Ministry Amidst Cataclysm: Epiphanytide Reflections
Hello, dear readers. Blog editor Emmy Kegler here, writing from Minneapolis, where the overwhelming presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol agents is writing a painful chapter in our city and nation’s history on race, immigration, and violence.
Each week we at Church Anew provide you with Lectionary Musings, a collection of previous posts related to the lectionary texts for the coming Sundays and feast days. This post is not that. This post is for my fellow ministers and church leaders staring down Sunday and wondering: How do I lead in a time like this?
We have done this before. Michael Brown. The 2016 election. COVID. George Floyd. January 6th. We have been leading in the face of brutality and animosity for a long time. This means we are exhausted, but also that we are experienced. Reflect on what helped your congregation and sustained you during those times. It may be a time to repeat sermons, songs, or liturgies that were meaningful in those eras; doing the same thing again does not somehow make us “lesser” leaders (after all, we’ve been reading the same story for over two thousand years).
People are primed for a fight. Many national political leaders, online “influencers,” and the algorithms that drive everything from our social media to local news to grocery prices are reliant on division to build power and wealth. Extreme perspectives get more clicks (and more ad revenue), and nuance is lost. If your congregants have snap responses to how you lead in this time, they may be reacting as much to the 167 hours of content they receive outside of church as to the one hour they spend with you. Be discerning in your preparation and then release it to the Spirit’s work.
No sermon can do everything. People will be coming through our church doors with a myriad of needs and wants, often conflicting ones. You well know that any given sermon may be liberating grace to one and condemning law to another in the most peaceful of times. You are not meant to know or do everything. Even the best and transformative preachers of our time, like Dietrich Bonhoeffer or Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., did not immediately invert the trajectory of their countries; you probably will not either. Your call is to do what you can in your time and place.
We cannot deep breathe our way out of this. Sustaining practices are necessary and self-care cannot be neglected, yet on their own they cannot deliver us from this time and place. A hypermilitarized presence require specific practices to release activated emotions and physical reactions. (As my dear friend and colleague Natalia Terfa likes to say: “Cold pack for your heart. Tetris for your brain.”) People are in need of intentional community beyond Facebook comment sections, something like regular public gatherings with rituals of repentance and restoration–something we, dear church, have millennia of practice in doing.
Our faith demands action. When suffering is widespread, we do not retreat into ourselves. Jesus sends us–commands us, even–to preach to all nations with love of God and neighbor. As church leaders, we have the unique opportunity to connect ethics and ideals to action for the care of those in need. Gather and share concrete steps:
Advocate for specific (often bipartisan!) political actions to move past rhetoric into change.
Encourage your congregants to direct connections with their geographic neighbors for mutual aid and support. (This could be as simple as joining their local Buy Nothing group, though hyperlocal mutual aid groups are also growing on the app Signal.)
Support mutual aid for those sheltering in place in Minneapolis or in your own community.
Lastly–know that I, and so many others, are grateful for your hard work, your integrity, and your diligent hope. Follow the light, preach the good news, bless the mournful and merciful. And be not trampled underfoot, for you are the salt of the earth.
