Blog Posts
What We Have
Black women have carried the hopes and the dreams, the expectations, the burdens and even the very members of their communities on their proverbial backs. In this revisit to Enfleshing Witness, Rev. Dr. Neichelle R Guidry preaches about the continued legacy of black women in life and faith.
The following is a lightly edited transcript and a video of Rev. Dr. Neichelle R Guidry’s talk from our 2021 Enfleshing Witness gathering.
Niechelle preaches because she believes in the liberating and transformative power of the gospel and of the Black preaching tradition. Niechelle preaches to primarily Black women and Black communities. She preaches, love yourself as God loves you. Niechelle preaches at Sisters Chapel of Spelman College in Atlanta, GA, on social media, and wherever the Spirit leads her.
Zora Neal Hurston once famously said that Black women are the mules of the earth.
By this, she meant that for years and centuries, black women have carried the hopes and the dreams, the expectations, the burdens and even the very members of our communities on our proverbial backs. In recent years, it has often been said that black women have heroically saved this nation. Time and time again, we have galvanized our communities and our resources and expended our money and our power and our influence to dig this nation out of the moral holes that it has repeatedly found itself in.
We even save our churches. We provide invaluable labor in spaces where we're not even sure that we're respected, that we're valued. And in some cases where we haven't even been allowed to be ordained into leadership. And most often this heroism happens at our own expense. We know so well now that when we put other people in other places before ourselves and before our needs, we are the last ones to benefit if we benefit at all.
Recently, however, we have been blessed to bear witness to another way of being black women who lead, elite athletes. Naomi Osaka and Simone Biles, both have stepped down recently from incredibly high profile, very powerful competitions in order to preserve their mental health. Allison Felix became the most decorated track and field athlete in the aftermath of walking away from a sponsorship contract with Nike, after they deducted her pay for becoming pregnant. She went on to start her own athletic wear enterprise that centers the stories and the bodies of women. And when she walked away from that deal, that woman took all of her amazingness, she took her force, she took her speed with her. And as I look and think about what it will look like and what it means to enflesh witness to and from our communities, the words that come to mind are creative agency.
See for so long the models and expectations of leadership have been handed down to us. We have enfleshed these roles as they've been taught to us, as they've been dictated to us, as they've been modeled in front of us. We have not always been empowered to ask the question of what does it mean to me to preach and to pastor and to serve the body of Christ.
And when we have dared to ask these questions, we have often ended up bruised and battered and broken simply for trying to show up in our realness and our authenticity and our fullness. So not only right now are we in need of a church that will go into some new directions, but we are in need of some leaders who are healing , and who are whole, and who are free, and who love what we do.
In 2nd Kings chapter 4 verses 1 through 7, we see a woman who is also in need. She's a widow. Her husband has died and she is now in so much debt that her creditors are threatening to take her children away from her. She consults the prophet Elisha who asks her,
“what do you have in your house?”
“Nothing”, she says, “but a jar of oil.” And he gives her very clear instructions to go and get as many jars as possible from your community, take your children into your home, shut the door behind you, and as long as you're pouring this fresh oil into these jars, fresh oil will be there, will be provided.
And in this time of need, this woman became an entrepreneur. She found fresh use for things that she already had. And if I'm being quite honest, what I am finding in this season is that as a result of so many of the traumas that we've suffered in our vocations in these churches and other institutions, so many of us don't even like what we do anymore.
We've lost the sense of excitement and passion for our ministries because they've become so tiring and so political and draining and exhausting. And perhaps like this woman, we have overlooked what's in our houses. In an effort to fit in as we lead, we have overlooked our own passions and curiosities and our innate skill sets and talents because they don't quite fit into the box of pastor that we've seen and that we were taught.
We have dismembered ourselves from our own spirits, trying to walk like and preach like and preside like everybody else. And in the process, we have forfeited our creative agency to create the flourishing that we want in our lives, in our vocations, and certainly in our churches.
As I conclude, I want to invite you to go back into your house, shut the door behind you and take an inventory of all that you have overlooked.
Yes, we do need leaders who are visionaries, but maybe the vision isn't as far off as we thought that it was. Maybe what we need to flourish in our vocation, in our community is right here in our own house, in our own heart, in our own hands. Nobody knows what you need to flourish like you know what you need to flourish.
And what will it take for that need to be met? How do you want to feel even as you are bringing healing to others? How can we begin to center our pleasure and our creativity and our sense of fun and playfulness in our ministries? Can we look to our innate passions and gifts outside of ministry and work for an indication of what God is trying to do in the church in this season?
Let me de-stigmatize these questions. It is not arrogant and it is not selfish to ask yourself, what do you need to do this work? Black woman photographer, Carrie Mae Weems said in one of her pieces, “I knew not from memory, but from hope that there were other models by which to live.” Models. If we want to be models to the future, we have to be not so wedded to what we have seen as much as we are wedded to what we hope for. And if we ask these questions, and we earnestly live into the answers, and we enflesh them in our communities maybe we can then be the models for those who are coming behind us. God's word for God's people. Ashe and Amen.
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.
REV. DR. NEICHELLE R. GUIDRY
Rev. Dr. Neichelle R. Guidry is a spiritual daughter of New Creation Christian Fellowship of San Antonio, Texas, where the Bishop David Michael Copeland and the Rev. Dr. Claudette Anderson Copeland are her pastors and where she was ordained to ministry in 2010. She is a graduate of Clark Atlanta University (2007, BA, Lambda Pi Eta) and Yale Divinity School (2010, M.Div.), where she was the 2010 recipient of the Walcott Prize for Clear and Effective Public and Pulpit Speaking. She is also a graduate of Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary (2017), where she completed her Doctor of Philosophy in the area of Liturgical Studies with a concentration in Homiletics. Her dissertation is entitled, "Towards a Womanist Homiletical Theology for Subverting Rape Culture." She currently serves as the Dean of the Chapel and the Director of the WISDOM Center at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia.
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.
Holy Ground Without Walls
The following is a lightly edited transcript and a video of Reverend Kim Jackson’s talk from our 2022 Enfleshing Witness gathering.
Kim Jackson serves as a Georgia State Senator and is an Episcopal priest. After graduating from Furman University, Kim volunteered as an EMT and led her colleagues at Emory's Candler School of Theology to advocate for criminal justice reform in Georgia. Upon receiving her Master of Divinity from Candler, Kim commenced her vocation as an Episcopal priest.
Over the past 11 years of ministry, she has served as a college chaplain, a nationally renowned consultant and preacher, and a parish priest. As the Vicar of the Church of the Common Ground, Kim co-creates church with people who are experiencing homelessness in downtown Atlanta. Kim and her spouse live on a small hobby farm in Stone Mountain, with goats, ducks, honeybees, and chickens.
Well, first of all, thank you. It's such a blessing to be able to speak to what is now home for me and for my wife. We both come from the country, and so trees have been important to us since before we could walk. And so we've chosen to make home, despite living in an urban area, on an urban farm. We have 10 acres with a forest behind us, with animals that ground us. Animals that don't talk, which is really helpful when I live and work in a world with a lot of words.
And for me, homegoing has really been about being grounded and touching the soil and touching the earth as a way of re-centering after going out into the city that's a concrete jungle where it can be difficult to find life. I have this great privilege of being the church home for people who have to sleep outside, and I've also had the great privilege of being with those folks long enough, knowing them well enough, to be invited into their homes that they've made, that are under bridges, that are in tents.
And I think because of the intimacy that is church, I've become so clear and so inspired by my congregants and the way that they've located home within themselves. Particularly within the songs and the hymns and the verses that they bring with them from their varied histories, right? But I've had so many people say, “you know, no matter where I go, even if I get swept up and all my tent gets moved away because cities, you know, making us move. I still have in my heart all of these songs that, that give me strength, that give me courage, that, that give me a place of home, a sense of home.”
And a home church is, for them, I think the place of stability, right? The place that reminds them that things may get confiscated by police, but they can always come back to their home church and come back to what's in their soul that cannot ever be taken away.
We are a church without walls, and we tell people wherever two or three are gathered together, we don't tell people that. That's what the scripture tells us, right? That whether two or three of us are gathered together, God is in the midst of us and therefore this is church. And because we are saying that in the midst of human feces, and urine, and people sleeping in sleeping bags, and also amazing people who are making music because we're able to kind of declare it and people say it with us, right?
We have this saying together where we talk about how this is holy ground. People believe it, right? It becomes true. I think we are able with our words and with our body in that space to make a home church right there. Whether it's in the park or whether it's literally standing on a street where somebody has had to relieve themselves.
Collectively, we say together, this is holy ground. This is our church. And it is. And I think because it's so raw, people know that they're welcome. Right? Like if you're willing to make church in the midst of all kinds of mess, then people know they can bring their whole selves. And even if they understand themselves to be messy, they know it's a space that's welcoming.
And I think that's a part of what makes it home. And I think it does matter that Common Ground is run by queer black women who know what it's like to not be welcome in a church and know what is necessary to make someone feel welcomed in a church. When I was called to ministry, I was a very young person and I was really clear that my calling to ministry was going to have to exist outside of the four walls of a church.
I was really deeply inspired by my pastors who had been working in the public square. I had a pastor who was a school board member. I had, you know, a pastor who was this huge community organizer, and the very first march that I ever went to was with Jesse Jackson and all these pastors, right?
And so I knew that if I was going to embody this call, that it would be in the streets. And I knew that from, from the moment that God breathed that call into my ear, and I said yes, that my work would be to sanctify streets. And that my work would be to find community and to bring love and to receive love from people who've been often ostracized and literally stepped over.
Amen.
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.
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.
Wolakota (Right Relationship)
The following is a lightly edited transcript and a video of Rev. Isaiah Shaneequa Brokenleg’s talk from our 2021 Enfleshing Witness gathering.
Shaneequa preaches because in her Lakota culture Winkte, Two Spirit people, have been called by their communities to be spiritual, social, and emotional healers. Following in that tradition, she strives to live into the role her communities have called her to.
Shaneequa preaches to call the Church and society back into right relationship, wolakota, with itself, with each other, with the Creator, and with creation. Shaneequa preaches among all her relatives, knowing that we are all related, Mitakuye Oyasin, faithful believers, those who doubt often, jubilant atheists, and all in between.
In the beginning, when Wakan Tanka, the Creator, made the heavens and the earth, we were all as one. There was love. We understood that we were all related. We were good relatives to one another. We were home. When I think of home, I think of security and comfort, relationships. I think of a place where I can be myself.
When I think of home, I think of God's kingdom. I think of wolakota. Wolakota is the state when all things are in right relationship, when we are in right relationships with ourselves, with each other, with creation, and when we are in right relationships with the Creator. Wolakota is peace, and wolakota is home.
Sometimes we forget that. Sometimes we forget that we are all related. Sometimes we forget to be a good relative and we wander away from home. We wander away from the kingdom, away from family, and we lose our way. The Western White church has wandered away from home. We know how some of this happened.
First, our church became tied up in empire, in power, in greed. Second, White Jesus.
You see, we all long to have a relatable Jesus, a Jesus like us. Throughout Christianity, cultures often depicted a Jesus who was incarnated and became one of our own. So we got a Greek Jesus, an African Jesus, a Russian Jesus, an Asian Jesus, and we got White Jesus.
The problem occurred when the church, tied up in empire and power and greed, spreading colonization and slavery, failed to present the folks it was evangelizing with a Jesus of color that looked like us, and instead presented us with a Jesus that looked like the slave owner and the colonizer. That imagery is directly opposed to a local Jesus who was born into an oppressed and occupied territory.
Finally, the White church failed to listen to Paul. Remember, in the early church, one of the questions was whether or not someone must become a Jew in order to become a Christian. Paul answered that and said,’ no, you can just become a Christian. You don't have to become a Jew first.’ However, the White church seemed to have forgotten that, and they even took it a step further.
They seemed to think we were supposed to become White before we can become a Christian. And so they didn't like any of our cultural expressions of faith, our languages, our ceremonies, our histories. And today, some branches of our church still think you need to become White, or for that matter straight, or cis-gendered, or able-bodied, or other things before becoming a Christian.
But Paul is clear. We can bring our culture with us when we become a part of the body of Christ. So our White church has wandered away from home.
And their story has many parallels to the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15. Most of you know this story. The son took his inheritance, those shared family resources, went to a distant country, squandered the property in dissolute living, and then famine hit the land. And he ended up having to feed the pigs before he considered coming back home.
The White church has taken our shared family resources. They took our land, our natural resources like minerals, forests, oil, and water. They took our humanity by enslaving our people, stealing our children, and being active in the genocide of so many of our communities.
They traveled to a distant country where they imposed their own cultural rules. They created this idea of rugged individualism that leaves out community. The country they move to values money, power, and material things over people and relationships. It's a country where what you own is far more important than the fact that each one of us reflects the image and likeness of a loving God.
The White church squandered the resources meant for the whole world in dissolute living, trading them for wealth and power that is placed into the hands of a few. And they have put into place systems and idols that help themselves, failing to see our black and brown siblings as relatives. These systems look like the Doctrine of Discovery, Manifest Destiny, slavery, boarding school, Jim Crow laws, Triumphalism, Patriarchy, or Nationalism, and on and on and on.
And as the story in Luke tells us, a famine hit the country. And we see famine all over in our story here.
We have global warming, climate change, extinction. We have a famine of money with just 1 percent of the people owning over 90 percent of the world's wealth. We have a famine of humanity, of caring for others, of empathy, and we have a global pandemic that cannot be cured because so many people can't vaccinate, or won't get vaccinated, or care about their neighbor enough to even wear a mask.
Our White church has left home. And maybe without realizing it, has been feeding those pigs for some time. Early on, these pigs they fed were triumphalism, empire, and colonization. But later the pigs grew and looked different. They looked like consumerism, multinational corporations, and power-hungry oligarchs.
And I think our White church is at the part of the story where they can begin to see that this is not working and it isn't sustainable. They may be missing home. The Wolakota, right relationship, God's kingdom home, is still here. And many of our Christian communities of color have never left or wandered away.
We have been calling our church back into right relationship ever since they stepped out. We've been reminding them that we are all related. We've been reminding them to come home. However, too often this church hasn't seen or heard us calling because the White Jesus they worship has made them unable to see the face of Jesus reflected in the black and brown faces all around them, calling them home.
If and when our relatives in the Western White church begin their journey home, we need to decide how we will react. Will we be like the brother in the story who is angry and refuses to come into the house? Or will we be like the parent who welcomes them back with open arms?
Coming home can be painful, coming home can be hard, but coming home is healing.
A few weeks ago, we had several of our stolen children come home to our Rosebud Reservation from the Carlisle Boarding School over 140 years later. In our Lakota way, we believe that when someone dies, their deceased relatives and ancestors come for them and guide them on their journey home. These children's souls may have been taken to the spirit world, but their bodies never came home to rest in their own community.
As we prepared to welcome these children home, great care was taken to ensure this was all done in a good way. In Lakota, our word for child literally means sacred one. Each child was assigned a veteran, who was also a mom, who would act as a mother for each of these children. The mothers went to Carlisle and accompanied the box with the bones of the child for the entire ride home.
They were there to grieve for them and to ensure that these children were laid to rest in a good way. The entire way home from Carlisle, other tribal communities asked the caravan to stop and offered prayers, hospitality, and welcome to these children in the caravan.
One community lined the road far as you could see with mothers and children holding their favorite toys. As the children were headed home, another [community] lined the road with orange balloons, parents and children dressed in orange to remember and honor the children who never came home. And when the children finally arrived on Rosebud, the entire community, and then some. welcomed them home, and we buried them in the Lakota way.
These sacred ones who were ripped from the arms of their loving family, whose hair was cut, whose clothes were taken, were now welcomed back into the community in the Lakota language with Lakota songs that they hadn't been able to speak at their school.
Now, their bodies can rest next to their relatives in the arms of Mother Earth, and their souls can rest in the bosom of God with their ancestors.
And while the Western White church left home by choice, some of us left home by force. Some of us were taken away from home because of slavery, boarding schools, reservations, and addictions.
Some of us have left home because we've been rejected by the White church, which in error says we are not White enough, or man enough, able-bodied, pretty, or skinny enough, wealthy enough, straight, or cis-gendered enough, sane enough, or subdued enough to be a part of their heretical White Jesus kingdom. Some of us have been wandering in the wilderness trying to find our way back home.
Home is here. Home is here. Home is here and home is now. Home is where we walk toward wolakota.
I invite anyone who feels like you've lost your way by choice, or by force, or by hate to come home.
Come home to a God who welcomes. Come home to a God who forgives. Come to this place where we are all related, where we walk towards right relationship.
Come home to this place where you are sacred, where you are known, where you are seen, but most importantly, where you are loved.
Welcome home.
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.
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.
Walk With Me
Jesus offers us all healing. We all need healing. And I offer you this peace to walk with Jesus. Maybe the question is, can I trust Jesus to walk with me? Will my community walk with me, with my pain?
The following is a lightly edited transcript and a video of Shin Maeng’s talk from our 2021 Enfleshing Witness gathering.
Shin creates because God has invited him to create and share beauty, brokenness, and redemption; and invites all to be a part of the beautiful, epic story of God and his creation. Shin creates in order to bring a deep awareness of the movement of God in our lives on a daily basis. Shin creates among those who daily walk with the experiences of brokenness, joy, scars, peace, loss, adventure, contemplation, redemption, and love.
Hello, my name is Shin, and I hope you're enjoying this conference. There have been many terrible things that have happened over the past few years. I guess it's been more than that.
However, this past year was difficult in many ways. Black lives not giving the reverence required to thrive and be. Anti-Asian hate boiling over into violence, and Asians becoming COVID blaming targets. Brown brothers and sisters being peddled as unwanted and unclean in our social systems. White nationalistic dogma distorting and corrupting the values of a man from Palestine. He was a brown, unclean, and unwanted target. A man we call Jesus.
While the world has been going through a lot of these tragic events, I live in Scotland, in one of the most beautiful and friendliest places on earth. I love it here. Also, we are the only Asian American family in our town. However, the tensions of the world still strike me and wound me.
It was hard for my friends, my British friends. They all wanted to help but didn't know how to help whilst in a global pandemic. I was getting frustrated with myself because I didn't even know what would help. I just kept on feeling I didn't want to emotionally vomit on my friends who are intentionally wanting to help. Also, I didn't want to lash out in anger towards my friends. I didn't want to say, you should have known, or this, this, and that.
I didn't have that many people to talk to relate a lot of things. And so my wife and I mourned a lot.
My mother-in-law was gifted this Korean illustrated Bible. I've seen many things. It is one of the most beautiful illustrations I've laid eyes on.
Jesus was always dressed as a traditional Korean gentleman. One with a round top hat, indicating his royal lineage. Jesus’s gestures are always gentle and elegant.
Then I remembered this phrase: Walk with me. His response is so gentle. Jesus, in all of the Gospels, invites people to walk with him, to come and see, to see and hear and believe.
To believe that in this broken world, the Son of Man is and was walking with us. I invited my British friends to walk with me, just like my journey of racial reconciliation. My black brothers and sisters walked with me to come and see, and see and hear and believe that in the midst of the darkness, Jesus's redemption still shines.
As Western culture folks, we want answers and deliverables. We want it now, just like our Amazon Prime deliveries. This instant gratification is not a healthy obsession. Just like it's not good for a person to just run a marathon. It takes training. We walk first. We might jog. We might need a massage. An ice bath. We just keep on walking.
I drew this piece as a reminder to walk with Jesus, and with our brothers and sisters. Not everyone knows your story, and may they walk with you in that. Even Jesus says in Matthew 13:15:
“For the people's hearts have become calloused. They hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise, they might have seen with their eyes, heard with their ears, understood with their hearts, and turned and I would heal them.”
Jesus offers us all healing. We all need healing. And I offer you this peace to walk with Jesus. Maybe the question is, can I trust Jesus to walk with me? Will my community walk with me, with my pain?
Jesus loves us even in our messiness. He holds our pain and doesn't erase it. He waits with us, and he walks with us. We can't do this alone. Jesus knows our pain and struggle. He is gentle and kind. He is not like anyone else we know. He is inviting you to heal and also inviting you to participate in his story.
For those who know the suffering of others, humbly walk with them. Hear their stories, walk with them just as Jesus walks among you. This is an invitation to holy ground. Come and see. Hear what Jesus is moving in our hearts.
May we know that Jesus walks with us.
May the Holy Spirit guide us to people to walk with and bless us.
May we walk, hear, see, heal, believe, and seek His kingdom come, His will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
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.
SHIN MAENG
Shin Maeng resides in St. Andrews Scotland. He grew up in Bridgewater, NJ, New Haven, CT and Cambridge, MA. He is married to Sarah and has a wee lass. Shin loves to create on his iPad and also loves to get his hands dirty. He has a Masters of Urban Leadership from GCTS Boston. Music, cities, stories, Marvel comics, dancing, most things on YouTube, food, justice and the movement of God's hand are a few things that inspire Shin's hands to create.
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.
Without our wound, where would our power be?
Jared E. Alcantara is Professor of Preaching at Truett Seminary at Baylor University. He was born and raised in New Jersey and came to faith in Christ at the age of 14. He is half Latino, Honduran, and half white and, in 2022, he mentione that, in an age marked by loss, there are plenty of reasons for us to lament, but there are not nearly enough lamenting groups to go around. Let's revisit his talk from Enfleshing Witness 2022.
The following is a lightly edited transcript and a video of Jared E. Alcantara’s talk from our 2022 Enfleshing Witness gathering.
Jared E. Alcantara is Professor of Preaching at Truett Seminary at Baylor University. He was born and raised in New Jersey and came to faith in Christ at the age of 14. He is half Latino, Honduran, and half white. An ordained Baptist minister, he has served as a youth pastor, associate pastor, and teaching pastor in Illinois, Massachusetts, Oregon, and New Jersey.
Before coming to Truett, from 2014 to 2018, he served as an associate professor of homiletics at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. Dr. Alcantara is passionate about equipping students to preach God's word in ways that are faithful, effective, clear, and inspiring. He also plays piano, enjoys disc golf, and is a rabid Philadelphia Eagles fan, which I try really hard not to hold against him.
He lives in the Waco area with his wife, Jennifer, and their three daughters.
Greetings, everyone.
My name is Jared Alcantara, and I teach preaching at Baylor University's Truett Theological Seminary. Normally, I want to rush to express gratitude to all manner of people, so I'll try to keep this part short, just because our time together is short.
So thank you to the organizers of Enfleshing Witness for extending this gracious invitation to me. Thank you, participants, for the ways that you serve in and alongside the Church, the church for which Jesus died. And thank you for the gift of your attention as well, which I do not take for granted. Our attention is a gift that we bestow on one another rather than a right or a demand that we should expect. Thank you.
In our brief time together, I'd like to draw on an image, an idea, and a scene. Let me start with the image. This is Paul Bartholomew's sculpture, “Lamenting Group.” Here it is from another angle. Perhaps you see yourself in it somewhere. Now there are many things that I could say about this image, but I'll stick to just one.
In an age marked by loss, there are plenty of reasons for us to lament, but not nearly enough lamenting groups to go around.
You don't need me to tell you that our world has seen better days. There's battles in our government, and battles on social media, and battles at the border, and battles for democracy itself.
The losses pile up. Losses from natural disasters, and losses to human rights, and losses from the war in Ukraine, and losses to human life on account of the havoc that's been wrought by COVID 19. You don't need me to tell you that our churches have seen better days. Denominations are splitting, are in danger of such. Cases of clergy abuse harm and even destroy our public witness. Some churches are struggling with membership losses and decline. And other churches sound way too much like psychophants of the state, rather than voices crying in the wilderness. There are plenty of reasons to lament. Not nearly enough lamenting groups to go around.
In light of these truths, these truths about our world, Let me also introduce an idea or consider an idea together with you. And I'll call on Gardner C. Taylor, the great poet laureate of preaching, civil rights leader, and advocate in New York City. Here's what Taylor says:
“Any authenticity that we're going to have as persons of faith, and any authority that we're going to have as witnesses to the gospel of Jesus Christ, will become or will come because of our exposure to bruises and scars. There is no other way to authenticity.”
What if our bruises and our scars are somehow conduits of gospel hope in the world? What if others can know through our bruises and scars that there is a God before whom they can bring their bruises and scars? So often we conclude wrongly that we must insulate ourselves or protect ourselves from pain.
So we put on that famous Sunday morning smile. We insist that it's spring rather than winter in our souls. We project a false self rather than who we are. We avoid knowing and being known by others. You know of that which I speak. Now, if you insulate yourself and you protect yourself from pain, then you may go through life with fewer bumps and bruises, but will you truly live?
Moreover, will you be able to reach others through authentic and enfleshed witness?
And now we come at the last to a scene. A scene. Jesus goes to the pool of Bethesda. Some of you have Bethsata. He encounters a man lying on a mat, and he heals him on a Sabbath, which means that he gets into all kinds of trouble.
Now, a tradition developed around this text, which is reflected in the fact that verse four does not appear in many of our Bibles.
Tradition was that an angel would come and trouble the waters or stir up the waters and those who were ill would rush in, in order to be healed. It's depicted right here in this scene, Robert Batesman's, “The Angel That Troubled The Waters.”
Thornton Wilder also wrote a play based on the tradition.
Now two men stand beside large stone steps leading down to a pool. Their names are Newcomer and Mistaken Invalid. Others join them at the water's edge, the sick, the blind, those who are ill. And hope feels like it's giving way to hopelessness, despair, entering into this painful scene, the first scene in Wilder's play.
But suddenly, as so often happens in scripture and in life, an angel appears.
Hope breaks into an impossible situation.
There, on the top step, the angel comes, and Mistaken Invalid cannot contain his excitement, for he's seen hundreds of people healed there at the pool by the angel. “I shall be next,” he exclaims.
Newcomer, who is a physician by trade, he comes to the pool less often. He comes from his bustling clinic in the city, but his injuries, his wounds, are less dire than those of his friends, less apparent and obvious to others. Nevertheless, he comes anyway, hoping to be healed, just like his friends, hoping against hope that things will change. He offers a fervent prayer for healing.
The angel responds in a way that he does not expect. The angel says, “Draw back physician. This moment is not for you, healing is not for you. For without your wound, where would your power be? The very angels themselves cannot persuade the wretched and blundering children on earth as can one human being broken on the wheels of living.”
“In love's service, only the wounded soldiers can serve,” the angel says. This is the beautiful and awful thread that runs throughout the scriptures and throughout our lives. There is no rainbow without a flood, no burning bush without the desert, no exodus without bondage, no return without exile. There is no birth of Jesus without the childbirth of Jesus.
There is no Resurrection Sunday without first passing through Good Friday. Pain and loss do not need to put a stop to our ministries. Indeed, they can authorize and even galvanize our ministry. For in love's service, only the wounded soldiers can serve. You see, as the Scriptures declare, God is especially good at turning our deserts into pools, our parched lands into springs.
Yes, the water tastes bitter to us at the time, but as an act of mercy, God transforms the water into wine in the lives of those to whom we minister. I'll put it another way:
Without our wound, where would our power be?
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.
DR. JARED ALCÁNTARA
Jared E. Alcántara is Professor of Preaching and holder of the Paul W. Powell Endowed Chair in Preaching at Truett Seminary at Baylor University. He was born and raised in New Jersey and came to faith in Christ at the age of fourteen. He is half-Latino (Honduran) and half-White. An ordained Baptist minister, he has served as a youth pastor, associate pastor, and teaching pastor in Illinois, Massachusetts, Oregon, and New Jersey. Before coming to Truett, from 2014-2018, he served as an associate professor of homiletics at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois.
Dr. Alcántara is passionate about equipping students to preach God’s Word in ways that are faithful, effective, clear, creative, and inspiring. He also plays piano, enjoys disc golf, and is a rabid Philadelphia Eagles fan. He lives in the Waco area with his wife, Jennifer, and their three daughters.
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.
I Am Okay
The following is a lightly edited transcript and a video of Rev Dr. Valerie Bridgeman’s talk from our 2022 Enfleshing Witness gathering.
Rev. Dr. Valerie Bridgman is the founder and president of Women Preach, and she serves as Dean and Vice President for Academic Affairs at the Methodist Theological School in Ohio. Dr. Bridgman is a graduate of Trinity University, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and Baylor University. Dr. Bridgman has written several published works and has edited and contributed to the Africana Bible: Reading Israel's Scriptures From Africa and the African Diaspora.
Hello, everyone. I'm glad to be able to speak to you. Hear these words from the Common English Bible Translation from 2 Kings 4:8-37. It's a long reading, but it's worth it:
One day, Elisha went to Shunem. A rich woman lived there. She urged him to eat something. So whenever he passed by, he would stop in to eat some food.
She said to her husband, “Look, I know that he is a holy man of God and he passes by regularly. Let's make a small room on the roof. Let's set up a bed or table, a chair and a lamp for him there. Then when he comes to us, he can stay there.”
So one day Elisha came there, headed to the room on the roof and lay down.
He said to his servant Gehazi, “Call the Shunammite woman.” Gehazi called her and she stood before him. Elisha then said to Gehazi, “Say to her,’ Look, you've done all, gone to all this trouble for us. What can I do for you? Is there anything I can say to you on behalf to the king or to the commander of the army?’”
And she said, “I am content to live at home with my own people.” Elisha asked, “So what can be done for her?” Gehazi said, “Well, she doesn't have a son and her husband is old.” Elisha said, “Call her.” So Gehazi called her and she stood at the door. Elisha said, “About this time next year you will be holding a son in your arms.” And she said, “No, man of God, sir, don't lie to your servant.” But the woman conceived and gave birth to a son at about that time the next year, this was what Elisha had promised her.
The child grew up. One day he ran to his father who was with the harvest workers.
He said to his father, “Oh, my head, my head.” The father said to a young man, “Carry him to his mother.” So he picked up the boy and brought him to his mother. The boy sat on her lap until noon. Then he died.
She went up and laid him down on the bed for the man of God. Then she went out and closed the door. She called her husband and said, “Send me one of the young men and one of the donkeys, so that I can hurry to the man of God and come back.” Her husband said, “Why are you going to him today? It's not a new moon or Sabbath.”
She said, “Don't worry about it.” She saddled the donkey, said to the young servant, “Drive the donkey hard, don't let me slow down unless I tell you.” So she went off and came to the man of God at Mount Carmel. As soon as the man of God saw her from a distance, he said to Gehazi, his servant, “Look, it's the Shunammite woman. Run out to meet her and ask her, are things okay with you, your husband and your child?”
She said, “Things are okay.” When she got to the man of God at the mountain, she grabbed his feet. Gehazi came to push her away. But the man of God said, “Leave her alone. She's distraught. But the Lord has hidden the reason from me and hasn't told me why.”
She said, “Did I ask you for a son, sir? Didn't I say, don't raise my hopes.” Elisha said to Gehazi, “Get ready, take my staff, and go. If you encounter anyone, don't stop to greet them. If anyone greets you don't reply, put my staff on the boy's face.” But the boy's mother said, “I swear by my life and by the Lord's life, I won't leave you.”
So Elisha got up and followed her. Gehazi went on ahead of them. He set the staff on the young boy's face, but there was no sound or response. So he went back to meet Elisha and said, “The boy didn't wake up.” Elisha came to the house and saw the boy laying dead on his bed. He went in and closed the door behind the two of them.
Then he prayed to the Lord. He got up on the bed and he lay on top of the child putting his mouth on the boy's mouth, his eyes on the boy's eyes, his hands on the boy's hand and as he bent over him the boy’s skin grew warm. Then Elisha got up and paced back and forth in the house. Once again, he got up on the bed and bent over the boy, at which point the boy sneezed seven times and opened his eyes.
Elisha called Gehazi and said, “Call the Shunammite woman.” Gehazi called her, and she came to Elisha. He said, “Pick up your son.” She came and fell at his feet, face down on the ground. She picked up her son and left.
So ends this reading.
I don't know if you've ever listened to that entire story, but let me say this: As a black woman from the deep south of the USA, I know what it's like to grieve and to want for something that doesn't seem like you can have it. She was vulnerable in the patriarchal society of her time. If her husband who was older than her were to die, and she did not have a son, particularly a son, to take care of her she would be a widow in the midst of this country and vulnerable, for who would take care of her?
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.
Rev. Dr. Valerie Bridgeman
Rev. Dr. Valerie Bridgeman is the Founder and President of WomanPreach!, Inc., the premiere non-profit organization that brings preachers into full prophetic voice around issues of equity and justice both in the pulpit and in the public arena. Her mission is to produce a network of preaching women and men who will use their voice in service to the gospel of Jesus Christ, especially as it relates to Womanist/Feminist concerns of equity and justice.
She serves as Dean and Vice President for Academic Affairs at the Methodist Theological School in Ohio. She also is Associate Professor of Homiletics and Hebrew Bible since 2015, after having served as Visiting Professor for a year and a half.
Dr. Bridgeman is a graduate of Trinity University with a double major in Communication and Religion. She holds a Master of Divinity degree from Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, where she won the Charles L. King Excellence in Preaching Award for graduating seniors. She pursued further studies at Baylor University, receiving a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Biblical Studies with a concentration in Hebrew Bible.
Dr. Bridgeman has written several published works which include "Homiletics and Biblical Interpretation," in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Biblical Interpretation (2016), "A Perspective on the David Narratives (Rizpah)" and "A Perspective on the Teachings of Jesus (Syrophoenician Woman/Mark 7:24-30)" in Global Perspectives on the Bible (Prentice Hall, 2011). She has edited and contributed to The Africana Bible: Reading Israel’s Scriptures from Africa and the African Diaspora (Fortress Press, 2009) with “Jonah” and “Nahum,” and co-edited Those Preaching Women: A Multi-Cultural Collection (Judson Press, 2008).
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.
I lift my eyes to the hills
Jeff Chu wears several hats, including writer, reporter, and editor. He's also the co curator and co-host with Sarah Bessie of Evolving Faith. He's an occasional preacher. Some days, Jeff says he believes in God. Other days, he wants to believe in God.
Let’s revisit Chu’s talk from our 2022 Enfleshing Witness gathering.
The following is a lightly edited transcript and a video of Jeff Chu’s talk from our 2022 Enfleshing Witness gathering.
Jeff Chu wears several hats, including writer, reporter, and editor. He's also the co curator and co-host with Sarah Bessie of Evolving Faith. He's an occasional preacher. He's also a teacher in residence at Cross Point Church in North Carolina. He's an ordinand in the Reformed Church in America. He's a cook, gardener, and dog walker to Fozzie in Michigan, where he lives with his husband.
Some days, Jeff says he believes in God. Other days, he wants to believe in God.
I lift my eyes to the hills. Where does my help come from?
My first home in scripture was Psalm 1:21. This was the psalm that my grandmother taught me in Cantonese when I was a child. This was also the psalm that went with her when she and my grandfather were forced onto the refugee road during World War II, the psalm that crossed an ocean with them to a new country years later.
The psalm that stayed lodged in my heart as I veered off the straight Baptist path that they and my parents had marked out for me, and the psalm that accompanied me even as I left the Church. The Church that couldn't be my home because I wasn't straight, the Church that didn't want me on equal terms because of this skin and these eyes and this hair, the Church that still isn't sure what to do with me.
I lift my eyes to the hills. Where does my help come from?
I don't know that my grandmother meant for this psalm to meet me in the fullness of my intersecting identities. In my youth, I didn't know enough to be honest about them to myself, let alone to her.
I do know that these ancient lines had met her in the fullness of her identities: a lone daughter in a family with eight boys in a patriarchal culture, an educated pastor's wife who taught Bible in her own right, a deacon, a poor person, an immigrant.
Perhaps she'd bargained, just as she had taught me to stash away a few twenties in case of emergency, that tucking a few lines of biblical poetry in my heart might just come in handy someday.
I lift my eyes to the hills, where does my help come from?
The old Sunday school psalm about the foolish man building his house on the sand wasn't that wrong after all. What if, in a world that idolizes certainties and fundamentalisms, (progressive or conservative) with their right opinions, what if they're finally revealed to be the sham building materials and shaky foundations that they've always been? What if the human welcome that you wish for, and then the human affirmation when that mere welcome doesn't satisfy, and then the human celebration when affirmation seems paltry, what if they prove insufficient? After all, it's still human, and what your soul longs for is the divine.
What if it's no lasting shelter? No ultimate comfort because what your heart craves, what your heart was made for, is to be loved above all by a God who isn't fickle like people are.
I lift my eyes to the hills. Where does my help come from?
My help comes from the one who made heaven and earth. I might once have told you that my help, my sense of home, came from the one who made me fried rice. My grandma's battered old wok produced the most marvelous version, always with extra scallions, both because I love them and because the Chinese word for scallion is homophonous with the first character in the word for intelligence, and my people, even the Christians, are superstitious like that.
The crust got crispy. Egg and soy and sesame oil hugging each grain of rice much as my grandmother seemed to embrace me each time I ate the dish. But then my grandmother died, or as she would have said, she went home to her lord. Did she? I want to think so. I want to believe that before the one who made me fried rice, there was the one who made rice itself. Who created rice to begin with.
My help comes from the one who made heaven and earth. In a world that can feel so far from home, I lift my eyes to the hills, searching the horizon, seeking divine fingerprints in the ragged silhouette of those hills, against the heavens and in the tree line. In the clouds as they race against the sky, and in the stars as day turns to night. God is there, everywhere, in my own scallions that I grew the way my grandmother taught me, in the sesame and the soy that sing of faraway lands, in my own fried rice, cooked the way I learned from her.
I take a deep breath, smell the damp earth and the bright alliums. And the fragrant rice, and slowly I stumble back into the embrace of the one who makes home for all who struggle to find it.
My help comes from the one who made heaven and earth. Rooted and grounded in God's ever present love, I, a Hakka son, whose tribe carries the nomad's legacy because our people's name literally means guest family, I, the child of the immigrant, make home nowhere and everywhere.
Once a wise teacher told me that she creates her own belonging wherever she goes, never expecting it to be offered by any other human, always trusting in the presence of home wherever her body happens to be.
My help comes from the one who made heaven and earth. My help, but also our help, right? We recited this hymn in the little congregation in my grandparents living room, but generations of ancestors before us also sang this psalm. Perhaps there, in the continuity of the centuries, in the echoes of the ages, in the company of the great congregation of sinners and saints, I can find my home and make it for someone else.
My help is not mine alone. nor is home to be mine alone. I can make enough fried rice to share. We're invited to borrow hope, and maybe even home, and to lend it to one another too.
In the name of that one, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, creator mothering one who longs to collect her chicks under her wings and companion to us all.
Amen.
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.
Jeff Chu
I wear several different hats to cover my coarse Chinese hair, which requires too much product to tame:
Writer, reporter, editor. Co-curator and co-host, with Sarah Bessey, of Evolving Faith. Occasional preacher. Teacher in residence at Crosspointe Church. Ordinand in the Reformed Church in America (RCA). Cook, gardener, and dog walker to Fozzie in Michigan, where my husband and I moved two years ago. (First time living in the Midwest. Snow tires are a revelation!) Some days, I believe in God; other days, I want to believe in God.
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.
Tethered Away From God
The Reverend Ranjit Mathews preaches because God has called him to prophetic and embodied witness to those with ears to hear. His vocation is to love extravagantly, and to invite the shedding from systems of white supremacy, purity culture, patriarchy, and the gospel of production. Let’s revisit his talk from our 2021 Enfleshing Witness gathering.
The following is a lightly edited transcript and a video of Rev. Ranjit Mathews’ talk from our 2021 Enfleshing Witness gathering.
The Reverend Ranjit Mathews. Ranjit preaches because God has called him to prophetic and embodied witness to those with ears to hear. His vocation is to love extravagantly, and to invite the shedding from systems of white supremacy, purity culture, patriarchy, and the gospel of production. Ranjitt preaches with vulnerability, knowing he is deliciously imperfect.
Ranjit preaches to the Episcopal Church, and has served in parishes in New London, Connecticut; Long Beach, California; and Milton, Massachusetts, and as a midwife to the Jesus Movement with Anglican partners in Sub Saharan Africa. He preaches about the realm of God, and how it touches all parts of us, from our bodies to our minds and our souls.
Ranjit preaches among his ancestors of Indian Christian healers from Kerala in India. He preaches as a Catholic. Personality who has lived and learned from so many beautifully open personalities.
The truth is… truth is… is that I am worshiping something other than God. I have been so attached and tethered to systems in this world. Every day I see on my work calendar at 2:30pm, I've inscribed it in for a 2:30pm “nap.”
And every day I move beyond it. I push it away, recognizing that in my body, more than likely, I need to take a nap. I need to rest.
Friends, I share that because I know in myself that my worship is not of God.
I know that from when I grew up, (and this could be maybe a cultural upbringing, and in my time in a more fundamentalist Christian upbringing in college), that I was so interwoven with a sense of purity theology, or purity culture, that had me so disconnected or disembodied from myself.
Or even if I were to be connected with myself and enjoying the pleasure of my own body, I was told that that was wrong. I was told that that was a sin. Early on.
And so then I learned very intentionally to disconnect from myself. So then a whole understanding that I am invited into by God of connecting not only with my mind and my soul, my spirit, but also my body, that was cut off.
So is it any wonder, is it any wonder that at 2:30pm on a given day when that pops up just inviting me to take a nap, that I do not listen to that part of myself, of my whole embodied self?
I just dismiss it. Because, in fact, I've done that already because of my indoctrination, because of this purity theology, and also because I'm so tethered, that purity theology is so tethered to the market.
As if, ‘Ranjit, you are not worth shit if you take a nap.’ You're not goddamn worth it, right? You need to get on and be productive. Is that not anyway connected again from my distancing from my own body, my own bodily intuition, because I'm so tethered again also to the market, that then I lift up a sense of toxic masculinity within myself, right?
Because I do not connect it again to my emotions, to where my body is on a day-to-day basis. And when I'm disconnected from that, then I bring things in. I let any sort of trauma or emotion to just bubble up within me and harden, thus disconnecting myself from my emotions, from my feelings, and becoming more of a patriarchal man.
Aren't these all symptoms also of a deepening of white supremacy within myself?
We all know that, you know, I'm invited into perfection. I'm invited to cut myself off from my body in a very intentional way.
So, my friends, I name these things because, in fact, I do not worship God. Hell no.
I am tethered to white supremacy.
I am tethered to purity theology. I am tethered to market based capitalism. I am tethered to patriarchy.
Those are the systems, those are the idols in which my body and myself [are tethered]. That's who we worship.
So I share that with you all, my friends, folks, people of color living in the United States, maybe abroad, of how important it is to just let go and to grieve all the ways in which you, maybe, certainly me, have been attached to those systems. Giving a space to just grieve it all and fall apart.
During this pandemic time, that shifted for me. Where I realized that, you know, I do not have it all together.
And I was awakened to this portal within me of brokenness, and how I might be invited forward if I just allow myself the space to grieve, to not go forward and do something more productive, but maybe to rest.
I share that with you all, hoping that we are not tethered to becoming more productive within a sort of capitalist market based understanding, but that we lean ourselves more deeply into flourishing.
But what does it mean to flourish as people who are made in the image of God? Does that not mean to untether from those systems? Create space where maybe we have rest so that then we can then dream what a new world might be inviting us into?
My friends, I confess that I worship these systems and that I am not a person of faith, but I'm struggling to become one of them. Thank you.
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.
REV. RANJIT K. MATHEWS
The Rev. Ranjit K. Mathews was called as Rector of St. James, New London, on May 21, 2017. Rev. Mathews most recently served on the staff of the Presiding Bishop as the Partnership Officer for Africa.
Prior to his work with the churchwide office, Rev. Mathews was associate rector of St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Long Beach, California, a bilingual parish where he worked to build connections between the English-speaking and Spanish-speaking community members and led the youth group. Before that he was a theology lecturer at the Msalato Theological College of St. John's University in Tanzania, and he has also served as assistant rector of St. Michael's Episcopal Church in Milton, Massachusetts. Starting September 14th, he will be the Canon for Mission Advocacy, Racial Justice and Reconciliation for the Episcopal Church in Connecticut.
Throughout his work, Rev. Mathews has followed the example of Jesus' ministry of presence, compassion, justice and reconciliation, whether in pastoral care, or in the diplomacy involved with the Anglican partnerships in sub-Saharan Africa, or in anti-war protests before the Iraq War, or in investigations of immigrant detentions, or in building community partnerships to address local needs.
Rev. Mathews was born in Brighton, Mass. and grew up in Sharon, Mass. He majored in business administration at George Washington University and received his Master of Divinity from Union Theological Seminary in New York. As a seminarian, Rev. Mathews served at St. Mary's Episcopal Church in Harlem and also studied theology at United Theological College in Bangalore, India. His father, Rev. Koshy Mathews, is interim rector of Gloria Dei Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Rev. Mathews lives in New London with his spouse, Johanna, and their two young boys, Dhruv and Kabir. In addition to his extensive world service experiences in Africa and Asia, Rev. Mathews brings to us an ability to speak Spanish and a working knowledge of Malayalam, as well as a love of New England sports teams, national and world politics, books, nature, travel, movies, hip hop music and playing tennis!
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.
Your Words Will Become Seeds
Dr. Christine Hong usually mostly writes and teaches, instead of preaches, as a seminary professor. But after her writing and teaching slips into sermon mode, and she's mostly sorry about it, Christine mostly teaches and preaches to seminary students and their loved ones at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia. Christine preaches among an amazing group of colleagues and friends with the spirits of her ancestors.
The following is a lightly edited transcript and a video of a talk Dr. Christine Hong gave at our 2021 Enfleshing Witness gathering.
Christine usually mostly writes and teaches, instead of preaches, as a seminary professor. But after her writing and teaching slips into sermon mode, and she's mostly sorry about it, Christine mostly teaches and preaches to seminary students and their loved ones at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia. Christine preaches among an amazing group of colleagues and friends with the spirits of her ancestors.
The word comes today from Psalm 19:14, “but the words of my mouth. And the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight. Oh God, my strength and my redeemer.” Amen.
In Korean, we have a saying, "말이 씨앗이 되다" (Mal-i ssiga doenda)
Or, your words will become seeds.
My grandmother would say this to me as a warning whenever she would catch me saying something she felt was rude or plain mean. And believe me, it happened way too often in my adolescence. As I grew up, these words were always lurking in the back of my head. I hear my grandmother's voice telling me, watch what you say and don't say things that you don't want to become reality.
She meant don't wish people harm and even don't wish something good for yourself if it will bring harm to other people. In some traditions, we believe that words aren't just words, they are spells. Words are the result of things that lay brewing in our hearts and even in our dreams. They reveal our innermost thoughts.
What's in your heart? What do your words reveal about you? About the things that you want most in this life?
말이 씨앗이 되다 Your words are seeds.
What my grandmother taught me continues to be true for me. Words, as I understand them, can commit violence and damage into generations. Think about any type of federal or local policy or law that was created to dehumanize, steal people and land, and facilitate the legal oppression and suppression of entire peoples.
Those aren't just legal words on a page. They were and are also thoughts and values in the hearts of people. Think about the residential boarding schools for native children in Canada and in the U. S. and the children who are right now being found. Their bodies recovered from mass graves as we speak. The church which supported, funded, and facilitated these boarding schools is complicit in sowing the words, the seeds, which turned into acts of genocide.
In the church, when we don't ponder carefully the thoughts in our hearts, they can become words, seeds, and acts of violence and injustice everywhere. Recently, there's been story after story coming out of a popular mainly Asian American and Korean American church stories of sexual and spiritual abuse by pastors and members steeped in a culture of purity culture and theologies of justified violence.
And I'm talking about it because we have to start talking about it.
Words were used to plant seeds and deeds of violence. Words were used to justify and hide dehumanizing actions. Words veiled in theological frameworks like salvation, called, purity, righteousness, chosenness, and even love.
These stories enrage me because I recognize those places, cultures, and the misuse of these words from my own experiences. Words that were meant to comfort and uplift, but became weaponized and used to violate instead.
This isn't you. This is not a single church. or a single time. Abuse in churches, sexual and spiritual often co-occur and happen all the time. And still the church uses its words meant for care and nurture to commit acts of deceit and to cover up its complicity with even more violence.
말이 씨앗이 되다 Your words are seeds.
Yet in the face of the mess that the church has wrought throughout its history and in our present time, there's this other side to the same. We can plant different types of seeds.
The meditations of our hearts can also be seeds for liberative and freedom oriented futures. It's through the planting of the words and seeds for liberation that we refuse the way the church has too often let its words and actions harm the lives of our beloveds.
If words are the seeds planted for the future, then let's plant different seeds of flourishing for all. Especially for those of us upon whose backs the systems and structures of oppression through white supremacy, colonization, heteronormativity, and ableism have been built. Let's become bold and claim that our words are the seeds that beckon collective action.
Seeds of a collective liberation and freedom that is coming and coming soon. Seeds of justice that's already here, rooted, and ready to blossom in our midst. Your dreams of joy, of love, of thriving can and must become the seeds of the future church. This is one way that we refuse the way the church has and still is harming through its words and actions.
말이 씨앗이 되다 Your words are seeds.
What are the meditations of your heart? Are they acceptable to our God of love and justice? Our God who loves justice? Our God who is the rock and redeemer of those who are oppressed in this life? Our words are a reflection of what dwells in the innermost spaces of our hearts, our dreams, our visions.
They are our dearest meditations. What types of seeds are you planting? Which dreams are being seeded through your words in your teaching, in your preaching, your parenting, and your neighboring. For too long, the church and those within it have used the words that they say to plant seeds that lead only to death and death dealing.
말이 씨앗이 되다 Your words are seeds.
Let us plant a different type of word, a different type of seed, words and seeds of life, a life where everyone gets what they need, a future where the church no longer harms but works to mend, repair, and heal. May the words that come from our freedom dreaming scatter in the wind like dandelion seeds, adhering to the earth in every place and time and blossoming as justice and joy for us and for the generations to come
말이 씨앗이 되다 Our words, our seeds.
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.
DR. CHRISTINE J. HONG
Christine J. Hong is Associate Professor of Educational Ministry and the Director of the Doctor of Educational Ministry Program at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, GA. Her research includes anti-colonial and decolonial approaches to religious and interreligious education. Hong's research interests also include Asian American spiritualties, and the spiritual and theological formation of children and adolescents among people of color communities. Hong is ordained in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and has spent time as both as a religious educator and youth and young adult minister in New York and Southern California. She is the author of two monographs, the first is, Youth, Identity, and Gender in the Korean American Church, published by Palgrave, and the second, Decolonial Futures: Intercultural and Interreligious Intelligence for Theological Education from Lexington Press. Hong is the current Steering Committee Chair of the Association for Asian/North American Theological Educators, serves as a faculty mentor at the Louisville Institute for doctoral fellows, and is a committee member for the Women of Color in Scholarship and Teaching Unit at the AAR.
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.
The Playfulness of God
The following is a lightly edited transcript and a video of a talk Ophelia Hu Kinney gave at our 2021 Enfleshing Witness gathering.
Ophelia most frequently speaks to peoples who may misunderstand each other. She is a queer Asian American who belongs to Hope Gateway, a progressive congregation in the whitest state in the country. There she serves on staff to open the pulpit up and all facets of Sunday worship to all, bringing forth the collective and unique wisdoms of the community.
Ophelia preaches about a creator who is kin and parent alike to our inner children, a god who is playful, imaginative, queer, and courageous. To Ophelia, preaching is an act of translation. She preaches because she externally processes the divine, and because the news is good indeed.
My name is Ophelia Hu Kinney.
She, her, and hers are my pronouns.
I am a child of emigrants from China, and I am a sister and a wife. I come from many streams, many traditions of playfulness, from peoples for whom play is part and parcel of survival and heritage and meaning making.
There is the high art of Chinese opera, for example, an extravagant commitment of imagination to fantastical storytelling, lavish makeup, exaggerated vocal performance, the whole nine yards. Of course, of only the most exquisite fabric.
And I also come from a queer lineage, a people who, like many peoples, have responded to marginalization with audacious joy. One public expression of that joy is pride festivals. which began as, and still are, riots against normativities, against marginalization and oppression.
And another public expression of that joy is drag. This is a performance, or a mythology, of gender. And I can't speak of a divine, of play, or of drag, without invoking the poetry of the great Sufi Muslim poet Hafiz, who said, “You are the sun in drag. You are God hiding from yourself. Sweetheart, oh sweetheart, you are God in drag.”
I come, as I've said, from traditions of play, of playfulness, and sweetheart, oh sweetheart, I believe that you do too. Deep and alive and co-mingled like the mycelia, that oceanic neural network that connects fungi and plants, that is the vastness of our respective traditions of play, of imagination, of exploration and fantasy and curiosity.
Play is how we first made sense of the world into which we were born. It was how we explored ourselves and our worlds, our divine outer and our divine inner realms. Unless we change and become like children, right? Then perhaps we will find our hands cupped and overflowing with the kingdom of God. Above this mycelium, Above the vast and rich traditions of playfulness that buoy and connect our cultures is what is visible on the forest floor of our existence.
Up on the forest floor, we are planted in churches and communities where playfulness too often has little value, and where play itself is subject to judgment. Leisure is what we call the play of the wealthy and the powerful. And laziness is what we call the play of the poor and the disempowered. Up on the ground level, our peoples are held captive by the belief that some of us are permitted to be playful, and some of us are not.
We may even believe, about ourselves, that we are not allowed to be playful. That as people of the global majority, as people of color, our nobility and our worth are inextricable from our productivity. We may believe that we are only as valuable as what can be extracted from us.
This is not a message about rest, which is also vital, and which is very different.
To be playful is to be wasteful, to be unproductive in the colloquial sense of the word, to be uninhibited by the immediacy of what is, and to have little ulterior motive. Up on the ground level, far from our roots, we are susceptible to commodifying even our joy, a hustle culture that lures us to ossify our happiness into an income stream.
We live in a culture where people of color must achieve far more than white people do in ministry, in our careers, and in our academic lives to compete for this seeming scarcity of empathy, respect, and opportunity. So what, then, is the purpose of play in a world that strips us of our playfulness, that profits off of, even banks on us, forgetting that we were ever a people of play?
Consider Jesus in his first act of public ministry. A party, a wedding, where he turned water into an overabundance of wine. This lavishness and playfulness, cupped and overflowing. There is the kingdom of God.
And then consider the woman with the alabaster jar of expensive perfume poured out over Jesus' feet the night before he was betrayed. A wastefulness, someone called it. A foolishness. And there too, overflowing, is the kingdom of God.
In our propensity for playfulness, in our childlike capacity for delight and mischief and wonder, is something like the image of God. A God who exhibits what we might call lavish and playful and wasteful and foolish.
That image of God remains unextinguished by the puritanical anti-tradition in which we live. And that deprives us, especially people of color and other marginalized peoples, of play and its associated innocence, youth, and grace.
In the realm of psychotherapy, there's an approach to viewing the mind called Internal Family Systems, or IFS. And IFS imagines the mind as an interactive system of parts protecting a truer self. And what our truer selves have in common is our propensity for playfulness, openness, and curiosity. Our response to subjugation is to suppress that inner child so that it cannot be hurt or exploited. But at our core, the theory implies, when we are unguarded, we are playful.
And when we forget the value of play, we forget God in us, and we lose a vital mode of connection to the divine. In the miasma of this puritanical anti-tradition, do we dare to encounter God playfully? Do we believe that God has room for our questions, our what-ifs, our unorthodox methods of reaching for God's self?
What God has called playfulness, let us not call a slippery slope or an idle or heretical simply because it balks against the anti-tradition of an unadventurous fundamentalism. Therein is the possibility of finding a God and an us that cannot be so easily controlled or manipulated.
So people of the global majority.
People of God's deep delight.
We were once children, too, made in the image of God. We were playful and imaginative and full of trouble.
And may it be that we recollect that we are cast in the image of God the child, full of mischief and wonder; God of a thousand stories, some of which we have called silly make believe through our collective history; God the child who dressed themselves up in the drag of human flesh.
And aren't creation and recreation a form of play?
God of joy, holy child, who breathed us into becoming, saying,”hmm, I wonder…”
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.
OPHELIA HU KINNEY
Ophelia Hu Kinney serves as the Director of Communications for an organization seeking LGBTQ justice and inclusion in The United Methodist Church and on the staff of a fiercely loving, justice-seeking church in Portland, Maine.
She also shares her time with Beloved Arise and the Equality Community Center of Maine.
Her pronouns are she/her.
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.
Beyond the Politics of Visibility
Jesus embodies a different kind of knowing, a different ministry and witness that comes with stiff social and economic penalties. His visions of an end to evil and dehumanizing systems so that all might flourish. Those were both popular and exceedingly disruptive.
The following is a lightly edited transcript and a video of a talk Rev. Laura Cheifetz gave at our 2021 Enfleshing Witness gathering.
Laura preaches because her understanding of the vision of the world God desires is so very different from how things are. Laura preaches to anyone who will listen. Seriously. But most typically, she preaches to the good people of the Protestant mainline. Mainly, the PCUSA.
Laura preaches hard things when called for, and beauty, and love, and body, and radical inclusion. That's when she's had a nap and is hydrated. Sometimes she preaches the gospel. of grace in “just enough”. Like we're all tired, but sometimes just enough is more than enough.
Our friends James and John asked Jesus for positions, you know, in his cabinet, on his pastoral staff. But wait, that's what we do. That's what those of us who are considered leaders in the progressive people of color Christian space sometimes do.
In our defense, it's what we're told to do in our capitalist society. Women are told to lean in. People of color are encouraged to put our names in for prominent positions where only white people have gone before.
It's not just that we are told to live as though we have the confidence of mediocre white men, particularly when we know we are better than that. It's that for generations we have not been given a choice about the shared cup and the shared baptism. Suffering and death have stalked all of us, but some of us faster than others.
Because the society we live in does its best to legally, culturally, economically advantage white people and men with the best we have to give, leaving the rest of us with the dregs.
Of course we are jockeying for our own positions. A place at the table, right? And if it comes with the ability to provide for our families and make positive change?
James and John are playing the system. This is what they know. James and John make the error and become object lessons of asking such a thing of a prophet who healed on the Sabbath, palled around with sex workers, and sat and talked with strange women.
While we are accustomed to writing what could be maybe the next best selling book in our space or the next article that gets a lot of clicks.
Putting forward our names for Bishop, self referring to the open call at that tall, steeple church, Jesus's words echo, “Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant.”
Jesus embodies a different kind of knowing, a different ministry and witness that comes with stiff social and economic penalties. His visions of an end to evil and dehumanizing systems so that all might flourish. Those were both popular and exceedingly disruptive.
James and John see popularity and imagine power as it is shaped in their society. But the way Jesus perceives is paved with consequences.
It is alienation, not comfort. Humility, not power. It is the ill and the unhoused. It is the challenge to the powers that be, unto death. And that, itself, is faithfulness. It is an honoring of all that our ancestors went through so that we could be.
We who are people of color know the danger we already live through our bodies, our ancestries, our cultures. And our ancestors lived this too, although we have had some problematic ancestors.
One of these ancestors is Takao Ozawa. He had the misfortune of living in the United States when the only way to be a citizen was to be white or black. Ozawa, an immigrant from Japan, argued that he was white. And he took this all the way to the Supreme Court in 1922.
He was Christian. His skin was, as he said, white. His children had English names. He had been educated in the United States. Despite all of his efforts, Japanese immigrants remained ineligible for citizenship until 30 years later in 1952. The lesson he took from a life of racism and xenophobia was the wrong one.
But honestly, who could blame him? We have other ancestors who knew the truth about this place.
Grace Lee Boggs, a Chinese American activist in Detroit, told us to build movements an inch wide and a mile deep.
Yuri Kochiyama, a Japanese American activist who engaged in causes ranging from Puerto Rican independence, to freeing black political prisoners, to redress for Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II, urged us to speak out wherever there is injustice.
And she modeled it for us. She didn't want us to be so polite.
Some of us are playing those old politics of visibility and respectability clothed in new social media strategies. How many followers do we have? Do prominent people think of us for speaking or for church positions? How provocative, but still within the basic framework, could we be?
Can we get that photo op maybe in the Oval Office? How can we create change within the denomination? Meanwhile, Jesus is over here making sure the children have a bite to eat.
We are the next ancestors. How will we shape what comes after us? Will we strive for the limits of our imaginations? Are we planning to be James and John?
Or will we be the ancestors willing to serve? Following the way of Jesus, fighting against injustice, a servant all the way to the end.
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.
REV. LAURA CHEIFETZ
Laura Mariko Cheifetz is the Assistant Dean of Admissions, Vocation, and Stewardship at Vanderbilt Divinity School. She is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), a graduate of North Park University (MBA, ’11), McCormick Theological Seminary (M.Div. ’05), and Western Washington University (BA in Sociology, 2000).
She is a contributing editor to Inheritance, a magazine amplifying the stories of Asian American and Pacific Islander Christian faith. She is the co-author and editor of "Church on Purpose: Reinventing Discipleship, Community, & Justice" (Judson Press) and contributor to "Race in a Post Obama America: The Church Responds" (Westminster John Knox Press), "Leading Wisdom: Asian and Asian North American Women Leaders" (WJK), "Here I Am: Faith Stories of Korean American Clergywomen" (Judson), and "Streams Run Uphill: Conversations with Young Clergywomen of Color" (Judson). She is co-author of the "Forming Asian Leaders for North American Churches" entry in the "Religious Leadership" reference handbook (SAGE Publishing). An occasional contributor to various blogs, her piece "Race Gives Me Poetry" for "Unbound: An Interactive Journal of Christian Social Justice" won the Associated Church Press 2016 Award of Excellence - Reporting and Writing: Personal Experience/1st Person Account (long format).
Laura is multiracial Asian American of Japanese and white Jewish descent. She was the fourth generation of her family to be born in California, and grew up in eastern Oregon and western Washington. Laura has served on various boards, national and international ecumenical bodies, and has been president of two homeowners associations. She is currently the co-moderator of the Special Committee on Per Capita-Based Funding & National Church Financial Sustainability for the Presbyterian Church (USA). As you might imagine, she is well-versed in people and politics.
Laura and her partner, Jessica Vazquez Torres, the National Program Manager for Crossroads Antiracism Organizing & Training, live in Nashville, Tenn. with two rescued Shih Tzus. They enjoy all their nieces and nephews, and hope to be such fabulous aunties that the kids smuggle good booze to them in their retirement home. In their free time, Jessica bakes and Laura delivers the baked goods to friends and neighbors.
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.
Enfleshing Witness: Rev. Wesley Morris
Wesley preaches because the pitch, tone, words, cadence, movement, shifts, and emotion in the voice or expression is another way to communicate a finite witness to the infinite proposal of love from God found in Jesus Christ.
The following is a lightly edited transcript and a video of Rev. Wesley Morris’ talk from our 2021 Enfleshing Witness gathering.
Wesley preaches because the pitch, tone, words, cadence, movement, shifts, and emotion in the voice or expression is another way to communicate a finite witness to the infinite proposal of love from God found in Jesus Christ. Wesley preaches to the seen and unseen without prejudice, city and residents of Greensboro, our local community, while heighteningly aware of the borderless world around us.
As a chaplain, He is deeply invested in the personal, while embodying the public. He views ministry like a note found in a cork bottle floating to a distant shore. Our words may very well be equally, for this or another time. Wesley preaches among the least, the lost, and the left behind, intentionally. I am among a generation of preachers and ministers, seeking a way out of, through, and with, what looks like no way, to the natural view.
Early in the morning, early in the morning.
Be fire baptized
Early in the morning, early in the morning, early in the morning.
Be fire baptized.
Peace. My name is Wesley Morris. I'm the senior pastor of Faith Community Church here in Greensboro, North Carolina. And I greet you on behalf of our entire congregation, and I welcome you in the joy of Jesus.
I want to begin by sharing with you a story. In 2006, I was part of a gathering in Bowling Green, Virginia.
It was a gathering of folks who were Black, Indigenous, and other people of color. And we came at the invitation, at the theme, of our spirituality. It was those who were concerned with the social, emotional, psychological health of Black and Indigenous people. And while there, we had a schedule of events. On this schedule of events my young mind became very curious.
On Saturday morning, we saw the opportunity for tai chi. In the afternoon, there was meditation. There was a vegetarian meal prepared for us in the evening. And at nightfall, we would gather around a fire for a fireside chat.
At this fireside chat, which was probably the most intriguing thing to me, Baba Antonio (Antonio Carpenter) came over to me and he put his hand on my shoulder, and he guided me through a meditation.
He said, “Look into the fire and pick a piece of wood.”
And so following his commands, I looked at this piece of wood and. Lo and behold, a face began to emerge on this piece of wood.
He said, “Just keep looking at it.”
And I did. And as time passed and I grew deeper and more intimate into the meditation, I began to see this face and it became all the more beautiful to me.
And I just kept looking at it and I didn't know what the end was going to be. I just knew to keep focused. On this face, the fire and the crackling and the whispers of the wind and the stars and their fixed positions all added to the environment. But I just kept my eyes on that fire and that wood. I saw that as an opportunity to understand that the unauthorized separation between the heavens and the earth, between the cosmic and the material, really does a detriment to what's possible.
You see what stirred inside of me was a way to view change and transition. I began to also really appreciate more deeply the material sense in which I live. My body, the broadness of my nose, my skin, my hair. I began to fall in love with myself and understanding that falling in love with yourself is part of the process of understanding what it means to fall in love with Jesus.
Let me take you on this journey. In Exodus chapter 3, Moses walked up on a bush that was burning, yet it was not consumed. In Colossians chapter 2 verse 9, Paul writing from a prison to people he never saw says, “For in Christ, the fullness of deity lived in bodily form.”
I myself began to reflect on these times in which we live.
As we pass through the fires of our country, of pandemic, of sickness, of hurt and harm and danger, which is not unlike that of times past, we are not consumed and that the fire itself that comes to burn may also be a baptism. So in many regards, that which you are passing through internally and externally, may it cause us to deepen our love and our appreciation one for another.
Particularly when we get to tell our stories on our time, and in our way, and in our language, it builds up the unity that we need to pass through the fires of even our own faith at times.
So I believe the calling of Sonia Sanchez and her poem, “Catch the Fire,” is so timely for us now. So yes, indeed. Catch your fire. Don't kill. Yes. Yes. Yes. Hold your fire. Don't kill. Yes. Yes. Yes. Learn your fire. Don't kill. And yes. Be the fire.
So after that night, I had a beautiful night of sleep. But even better than that, I rose early in the morning, and I believe that I was not consumed by the fire, but baptized by it. May we see each other in the fire.
God bless you. Amen.
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.
Rev. 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. His work for more than a decade with the Beloved Community Center of Greensboro, home of the nation’s first “Community Truth and Reconciliation Process” uniquely positions him to guide those interested in intergenerational learning, historical archiving and community organizing.
Wesley is a graduate of North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University and Union Theological Seminary (NYC). His work with international travel projects in countries such as Cuba, Barbados and Brazil, have opened cultural and spiritual pathways for communities that would otherwise not have the opportunity or access to such rich experiences. Over the course of his career, he has continuously proven himself to be a catalyst for positive change in the community by helping people from diverse backgrounds embrace forgiveness and peace.
In high-pressure situations he pulls from his formal training and practical experience to unlock clarity for those who are seeking to change the world we live in. Mr. Morris is the Senior Pastor of Faith Community Church. When asked about his call to ministry, Wesley emphatically says, “I am here to drive strategic community building and influence transformative justice movements for all people.”
In his free time he enjoys traveling, reading, writing, playing basketball, and watching live sporting events.
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.