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Char Cox 3/26/24 Char Cox 3/26/24

Nurturing Children in the Faith

Rev. Dr. Char Cox fondly reflects on her Sunday School exprience in this poem.

***Photo by*** ***Ben White*** on ***Unsplash***

I can still smell
the sweet musty scent
of the church basement
where I went to Sunday School
as a child.

I can still see the
white plastic, church-light-coin-box
in which we deposited our pennies
on the Sundays
closest to our birthdays –
one penny for each year of our age.

I can still hear the old upright piano,
slightly out of tune,
and so familiar
as we sang our Opening songs
every Sunday –
He Leadeth Me,
O God our Help in Ages Past,
Savior Like a Shepherd Lead Us.

I can still see the little chairs
on which we sat,
the tables around which we gathered,
the steps that we climbed to the sanctuary,
and the clusters of children and adults
throughout the one big room,
learning Bible stories
and Luther’s Small Catechism,
and that there are people of faith
who love you
and care about you
and who want the best for you in life
and want you to know
and trust
and believe
more than anything else in the world
that God loves you
as God’s own beloved child –
full stop.
No exceptions.

And I can still see Eunice.
Eunice was my Kindergarten Sunday School teacher.
Eunice played the guitar
and she sang songs
and she wore white fashion boots
and smiled a lot
and she taught us about Jesus.

I remember one Sunday
in particular.
It was a day that we left the basement
for Sunday school.
We didn’t have to sit
on the little wooden chairs that day.
We didn’t have to sit still
for the whole hour that day.
Instead,
Eunice led us up the steps
that came in the back of the church,
and we went up the aisle
and got to sit on the floor
inside the altar rail.
We never got to go
inside the altar rail –
But that day we did.
And Eunice told us
to look up –
Look up at the picture that
was above the white and gold-trimmed altar.
Look up,
She said.
What do you see?
She asked,
when you look at the picture?

I was a shy five-year-old,
so I kept my thoughts to myself,
But someone said what I was thinking.
A man sinking in the water.
Someone else said,
Jesus standing on the water.
Someone else said,
Jesus pulling the sinking man up.

And Eunice smiled and nodded.

After she heard
everything we had to say about the picture –
the picture of Peter sinking
in the water
and Jesus holding on for dear life –
Eunice asked us
if we knew what the name of our Church was.
I thought it was a trick question
because our church had two names.
And somebody said “Rosehill.”
Somebody else said, “Emmanuel.”
And Eunice told us
that both were right.
Our church was
Emmanuel Lutheran Church of Rosehill Township.
And then she said,
Today I want to talk to you about
Emmanuel.
She asked us if any of us
knew what “Emmanuel” meant.
When we all shook our heads,
She said,
Emmanuel means “God with us.”
It is one of the names of Jesus.
She had us say Emmanuel
with her several times,
And then she told us to
look up at the picture above the altar again.
Look up.

As we did so,
Eunice told us the story of Peter,
stepping out of the boat,
and trying to walk toward Jesus
on the water.
She told us
how he started to sink
and how Jesus reached out to save him.
She told us
that there would be times in our lives
when we would feel like Peter,
when we would feel like we were sinking,
but to always remember
that Jesus is always with us,
that Jesus will always reach out to help us,
to pull us up to his safe arms.
She told us
to always remember
that whatever happened to us –
whatever we experienced –
good or bad –
happy or sad –
Jesus would always be with us –
just like Jesus was with Peter
that day on the water.

I can still see Eunice –
the passion in her eyes,
the smile on her face,
the joy in her voice
as she told us about Emmanuel –
God who is always with us.

I have frequently thought
about that day
over the years –
how formative it was,
how it has stuck with me,
how often I return to it,
and how,
when I close my eyes,
I can still see that picture
that was above
that old church altar –
and if I let myself
imagine it –
I can feel the arms of Jesus
reaching out
in both gentleness and power
to hold onto me,
especially when life is hard.

Eunice
is in her eighties now,
and I am fortunate
that I still have a relationship
with this one who taught
me the faith
so many years ago.
In many ways,
I am still a Kindergartener
and she is still my teacher.
Eunice continues to embrace life,
to be full of laughter,
love, and joy,
still singing about Jesus,
still reminding me
that more than anything else in the world,
Jesus is always with me.
God loves me.
as God’s own beloved child.
full stop.
No exceptions.

Several years ago
when my wife and I
were getting married,
there were some
in our small, rural community
who were less than kind,
and Eunice sent us a card
and to let us know
how much she loved us both,
to congratulate us,
to speak a word
of acceptance,
love,
and grace.
It was a holy,
life-giving,
sacramental gesture.

Every once in a while,
we will get a letter in the mail
with a clipping
from the newspaper,
or rainbow bracelets,
or a simply profound word of kindness,
And when those missives come –
We got one such letter last week,
prompting me to write this reflection –
it is as if I am five years-old again,
sitting at the foot of that old wooden altar,
staring up at Peter sinking in the water –
Jesus holding on for dear life –
and hearing again
and anew –
Jesus is always with you –

And I am reminded
how utterly important it is
to keep on speaking
words of
acceptance,
grace,
and love
into people’s lives.
No one can ever hear too many times,
Jesus is always with you.
No one can hear too many times
God loves you.
No one can hear too many times
You are God’s own beloved child.
Full stop.
No exceptions.

And so, dear readers,
If you are a Eunice
in other people’s lives,
thanks be to God for you.

If you need a Eunice
in your life today,
I’ve got a word for you:
Jesus is always with you.
God loves you
as God’s own beloved child –
full stop.
No exceptions.

And finally,
thank God
for sweet, musty church basements
and the messages of grace
that get planted there.

Dr. Charlene Rachuy Cox

Rev. Dr. Charlene Rachuy Cox (affectionately known as “Char”) holds a Doctor of Ministry Degree from the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, with an emphasis in Spirituality; a Master of Sacred Theology Degree from the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, with an emphasis in Preaching and Worship, a Master of Divinity Degree from Luther Seminary, and a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Augustana University, Sioux Falls. She has served as a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America for over 28 years, serving in seminary, collegiate, and congregational settings. She loves reading – especially memoirs and historical fiction, and enjoys writing poetry, travelling, and all things winter.

Facebook | PrChar
Website | Charlene Rachuy Cox

Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.

As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.

Rev. Susan Sparks 2/20/24 Rev. Susan Sparks 2/20/24

The Hidden Secret of Winter Trees

In order to grasp this great truth, the first thing we need to do is to get off our human high horse. We aren’t all that, especially when you compare us to the world of trees.

***Photo by*** ***Jan Huber*** on ***Unsplash***

Shared with permission by the Rev. Susan Sparks and www.day1.org.

Today, I’d like to share the secret to life.

Where might I have found this great wisdom?

Oprah? No.

Dr. Phil? Nope.

Tik Tok? Definitely not.

No, I found this great wisdom by doing something very simple: walking out and looking up at the winter trees.

How could trees—let alone dead, lifeless, winter trees—hold the secret to life?

In order to grasp this great truth, the first thing we need to do is to get off our human high horse. We aren’t all that, especially when you compare us to the world of trees.

Trees have lived longer than we have. In fact, trees are the oldest living organisms on the planet. Trees, mold, and jellyfish are older than human history. The oldest tree is a bristlecone pine in the White Mountains of California that scientists date as around 5000 years old. That is Tigris and Euphrates, early Mesopotamia, Bronze Age stuff. Its name, appropriately, is Methuselah.

Trees are also smarter than we are. In the book, The Hidden Life of Trees German forester Peter Wohlleben shares some astonishing discoveries. He talks about trees as social beings and explains how they actually communicate with each other, give warnings to other trees in the forest, share food through their root systems with their own species, and sometimes even go so far as to nourish their competitors. Why? Because one lone tree is vulnerable, but a forest offers strength and safety. In short, trees nourish community.

If only human beings could learn that simple lesson.

At least the writers of the Bible realized the importance of trees. In fact, there are three things the Bible mentions more than anything else: God, people, and trees. The Bible speaks of the great cedars of Lebanon and tells how Moses used acacia wood for the ark of the covenant. Zacchaeus climbed a sycamore tree, and Jesus’ followers are described as oaks of righteousness. David crafted his musical instruments from the wood of a fir tree. A branch from the olive tree signified safety after the flood. A tree formed the wooden manger, and a tree formed the cross.

Trees are an intimate part of the holy narrative, but they’re even more than that because out of all creation, God chose trees for self-revelation. We see this in the beautiful passage Isaiah 41:19-20, where God recognizes the suffering of the people and offers them a sign: “I will put in the desert the cedar and the acacia, the myrtle and the olive. I will set junipers in the wasteland, the fir and the cypress together, so that people may see and know, may consider and understand, that the hand of the Lord has done this.”

God chose trees—the myrtle and the olive, the fir and the cypress—to reveal God’s self, making trees the sacred keepers of holy wisdom.

This brings us back to the secret of life, which, in my humble opinion, is to be found in trees. Specifically, it’s in winter trees.

The day I walked out to look up at the trees was dim and dreary. The trees, leafless and bare, formed an almost lace-like pattern against the gray winter sky. To a brief passerby, they probably appeared lifeless, dead even.

I think we all know how that feels. Sometimes everything in life can feel and look bare and brittle, lifeless, even dead. However, there is way more going on under the surface than we realize.

Consider those bare winter trees. Inside their seemingly dead branches and trunks, a magical transformation is happening. Months before, in the fall, the trees dropped their green leaves in order to conserve water and centralize and focus their energy. I think of a tree in this stage as being like a sprinter in a quiet, motionless crouch before a race. All energies and focus are drawn down into that moment before the runner springs into action. What appears in winter to be a quiet time of death for those trees is, in fact, the combustion engine of life.

We always think of the season of spring as the beginning of life, but in fact, spring is not the beginning. It’s the manifestation of the transformation happening inside those great trees right now, in the winter.

In writing about wintering trees, the author Katherine May explains, “The tree is waiting. It has everything ready. Its fallen leaves are mulching the forest floor, and its roots are drawing up the extra winter moisture, providing a firm anchor against seasonal storms . . . It is far from dead. It is in fact the life and soul of the wood. It’s just getting on with it quietly.”

We see the same pattern in human life. William Bridges in his book, Transitions talks about the passages of life, such as those that take place in a job, a relationship, a move, or another life change. He explains that all transitions are composed of three things: (1) an ending, (2) a neutral zone, and (3) a new beginning.

The ending is when we let go of the old. The neutral zone is that time of unknowing when we listen, focus, think, and wait. Then, eventually, the new beginning gleams forth. The key is that it all starts with an ending.

The problem is that unlike trees, we humans tend to fight this truth. We want to focus only on the new beginning. We think that to figure out our plan, to make our choices, we’ve got to get going. If we aren’t producing something, who are we? Endings are seen as unpleasant, and the neutral zone is seen as unproductive. It’s also scary.

When we’re in the neutral zone, we stand bare, like the trees in winter. It’s a time when we can no longer hide our truth behind our agendas, lists, or busyness. Who are we without our leaves? We humans hate asking that, but vulnerability is the place of greatest beauty.

There is a tiny, wonderful book called Trees at Leisure written in 1916 by Anna Botsford Comstock. In it, she talks about the beauty of winter trees: “In winter, we are prone to regard our trees as cold, bare, and dreary; and we bid them wait until they are again clothed in verdure before we may accord to them comradeship. However, it is during this winter resting time that the tree stands revealed to the uttermost, ready to give its most intimate confidences to those who love it.”

The true secret to life lies in the deep wisdom of trees, the place where God chose to reveal God’s self. The trees know that spring is not where life is truly generated. Transformation takes place in winter—that time of ending, that quiet neutral zone, that gap that exists when the old is gone but the new isn’t fully formed.

What parts of your life feel like those bare, brittle, lifeless branches? Who are you without your leaves?

While life can sometimes look and feel like a tree in winter, remember that there is more going on under the surface than we realize. Like the energy humming inside those trees, there are unseen things happening within us. We are changing, churning, transforming inside.

If you doubt that, just walk outside and look up.

While it may feel like loss, while we ourselves may feel lost, winter is simply a time when our energies are gathered deep into our souls, waiting like a sprinter in a crouch ready to spring into new life.

Amanda Gorman, the inaugural poet, put it best: “If nothing else, this must be known: Even as we’ve grieved, we’ve grown . . . We are battered, but bolder; worn, but wiser . . . If anything, the very fact that we’re weary means we are, by definition, changed; we are brave enough to listen to, and learn from, our fear. This time will be different because this time we’ll be different. We already are.”

Rev. Susan Sparks

JAs a trial lawyer turned standup comedian and Baptist minister, the Rev. Susan Sparks is America’s only female comedian with a pulpit. A North Carolina native, Susan received her B.A. at the University of North Carolina, law degree from Wake Forest University, and Master of Divinity at Union Theological in New York City.
Currently the senior pastor of the historic Madison Avenue Baptist Church in New York City (and the first woman pastor in its 170-year history), Susan's work with humor, healing, and spirituality has been featured in *O (The Oprah) Magazine*, the New York Times, and on such networks as ABC, CNN, CBS, and the History Channel.
A featured TEDx speaker and a professional comedian, Susan tours nationally with a stand-up Rabbi and a Muslim comic in the Laugh in Peace Tour. In addition to her speaking and preaching, Susan writes a nationally syndicated column through Gannett distributed to over 600 newspapers reaching over 21 million people in 36 states.
She is the author of three books, *Laugh Your Way to Grace: Reclaiming the Spiritual Power of Humor,* *Preaching Punchlines: The Ten Commandments of Standup Comedy.* and *Miracle on 31st Street: Christmas Cheer Every Day of the Year – Grinch to Gratitude in 26 Days!* (May 2020).
Most importantly, Susan and her husband Toby love to fly-fish, ride their Harleys, eat good BBQ, and root for UNC Tar Heel Basketball and the Green Bay Packers.

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Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.

Jean Carlos 2/13/24 Jean Carlos 2/13/24

Making 100 TikToks as Ministry

It’s remarkable how many transformative words stay locked within the walls of our churches. Our messages are beautiful, life-changing, and somehow secret. Our ideas are available only to those who know our addresses and trust us enough to step inside.

As part of the preaching team at New City Church, I felt this. As a church led by queer people of color in South Minneapolis, I heard and gave powerful messages. I saw God’s liberation experienced and expressed – with one condition.

You had to be there. Whether in-person or online, attendance was mandatory.

That’s why I started making TikToks

Culture is having a conversation. Will the Church be a part of it?

We all have different relationships to social media. For you, is it a distraction to avoid? A danger to reject? Another type of noise?

Is it a mystery? An algorithm that rewards some content while punishing others? So complex and changing that it can’t be learned or used?

Or maybe it’s simpler – is it a chore? Is it something you have to do? Is it something you make someone else do?

At some point, I’ve answered yes to each of these questions. Maybe you have, too. But as a speaker and storyteller, I felt compelled to extend my ministry online.

My first reason is geographical. To love my neighbor, I must ask, “Where is my neighbor?”

If my neighbors spent three hours every single day by the river, I would have a river ministry. It just so happens that the river is TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube Shorts.

My second reason is theological. I worship a Jesus who preached in synagogues and in streets. His message could not be contained in a temple; it spilled over into towns, rivers, hills, and fields. His best work was outside – where the people were.

For those reasons, I began to experiment with short-form videos. I tried lots of things – posting clips of sermons, making original content, filming video responses to others, scheduling on different platforms, and much more. I was surprised by what worked and what didn’t.

I’m by no means an expert on TikTok. God knows I watched a bunch of videos from people who say they are. Like many of you, I’m just doing ministry and learning every day. But by taking this journey, I’ve grown as a leader and I’ve grown my community. On average, I reach 10x more people per post (TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube combined) than I do in person.

After making 100 TikToks as part of my ministry, here’s what I’ve learned

1. TikTok Never Ends. You Do.

Social media is an endless source of content, but I am a limited, beautiful child of God.

Content that never ends can mean creators that never stop. This type of content is never content.

When I started, the advice online said to create one to three TikToks a day! With a full-time job in marketing and a ministry role at my church, that was not going to happen. But when you start an account with zero followers, there’s this constant temptation to do more.

To do healthy ministry online, we must reject never-ending, never-stopping, never-enough content.

God has taught me that frequency determines fun. The ideal frequency is the point where something is both presently enjoyable and potentially expandable. It’s the place where you feel like you could do more, but you chose not to. Giving 100% sounds great, but it is actually exhausting and unsustainable. I’ve learned there is something beautiful about giving 70%.

In this season, making three TikToks a week is fun. Five was too many. Seven was a non-starter. Sustainable ministry is more important than super-sized growth.

2. TikTok is Always Available. You Aren’t.

Healthy ministry requires healthy boundaries. This is true whether you’re serving others in-person, online, at church, or on TikTok. These guardrails look different from person to person and even from season to season. While some may reject social media altogether, I think healthy boundaries can make social media a joy and a gift.

First, I protect my time. I want to be fully present in life. This includes my ministry but goes beyond it. I enjoy limiting social media to after 5 PM on weekdays. I turn off notifications so I don’t see likes or comments until a designated time. All of this enables me to engage with my life and work during the day while enjoying great content and community at night. Your life is different than mine, but designated times to be on and off are essential.

Second, I protect my process. I tried so many different ways to create videos – on my phone, on my laptop, in my car, in my house, the day before, a month out, and more. I’m currently making three TikToks a week – two are originals and one is a sermon clip. They are filmed on weekdays and scheduled by Sunday for the following week. I don’t make videos for the same day/week anymore. I have a spot in my house and a time on my calendar for making videos. I schedule my videos for 8 AM on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and I don’t see those videos myself until after 5 PM. I don’t post on weekends because those days are for me. Last year, I edited everything myself and now I have the support of a talented video editor. My process protects my life and my ministry.

3. TikTok is A Place of Discovery. Be Discoverable!

On TikTok, people are constantly discovering new content and creators. It’s a place where people who would never walk into your church or end up on your website can discover your message. Let’s make ourselves discoverable!

Making a 30-minute sermon is an art form – making a 60-second video is, too. Hashtags, subtitles, location, camera, lighting, and sound are all just ways to help people discover you.

I didn’t know sharing an idea from the front seat of a car was more engaging than hearing the same thing from a pulpit. I didn’t realize responding to another video, called a stitch, was more captivating than hearing the same thought in a sermon.

In His ministry, Jesus would say, “You have heard it said,” and then he would add, “But I tell you the truth.” Who knew Jesus was really good at TikTok stitches?

Jean Carlos Diaz

Jean Carlos Diaz is a gay, Puerto Rican speaker and storyteller from the Twin Cities.
‍
jean also preachs at New City Church, a faith community led by queer people of color.
‍
Whether through marketing or ministry, storytelling or speaking, his mission is to move people to things that matter.

he’s married to his amazing husband Fabo. Jean loves Jesus, but in an inclusive and liberating kind of way and He'd love to support or speak to your community.

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Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.

Erin Weber-Johnson 2/6/24 Erin Weber-Johnson 2/6/24

Questions have Wings

As we enter 2024, there is deep apprehension and fear about the pending presidential election this fall in the United States. How do we stay connected to our faith in such anxiety ridden times?

“At this point in my life
I'd like to live as if only love mattered
As if redemption was in sight..
You see when I've touched the sky
The earth's gravity has pulled me down
But now I've reconciled that in this world
Birds and angels get the wings to fly
If you can believe in this heart of mine
If you can give it a try
Then I'll reach inside and find and give you
All the sweetness that I have
At this point in my life.”
-Tracy Chapman

As we enter 2024, there is deep apprehension and fear about the pending presidential election this fall in the United States. There are anxieties about the outcome of that election and the impact it will have on bodies: women’s bodies, the bodies of persons of color, trans bodies, LGBTQIA bodies, bodies living in war zones outside the United States, bodies of those who live on the margins, the poor, the unhoused, the hungry, and those without access to healthcare.

The concern for further division and the hateful rhetoric of years past looms large. Earth’s gravity feels heavier at the start of this year. We feel the weight of the past and wonder what is next. I am reminded of that iconic scene from Forrest Gump, as Jenny, the titular character’s lifelong friend, a young girl traumatized by a life of abuse and hurt, tugs at Forrest’s arm to join her on her knees in a field, in a childlike prayer for deliverance. “Dear God, make me a bird, so that I can fly far, far, far away from here.” The present moment feels as if it is freighted and encumbered by all we’ve been through and there are moments when many of us want nothing more than to escape, to fly far far away. But the weight of gravity seems to keep us stuck in place.

It can feel hard to imagine right now. It can feel hard to consider what the future holds. I find myself asking:

What do I wish I had known years ago to prepare for the years following 2016?
What can I apply today?
How do I show up with love and care for others with this information?
How will my body and the bodies of others be impacted?

There is a phrase I’ve heard , “thoughts have wings”,which describes how a thought or an idea can take off growing and stretching farther than anyone could have anticipated. This phrase invites us to consider unintended consequences attached to the power of words, to stories, to questions. Words can take flight and catalyze our fears, stir our hopes, and spark imagination. The right questions can allow us to let go, take off. They have the power to transform our minds and hearts and to see beyond the fears and pain of any given moment to something hopeful.

The right question has wings.

In Isaiah we read: “But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles” (Isaiah 40:31) Written at a time when both the kingdoms of Israel and Judah were crushed under the weight of the Assyrian empire, the prophet describes God’s action in the world, but also a people in turmoil. As they looked for liberation from oppression, as they faced their own divisions and conflicts within, these words sparked their imagination and fueled hope.

But, that hope isn’t just the product of inspiring words. Embedded in and around this verse in chapter 40, the prophet questions to their audience: “Who is like our God?” (v.18) and “to whom then will you compare [God]?” The questions catalyze a change in thinking. They serve as a reminder of who the people are, and who they belong to. Ultimately the prophet’s questions serve to shift the hearer’s perspective. “Lift up your eyes on high and see” says the prophet. And so an idea like hope takes flight.

Now is a moment, like the one facing the prophet Isaiah and the people of God. It is a moment that calls for good questions, perspective shifting, eye-opening, story changing questions. Our questions can lead to new ideas, redefining and reshaping how we understand and live into concepts like belonging, stewardship and ownership and so much more, moving us away from easy answers toward deeper connection with one another amid the struggles of life.

Our questions and our words mold themselves into wings that can break free from every weight of fear and defy Earth’s gravity.

Erin Weber-Johnson

Erin Weber-Johnson is Senior Consultant at Vandersall Collective, a faith based, woman-led consulting firm and Primary Faculty of Project Resource. In 2017 she co-founded the Collective Foundation, which worked to address the gap in giving characteristics in faith communities of color. In 2022 she co-founded The Belonging Project, a movement designed to reimagine belonging across the ecclesial landscape.
Previously, Erin worked as the Senior Program Director at the Episcopal Church Foundation, as a grants officer at Trinity Wall Street in New York City, and served as a missionary for the Episcopal Church. She holds a BS from Greenville University, a Masters of Public Administration for NYU and is currently completing a second masters in Religion and Theology from United Theological Seminary.
A published author, she strives to root her work in practical theology while utilizing her experience in the nonprofit sector. Her co-edited book, *Crisis and Care: Meditations on Faith and Philanthropy is* available through Cascade Books.

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Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.

Erin Weber-Johnson 1/18/24 Erin Weber-Johnson 1/18/24

The body is not an accomplishment: a bodily apocalypse

What do we do with the memories that haunt us? That sneak up on us late at night. And whisper words that cut quick to our core?

***Photo by*** ***Eneko Uruñuela*** on ***Unsplash***

“….somewhere a little girl is reading aloud
in the middle of a dirt road. she smiles
at the sound of her own voice escaping
she is not the opinions of others
she is of visions and imagination
somewhere a little girl is reading aloud in the middle of a dirt road.
she smiles at the sound of her own voice escaping the spine of a book.
she is a room full
of listening, lending herself
to her own words
somewhere
a deep remembering of what was, she survives all.”
-AJ Monet

There is an industry alive and well. The industry of healthy lifestyles. So many before/after pictures, promises of things to come, ways for the body to achieve more than we thought possible.

By making healthy choices, we are told we will become more successful, more at peace, more in our bodies, more, more more.

I see similarities to the prosperity gospel mentalities which spout that financial blessing and physical well-being are always the will of God, and that faith, positive speech, and donations to religious causes increases one's material wealth and physical well-being. The responsibility lies solely on us as humans to make better choices, to be better people, to follow the rules. And if you don’t follow the rules, then those who experience poor health or a lack of wealth are in these circumstances because of choices they made.

The other side of this, of course, is what happens when change isn't possible.

When economic systems are built to ensure people remain in poverty.

When the body doesn't respond to changes in behavior.

When both money and health intersect and we see a deep inequity in our access to healthcare.

When we are told that we are the sum product of our choices, it's a lie.

There is an interconnection between the illusion of control, the commodification of well-being and our culture of blame for those who cannot meet unattainable expectations.

There always comes a moment when bodies break, and are beyond control, despite our deepest wishes. What does it mean to come to a bodily apocalypse? When we are stripped down of all illusions that the latest Instagram reel or set of positive choices will delay the onset of age, or will change our health realities.

What pervisity has befallen us that calls for us to use the health of our bodies for more systematic bias? When did we create a narrative of success and achievement around health?

When I hear words of bodily health lifted up as something we control, we battle, we push the limits for, we seek to own as a marker of influence…it is here that I wonder: where is God?

Pseudo-Dionysius and other like-minded negative theologians talked about how, in the working of articulating the limits of language, we find the divine. In describing what the Divine isn’t, we point both to the limits of language and, in comparison, how much more God is.

In this same way, we can apply this thoughtful framework to how our bodies exist in the world and intercept God's movements.

Our limits, our beautiful humanity, point to a place where the divine is. This is holy.

Resist how our bodies, in all their limits, become places of idolatry. Where we seek to become more than we are or were ever created wondrously to be. Perhaps instead, our body’s limits are reflections of the Divine’s creation, and by buying into false promises, we reject that creation.

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Bishop Michael Curry 12/21/23 Bishop Michael Curry 12/21/23

Bishop Michael Curry’s Christmas Message

The following transcript of Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Michael Curry’s recorded Christmas message for 2023 was originally published here.

Hello to my family of faith in The Episcopal Church, and to all of our ecumenical and interfaith friends, and to all people of love and goodwill.

I want to first thank you all for your prayers and well wishes this year as I have weathered some health issues. Please know that I’m doing well, following the doctor’s orders.

I’m also ever more aware of the power of the messages of Advent to watch, to wait, and to listen to the pregnant voice of silence, as one version of the Bible says. And out of that watching, waiting, and listening, following the way of Jesus of Nazareth and his way of love, the Spirit of God being our helper.

So please allow me to offer a reading from the Gospel according to Luke. You know it well. The deep truth embedded in it, simple story of the birth of a baby. That deep truth has long given me strength for these 70 years, strength that I often did not have on my own. For some, it may seem fanciful, but in its own way, it points to what the Bible calls hope beyond hope. It reads:

While Mary and Joseph were in Bethlehem, the time came for her to deliver her child. She gave birth to her firstborn son, wrapped him in bands of cloth and laid him in a manger because there was no place for them in the guest room. Now in that same region, there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. The angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for see, I am bringing you good news of great joy for all people: To you is born this day in the city of David, a savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: You will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”

The message of the angel is as scandalous and striking now as it was then. For in it is embedded God’s message in the death and resurrection of Jesus: to trust and believe in the invincibility of the good in spite of the titanic reality of evil, because God is good all the time. To trust and believe in the enduring power of love, of truth, of the good, and of justice when the reality of the opposite seems so prodigious.

To trust and believe in the enduring power of love, justice, kindness, and compassion, all because God is love and the author of all that is true, noble, and just. “Do not be afraid,” the Scripture says, “for see, I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: To you is born this day in the city of David, a savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: You will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.”

Lord, we pray, give us this sign anew. Give us the lowly, the tired, those of high estate and low, and those of no estate. Church folk, those who haven’t stepped through the red doors for years or ever, give us all a sign. Give us the working, the watching, the weeping. Give us that sign anew; as you did in the first century, so now in the 21st. Give us the expected, the faithful, the passionate, the undeserving; give us a sign.

“The angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid, for see, I am bringing you good news of great joy for all people: To you is born this day in the city of David, a savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.’”

On behalf of the entire Episcopal Church, we wish you and yours a Merry Christmas and a joyous new year.

God love you. God bless you. May God hold us all in those almighty hands of love. Merry Christmas.

Shared with permission by the Office of the Right Reverend Michael B. Curry, The Episcopal Church, in its entirety. The Most Rev. Michael Curry is the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church and the author of the book "Love Is the Way: Holding On to Hope in Troubling Times".

Bishop Michael Curry

The Most Rev. Michael Bruce Curry is Presiding Bishop and Primate of The Episcopal Church. He is the Chief Pastor and serves as President and Chief Executive Officer, and as Chair of the Executive Council of The Episcopal Church.
Presiding Bishop Curry was installed as the 27th Presiding Bishop and Primate of The Episcopal Church on November 1, 2015. He was elected to a nine-year term and confirmed at the 78th General Convention of The Episcopal Church in Salt Lake City, UT, on June 27, 2015.

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Eric D. Barreto 12/12/23 Eric D. Barreto 12/12/23

Enfleshing Witness: Eric Barreto

The following is a lightly edited transcript and a video of Rev. Dr. Eric Barreto’s talk from our 2021 Enfleshing Witness gathering. Eric preaches because the God who called him is a God who creates and delights in the storytelling of diverse communities. In short, he preaches because the way of Jesus's faith is not a solitary path, but one in which we lean on and learn from the stories of others. Eric preaches to followers of Jesus yearning to connect their community's reading of scripture with God's active grace in everyday life. He preaches so that followers of Jesus might see how their faithfulness is bound up in the lives and experiences of their diverse neighbors.

If you didn't know, you will shortly know a very important unwritten rule. An unwritten rule that extends beyond ritual or tradition and taps into the yearnings of a people and a place.

You see, if you have ever flown to San Juan, Puerto Rico, the capital of the indisputably most beautiful island in the world, then you probably experienced this unwritten rule as the plane's wheels touched the ground and Puerto Ricans on the plane began to clap. Now, you have to understand that the clapping is not just an affirmation of the pilot's or crew's skills.

No matter the quality of the landing, we clap. It is the fact of the landing that we applaud. For so many of us, landing back on this island is not the beginning of a vacation, but an emotional return to a place we seek and yet cannot really find.

Home. There's something powerful in that small but meaningful word.

Home. There's also something sad, challenging, even forlorn for many of us.

For me, there's a certain bittersweetness in that Caribbean air and the taste of comida criolla, in the view of the Puerto Rican coast from the plane window that breaks the blue expanse of ocean.

Home is both promise and grief.

You see, imperial and colonial imaginations have made home complicated for some of us.

For Puerto Ricans, colonial rule has taken the resources of the land, and then spread many of us in a diaspora across the United States and the world. For other communities, the slave ships tore apart families and places and belonging. For others, it was warfare and privation that led to migration. For yet others, it was rejection at home, at school, at church, about whom God has made you to be.

That this home for many of us feels like it is somewhere else, but it's a somewhere else that lives largely in our hopes and imaginations, a somewhere else to which we cannot descend on a plane, even if we clap as the wheels touch the ground.

In Luke 4, we read about Jesus's return home to Nazareth. There is initial applause.

But that adulation quickly turns more dire. Jesus, you'll remember, reads from Isaiah at his home synagogue, announcing the ways God's grace is embodied in freedom for the imprisoned, liberation for the poor, wholeness for all those who lack. And at first his neighbors celebrate his prophetic voice, but then Jesus reminds them and us that God's grace falls upon those we don't think are worthy. And with that, applause turns to rage, and Jesus' neighbors seek to cast him from the nearest cliff.

You see, Empire has taught us that grace is a zero-sum game, that our thriving requires the suffering of others, that there simply isn't enough to go around, so we must desperately hold on to whatever we have.

Empire has lied to us. That grace for others means loss for us, and Jesus was trying to help his neighbors and to help us imagine something different. Yet returning home apparently was simply not possible for a prophet. And I wonder if Jesus took this lesson with him on the road to Jerusalem, on the road to a Roman cross.

In Luke 9:58, Jesus responds to a would-be disciple who perhaps impulsively declares that they would follow Jesus wherever he went. Perhaps you, like me, have uttered such foolishness to Jesus, forgetting to count the high cost of the Messiah's path. Jesus responds to them and to us:

“Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests. But the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”

Now, that's a word. And I think we miss the point if we narrow the scope of this verse to be an indication of Jesus' itinerant life, or merely a biographical point. No, I wonder if this is a way to think about life under the shadow of Empire, under the threat of the kind of imperial violence that will take Jesus' life. And which still stalks so many of us still today. Perhaps home is just not possible in the wake of Empire's violence.

My friends, I yearn to be on a plane again, heading to an island that makes me who I am, an island whose influence reverberates in the lives of those I love. I want to gaze expectantly to the horizon, waiting to see those green shores.

I can't wait for the first step on that jet bridge, that first whiff of Caribbean air. Can't wait to be home again. But I also know that feeling, that yearning for home, will remain unrequited. That home I yearn for no longer really exists, but what does exist is not the home I imagine. But the tangible, real home I've created here in this home, with this family, with these friends.

Home is a place, yes, but it's also a commitment, a demand that God's justice would unfurl here and now, a faith that expects to taste God's grace in the people and the places where God has planted us. Home is a feeling and a commitment. But it's also a sense of loss, an absence, an unfulfilled promise. And in all that, Jesus is our companion, and so also are all these marginalized folks yearning for home and finding it wherever we can.

In the end, home is tinged with grief for many of us. God's promise is that home can also be a recognition. Hard won to be sure, but a recognition of the immense grace that yet surrounds us. And maybe as we clap when we land, we grieve what we have lost, and yet treasure the many gifts that have kept us alive.

And in that space between grief and hope, loss and promise, life and death, we discover anew the shape of God's grace. And just maybe. Catch a glimpse of home right here and right now.

We are excited to announce a new chapter in the Enfleshing Witness movement: “Enfleshing Witness: Rewilding Otherwise Preaching.” Learn more about this new grant opportunity and sign-up to stay connected as the project unfolds.

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Rev. Eric Bareto

Eric D. Barreto is the Weyerhaeuser Associate Professor of New Testament at Princeton Seminary. He holds a BA in religion from Oklahoma Baptist University, an MDiv from Princeton Seminary, and a PhD in New Testament from Emory University. Prior to coming to Princeton Seminary, he served as associate professor of New Testament at Luther Seminary, and also taught as an adjunct professor at the Candler School of Theology and McAfee School of Theology.

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Rev. Winnie Varghese 12/5/23 Rev. Winnie Varghese 12/5/23

Enfleshing Witness: Winnie Varghese

Be not conformed to this world, the Bible says, but be transformed by the renewing of your hearts. Or, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. What are those conforming things that we should be watching out for? What keeps us from freedom?

The following is a lightly edited transcript and a video of Reverend Winnie Varghese’s talk from our 2021 Enfleshing Witness gathering. Winnie preaches because God has given her a love for words and images and a heart that is changed by the words of others. Winnie preaches to American Episcopalians because she has found her home there. And because she believes the word held in the context of communal prayer creates a space for her to encounter profound truths, personal clarity, hope, and community. Winnie preaches among people who seek to walk with Jesus on the way of liberation.

Hi, my name is Winnie and I'm an Episcopal priest, and I've just moved back to Atlanta, Georgia.

When my dad was on the phone with his sister (my aunt) he told her that I was moving to Georgia, she replied, “Winnie's moving to Russia?”

My aunt lives in India, but when I was a child, that family lived in Tripoli, in Libya. There's a picture of her in our photo album. By herself, with her hair in a high, loose, very glamorous bun, early 1970s, with a Ghazi sari on, on the beach, on the Mediterranean, on the Africa side, in Tripoli. From my perspective, in Garland, Texas, just impossibly glamorous.

How amazing that she would assume that I was equally cool and international. I mean, I guess I am her brother's daughter, but... My Georgia is in blue and red America, and of course, it is perfect for me to be here again. I came here for the first time as a 17-year-old and among the first generation in my community of immigrants from India to have their college education in the United States.

So, “be not conformed to this world,” the Bible says, “but be transformed by the renewing of your hearts.” Or, “it is for freedom that Christ has set us free.” What are those conforming things that we should be watching out for? What keeps us from freedom?

My pursuit of freedom, of vocation, of purpose, and my own curiosity about what my life should be like or could be like, took me far from my family and community at the same time that racialized identity started to act, and starts to act in most of our lives. All the forms with race start to appear right around college. The clubs that you have to join, the organizing, the potlucks around identity. What does it mean to be Asian American or Indian or Malayali if you have no place in those communities?

The Bible reads to me as a story of people who migrate and move and wonder about identity. People that move away from the place and people they know. Sometimes they say it’s because God calls them, which I think means that whoever was writing it down couldn't figure out why they had left that great home. Or that the writers are a generation that experiences themselves as interlopers in a strange land, still, and who needed to tell a story of their own legitimacy. Or because of empire, or war, or political upheaval, or violence, or famine. The things that cause migrations of people today. At the mercy of powers greater than our own little families, we are seeking a way through for this generation and maybe stability for the future.

To people who know these stories well and live in the midst of occupation, Jesus and Paul say: Live in freedom now.

I've tried to take that very seriously in my life and I've noticed a few things along the way.

1. The systems that restrict freedom are sophisticated and can confuse us into believing that freedom lies within those systems.

Climbing a ladder or sitting on the panel, admission to the college, a seat at the table, acquiring some of the access to voice or decision-making that people in power seem to have.

Equality and representation matter a lot, but they have nothing or very little to do with actual freedom. With your freedom. It might make the world appear to be more equitable, but it won't ultimately feed your heart.

2. I feel most at home in communities, I've found, that are multiracial and multicultural.

That's the kind of church and neighborhood where I feel most like myself. I don't feel at home in monocultural church or community of any kind, including the churches of my origin and my family's origins.

Now, I love those communities. I like to hear their language and their music. It brings me to tears often. It is my personal history in some ways, but I literally don't speak that language, and I think that's fine. And more importantly for me, my parents never probably felt fully at home there either. They chose to wander out. Our story is not an ideal, and probably no one's is, right? They too look for other communities, and I inherit those choices of exploring and questioning.

3. No one gets to tell us, me or you, what home is, who to love, what is authentically you.

The Bible actually seems to say you will struggle and journey in that space your entire life. Have integrity there. Communities of origin or identity are very important for political organizing, for solidarity based on experience. No one is going to fight for our rights, but us, we're all told. That is probably a practical reality. And in that context, yes, I am Asian American. I am Indian. I am Malayali. But let's not confuse that kind of identity marker with freedom, or even with embodiment. Whether my mind can seek knowledge and wisdom freely within that community, whether I can be myself, as my body tells me to be, in that community I come from, where so many men claim that their need for authority within the community is essential to community identity.

I know none of you know what I'm talking about. There's now a robust new round of patriarchy among young adults in my community, as they embrace a more evangelical Christianity, or root themselves in a nationalist lane of orthodox Christianity, or just plain old secular patriarchy, which also we call tradition, culture, and to our shame, faith.

Paul calls that the ‘powers and principalities,’ and ‘the ways of the world.’ Sin that is disguised as tradition and culture, as a racialized excuse to subjugate women, base culture on the unpaid domestic labor of women, to physically and emotionally abuse women and LGBTQIA persons in our communities, to define our community as caste. Sin becomes the ultimate separation from and demonizing of the flesh of our bodies.

So this return to Georgia for me, the U. S. one, has taken me back in my mind to when I was 17 and wondering what it meant to be an adult American from India. Trying on Asian American for the first time, realizing I was a queer person, walking around self-consciously in dark brown skin in George Bush's America that was about to go to war with the parts of the planet that my family is from. That aunt and her family left Libya, not long before the U. S. bombed a neighborhood they used to live in. We are told here that those were precision bombings, targeted, which it makes it sound like it was a military installation or something, far from babies and mothers.

But this one was catty-cornered to my aunt's house, like when the U. S. invaded Kuwait and our relatives fled, leaving everything they owned behind, never compensated, some missing for months. In that good war. ‘We won that war,’ they said on TV. ‘No one was harmed. We were invited in,’ they said.

For those of us with families impacted by U. S. foreign policy and the shifts in the 1990s, there is a new solidarity of otherness and outsider. Those were the years I started to get stopped in airport security lines for the extra long checks with guns and dogs sometimes. ‘For your own protection,’ I was told over and over again. And I'm one of the super lucky ones that was actually never hurt or detained.

But I remember all the people who walked by and looked away. That multiracial America. Everyone, right? No one stopped. Some people shouted, people stopped. And sometimes in Spanish, to each other, assuming that I could not understand.

The powers and principalities are everywhere. The ways of the world, we read in the Bible. Take care of your own, we are told today.

I believe our freedom in Christ is far more than that, and offers us so much more than that. Entangling human connection through the boundaries of identities, generating wild possibilities, for beautifully connected living that we discern in these bodies, in these contexts, over and over and over again.

Now I don't know that there will be anyone to look at a faded photo in a family album of me in 20 years, but if there were, I hope they would see a woman whose image says that there are many ways to be in this world. This beautiful world of seashores and continents stretching the limits of our imaginations.

A photo of someone enough like your own flesh and blood. To know she could love you and already imagines for you much more than you might think to ask or imagine.

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Rev. Winnie Varghese

The Rev. Winnie Varghese is the rector of St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Atlanta. She co-hosts the (G)race podcast with The Rev. Azariah France-William and is on the leadership team for Church Anew’s Enfleshing Witness movement.

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Bishop Michael Curry 10/30/23 Bishop Michael Curry 10/30/23

Bishop Michael Curry on his Faith and Health Journey

Prayer seeks the good and well-being of others. It is an act and expression of love as we lift someone or some circumstances before the God whom the Bible says is love. And that is not only a matter of expression. It leads to and undergirds outward action.

***Photo by*** ***Aaron Burden*** on ***Unsplash***

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the opening remarks of Presiding Bishop Michael Curry to the Executive Council of The Episcopal Church, meeting virtually through Oct. 27.

My wife, Sharon, and I are profoundly grateful to you for your prayers, thoughts, and well wishes; and to God, who, out of the fullness of love, receives our prayers and responds in God’s will and way. Thank you is hardly an adequate word but please receive it in the full spirit. Thank you.

I don’t think that I have ever been more prayed for than in the last month or so. I’ve been prayed for by you, my fellow Episcopalians, by friends and colleagues from other Christian traditions, by Jewish and Muslim friends, by fellow children of God of all stripes and types. Prayer matters, and it makes a difference. I’m a witness.

Before the surgery I found myself at a strange peace with whatever was to be. I know that that peace wasn’t the result of Michael Curry’s will power. Somebody was praying. I remember there’s an old Gospel song that says in the refrain, “Somebody prayed for me.”

During nine hours of surgery, somebody was praying. During three days in ICU, two weeks in the hospital, somebody was praying. And now in this recovery period with physical therapy, somebody was praying. Part of my physical therapy has been to walk a little bit further each day, and the therapist goes with me. And then when she’s not here my wife, Sharon, goes with me. And Sharon sometimes will say, “It’s time for our walk.” And I’ll say, “You know, I’m not a dog,” but it does sound like taking the dog for a walk.

But believe me, prayer matters, and it has made a difference. And I’m a witness. Thank you.

In the weeks since I was in the hospital, I’ve thought more about prayer, and not only prayer, but the relationship between prayer and what Jesus taught us about God’s way of love.

When Jesus and New Testament writers speak of love, the Greek word most frequently used to translate the word love is the word “agape.” The word agape refers to the kind of love that is unselfish, sometimes sacrificial, but always seeks the good and the well-being of others as well as the self.

That kind of love is what Jesus was talking about when he said, “God so loved the world that he gave his only son.” Unselfish, sacrificial, seeking the good, our good, of all people. That kind of love is what Jesus was talking about when he said, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”

Agape. Sacrificial. Unselfish. That kind of love is what the writer of 1 John was talking about when he said: “Those who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.” Agape. Unselfish. Sacrificial. Seeking the good and welfare of others.

So what’s this got to do with prayer? Interestingly enough, I didn’t think of this til earlier this week, but if you look in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s Gospel in Matthew 5-7, where Matthew has brought together many of the critical teachings of Jesus, Jesus explicitly links prayer and love as a way of personal and social change. This is what he said:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven.”

Agape. Unselfish, sacrificial love that seeks the good and well-being of others as well as the self.

From Leo Tolstoy to Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, this text has been a cornerstone of the nonviolent way of justice and change that seeks the good and well-being of others as well as the self, personally and in society.

Actually, that’s what our prayer book teaches us. This is a side note—the prayer book really is our order of worship; it actually is kind of a rule of life shaped by prayer in the best of the Benedictine tradition. In the prayer book, in the General Thanksgiving at the very end of Morning and Evening Prayer, it asks that we may pray and praise God, “not only with our lips, but in our lives.” Prayer is as much action as it is contemplation. So pray, and do something.

Now this can be dismissed as church talk, and I know that. But this is not simply a church thing or a religious thing. It matters for the life of our world. It matters in our homes and families. It matters in our communities and societies. It matters in our congregations and in our church. It matters here in our life together as Executive Council. It matters to the nations that we call home. It matters to the entire human family and our care for God’s creation. Dr. King wisely and prophetically warned us before his death: “We shall either learn to live as brothers and sisters or we will perish together as fools.” The choice is ours—chaos or community. We are all children of God equally bearing the image of God, each of infinite worth, value, and dignity.

Even as we speak there is conflict, division, and great suffering in Israel and in Gaza; in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo; and in Ukraine, Armenia, and Haiti.

Prayer matters and makes a difference. We must pray. So, pray for wisdom and moral courage for world leaders so that violence does not beget more violence—because violence doesn’t work, and violence will not bring about a just and sustainable and enduring peace. Shalom. Salaam. Violence will not get us there. Violence of the spirit, violence of the tongue. Violence of the flesh. It does not work. So pray for the leaders of the nations. Pray for all victims of violence who have been hurt, harmed, or killed in our societies and communities.

Pray for those who have been victims of hate crimes, whether directed at Jews or Muslims or anybody else.

While we can’t do everything, we can do something. I’ve learned this from our Office of Government Relations. People of faith and goodwill can organize and address our governments to call for humanitarian aid to flow freely to those in desperate need in Gaza; for the release of all hostages; for an end to all targeting of children and other civilians; and for a de-escalation of violence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

But beyond the practical about what we can do is who we are called to be. On Aug. 16, 1967, Dr. King addressed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which I believe was his last formal address to that conference, with these words:

I’m concerned about a better world. I’m concerned about justice; I’m concerned about brotherhood; I’m concerned about truth. And when one is concerned about that, he can never advocate violence. For through violence, you may murder a murderer, but you can’t murder murder. Through violence you may murder a liar, but you can’t establish truth. Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can’t murder hate through violence. Darkness cannot put out darkness; only light can do that.
And I say to you, I have also decided to stick with love, for I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind’s problems. And I’m going to talk about it everywhere I go. I know it isn’t popular to talk about it in some circles today. And I’m not talking about emotional bosh when I talk about love; I’m talking about a strong, demanding love.
For I have seen too much hate. And hate is too great a burden to bear. I have decided to love.

But this doesn’t have to apply just to lands far away or to political leaders. It can apply to us. It’s not just about Israel and Gaza, Sudan and DRC, Ukraine, Armenia, or Haiti. It’s about Michael Curry. It’s about you and me. It’s about all of us in this church and all of us who are part of God’s human family.

Jesus said it this way, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you and so fulfill the law and the prophets.” In our agreements and in our disagreements, we can treat each other with love, honor, and respect. For that is God’s way of love and life. And that is the only hope of humanity.

God love you. God bless you.

Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.

Natalia Terfa 10/26/23 Natalia Terfa 10/26/23

What Sabbatical Taught Me

I know some countries and companies are flirting with 4 day work weeks, or 6 hour workdays and finding increased happiness and productivity among their employees. They aren’t being lazy, but have learned what I have - there is so much more to life than work.

What if you did less?

This is the question posed to me by my therapist, one week before I went back to work after 12 weeks of sabbatical. We were talking about my work-life balance, and she posed this question about the work part of the pie.

What if you did less?

During my 3 months of rest and renewal I found myself with time. So much time. Time for the people that matter most, and time for myself, so the prospect of giving roughly 8 hours a day back to a job has been the cause of a lot of anxiety. How do I stay healthy without sacrificing something or someone? I was able to say so many yeses with all that time. Yes to hanging out with my teenager (in those rare moments she left her cave), yes to walks and dates with my spouse, yes to friend getaways and happy hours, yes to drag brunch, yes to reconnecting to a worshiping community I wasn’t in charge of leading, yes to my mental health, yes to my creativity, yes to my physical health, yes to helping friends, yes to serving my community.

My days were not empty, they just weren’t filled with work.

So now what?

What if you did less?

In the church (and in so many other caring professions) we name our work a “call” and in doing so open the doors to overwork and underpay. But what we don’t often talk about is who bears the cost of clergy giving all their hours of the day to their call. I wrote an article for Church Anew earlier this year about PKs (pastor kids) and how I don’t want my kid to resent the church for getting all of me, or the best of me.

What might it mean that my first call is to my family?

What might it mean that my next call is to myself?

What if you did less?

I ask all these questions knowing that this is tricky. We live in a culture that values overwork, overextension, and we reward achievers with promotions and financial incentives. In the church, we have trained congregations to see clergy as the be everything and do everything leaders. Not just shepherds but CEOs and CFOs and administrators and project managers and teachers and preachers and, and, and.

I wonder what it might look like for a congregation to ask their pastor to do less?

I wonder what would happen if we rewarded people for saying yes to their families and yes to themselves?

Sabbaticals are such a privileged gift, I know.

Not everyone gets one (that’s a rant for another time because I wish EVERYONE got a significant chunk of paid time off of work) but the point is for the receiver of this time to find rest and renewal. I did find those things, but I also found myself in the midst of a massive rearrangement. My priorities and how I spent my days finally aligned and it was magic. Absolute magic. And I want to be a part of creating this magic in others.

Who is with me?

Natalia Terfa

*Natalia* is a Lutheran pastor and author who lives in Minneapolis with her hubby, kiddo, and kitty babies. She loves to bake, to read, practice yoga, and find nature adventures. She is passionate about the church of the future, one with no boundaries and filled to the brim with love and grace and laughter and snark and a lot of fellow “not that kind of Christians.”
*Natalia co-hosts Cafeteria Christian, a podcast for people who love Jesus but aren’t so sure about his follower*

Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.

Erin Weber-Johnson 10/19/23 Erin Weber-Johnson 10/19/23

Upending the Parable of The Widow's Mite: Witnessing Systems of Harm

A close reading of Mark 12: 41-44, especially interpreted through the lens of the Law found in Deuteronomy (14:22-29), stirs up important questions about an often used stewardship approach that interprets this as an object lesson from Jesus regarding individual, sacrificial giving: a person of limited means asked to give generously beyond their livelihood.

Stories about what we think about money, or what we think God thinks about money, are profoundly important. Our money narratives impact scripture and can shape how we hear and interpret scripture. Fostering feelings of guilt or shame, they can serve as a barrier to receiving the good news of the liberating love of God.

The story of the widow’s mite from the Gospel of Mark is frequently utilized in sermons across denominations during annual giving campaigns. While often used to provoke individuals to faithfully consider their giving to the Church, unlike the wealthy young ruler found earlier in Mark (chapter 10), here Jesus does not prescribe action or lift up the widow as an example for others to follow:

He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. (42) A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. (43) Then he called his disciples and said to them, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. (44) For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

(Mark: 12:41-44)

Rather, Jesus is observing and commenting on predatory and exploitative political and social practices. Read in this refocused way, the story reveals the negative impact those that misuse the Temple system had on the marginalized, specifically this widow. Reinforcing this interpretation is Jesus’ own words, often found throughout the gospels quoting Deuteronomy, to highlight and condemn the predatory practices of the day.

Jesus was concerned about how money and possessions were used within larger systems, and utilizing this pericope, frames his observation as directed at the Temple treasury rather than the widow, and draws a corollary between the unjust systems experienced both then and now.

When reading this selection of text from Mark, one might rightly ask the question:

“Where is Jesus pointing our attention ? Where is the moral weight of this story? Is it with the widow or the treasury?”

How one answers these questions dramatically shapes the interpretation of the passage. Fellow Church Anew contributor Walter Brueggemann’s Money and Possessions presses this question:

“It is astonishing that we in the west have been schooled to read the Gospel narratives through a privatized, otherworldly lens that has transposed the story into an individualized, spiritualized account…Jesus was focused on issues related to money and possessions, the ways they are deployed in a world governed by God, and the ways in which they define and key social relationships.”

Brueggemann points to a Jesus who not only was deeply concerned about the ethical use of money and possessions within systems, but in keeping with Mark’s context, saw the necessity of fulfilling the Law found in the Torah.

Before the destruction of the Temple the treasury functioned as a vehicle to fulﬁll the demands of Torah for the collection of economic aid for those regularly dispossessed, namely widows. By giving to the treasury, the rich and those with means were fulﬁlling their responsibilities, so that the widow did not have to. In fact, widows were not required by Law to give to the Temple. Given that she was not under any obligation to give (and in light of the fact that she contributed her two remaining coins), this parable challenges the interpretation that the widow is motivated by generosity. In fact her motives remain unclear. What is important to note is that the wealthy are not taken to task for contributing to the system. Rather, in the passages just before this text, it is the scribes that would “devour the houses of widows” (Mark 12:40) that perpetuate an inequitable and unjust system.

This challenges many western narratives about money. We do not see any passage within this text that suggests Jesus is asking others to give sacrificially or to reflect on their own individual giving. Rather, his words seem almost intended to shame those who would receive a widow’s last coins.

In the wake of crisis after crisis from the last few years, many are calling for reordering of our faith communities and systems. We see the dispossessed and marginalized still fighting for rent relief, for justice from consumer predatory practices, and the regular practice of philanthropic redlining which limits what additional services are provided.

Throughout Mark we witness Jesus concerned about the use of money in larger systems. This preexisting concern provides a consistent basis for the argument that Jesus’ attention was not focused on the sacrifice of the widow, for whom we do not know of her actual motives for giving, but for the predatory economic practices of the day. When viewed not in the interpretative lens of an individual giver, but through a wider analysis of broader systems of injustice, the Jesus in Mark’s gospel provides relevant spiritual insight to be utilized by contemporary readers today.

How might shifting the focus away from individual thoughts on giving to systems that do financial harm release problematic narratives this fall?
How might Jesus’ witness of predatory practices invite us into the liberating love of God? And, living in that love, might we respond?

This fall is an important time to ask what narratives need to be released and how we might reorder our lives together.

Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.

Church Anew 10/17/23 Church Anew 10/17/23

Leadership Lab: Winnie Varghese

We've had to rebuild all of our systems for who we are today. I don't know that we would've had permission without that kind of isolation to rethink some things that probably needed to be rethought, frankly.

Over the past year the Church Anew team has been working to connect and build resources for church leaders to see what their colleagues are doing around the country. With that the Leadership Lab was born. We have interviewed several church leaders doing innovative and amazing things, and we want to share their knowledge and wisdom with the world.

Church Anew recently caught up with Rev. Winnie Varghese whose name you might recognize from our Enfleshing Witness project. We are excited to share a deeper dive into the roots of her passion and the richness of her experiences serving Episcopal congregations in Los Angeles, New York City, and now in Atlanta, Georgia.

Church Anew (CA): Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Winnie Varghese (WV): I am an Episcopal priest and the rector of St. Luke's in Atlanta. I grew up in Dallas, Texas, and I served as a priest in New York City for about 20 years and in Los Angeles before that. I've been here in Atlanta for two years.

CA: Can you tell us a little bit about your current ministry context?

WV: St. Luke's is a downtown church in Atlanta. It was founded in 1864, the last year of the Civil War. This is its fourth building, and it's moved within maybe a mile downtown. This building is from 1906. 1906 was the year of the Atlanta race riots, and it was a massacre of black people by white people. That was called a riot, and many happened all over the country at that time. And so this building opened that year, and the rector at the time, Kerry Wilmer, invited W. E. B. DuBois, who was a mile away at Clark Atlanta, Spelman, Morehouse, to come and have a conversation about what had happened. I feel like that's a really iconic piece of who this church is.

We didn't move out of the city during white flight, or when the highway tore through the city during that era of segregation, of disenfranchising black people and emptying out neighborhoods. We're right at that court junction. We've had the kind of leadership that could do things, like have a conversation with DuBois, at that level of conversation in our church on the broad step in a brand new building when things like that just were not happening, but also it feels shameful to read the conversation today. We're ashamed, you know, you couldn't be proud of that conversation, but it happened.

So, I feel like we sit on seven acres in downtown Atlanta that is booming, that is ripe with development possibility, and it has the ministry founded at the church that serves people who are unhoused, that has mental health services that are very accessible and that are linked to spirituality. The food bank for the city was founded here. It has this great sense of service to the community and is thinking about what belonging means and what it means to be a powerful institution in the center of the city with access to all the leadership of the city with an endowment that's robust and booming that actually speaks the truth and creates space for the city we're becoming.

CA: What are some bright spots currently of the ministry of St. Luke's or your own ministry personally?

WV: What's really fun about the city, this church and the city, is two years out of pandemic isolation, which in our church, across the board in the Episcopal church, bishops took a really firm hand in telling people to close their buildings, to not gather in the buildings. So it means that coming from an empty building, an empty site a couple of years ago to coming back to full functioning has been a journey. We are right at the point where we now again have hundreds of people on a Sunday morning and we've got 20 babies in the nursery and we're coming back and you see people on Sunday, so happy to see each other because it's been three years and we can do that again.

It feels just really energized because people are coming back, and we've had to rebuild all of our systems for who we are today. I don't know that we would've had permission without that kind of isolation to rethink some things that probably needed to be rethought, frankly. We've tried to take that opportunity to get it right about what people need, what they can handle, and really to get back in the business of inviting people to be together because it feels good to be in community. On Sunday morning when I asked people to greet each other before we start the opening hymn, it's just raucous, which feels really good in a very big building for it to feel full. It's a really happy time at St. Luke's.

CA: What have been some of the challenges that you've faced in either your current ministry context or previously? What have been the challenges related to creating an equitable, diverse environment that is inclusive of everyone?

WV: I think one of the pieces that we might work with leadership on, lay and ordained, is to really think about belonging and equity. You've got to do your personal work.

We all carry a lot of baggage. I think what I've watched in the church is either one version where it’s kind of resigned: ‘Why would anyone want to come here? Church is so lame, so dull, we're so problematic.’ This self-defeating almost cynical version of church. Or, the other extreme of that would be scolding people that ‘y’all are just getting it wrong and that we've got to get it right.’ Whether you're the kind of church that scolds people on their personal behavior, or on the systems that we live in, and the struggles of the world that we live in.

I think being a grounded Christian leader, a faith leader that has thought about their, and worked on our own, points of pain and trauma that trigger in our own lives. What we're trying to accommodate and account for in leadership, what we're scared of, our own sense of what is good and what makes us good, which is often a very shallow place for most of us. Our desire to be good is probably why we are in church. That's actually a destructive place to act from because good and innocence and all those things are deeply problematic. Really having done the work of thinking through how we function in complex societies, are complicit in those societies, are rewarded for that, are privileged in that. Really doing that work so that we stand in pulpits and in leadership with a lot of humility work, working out our salvation as we are collectively. Speaking modestly and boldly the truth.

That's what prevents people from becoming burned out, from becoming cynical, from becoming resigned to the way things are from or not believing in the power of the gospel to transform the world or the church. I feel like I've just encountered it over and over and over. Both self-righteous and ragey leadership. They're just frustrated with the system, or really sanguine, just kind of, ‘ah, we tried and we couldn't get there’ or burned out or defeated. I feel like I've encountered that character over and over in my adult life. Clearly that's where I'm supposed to learn something about myself, and so I think the capacity to be self-reflective and learn while also being a leader, not using that to be passive, is the trick. That's the journey, and it never ends.

But I think that's the heart of it. I guess another way I'd say that is I remember meeting an older priest when I was a new priest who said that you couldn't be an effective priest unless you had had an encounter with the living Christ and been born again. And she's a mainline Anglican. What is she talking about? Right? I'm not fundamentalist or evangelical, but I think I know what she means now. She had been a priest for a while before she figured that out. If the journey of faith isn't true and active in your life, if you're not on that journey and changing - changing before God, changing yourself - you burn out.

CA: You said a lot of the people, in clergy and church leadership are coming in because they want to be good, but that's not the goal. Can you elaborate a little bit more on that idea?

WV: Often people that want to be in religious leadership…deep down what's happening is you want to be right, you want to be good. And that's often tied to a sense of innocence: that we are good, that there's bad things out there or bad ideas out there, but we are good. And I think it's really naive, and it's an American identity as well. And it's not true. And so if we do something wrong, it's a mistake where we wouldn't have meant genocide or slavery or class oppression. We're good and our hands are clean.

I think it's part of the fallacy of the American identity that because we didn't mean it then it doesn't matter, it's not part of us. I think a true Christian identity is much more about standing in the truth of who we are, and what we inherit, and what our responsibilities are, and then seeking the guidance of the gospel message; seeking to be followers of Jesus as we find our way. That's always going to be messy. There's not a way to step out of that mess.

I've had friends that talk about their call that way. Like ‘I was a lawyer, I was in finance and that was just so conflicted and complex. And so I came to the church where things were on the side of the good,’ and then they're disappointed by how there are still the same old people in the church that were everywhere else. Everywhere we go is just people trying to figure out how to be people together. There's nothing more holy or different in this space except that we're more clear that we're trying to follow this path of Jesus. But it's the same old people in the same old struggles everywhere. We are still making decisions with all the complexity of ourselves.

So I think that desire to separate ourselves from the rest of the world, and I come from that idea of a commune or a utopia or somewhere where we're not having that much impact on the land and we're not causing harm. I have that in me, and it's just not true. There's no version of life that's like that. But I think a lot of people that choose church leadership, we have that idealism in us that there's some way that we can really get this right separate from the world. And I feel like that so much of the story of Jesus is that he steps away for relief, but he's just constantly in the messiest part of the mix where we see the life of God.

CA: Where have you found support and encouragement for some of the harder work that you're doing?

WV: I remember when I was a student at Union watching James Cone, like the great James Cone. He was in his sixties still lecturing. Watching him literally learn with students in class with this amazing lecture, these amazing readings, and then asking questions in such a way that meant that we were learning, and he was learning, and we were learning from each other together.

I remember thinking, I want to be an adult like that. I want to be someone who's always curious and knows how to learn, that can know how to draw teaching out of people.

I learned this in my third congregation. I wish I had learned it earlier, to talk to other leaders here. And it's really interesting to me to watch them guide me and guide themselves to a better solution than I would've come up with myself. And if it is something I might come up with, it's faster and better than I would've done if I had been sitting by myself trying to figure it out. Staying in a real, solid relationship with the people in our community.

I'm answering this very differently than I would've 15 years ago, I would've said, ’here's my colleague group of people that are not attached to where I work’, or ‘here are my friends who are not church people or not in ministry who are my safe place.’

I find that now in our lay leadership, in our staff, like our people, but importantly not just clergy people. Being as inquisitive as Dr. Cone was, and inviting that from them, and being curious brings so much clarity. For me it's really important that it's within the context I'm in, that it's not like a little cabal of clergy are the only people that have answers, or that a little group of people so separated from the church are the people I can really trust. That we do that here, I'm finding, is really important for me.

CA: What words of encouragement, advice, or challenge would you have for ministers and church leaders right now?

WV: There's this beautiful writing: “the response to anxiety is awe and wonder.” [In] our baptismal prayer, we pray for a sense of awe and wonder in God's creation. We are in such an anxious time – for very good reason. What a clown show of a world we live in right now, just hate everywhere. Fascism everywhere. All around us are such strong reactions that feel violent and are violent. We are right to feel anxious. And I think part of being a church leader is that you feel the anxiety of your people. It is so important that we stay in the awe and wonder space. It doesn't mean that we deny anxiety, but that we notice those things that facilitate our being, and those things that make us thankful, and that we make time to notice in those ways.

We don't counter anxiety by repressing it or denying it. We counter it by noticing the great beauty of life. You need creativity to feel courageous. It's not like I have a moment where I think, ‘oh, I'll be brave and say some brave words. I'll be courageous.’ I have moments where I think, ‘oh, this is what needs to be said. This is the truth. This is actually a beautiful truth.’ And I can do that with some humility, say something that feels true. When I get that right, the community comes right back with, ‘oh yeah, that's so true.’ And some people will be mad at us, but we've got to feel creative to do those courageous things. We can't do them out of anxiety, so we have to find ways to step out of our things that take us out of our anxiety. Sometimes that's speaking it, but, often it's getting myself to a more creative place.

I often don't feel confident, but I want people to feel like we can be calm, and go together. That we can make mistakes, and we can come back. Everything in our culture is designed to make us feel like we're alone, and that we need to buy stuff to feel less alone. Whether we're alone or not, really deeply, it's a choice we can make. If we can invite people to be with us, even in those things that we think are our decisions alone, and be with us in those things where it's obvious, we don't have to be alone. To me, that's where courage comes. It's where the spirit works when two or three are gathered. And I think we should resist everything that tells us we must be alone or isolated.

Special thanks to Elizabeth Schoen, one of our Church Anew interns over the summer, for her work conducting many of the Leadership Lab interviews and getting the series launched!

Winnie Varghese

*The Rev. Winnie Varghese is the rector of St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Atlanta. She co-hosts the (G)race podcast with The Rev. Azariah France-Williams.*

Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.

Church Anew 10/12/23 Church Anew 10/12/23

Leadership Lab: Erika Spaet

A one on one interview with Pastor Erika Spaet exploring the challenges of planting a church and building relationships between the congregation and the community in an ever-changing world.

Church Anew recently caught up with Pastor Erika Spaet in Bend, OR to discuss her ministry and the Story Dwelling community that she has helped to build there.

Church Anew: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Erika Spaet: Sure. I'm an ordained pastor in the ELCA, and I live in Bend, Oregon. I would say it’s a rapidly growing small city, maybe you've heard of Bend. I don't know. It's kind of a hot thing right now.

I am married, and I have two very young children. I have a three year old and a three month old. I moved to Bend in 2017. This is my first call, I moved to Bend as a mission developer under a call through both the Oregon Synod and the United Methodist Church. So those two denominations invited me to come to Bend because it's a quickly growing city and to listen since I have some background in community organizing, particularly in the criminal justice system and local politics. They wanted me to come and weave some of my organizing experiences along with a call to word and sacrament, to uncover what the longings are here in this place, particularly among young people and working people and queer folks.

I was really open to what the call might evolve into. I didn't know if a faith community would be the thing that this place needed. And what has emerged is Story Dwelling, which is a faith ecosystem. We talk about it as a web, or a network of people, who are walking together with shared commitments around liberation and real relationships that care for one another and for our neighbors.We have a Sunday morning gathering, but we also have these other kinds of gatherings and other ways that the work expresses itself as a faith community. Not everybody would describe themselves as Christian. Many people would describe themselves that way. But what brings us together are these shared convictions around relationship and justice.

One of the pieces of work that's grown out of that, (I wouldn't say I’m bi-vocational for me it's all connected), is the midwifing of childcare organizing. We set up childcare co-ops in churches, and part of that has been getting these co-ops off the ground and figuring out what it looks like to build that organization for more equitable, affordable childcare here in this place. Because as we were listening, not only was “meaning making community” something that people were longing for, but childcare was an urgent, urgent need, as it is everywhere. So that’s what my days look like, I'm a pastor and a childcare organizer. Yeah, that's me.

CA: You've talked a little bit about how your faith ecosystem started and evolved. If you had to encompass what makes Story Dwelling different on a day-to-day basis from an average ELCA Lutheran congregation, how would you describe that?

ES: Yeah, I think the question for any congregation, whether you're the average traditional or you're a mission development, is like, ‘oh, this particular group of people, what's our work to do together?’ And so that's kind of how I think about it. What's our vocation together as a group of friends and as a group of people walking together? What's our work to do? And I think our work to do is increasingly around three perspectives that are really centered in our community. Those three perspectives are working families with young children, queer folks, and people who, in church jargon, we might say they're ex-vangelicals.

Bend is a place with unbelievable wealth disparity. And so the focus on working families is really intentional, and there's a lot of overlap. We have a lot of queer ex-vangelical young working families. So those three groups of people, what is their work to do together? I think it is to center their experiences, as well as the experiences of other people who have been wounded by church, or who have never experienced church or people who feel like the church is called to do actual tangible in-the-flesh work in the world and in our neighborhoods.

So our work together is to make that a reality. It’s to center the perspectives, our own perspectives and other people who have not found their place in traditional western Christianity. And out of that comes a real commitment to childcare, for instance. Childcare is a faithful issue because if we don't feel supported, if we don't have a place for our children to be nurtured, then I think that's a matter of faith, a matter of community, and a matter of love and justice. To center walking alongside local efforts to elevate and be accomplices alongside BIPOC folks. What does racial justice look like in a very white city, in a very white-centered city?

When we prioritize and center those voices, working families, queer folks, and ex-vangelical voices, what emerges is our own kind of special vocabulary of faith, our own theological vocabulary: What do the sacraments look like for people who didn't grow up with communion? What do rituals look like as our children are growing up? How do we come alongside them with ritual? What kind of music do we sing? I mean, I'm the only one who would identify as Lutheran in my congregation. So what kind of hymns are we singing? What's our musical kind of expression in the world? Our work builds out of our own experiences as working families, queer folks and ex-vangelicals. Cultivating that work in the world together and practicing a liberatory theology that comes out of our experiences is the goal.

CA: You’re creating an individualized faith community that is so centered on the people and the individual experiences of the people.

ES: Yeah. We're doing life together based out of our own experiences for sure. And that's part of the name, Story Dwelling. A lot of what is important to us is not only drawing upon ancient stories, biblical stories, and ancient wisdom, but doing a lot of our own storytelling and being in touch through one-to-one conversations as well as through a public kind of storytelling. But to see those stories as sacred, there's nothing that's not sacred.

CA: You moved to Bend for this project in 2017. What have you found to be the biggest challenges in establishing Story Dwelling and keeping it alive?

ES: Maybe there are three that are coming to mind right now. The first is walking alongside people who are coming out of, to be frank, patriarchal, homophobic contexts (church contexts), but who long for a ritual and community and maybe don't want to identify as Christian ever again. There are challenges, but also there's a lot of beauty inherent in creating community out of what we don't want. So I think, again, I would describe that as a really beautiful, really rich fertile challenge is how do we create community about what we're for? Not just what we're against, but both are very important. It's very important to know what we're saying no to. And to be really clear about our no. But then the evolution of this community has been what are we saying yes to? So that's one I would say a beautiful challenge.

A couple of challenges that are contextual about here, but probably a lot of places in the United States, are, and these are not so beautiful challenges, space and resources in a city that is incredibly expensive to live in. Our people, some of them struggle with whether they can continue to call this place home because it's so expensive to live here and the values of this city can be so different from the values we are trying to live as people and as a community. So gathering space, for example, is very difficult to find gathering space that we can afford. We met in homes for a long time, but at a certain point it was very difficult to pay a pastor and to have a gathering space and to have enough resources in this very expensive city. And that's connected to the final challenge that I would say. And I think that other mission developments are struggling with this, but this is a question for the church, for any denomination who's doing new church plants, is if we create community and accompany young working families.

Millennial families on the whole, I would say, cannot afford to pay a pastor. And so there's a rub there of calling pastors to new church plants. Beautiful, vibrant work, as you said. We have lots and lots of children in our community, which I would say the average typical ELCA church would say like, wow, that's wonderful. And yet if you don't have wealth in your congregation, you cannot pay a pastor. And so that's a rub that I think that the denominations will have to reckon with. It can be a beautiful challenge because perhaps we discern in the future that we're going to rely more heavily than we already do on lay ministers and elevating the leadership of folks in the community. I find that millennial working families are pretty at capacity, so it's valuable for us to have a full-time pastor. So there's a tension there. And it's not just a bad one, it can be a very good one to discern, but I think something for the denominations to get really serious about. In the United State to be an ELCA congregation, do you have to have wealthy membership to survive? And so far up to this day, the answer has been yes. And do we want to change the answer to that? And that the question of the hour.

CA: What would you say when so many pastors are feeling burnt out, especially with the pandemic and all of these growing questions and concerns about the church dying out? Where have you found support and encouragement to keep going and keep working towards something better?

ES: I don't feel burnt out. I feel lucky enough to be pastoring a young, excited, and imaginative group of people that is growing. I think of one woman in our community, and their family's pretty new. They've gotten really engaged over the course of the past year, I would say. I met them last summer. The mom in the family and I are about the same age. Her parents moved to the United States while her mother was pregnant with her from Vietnam. They were refugees from Vietnam during the Vietnam War, and they moved to the United States. She grew up Buddhist, and is now in what she might describe as an inter-faith marriage. And they never knew what church or any of that might look like for their family until they found Story Dwelling. And now she feels like this just feels like the right fit for her family. And for me that’s one of the greatest joys of my life to be pastoring in a context where I have a multi-faith family looking for friendship and community and mutual support and church is where they have found it. And to get to be the priest or the pastor of a family like that is a great joy for me. So I would say I'm not burned out around that. My friendships and my people, we have more that we want to do at the end of the day, but we just don't have the energy to do. But we have a lot of excitement, and a lot of conviction. But I'll come back to the previous question of fundraising, grant writing, hustling to just make ends meet for this beautiful group of people for their sake. That does kind of burn me out.

We have more community than I have the capacity to pastor to. I have more children than I certainly have the capacity to pastor to. Having to use my time grant writing, fundraising, hustling for resources does not feel like it brings me life. Yeah, that is the only part. I mean,there are so many granting agencies that are so generous and such great partners. The Synod, my Synod, I love my Synod. But yeah, that doesn't feel like at the end of the day what I want to be using my time to do. My people give me life , hustling for money does not.

CA: What does your gathering space look like right now?

ES: Well, in the pandemic, we had a lot of really cautious folks in our congregation and a lot of children. So we met outside at our local Unity community. They have a fire pit and a labyrinth. So we met outside all winter, and Bend is probably just as cold as Minnesota. This past winter was the first winter we gathered inside at our local Latino Community Association. They have a community hall where they do events. So we rented space from them and in the summer we meet in a public park that's got a playground. So that's really wonderful. And then we're hoping that this fall for the first time, we might have a semi-permanent partnership gathering space at one of our local mental health counseling facilities. So we will see. It's been a very flexible adaptive group of people.

CA: What is a bright spot in your ministry area?

ES: Yeah, maybe something that I haven't mentioned yet that is definitely a bright spot is partnership. Story Dwelling doesn't think of itself just as Sunday mornings. This is a kind of web of relationship. We are also in relationship with other congregations and other entities in our city, and that feels like exactly the way that it's meant to be for us. We're partnering with three other congregations to do ecumenical youth group work, which has been so valuable. We partner with two other congregations to do our childcare work. And so to be doing all of this in teamwork, not only for my congregation, that feels really good. It's not just us. We've got other groups of people who are following their vocations in the world. It takes all of us. One church is not better than the other. Hopefully we are listening to where Spirit is calling us. As a pastor it offers me a lot of grace in my life, relieves a lot of pressure in my life, and together we've been able to do some pretty incredible things that no one congregation could do by themselves. So that's a bright spot.

CA: You talked a little bit about your background in community organizing. What lessons did you learn from that background that you would want to share with other ministers and leaders in the church?

ES: I think the primary one from these really fundamental points of community organizing is listening. I think that's something that I've tried to really center rather than being a kind visionary who's got a vision for a church that I want to make. It was really important to me to come and listen. It was less like casting a vision and more like putting my ear to the ground. That feels like a skill I learned in community organizing. You don't pick an issue and then try to get people to work with you on that. You listen and then people will say, ‘come on, let's get together and work on this together’. The fundamentals of basically one-on-one relational conversations is a lot of where that listening happens. Listening for what people need, what gets them up in the morning, what keeps them up at night, what stresses them out. Really thinking of everyone as a potential leader and accomplice together. I don't think of myself as being in service to the people in my congregation. I think of us as a bunch of leaders together listening to one another and operating out of that listening. So leadership, listening, one-to-ones.

CA: You talked about the idea of ex-vangelicals and people who have been hurt by the church, whether it be queer folks, people of color, women in general, or people who identify as women, or people assigned female at birth. If somebody were to come in, whether it be a congregation or a faith collective or just a minister's life, what are tips that you would give to try and make them feel more welcome and comfortable in a space that has hurt them in the past?

ES: So one of the ways that we think about this in Story Dwelling is not so much that ‘you are welcome here’, but that ‘we are welcome here’. We need all of us in order to feast in the spirit of Jesus. That's our affirmation statement, we don't have a welcome statement. We have an affirmation statement. And part of the spirit of that is, and I've heard this, I didn't make this up, not like you are welcome here to join this thing that we're already doing, but that this was designed with you in mind, and this is designed with your experiences in mind. So that's one piece of the way that we talk about the space that we create together.

Another piece that felt like the right thing to do, that spirit was calling us to do, was to invite people with all of those experiences into leadership, so that they are making the decisions and they are designing the spaces with their own experiences in mind. We have people on our board who might not describe themselves as Christian because we want to make sure we have spaces, and we want to have people making decisions with that perspective. It's a little bit of a shift from “you are welcome here” to this thing that's already happening, but we are designing this out of our own experiences with people with similar pain or similar joy.

Special thanks to Elizabeth Schoen, one of our Church Anew interns over the summer, for her work conducting many of the Leadership Lab interviews and getting the series launched!

Erica Spaet

Pastor Erica Spaet is an ordained pastor in the E L C A and the founder of Story Dwelling, a faith ecosystem in Bend, Oregon. She moved to Bend in 2017 as a mission developer to listen and uncover the longings of the community, particularly among young people, working people, and queer folks. Story Dwelling is a network of people committed to liberation, real relationships, and care for one another and their neighbors. They have a Sunday morning gathering and also focus on issues like childcare and racial justice.

Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.

Peter Wallace 9/28/23 Peter Wallace 9/28/23

The Meaning of Life: A Parable

Journeys are less often about the goal, and more frequently about the experiences it takes to complete them. Such are the spiritual journeys that we embark on, but they are more than they seem. They can reveal things we do not expect, and like a dream, hold a unique significance for each of us.

***Photo by*** ***Clint McKoy*** on ***Unsplash***

This is based on a dream I had. What do you think it means?

In a town far away, a young man approached an older man known to be wise. "Sir, I am told that you know the meaning of life. Will you share it with me?"

"Yes, my son," the older man said. "Come with me."

After a walk of many miles, they came to the shore of a large lake. The older man pointed to an island of rocks in the middle of the lake. "Do you see that island in the lake?" he asked the young man.

"Yes, sir, I do. Is that where I may find the meaning of life?" the young man said excitedly.

"We shall find out," the older man replied. "First, we must get there."

The older man reached down and scooped up a handful of wet sand from the lake shoreline. He threw it out into the lake toward the island, where it landed with a splash. He did this a second time, and a third.

The young man was perplexed. "Sir, what are you doing?" he asked.

"I am building a bridge of sand to the island," the older man replied. "Help me." The young man reached down and scooped up a handful of sand and threw it into the lake toward the island.

"Each scoopful of sand represents a word of wisdom," the older man explained. "We must walk to the island on a bridge of wisdom."

Twenty years later, enough sand from the shore had built up a bridge enabling the two men to walk to the island of rocks.

"Finally, now, is this island where I will find the meaning of life?" the younger man, now twenty years older, asked.

"We have another journey ahead of us, my son," the older man replied. "Do you see that mountain on the other side of the lake?"

"Yes, sir," the young man replied. "Is that where I may find the meaning of life?"

"We shall find out," the elder replied. "First, we must get there."

The older man reached down and picked up a rock from among the countless rocks on the island, and threw it in the water toward the mountain, and it landed with a splash. He did this a second time, and a third.

Again, the young man was perplexed. "Sir, what are you doing?" he asked.

"I am building a bridge of rock to the mountain," the old man replied. "Help me." The young man reached down and picked up a rock and threw it into the lake toward the mountain.

"Each rock represents an act of caring love," the older man explained. "We must walk to the mountain on a bridge of love."

Twenty years later, enough rocks from the island had built up a bridge enabling the two men to walk to the mountain and climb to its summit.

"Finally, now, is this mountain where I will find the meaning of life?" the younger man, now forty years older, asked.

Just then a ferocious storm arose. Heavy rains and fierce winds buffeted the lake, the island, and the mountain. The lake was filled with treacherous waves, dissolving the sand bridge they had built. Great winds blew the bridge of rocks into the waters. Forty years of work vanished in a matter of moments.

The younger man was heartbroken. "All that work we have done is gone!" he said, "and I have yet to find the meaning of life!"

"No, my son, you are well on your way to finding the meaning of life," the old man said calmly. "You have walked the way of wisdom, and you have walked the way of love. But you have another journey ahead of you."

"Where must I go now, sir?" the younger man asked.

"You must climb down this mountain and return to the town and wait there for a young person to approach you and ask you to share the meaning of life. And then you must guide them here just as I did you," the older man explained.

The older man smiled and added, "When you have shared this journey with another, then you will have found the meaning of life, as I have just found it myself now. Thank you, my son."

The two embraced, and then the younger man, his eyes brimming with tears and his heart full of wisdom and love, climbed down the mountain to return to the town.

Peter M. Wallace

Rev. Peter M. Wallace, an Episcopal priest, was for 22 years the executive producer and host of the “Day1” weekly radio program and podcast (Day1.org). He is the author or editor of 15 books, including most recently A Generous Beckoning: Accepting God’s Invitation to a More Fulfilling Life; Bread Enough for All: A Day1 Guide to Life; Heart and Soul: The Emotions of Jesus; and Comstock & Me: My Brief But Unforgettable Career with The West Virginia Hillbilly.

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Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.

Rev. Mihee Kim-Kort 9/26/23 Rev. Mihee Kim-Kort 9/26/23

"This Generation"

Trying to make sense of “this generation” can be fraught with misapprehension. Many things are different, yet many things remain the same. The Gospel of Matthew helps to reinvigorate our notions of modernity, and remind us of the place that children hold as descendants of faith and the new foundation for future discipleship.

***Photo by*** ***Benigno Hoyuela*** on ***Unsplash***

Inspired by the play-based curriculum of my children’s preschool, I used to turn my kitchen over to Desmond, Anna, and Ozzie, when they were barely toddling around and gurgling a few words at a time. I would get out all the pots and pans, every possible cooking utensil, and many large bowls of random ingredients: uncooked rice grains (to my mother’s chagrin), flour, baking soda, various shapes of dried pasta noodles, water, vinegar, food coloring. The shrieks of joy and frustration at the experiments we were concocting together punctuated the constant music of spoons clanging on bowls.

We would go at it: straining and combining, kneading and splashing, and if there was ever an image for the strange mixing of images and stories that often happens in so many of the stories of the Bible, (and especially the stories that Jesus tells us), this might be one possibility. I love the Jesus of Matthew’s Gospel, and the chance to sit with his version of Christ’s life and ministry, a version that includes all the familiar stories ranging from the parables about the kingdom of heaven to the feeding of the multitudes.

Speaking of children, they actually play a striking role throughout most of the gospel of Matthew—they’re received and blessed by Jesus, they participate in miracles, they are recipients of healings. This is not surprising as Matthew’s focus is firmly rooted in one’s roots—the relationships between ancestors and descendants, and making explicit the line from Jesus to all the familiar characters beginning with Abraham to King David to less familiar names, then to “Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah. So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David to the deportation to Babylon, fourteen generations; and from the deportation to Babylon to the Messiah, fourteen generations,” (1:16-17). Matthew wants us thinking in terms of generations. Of the stories of ancestors. Of dreams of descendants. And all the beautiful ways we’re tied together.

There’s the moment in chapter 11, though, when he seems especially exasperated with “this generation.”

“But to what will I compare this generation?” (v. 16). He answers this himself with a parable about children who do not respond to the celebrating or to the wailing. Are the children who play and wail in the parable to symbolize the prophets of their tradition—Elijah, Moses? Or do they represent John the Baptist and Jesus? They were on opposite ends of the spectrum: John played the part of societal misfit, a throwback prophet whom many supposed was demon-possessed (v. 18). Jesus, on the other hand, associated himself with sinners and tax collectors, and was viewed “a glutton and a drunkard” (v. 19). John called for mourning and repentance in the face of judgment whereas Jesus proclaimed joy because of the presence of the kingdom. In both cases their messages encountered unbelief or indifference by “this generation.”

Having read this passage countless times over several years I always found myself nodding at the overall frustration that Jesus may have felt towards “this generation.” Why haven’t they figured it out?

The message of God’s kingdom was practically a bright, flashing neon sign with John the Baptist, and they had a front row view of the nearness of God’s kingdom enfleshed in Jesus: in all the teachings and miracles of healing and raising from the dead, of feedings and calming of storms and walking on water.

In other words, “this generation” in Matthew’s gospel seems easily swayed, capricious, even fickle.

At the same time, I can’t help but feel some empathy for them - the crowds, the people, the disciples… ”this generation.”

Chapter 11 is part of a narrative section following Jesus’ launching of the disciples out into the world – their commissioning to proclaim the good news: “The kingdom of heaven has come near;” and the work: to cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. Not only does “this generation” have this work, but there is the extra burden of the constant tension with the wider community; and not only the established religious community, but pressure from neighbors, relatives, colleagues and co-workers, and friends. There is judgment, rejection, persecution.

But this story isn’t just about the disciples, it was written to include Matthew’s community, (those reading the gospel at the time), that is, “this generation” includes Matthew’s people: those who’ve witnessed the destruction of the temple, the displacement of their people, and the emerging question of their own identity as God’s people in the midst of cultural upheaval, and governmental and political corruption. There was disease and poverty, and ongoing social inequities.

It feels familiar, doesn’t it? The world was heavy then, and it remains so today.

At the end of the prayer, Jesus offers an invitation. It is tantamount to turning from the narrative world to the writer’s world to the reader’s world, what we sometimes call “breaking the fourth wall.” Matthew intentionally includes future generations. That is, “this generation” is the church today, meaning all of us here. When Matthew has us thinking in terms of generations, it’s because the story is constantly extending out. The circle is constantly widening to include more and more of us.

“But to what will I compare this generation?”

I reflect often on this last year in which we’ve attempted to recover some semblance of pre-covid normalcy by returning to the speed and intensity of life before. Or maybe we tried not to because we did learn that our pre-covid lives were untenable – not for us, not for our planet. But we got swept up anyway into all the activities and work, the programs and commitments, and this on top of regular life with its new babies/grandbabies, illnesses, and travel—most of it good, wonderful and purposeful.

Suddenly, our calendars became fuller than ever. Maybe it’s just me. No doubt much has shifted not only in the last three years but even in just the last year. In hard ways. There are a lot of conversations now about “this generation,” and the impact of all that has happened - is happening in the world - on them. What can we do, or should we do with “this generation”?

It struck me that at least one thing has remained the same. All around us there are narratives and stories, voices and sources claiming answers: the formulas, the plans, apps and tools—proffering and asserting a “wisdom,” a certain way of operating in the world, of living, of being, of choosing. To be pushed and pulled in so many different directions – this too weighs on so many in “this generation.”

And so we have Jesus’ countercultural words at the end of the passage: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”

Before this invitation Jesus gives thanks to God: “You have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants.” What does God reveal to “infants,” to the most vulnerable, to the least likely, to the powerless among them? To “this generation”? :

“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”

We are invited to rest. And certainly this resonates in profound ways during this summer season. But the kind of rest offered here is, (typical to Jesus’ vision), a radical alternative. Rest as a response of love. Rest as an offering of care. Rest as a way of being in this world when everything says “do” and “go,” and “scroll” or “download” or “buy”?

‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me.”

This invitation to rest is radical because it is also an invitation to a particular kind of discipleship.

According to NT scholar Colin Yuckman: Despite all the warnings about rejection and suffering (10:16-22), Jesus speaks of a discipleship characterized by “rest,” “light” burdens, and an “easy” (or “good”) yoke.

But light burdens and easy yokes appear oxymoronic. They produce a tension in our understanding of Matthew’s Gospel, in which Jesus elsewhere reminds disciples that “the gate is narrow and the road is hard” (7:14). Less than a chapter ago in Matthew we hear a different tone: “whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me” (10:38).

The command to “learn from me” in the Greek (mathete ap’ emou) is related to the word for “disciple” (mathetes). The invitation to discipleship, however, is more than cognitive learning, or overcoming a gap in knowledge; it is the adoption of a way of life. And this way of life is expressed in terms of doing and being something in relation to Jesus.

In other words: to learn from Jesus is to rest in the person of Jesus. To follow Jesus is to rest in the person of Jesus.

The promise of rest is not guaranteed vacation time, but a beautiful theological affirmation. Of who we are. Of who is with us and for us. And it has precedence. Yuckman goes on to explain: The language clearly recalls Moses’s own vocation (Exodus 33:12-17). To ease Moses’s anxiety about the uncertainty of the wilderness journey, God promises to accompany God’s people along the way: “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest” (Exodus 33:14). God will fulfill the promise for this people whose existence has known little rest (first enslavement, then wandering, later exile and captivity).

Discipleship then, according to Jesus in Matthew’s gospel, is the ongoing return to the person that is the source of all we are and do in this world. It is as the prophet Zechariah says in the passage today: a return to the stronghold and to the promises of God’s restoration. It is the simplicity of the child-like dependence on God who sees us and all we carry, and loves us.

I think often of the young people in our midst, in our churches, who especially participated this past summer in the work of the church, (whether at church camp or on pilgrimage). How might we affirm all their journeys, their work, their experiences because they too need reminders that God’s invitation to rest is an invitation to discipleship? But they also show us a particular kind of wisdom as “this generation,” which is their adventurous response to these invitations, this summer, engaging their belovedness.

Perhaps this is why children are an important motif throughout the gospel. We read elsewhere that “unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” To read about feeding the hungry is one thing; to give a cup of water to one of these little ones is quite another; but to receive that gift is a part of our faith.

This is an invitation to enact wisdom by redirecting our lives. Because the truth and wisdom of our faith is in the living. One discovers the wisdom of Jesus by following, (and yes, sometimes), doing, and also sometimes napping, (Google the Nap Bishop and the Nap Ministry). It’s also making space to dream and to imagine and to hope, and we do so by adopting his spirit and living his imperatives, that is, first to rest in him.

It is fitting that Matthew’s Gospel ends not with Jesus’ departure, but with the assurance of his ongoing presence: “I am with you, even to the end of the age” (28:20). We rest in Jesus, we respond in love so that through him we might be the flesh and blood, the hope and joy of his kingdom in this world.

Mihee Kim-Kort

Rev. Mihee Kim-Kort is a Presbyterian minister, agitator, speaker, writer, and slinger of hopeful stories about faith and church. Her writing and commentary can be found in the NY Times, TIME, BBC World Service, USA Today, Huffington Post, On Being, Christian Century, Sojourners, and Faith and Leadership. She is co-pastor with her spouse of First Presbyterian Church in Annapolis, MD and a doctoral candidate in Religious Studies at Indiana University.

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Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.

Erin Weber-Johnson 9/21/23 Erin Weber-Johnson 9/21/23

The Stewardship of Memory

What do we do with the memories that haunt us? That sneak up on us late at night. And whisper words that cut quick to our core?

***Photo by*** ***Prometheus 🔥*** on ***Unsplash***

Gawd at times it's pretty rough

I get these flashes from the past

The pain, the anger, the sadness

Just creeps up on me, unexpectedly…

Haunted by Memory: A poem by Kaila George

There are many sayings about living a life without regrets, living life to the fullest, regretting what you did instead of what one didn’t. So many memes and words of inspiration. What do we do with the memories that haunt us? That sneak up on us late at night. And whisper words that cut quick to our core?

I live many days as Harper Lee describes her iconic character Scout; living the book of common prayer. I am thinking of things done or left undone, evil done to me or done on my behalf. Working to be present, but when living I hold my ancestors' stories and my own ... .all the while working to discern what's useful, what needs to be saved, what needs to be passed on to my children.. Sometimes all my old memories feel like junk— hanging out for all to see, to comment on, to frame in their own lens.

I wonder what the old evangelical revivalists would proclaim about an internet that doesn't allow for memories to be washed clean as snow. They pop up at us, surprise us, take us back at how real feeling can hit—even after decades. There they are—sitting out—waiting to be used, to be remembered, to be felt again.

The summer I was married, I lived in my husband’s village on an island in Alaska. Growing up in the midwest in a white, upwardly middle class family had taught me specific economic and class rules. Among those rules were neatly mowed, tidy yards with houses well tended. At Christmas, we were assigned a specific lamp color so as to keep to the correct order of red-green-red-green. All distracting kids paraphernalia saved for the backyard where fences kept messes away from view.

Arriving at my husband’s fishing village, I was unprepared for how stewardship looked in different cultures. How cars and old machinery parts were piled and lined the yards of houses. Piece of whatnots stored for a future date.

On the island, there are few places to take, say a car with a broken down transmission, to trade in. There is also limited ability to locate items for repair and often items can be reused for other purposes. Kids toys are often communal property as well. Rather than used by one family, they lay in front yards ready for other families.

Nothing is wasted. Everything can be saved, reused or shared.

Stewardship is often described in how we use the gift of our lives. Whether it be the gift of time, talent, treasure, testimony. We use these simple T’s as they present tangible ways to consider how God moves in the world and, in the movement, calls us to life. Tangible things we can offer to give up for the sake of God’s liberating, life giving love. Yet, our life is made up of so much more than those tangible things.

In the stewardship of our lives, nothing is wasted. In the economy of God, we see how creation reflects this wisdom. We are seen fully and loved completely—from the hairs of our head to the random sparrow.

But, what do we do with the stuff of our lives that don't fit easily into those tangible T-categories? The stuff that doesn't feel like treasure but doesn't feel like sin either.

The memories that we receive may not feel like gifts.

I am haunted by memory. Memories of moments I can not take back. Regrets for choices made, even when the choices were the right ones. Even when I believe I acted as one called.

Memories my ancestors made through their choices. Regrets carried, even when they believed they acted rightly, as one called.

And so today I am laying them out in my front yard. No longer seeking to hide them with a fence. I may pray for my soul to be clean but my memory will never be.

In the ongoing act of the stewardship of life, I offer up my memories for repair, for reconciliation, for the common good. I am unsure what can be reused or shared. But I cling to the hope of God’s economy.

And, some memories, the haunted memories, are of no use except that they bear witness to mine or others’ survival. In God’s economy, nothing is wasted.

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Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.

Eric D. Barreto 9/19/23 Eric D. Barreto 9/19/23

The Source and End of Unity and Belonging

When reading Paul’s letters, the exegetical and theological mistakes we might make are numerous and often tragic, as we all know. The list of insights is significant, of course, but so too are the distracting detours and the deadly interpretations.

***Photo by*** ***Marc Pell*** on ***Unsplash***

Editor’s note: This sermon on Romans 12, preached by the Rev. Dr. Eric Barreto of Princeton Seminary at the beginning of the new academic year, is an invitation for all of us to live into and experience God’s call to community wherever we may be.

Making your way through the beginning of Romans, you will find a haunting story about the downfall of all humans and the divine intervention it took to deliver us all, everyone. The letter reaches a beautiful crescendo at the end of chapter 8 in a long litany of dangers that cannot separate us from the love of God. Nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God, and what a necessary word that is for me. ln chapter 9, Paul turns to a problem: what about Israel? What about God’s promises to a people? Here, again, Paul turns to a haunting story of human failure and divine persistence. Paul closes in chapter 11 with worship and wonder when pondering God’s extraordinary goodness, God’s unbroken promises, God’s inexhaustible grace.

And if you’ve made it this far in Romans, you are exhausted! So many ideas, so many twists and turns, so many questions to pose, but at least the letter is almost done, or so we think!

Because we are not nearly done. Not even close. We still have five more chapters to go! And here we run into a significant problem in coming to understand the heartbeat of Paul’s letters into the confession about God’s unrelenting righteousness that Paul places before us.

Of course, when reading Paul’s letters, the exegetical and theological mistakes we might make are numerous and often tragic, as we all know. The list of insights is significant, of course, but so too are the distracting detours and the deadly interpretations. I want to draw our attention to one such potential mistake today as we begin this fall semester, as some of you join the community for the first time and as some of us return to the rhythms of the academic year once again.

Here’s the mistake:

When we arrive at these closing chapters of Romans exhausted and full of questions, we might miss the centrality of community. We might not notice the importance of belonging. We might neglect the possibilities of human relationships in a world dominated by empire’s drive to make us enemies, contestants over scare resources, neighbors so suspicious of one another that we build ever greater walls between us. You see, these closing chapters of practical advice, hard-won hopes, and personal greetings are not mere appendices for Paul’s letter but critical to the larger arguments he is weaving about God and, yes, about us.

I would be deeply mistaken if I were to listen to the litany of wisdom Paul enumerates in chapter 12 and hear only digestible bits of advice best captured in a greeting card, a cross-stitch, or a bumper sticker. These are not mere quotes but the hard-won conclusions of a pastor and missionary who has risked so much. I would be deeply mistaken if I assume that these closing chapters are the afterthoughts of Pauline theology, the specific stuff I can jettison for the universal, or merely the practical implications of much more important theological truths.

Instead, for Paul, how we gather is a reflection of whom we confess God to be, the ways we find and create belonging are practices of faithfulness more than just politeness, how we treat one another carries the weight of God’s presence in our midst because how we care for one another is a matter of life and death, for in community we experience a taste of the power of Jesus’ resurrection.

I wonder what it would mean for us all to take much more seriously the value of not just the products of our intellectual efforts but also the everyday care and attention we might share with one another, whether in a dorm or a park, whether in a classroom or at the cafeteria, whether at the quad or here in this chapel. What if we imagined that how we relate one to another was not just a way to be nice or polite but a reflection of our deepest commitments to God and one another? And what if we believe, truly believe, that the “we” I’m talking about includes not just students and faculty but also the staff and groundskeepers, those who tend to and clean the buildings, our neighbors here in Mercer Hill and the Witherspoon neighborhood alike?

After all, we rejoice and weep because of the ways God’s joy courses through our communities and the ways God’s grief has drawn near to us even when, at times, all has seemed lost. Living in harmony here should not be a form of control; harmony should reflect the grace that makes us kin one to another. Living fully into community reflects God’s intentional attention to the oppressed and Jesus’ own practices of eating with the sinner. We feed our hungry enemies and give water to our rivals because of God’s bounteous feeding of all creation. We overcome evil with good as we reflect God’s own intervention into a fallen world with love, not violence; sacrifice, not a quest for earthly power; hope and grace, not resentment and vindictiveness.

That is, in every case, in every single case, the source and end of these forms of unity and belonging, these founts of freedom are not our achievements but God’s free gift to us.

So, my friends, remember that each person you meet on this campus is a beloved child of God. And know this, (not in the way you know 2+2 is 4 or the forms of the aorist or the dates of the creeds), but in the way you have tasted and known the joy of God’s presence, in the way you feel when you first meet a friend it feels you have always known. Expect to see God when you exegete and when you eat, when you read and when you pray with a neighbor, when you are writing the best essay you have ever produced and when you comfort a classmate in grief.

After all, the God who incarnated in Christ, who dwelled and dwells among us, who suffered and died, who lives in victory over death, that God is always near. That God is always here with us. That God is always stirring in this community. That God is always inviting us home, inviting us to belong, inviting us to make room for all these strangers who have now become our friends.

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Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.

Church Anew 9/14/23 Church Anew 9/14/23

Leadership Lab: Jessica Liles

A one on one interview with Jessica Liles exploring the challenges of planting a church and building relationships between the congregation and the community in an ever-changing world.

Church Anew recently sat down with Jessica Liles, Deacon and Director of Faith Formation and Education at the Neighborhood Church in Bentonville, AR. She has also been recently named as the Director of Youth Ministry for the ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) and Director of the 2027 Youth Gathering.

Church Anew: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Jessica Liles: I live here in Bentonville, Arkansas. I'm a deacon in the ELCA, married to a pastor. We started the Neighborhood Church about 11 years ago. We planted this church straight out of seminary. We have two kiddos. I particularly love traveling a lot, and national parks are our thing. Joe and I get to do a lot of other fun work for the larger church. We've been part of Mission Developer Training and helping lead the church planning component. We've been doing that since 2018. I've been connected to the Youth Gathering since 2009 and working in the Interactive Learning Center. I've been recently working on a special project with a network called Formation Co-Op, to think about reimagining youth ministry and what that would look like.

CA: Can you talk a little bit more about your ministry context?

JL: Yeah, absolutely. Joe and I planted the Neighborhood Church. He was called here in 2011. We started in an elementary school in a Cafetorium [cafeteria/auditorium], and we rented the space for three hours. We had three hours to get in, set up, have service, and then tear down, but one of the neat elements that we kind of wrapped into worship was fellowship in the middle of service, kind of also holding to the larger framework of worship that gathers the word at meal sending.

And we took the elements of that, and the Lutheran hymnals, and revamped it to feel kind of non-denominational. When folks walk into worship at the Neighborhood Church, they're like, wow, this is non-denominational. And you have these great songs that you hear on the radio with a great prayer and a great message. After the message, we roll right into traditional worship including the Apostle's Creed and the Lord's Prayer and communion. Lots of folks find this is engaging when we have this mix of hitting their spiritual needs in a variety of different ways.

CA: What has been a bright spot in your ministry, whether it be through the Neighborhood Church or through your work with Churchwide, statewide, or synod-wide kind of work?

JL: Being a deacon is this interesting space where you act as the bridge between the church and the world, or the larger context of the church. I think one of the brightest by spots of my ministry is living in that space.

I think another one of the bright spots is the Youth Gathering. You just plop in a city, see 30,000 youth participate and embrace the unknown, embrace the city, embrace everything. I really love interactive learning. It’s amazing to watch young people walk into that space and be able to try to tangibly interact with their faith. They get to see other places in this world where they might connect that maybe they don't see in their home congregations, or they learn about a new ministry and make connections with other folks in other parts of the country, or the world.

CA: What have been some of the challenges in your journey of building the Neighborhood?

JL: Building a church from ground up is some of the hardest work you will ever do. I think part of that challenge is trying to figure out and navigate the space in which you land. This is where you're going to plant a church. You’ve got to get connected to the right ministries, other churches, and create a support space in and around everything you do.

I think for mission starts, one of the bigger challenges often is the movement of people in and out of the building process. The first couple years you have these really impactful, involved, and crucial leaders that helped you start this thing. And then you realize that they must go on to their next thing. That's a really unexpected challenge that I don't think Joe and I were prepared for at the beginning. Now we realize that every ebb and flow of folks within the ministry has come and gone at the right time. The spirit is just moving in this ebb and flow of people because of the gifts they bring are what we needed at that moment to move us to the next spot.

As you grow, just sustaining is a big challenge for mission starts. Part of it is that movement from the pastoral congregation to the programmatic congregation because when you're the person that has done everything and then you start to move into the next phase things get tricky. There are other people that are doing the work and allowing the congregation to see them as knowledgeable and as important as the pastor and the other leaders. Navigating some of those components gets to be a challenge, not just in a mission start, but in a lot of churches that are growing.

CA: So, throughout all of this, where have you found support and encouragement?

JL: I find that camaraderie with other mission planters, people that are in a similar space as you, creates a really supportive and encouraging space. Pastor Anna Johnson at Churchwide has been one of our biggest supporters, encouragers, and cheerleaders. Reuben Durand has also been another one that has just been a phenomenal support for us, as well as some of the other staff at Congregational Vitality. But really getting in and getting connected to other folks living it really has been super life-giving for us. It feels like you're not the only one living these things. They understand the bigger picture of what's happening and are willing to give you compassion, and support, and encouragement. That's been huge to have folks that just have your back and understand the hard work of starting a thing from scratch.

CA: What spurred you and your husband to start the Neighborhood Church? What hole in the community were you trying to fill when you originally decided to create a church plant?

JL: It goes back to our calling together in seminary. I came from a super small town in the northeast corner of North Dakota where our pastor was shared with two congregations. It was a two-point parish. Joe came from Phoenix and Las Vegas where his dad was a pastor of large, massive churches. We kept trying to figure out how we would do ministry together when we came from such different places. For us, it ended up being a great space for us to think about how to merge our experiences.

When we got in the space of starting a church, we needed to just sit and listen for a while. There’re some really important conversations you need to have with city planning, with school districts, school boards, a variety of the other nonprofits in the area, and other churches in the area to figure things out: Where are the gaps? What do we need here? And I think what we intended to bring to Arkansas was this idea of a church for young families, partly because we were in that space and stage of our life of having young children. We embraced that idea of ministering and focusing on young families. Just this idea of providing something new and something different in the lens of the Lutheran world.

When we got to Arkansas, there were all these churches that didn't have any particular denomination in their name. That was a component that we both thought was super important. We don't have Lutheran in our name, and that was intentional because we wanted folks to not be afraid to walk in our doors if they didn't understand what Lutheran meant.

CA: What makes Neighborhood Church so approachable?

JL: Yeah, you walk in and everyone's going to say hello to you. It’s that sense of hospitality and welcome that is so important to us. When you start a church, you think all about what the culture of the church is going to be? What are we going to do? Our folks have realized that at one point they were a visitor, and someone walked up to them, and said hello, and had a fantastic conversation with them that made them feel welcome. Then they feel empowered to go and do that for the next person. Anyone can walk in and be welcomed.

Also, we’re super focused on kids in regard to our worship. We greet the kids and try and engage with them. Then we talk to the parents. If you're focusing on young adults, you have to engage in conversations with young adults, not with their parents. That's been a big part of us really trying to be a welcoming, approachable congregation.

CA: Many parents struggle to get their kids interested in to church. How can adults foster a love of faith and community in their kids?

JL: Yeah, that's a great question. And it's so foundational to faith going beyond the childhood years into the teen years, into the college years.

Our catchphrase is this: parents don't bring kids to church; kids bring parents to church. If you think about that it means that you are engaging, and you're tailoring the experience to children. On Sunday morning when mom and dad are tired, and the kids wake up excited for church, mom and dad will go to church because the kids want to go to church. Think about walking into the space, from the parking lot all the way in. What elements screen children? What elements engage children?

We have a super engaging children's ministry. Again, a lot of this has changed because of COVID, but I think what was so successful for us was that in our form of worship, if you will, families start with worship together. We do this two or three song opener where families are together worshiping. Joe comes up and does a welcome. He invites kids forward for a quick sermon. He provides a super engaging children's message, and he does a fantastic job getting the kids excited. He engages the kids and asks them to bring their parents up. So, if we're doing a pushup contest, Joe's not going to ask the kids to do the pushup contest. He's going to ask the kids to go grab their parents, and their parents are going to have a pushup contest engaging the family in worship. We also create opportunities to keep children engaged in the traditional aspects of worship.

Some people love it and stay forever, and some people are mortified and will never come back, but I think being comfortable in that is an important piece. We're not trying to keep all the sheep; we're trying to feed the flock. If they are not being fed here at the Neighborhood, we know all the other pastors in the area, so we can help find the place where you're going to worship and be connected the most.

I think another successful thing that we've done from the very beginning is expanding church use. Walking into church is a super scary thing for a lot of people, so we built the church as space to be used for more than just a Sunday morning service.

We do popcorn theologies on Friday nights. We would play whatever popular Disney or Pixar movie was happening at the time. We would have food and they would watch the movie as a family. And then the only thing we did at the end of the movie was ask the question, “where did you see God in this movie?” And we wouldn't let the parents’ answer. We wanted the kids to answer, and then we circle up and we pray and that's it. It was easier for families to invite friends to something like that rather than on a Sunday morning. It was an easy stepping point for an experience of the church without it being a worship service.

We had an experience before we planted the church. Like I said, I think I was pregnant with Landon. Kaleigh was probably year and a half, almost two maybe. And we were sitting in a church in the area, a traditional Lutheran church, and she's a year and a half. She does not sit still. She won't go to the nursery. So, she's literally crawling up and down the pews, and then a lady turned around and shushed us, and I thought Joe was going to lose his ever-loving mind. Then we walked out of the room, he's like, we will never ever have that happen to the Neighborhood. That is a no-go for me. Kids are a huge part of our life. So yeah, it's playful.

CA: The Neighborhood has really innovated in using the internet and social media. Especially since the pandemic, when everything was shut down.

JL: Yeah. Joe does a great job being aware of what's happening next. We were streaming when COVID hit in March. Joe knew how important it was to be there and to be streaming from that very first Sunday. It was supposed to be our largest Stewardship Sunday of the Neighborhood's history. And it was that Sunday we chose to go completely digital.

We realized how hard it was to pivot for a lot of other congregations. By that May, we had reached out to, I think, all 65 synods at that point offering to teach them how to use streaming tech. I think we had between 100-150 churches join in on that. That's where a big catalyst for our outreach towards that ministry started. We met Matt Short, who's at Milwaukee Synod, and he got us connected to a grant with the Missouri Synod and Wisconsin Synod churches in Milwaukee.

We did a tech conference for them. We did three lead-up events, and then a big one-day conference on Digital Reformation, that’s what we called it. And then helped install tech into probably 15 different churches in Milwaukee. We’ve continued to install tech, and cameras, and switchboards, and all the things that you need to stream. So not only was it important for us to be there, but it was also important for us to help others to get to that point because the larger Church understands now too. Your reach is now farther beyond your town or even your county. You have people watching from all over the country, from all over the world.

It is so important to continue this ministry in the digital sense, whether it be streaming, or social media, or little video clips on YouTube, whatever it is.

CA: As we wrap up, what words of encouragement and or challenge would you share with other leaders in your faith community or in another city?

JL: What we've taken as the vision of the Neighborhood is grounded in Philippians 3:12-14, and it is that we strive to change church and create relationships. If those are two foundational principles that church leaders or churches can live by, it gives them permission to do a lot of things that I think folks might be nervous about. It empowers you. Creating relationships foundationally with God is so important. And like I said, the foundation of all of that is so that you can go out to the community and build relationships there, and then build relationships within the congregation. That changing church isn't scary when you're doing it, when you've created relationships on a great foundation. Change is hard. And we went through a lot of change in 2020 and beyond.

My encouragement would be to continue to embrace change and to try something different and to think and move outside the box. Joe and I did the keynote speech at the North Texas North Louisiana Synod Assembly this spring, and we like to do this paperclip activity. We call it “clip art”. So, we all know that the paperclip has one use, but we want you to tell us as many uses you can have for the paperclip. Write 'em all down. Now apply that process to the church: What are the uses of the church? How is your church building being used? How is your ministry being used? Then we give you a pile of paperclips, and you to build something out of paperclips that's functional, or art, or whatever.

Church leaders should do the same thing for ministries. It’s okay to stop doing something. It's okay to do something completely different. Try something for six weeks. If it doesn't work, try to fix it and move on, or scrap it. Always being willing to change, to move, and embrace the culture and the world around you.

Special thanks to Elizabeth Schoen, one of our Church Anew interns over the summer, for her work conducting many of the Leadership Lab interviews and getting the series launched!

Jessica Liles

Jessica Liles has served in many different roles; children's ministry, youth director, admin, and overall master organizer of all things church. Ordained as a Deacon in 2021, she is the extension from the church out into the community! She currently serves as the Faith Formation and Education Director guiding people to understand how to live out their relationship with Jesus!

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Church Anew 9/1/23 Church Anew 9/1/23

Leadership Lab: Wesley Morris

Our first interview in the Leadership Lab series with Rev. Wesley Morris.

Our first interview is with Wesley Morris, who was involved in our Enfleshing Witness project. He has roots in community organizing, and is currently serving as pastor of Faith Community Church in Greensboro, North Carolina. We were honored to have a Zoom conversation chock full of wisdom we wanted to share.

Church Anew: What is your ministry context?

Wesley Morris: I am the senior pastor of Faith Community Church. The second pastor of this church, the founding pastor, and pastoral team emeritus are my elders, my mentors. I still see them, and they are members of the church. I came to this work of pastor through being a youth pastor and a child of the church, and also being someone who effectively became disenchanted with the church for a while. Then I had a journey of self reclamation, raising my awareness of who I was, and who I was becoming. And so a lot of that was exploration into religious engagement, and understanding that when I came back to the church it was really under the salvific scripture of Matthew 11:28. “Come on to me, all you who are heavy laden and burdened down with care. and I will give you rest”. So that is part of my scope of ministry. There are folks who live in the continual need of rest. These are some inner needs that I think about when I think about our ministry. Our ministry is geared towards children, number one. Creating and having a sustainable viable environment where children get to be children. and don’t have to rush into adulthood.

Another aspect of our church is geared towards a justice ministry, a ministry of fairness, a ministry of looking that is not abstract, but practical. Attending our city council meetings, and protests [if need be], and calling in when you have the opportunity to speak out, and proclaiming liberty for those who have been bruised. That's the Lukean [Luke is often viewed as the social justice gospel] approach to Jesus’s ministry that we take in here. It's generational in nature, but also by circumstance because we are an older congregation. The Beloved Community Center is in our church, as well. It is a nonprofit that we have a very close relationship with. Sometimes people even say, Beloved Community Church, even though we are the Faith Community Church. Beloved is anchored in the truth and reconciliation work of the city of Greensboro and so is our ministry.

CA: What have been some challenges in your ministry area?

WM: The model of churches and of being a senior pastor. I was in seminary learning, and I thought a lot about Christian education and how I would deploy what I learned. But then it came to a point where I realized there are 52 weeks in the year, and that's 52 sermons. If you're one pastor, and then there's Bible study, and there's pastoral care. A lot of my peers, myself included, have to be bi-vocational.

There's a strong cultural impact of emerging as a church anew within a church that has a very strong, a very powerful ministry and history, and so I think I would name the challenges as the stretching, the tugs, and the pulls that happen in the pastoral position. The setup of a church, and the many roles of a pastor, are struggles that I still deal with.

CA: When did the Matthew passage really become part of your call and your ministry?

WM: Before I joined the Church in 2008, I had left and gone with other spiritual and faith communities. Those spaces I still highly honor, and they became integrated into what I do now. I was physically worn out. Looking at my life, I was zipping around traveling, organizing. I was intimate with burn out. That was an invitation from Jesus to let me speak with you and sit with you and talk with you. I often relate to the the man who was possessed. He was chained outside the the city limits by the tombs. The conclusion of that story was that Jesus related to him and just sat with him, and then they said he came to himself. Basically just sitting down and talking and acknowledging who he was, he was released from some of that burden.

I found myself needing rest for my body and rest for my soul, because while I was greatly impacted positively by my time with other spiritual traditions, it felt like I was kind of on a road trip. It didn't feel home. Coming back to that Scripture was where I found a renewed sense of self, and that helped me to start seeing my mentors living the Word of God differently. They told me, “We're gonna be rewiring how you understand some of the things that you hear and the things that you see, and that rewiring really was this re-description of love. In practice, what does love do in a housing struggle? What does love do in the middle of a tobacco field? When there are folks coming together? When people’s human rights are being abused? What does love do in the middle of street conflict?” Those are literal examples that I actually have by way of being with this community.

CA: Can you share some of the wisdom that you learned from your time at Union Theological Seminary either from mentors or your own spiritual journey?

WM: I went wanting to step back and to be more invested in the reading and research aspects of seminary, which was totally blown up in my first month because of the killings all throughout the country. My first month was 2014, and Michael Brown was killed by the police in Ferguson, and then Eric Garner was killed in New York, and that's where our school is. My first semester, they interrupted our studies, and we went out to Ferguson, Missouri by bus to bear witness and to answer a national call to join them. During this time, I'm studying with Dr. James Cone as my advisor, and he's teaching black liberation theology in this context. It was the election of Donald Trump, and the embattling of Republicans and Democrats, and all that. So my seminary experience was bookended by a city in total uproar, and a nation and a country pretty much full of conflict. Sandwiched there, I'm reading Bonhoeffer and the traditional seminary text and getting real-time application. That's one thing I took from this super-concentrated experience. It was a super experience, for folks who care about social justice for sure, but I learned there are so many nuanced ways of approaching liberation. That to be able to learn what liberation looks like in this part of the country, and to listen to classmates who came for that call was eye-opening. What I realized is that it's not the place. It's actually the people that venture there, and the spirit that they believe is there.

CA: How has your other vocation of community organizing informed your ministry?

WM: There's a phrase that I got when I was younger, that everything is one thing. When I'm doing a diversity of projects, or wrangling a multiplicity of ideas, I can settle back and say this is about community, or this is about building relationships. That's the one thing. It's about building relationships, quality relationships. So when I was a community organizer, it was on the front of homeless hospitality. It was on the front of economic justice and housing justice and peace treaty work, but in all of that we're just building community. I'm not shrugging it off, but it helped me to dial back, to focus.

CA: What advice do you have for pastors and ministers who are trying to broaden their outreach with congregations who may be more insular?

WM: I love this question because I always say the same thing. Go to the library, and look at the bulletin board, and see what people have questions about. Ask librarians what's their sense of the community? What's their sense of what's been going on or what's happening? The other thing is, I'm a child of working in community centers. The person that runs the community center, that's another person. Go talk to them. If you can just spend 30 min with them and talk about what's their sense of the neighborhood? Also watch the local news or the public access channel. Those are the things that have helped me when I go to other places and want to be respectful. The last two are things are something I just do. I don't necessarily recommend them. Whatever you like to do, whatever you want to do, it's happening somewhere in the place, and it's probably not too far away from you. And so when we're in meetings we can talk about these things and understand where everyone is coming from.

CA: What words of encouragement or challenge do you want to share with other church leaders?

WM: Do the best you can. Others have experienced what you're experiencing right now, so you’re not alone. Try to read. I read Howard Thurman and Renita Wes. They were writers out of the pastoral tradition that I think squeeze a lot out of it. It's like, you know, you squeeze an orange and a lot of juice comes out, but if you squeeze a little bit more, a little bit more will come out. I think they do the extra squeezing on the pastoral experience because I'm trying to be as gentle and nice as I can on understanding that part. Also, remember that it's okay to stop, and not do something. That it's okay to change your course. All those things, I think, should be said much, much more. Failure isn't what you think it is, you know. Don't think of yourself as a failure.

Special thanks to Elizabeth Schoen, one of our Church Anew interns over the summer, for her work to get the Leadership Lab series launched!

Wesley Morris

Wesley Morris is the Senior Pastor of Faith Community Church in Greensboro, NC. Also, he is a dedicated coach, facilitator, community organizer, chaplain and internationally recognized leader who uses his dynamic speaking talents to inspire all who have the opportunity to hear his voice.

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Erin Weber-Johnson 8/28/23 Erin Weber-Johnson 8/28/23

Upending the parable of talents: bodies over profits

The parable of the talents then would become a commentary at large about an economy that uses people and values things rather than values people and uses things.

“God forgive me for seeking a place at a table you would have overthrown.” Mikayla Bates, viral post accessed August 2023.

Since the pandemic, I have been drawn to stories that, for better or worse, have shaped me. Seeking a sense of myself in the midst of uncertainty, I wanted to find meaning between the words and hope in the story arcs. I asked myself what were 3 books that significantly impacted the way I viewed myself or the world that I read as a youth. I’ve spent the last few months rereading them. In the midst of so much grief and change, I wanted to tap not into nostalgia or memory. Rather, I wanted to remember who I was, what I cared about, and who I wanted to be. In the lines I remembered how characters became, albeit imperfect and rather one-sided, mentors. These stories were powerful; they shaped life.

At the same time, an online congregation I am a part of entered a time of learning about the power of story through the lens of the parables. Parables are powerful; in their interpretation we find layers of wisdom and purpose. Psychologists talk about how we translate new information and fit it to align with our internal narratives. It’s how a single event, say a conversation, can leave individuals with very different recollections.

When hearing parables, we can often feel bound by our own narratives. Often our first readings are the ones that stick. They shape how we hear it moving forward and the complicated truths are lost. While it does the work of rooting one’s identity, it also can tie us to problematic narratives that keep us from receiving the liberating love of God.

It was in this context that I prepared for the upcoming parable of the talents in the lectionary:

Matthew 25:14-30

Jesus said, “It is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. The one who had received the five talents went off at once and traded with them, and made five more talents. In the same way, the one who had the two talents made two more talents.

But the one who had received the one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money. After a long time, the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them. Then the one who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five more talents, saying, ‘Master, you handed over to me five talents; see, I have made five more talents.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’ And the one with the two talents also came forward, saying, ‘Master, you handed over to me two talents; see, I have made two more talents.’

His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’ Then the one who had received the one talent also came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.’ But his master replied, ‘You wicked and lazy slave! You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter?

Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him, and give it to the one with the ten talents. For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’”

Fall is coming, and with it will come many a story of how Time, Talent and Treasure are used.

With fall will come a season of exploring what we believe about money and…what we believe God thinks about money.

How do we unpack or release narratives that prevent us from the liberating love of God?

Often, when this text is interpreted, it is thought that God is embodied by that of the master and we are to learn something about our own gifts and abilities. Used as a stewardship sermon, I`ve been exhorted to use my talents to grow other gifts for the benefit of the Christian community.

However, in this recent reading I began to ask myself, why would Jesus ever compare the Divine in such a way as “Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; so I was afraid.” And where else does the Divine say such things as “For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.”

I believe this story was not told for modern-day Christians to determine how best to get a return on investments. Jesus did not come into the world to form a kingdom built on acquisitions and bottom lines. Rather, this powerful parable was once again a commentary on those in power who would use a person’s fear to intimidate others into production and profits.

Jesus, formed in the way of covenantal relationships, sought to build a kingdom that upends our narratives and shifts our understanding about money. The parable of the talents then would become a commentary at large about an economy that uses people and values things rather than values people and uses things.

As we enter the fall together, I invite you to share in considering these questions:

What would it mean if Jesus tells stories like the parable of the talents as a way to highlight the corruption in power?
What if Jesus tells stories of stewardship to show us, in contrast, a new—and yet ancient—way of sharing and caring for people? A way of reminding each other how to be with and for each other.
What if Jesus is giving witness to the injustice of his day and proclaiming a new way of being? What would that mean for us today?

As we enter the fall together, I invite us all to return to the stories, either internal or external that shape us.

May we repent of seeking to join tables that need to be overturned and seek to uplift the worth of bodies rather than profits.

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The Most Rev. Michael Bruce Curry is Presiding Bishop and Primate of The Episcopal Church. He is the Chief Pastor and serves as President and Chief Executive Officer, and as Chair of the Executive Council of The Episcopal Church.

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Erin Weber-Johnson

A published author, she strives to root her work in practical theology while utilizing her experience in the nonprofit sector. Her co-edited book, Crisis and Care: Meditations on Faith and Philanthropy is available through Cascade Books.

Rev. Eric Bareto

Jessica Liles

Wesley Morris

Wesley Morris is the Senior Pastor of Faith Community Church in Greensboro, NC. Also, he is a dedicated coach, facilitator, community organizer, chaplain and internationally recognized leader who uses his dynamic speaking talents to inspire all who have the opportunity to hear his voice.

Fall is coming, and with it will come many a story of how Time, Talent and Treasure are used.

Erin Weber-Johnson

A published author, she strives to root her work in practical theology while utilizing her experience in the nonprofit sector. Her co-edited book, Crisis and Care: Meditations on Faith and Philanthropy is available through Cascade Books.

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