relationship-based community organizing and anchored in the Vernon and Alberta neighborhoods, initiated a process of deep listening with their neighbors. Due to the effects of gentrification, racialized harm, substance abuse, and other impacts on the neighborhood, the congregation focused on relational community organizing in the broader community to address the root causes of inequity and oppression.

That process led to the birth in 2013 of Leaven Community. As part of this re-emergence, Leaven opened its building and grounds for community use, and now shares headquarters with partners such as the Portland Fruit Tree project, NE Portland Tool Library, and Center for Diversity in the Environment.

Leaven Community has a rich tradition of organizing for the common good, and has been an institutional member of Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) affiliates in the Portland area since the 1990s.  In order to live out the passion this community feels for social, economic and ecological justice, in 2019 we incubated the interfaith Leaven Community Land & Housing Coalition to organize around housing pressures felt by its members to enact change that will positively affect Oregon residents.

Leaven Community Staff