Blog Posts
FINE: A Word for 2024
As someone who attaches a great deal of importance to words, it might surprise you that sometimes I find the things that mean most to me of all are things that I find hard to express with words.
Photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash
As someone who attaches a great deal of importance to words, it might surprise you that sometimes I find the things that mean most to me of all are things that I find hard to express with words. Too many words can feel cheap, languorous, lacking the sharpness of my deepest emotions.
Maybe that’s why for the past few years I’ve tried to take each January and make a single focus word for the year ahead. I’m pretty sure the word I chose for 2023 was LESS, but maybe I embraced that idea so much that I didn’t write about it at all, though I did write a poem about the futility of unrealistic resolutions.
Anyway - I do have a new word for 2024 and that word is FINE. I’ll share more about why below.
And hey, if you’re interested - here are some “words of the year” as chosen by linguists and dictionary organizations. Two from 2023 were “rizz” and “authentic.”
I guess if I’m going to choose FINE as my word of 2024, I couldn’t choose a better theme song than this one, by the Indigo Girls
Why FINE?
I’m glad you asked!
The great thing about the word “fine” is that it’s a deceptively simple one, with a layer of different meanings. There’s a richness to “fine” that’s easy to miss when it’s sometimes our default response to a question about our own wellbeing. I think 2024 can hold within it all these different meanings of FINE, or at least I’m going to try to remember that throughout my own year.
FINE 1: The goodness of “OK”
While the COVID pandemic raged in 2020 and we all found ourselves buying weird loungewear on Amazon, I too bought myself a sweatshirt with an ironic saying (they are my favorite). This sweatshirt read:
It’s fine, I’m fine, everything is fine.
I guess that kind of sentiment is the initial thought I had when choosing FINE for my word of 2024. But rather than an acquiescence to the status quo, or worse, a covering up of authentic emotions, the kind of “fine” I wanted to get at here is that “fine” is actually all around me and I’m often the one turning its beauty into something pedantic and unsatisfying.
The truth is that the actual meaning of the word “fine” really does denote pleasure and beauty and quality of life. Something fine is something unique and special and individual. So part of what I want to say when I say FINE in 2024 is to recognize the absolute everyday beauty of my own life, my own individual self, and all those around me.
One of the traps of January is the way that marketing and capitalism turn each of us into works-in-progress. Sure, you’re lovable and capable … if you’re working out and eating well and journaling and waking up early and making all your meals from scratch and dry brushing and saving for retirement and paying off all your debts and, oh I don’t know, fill in whatever other virtues that you feel responsible to each morning when you wake up.
I forgot flossing.
Don’t get me wrong, routines and responsibility are the building blocks of adult life. But they don’t make you valuable or lovable or who you are. That’s why I like fine.
You’re already fine. I’m already fine. It’s fine. Life. Is. Fine.
If we learned anything in 2023 and into the first month of 2024, it’s that calamity and war and violence and disaster absolutely will come. We don’t have to hasten them. Still too many of us are making catastrophes out of ordinary challenges, and hating ourselves for not living into some externally or internally imposed impossible standard, which really only makes money for someone else by convincing us to buy the things that will ultimately make us FINE when we are already FINE.
Have I convinced you yet?
FINE 2: embracing the rarity and fragility of beauty
Some of the other meanings of the word “fine,” particularly as an adjective, denote high quality, uniqueness, and sensitivity. Maybe this meaning seems the opposite of the typical bland retort: “I’m fine.”
But that’s also why I love this word so much for 2024. To know in this year what it is to be FINE, to be OK and alive not as a work-in-progress but right exactly as you are, means that you’re set free to see and experience the fullness of rare, fragile beauty in your midst.
As I think about this meaning for 2024, I’m reminded of something I heard on one of my favorite podcasts, Under the Influence, by author Jo Piazza.
On Dec. 28, Jo’s guest, Kathryn Jezer-Morton is talking about the recent popularity of “trad wives” on Instagram, and this new sort of reactionary trend that suggests mothers need to spend their days in carefully manicured bliss, always looking well-groomed, with affable, attractive children - and certainly no career outside the home.
In the midst of their discussion, Jezer-Morton says this really profound thing that is part of my focus for 2024. I’m paraphrasing here, but she basically says this:
So many beautiful things aren’t pretty.
At that point I had to pause the podcast and just reflect for a moment on my own life, and lives of my loved ones. I thought about the beauty of hard-won young love, and the dirtiness of growing up together into fully formed adults, embracing the changes of aging and maturity and parenthood. I thought about newborns, and dark circles, and poop literally everywhere. About an overgrown backyard full of wild creatures and weeds that needed to be pulled. About speaking the truth in love and hearing it with an open heart. About a community that comes together to support someone who’s struggling. About cheap, watery coffee in church basements and the smell of stale cigarettes. About wiping dirt off your son’s skinned knees and tears out of his trusting eyes, knowing that even as he has fallen, you’ll help him get back up.
When I say FINE in 2024 I also want to get at this idea, that maybe I’ll only really experience the beauty if I let go of the need for everything and everyone to be pretty.
FINE 3: the end
The last thing I thought about when I thought about using FINE as my word for 2024 was the Italian meaning of FINE, in a piece of music, pronounced fee-nay.
FINE means “end” in Italian, and you’ll often see it in a piece of music that repeats, including many religious hymns, which will instruct musicians and singers to D.C. al fine, which means repeat back from the beginning until you reach the “fine” or ending.
The repeat symbol in music can sometimes be a dreaded one. It can throw you off, make you lose your place, or get confused as to where you’re going. I guess that can be a familiar feeling in life, too.
So FINE can also be a signpost not to miss, a guide on the way when the road seems uncertain or confusing.
And FINE also means that sometimes it’s just time for something to end. FINE or “ending” is OK. It can even be beautiful or, reminiscent of our second definition, fine. I know without a doubt that 2024 will have within it many FINES, or endings. Hopefully those won’t include American democracy. (Seriously). But on a smaller scale, within the endings of 2024 will be challenges in our lives and in the world in general to begin anew, with energy and hope for a better future. Part of embracing this meaning of FINE is letting go of what didn’t go well before something came to an end.
If you’re like me, and you can sometimes be seduced by the allure of nostalgia, you can find yourself thinking that everything that has passed away is an occasion for despair - that that moment is gone, and the joy you felt in it will never come again. That’s true, of course. But if we extend that way of thinking, each moment is a lost cause, once passed. You can never catch up. There is only the eternal now.
FINE’s, or endings, are OK. They have to happen for life to go on. There is no perfect FINE, no absolute right time for one thing to end and another to begin. There is only FINE in the moment, an acceptance of the beauty amidst the pain and the struggle, a knowledge that nothing is forever in this world, and that each moment is worth experiencing in its own unique fullness.
So that’s it for my word for 2024. What’s yours?
My hope is that as I embrace all three meanings of FINE in 2024, I’ll be energized and enlivened to tackle the challenges for truth and justice and love in this world and in my own little life. I’m sending you all those same wishes for energy and restoration and love in your life, so that we can be here for one another in the year ahead.
Shared with permission from Rev. Angela Denker’s Substack, “I’m Listening”
Angela Denker
Angela Denker, author of Red State Christians: Understanding the Voters who elected Donald Trump (Fortress: August 2019), is a Lutheran Pastor and veteran journalist who has written for Sports Illustrated, The Washington Post, Christian Century, and Christianity Today. She has pastored congregations in Las Vegas, Chicago, Orange County (Calif.), the Twin Cities, and rural Minnesota.
Twitter | @angela_denker
Facebook | @angeladenker1
Blog | https://angeladenker.substack.com/
Website | https://www.angeladenker.com
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.
Multi-Vocational Ministry: Part 3 - Profiles in Multi-Vocational Ministry with Rev. Natalia Terfa
For the next few columns, I want to start sharing with you profiles of other folks who are engaged in Multi-vocational Ministry. Their examples will add depth and breadth to how we see multi-vocational ministry, and we can also see through their stories real-life examples of how people are living out these callings, as well as areas where they need more support and guidance.
Hi Everyone,
Welcome back to my musings on Multi-vocational Ministry. You can read parts I and II here and here.
In Part I, I shared a bit about my journey into multi-vocational ministry, and why I think this is such an important conversation for us to be having in the Church right now. In Part II, I delved a bit deeper into some of the background for multi-vocational ministry, how it’s sometimes used as an excuse to pay pastors less, especially pastors with marginalized identities. I also talked about what’s maybe the most complicated/difficult part of multi-vocational ministry: making it work financially, especially when it comes to benefits like healthcare and retirement accounts.
For the next few columns, I want to start sharing with you profiles of other folks who are engaged in Multi-vocational Ministry. Their examples will add depth and breadth to how we see multi-vocational ministry, and we can also see through their stories real-life examples of how people are living out these callings, as well as areas where they need more support and guidance.
I’m looking forward to sharing these stories and interviews with you! If you would like to be featured in this series, or if you know of someone I should profile, please send me a message!
And, as always, if you have a topic in multi-vocational ministry that you’d like to see addressed here, or questions and case studies, send those my way, too. I can always mix in more topical columns in the midst of our profiles.
Thanks for reading - here’s our first profile!
Multivocational Ministry Profile
Name: Rev. Natalia Terfa
Location: Minneapolis/Brooklyn Park, MN
Years of Ordained Ministry: 8
Years of Ministry (total): 20(+)
Official Job Title: Associate Pastor, Prince of Peace Lutheran Church
Un-Official Titles: Project Manager, Church Anew; Podcast Host: Cafeteria Christian; speaker, teacher, presenter, convener; collaborator, dreamer
I’ve known Rev. Natalia Terfa for a few years now, but it wasn’t until we sat down together for this interview that I learned she was an author! And just that fact showed me that even those close to multi-vocational ministers often have little idea of the breadth and depth of their work. So much of multi-vocational ministry gets done behind the scenes, in the margins, with small, incremental pieces of hard-fought progress only much later on resulting in visible accomplishment and acclaim.
Terfa has seen that truth lived out in her own work and ministry, first following a calling into Children, Youth and Family ministry as a longtime Director of Youth Ministry at Prince of Peace, as well as a singer and musician in her own right as a member of the Morning Glories singing group. She then completed a Master of Divinity degree and became ordained to serve as a Pastor of Word and Sacrament in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. While serving the traditional church, Terfa noticed that many people around her no longer felt comfortable in traditional church spaces, especially those who’d experienced abusive church cultures. She eventually teamed up with bestselling author and podcaster Nora McInerny to develop a ministry of their own to reach those very folks, called Cafeteria Christian, which started as a podcast in August 2018 and now boasts 241 episodes (and counting!), 5,000(+) weekly downloads, and an active Facebook group of more than 1,300 members - plus live events and community gatherings online.
Here’s what Terfa had to say about her life as a multi-vocational minister (answers edited slightly for clarity):
Q: How did you become a multi-vocational minister?
I would say … I got asked to write this devotion for our cancer support group (at Prince of Peace). It turned into a book (titled Uplift), which one of my friends gave to (bestselling author and podcaster) Nora McInerny. After that, she and I started meeting and having conversations.
One night, at a fundraising bingo event, she told me: “I came up with a name for our podcast!” Then, we did an episode together on the Alter Guild podcast, and it was just magic … we started Cafeteria Christian in August of 2018.
I’ve also been helping with Church Anew; I started writing for their blog first, and I ended up writing their #1 most-read blog, called An Open Letter to those who haven’t come back to church after COVID, which tells you something about where people are right now.
Since I went 3/4 time (at her pastoral job) in October of 2022, I’ve been doing more of that “side hustle” work, writing curriculum, organizing and managing projects like Stewardship in a Box.
Q: What has been the most rewarding part of being a multi-vocational minister?
I like expanding the view of what a pastor does. So often we think pastor = something at church. It’s fun to be like, “But we do this, too!” I really love singing with the Morning Glories. We just have so much fun singing. I get to show people, “Pastors do this, too!” It’s about widening the view of what ministry is, and helping people see that my only pulpit is not in the church.
Q: What has been the most challenging part of being a multi-vocational minister?
Definitely fitting it into all the time. Because of the expectation that pastors are working at church all the time, it was really helpful to go to 3/4 time in my pastoral call. That way I know: 1/4 time is spent doing this, and I can really give it the time and energy it needs.
One thing I learned on sabbatical (this past summer) is how good it is for me, and my family, to devote time and energy to that part of my life as well, and I don’t want to give that up.
When I first went to 3/4 time, I knew how much pay I was giving up, and I try to keep that in mind to make it up, like how many extra weddings I need to do, or how many articles I need to write. That part has gotten a little bit easier, though I don’t always make it all up. The hardest part too is that health care is attached to your job, and retirement savings.
Q: What’s your advice for others who are considering multi-vocational ministry, or who are doing it right now?
It’s really worth setting time aside from your steady income-paid job or call. I can’t believe I’m going to say that I’m grateful to have gone 3/4 time, but I am. I wish I would have been willing to do it on my own sooner. When I think about the things I love doing most each week, it’s recording the podcasts and spending time with “Cafeterians.” I wondered why I wasn’t giving those things the attention they needed.
I do really get the concept of golden handcuffs, and how everything is often tied to full-time work in a congregation. But there are ways to benefit your congregation through multi vocational ministry. Three-quarter time has been great for my church and for me; if you can set aside a chunk of time to work on your other vocations.
(Note: Pastor Terfa and her pastoral colleague went to 3/4 time in October 2022 for budget reasons. They each take one full week off each month to meet this new schedule).
To learn more about Rev. Natalia Terfa’s multi-vocational ministry journey, and follow her work, check out:
IG: @nterfa
And subscribe to Cafeteria Christian anywhere you get your podcasts.
Thanks for reading this edition of Pastor Angela Denker’s column on Multi-Vocational Ministry. If you’d like to be featured or share your story, or share an idea you’d like Angela to address in this column, please message her at https://angeladenker.com/contact.
Angela Denker
Angela Denker, author of Red State Christians: Understanding the Voters who elected Donald Trump (Fortress: August 2019), is a Lutheran Pastor and veteran journalist who has written for Sports Illustrated, The Washington Post, Christian Century, and Christianity Today. She has pastored congregations in Las Vegas, Chicago, Orange County (Calif.), the Twin Cities, and rural Minnesota.
Twitter | @angela_denker
Facebook | @angeladenker1
Blog | https://angeladenker.substack.com/
Website | https://www.angeladenker.com
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.
Multi-Vocational Ministry: Part 2
Churches, leadership, and denominations should begin by seeing ministers as complete human beings with a variety of gifts to offer inside and outside the church, rather than sort of widgets to fill in to particular parish settings, while adding in a part-time job or “bivocational ministry” heading to pay the bills.
Dear Readers,
Welcome back to the second edition of my column on Multi-Vocational Ministry!
I was so grateful to read the many responses you sent to the first column, as Church Anew seeks to open a space for us to talk about the many pressures, new ideas, and challenges of doing ministry in this ever-changing era.
In my first piece, I wanted to begin to expand our thinking from the more commonly heard “bi-vocational” ministry to see all of our work in the world as multi-vocational, a term that for me more accurately reflects the way so many of us ministers and leaders move throughout the world.
As part of my last column, I shared the many vocational roles that I’m balancing in my life, whether it’s working on a new book, writing my Substack, speaking about my previous book, preaching in my local congregations, and of course serving in multiple family caregiving roles as a spouse, parent, daughter, and sister.
At least one of you reached out to say that initially as you read my different vocational roles, it made you feel a little bit overwhelmed, or like I didn’t fully grasp the financial challenges of bi-or-multi-vocational ministry. Even as you said you’d re-read the article to realize that it’s probably because of those financial challenges that I’m doing so many things at once (you’re right!) I still thought it was important to use this second edition to talk about the very real financial realities and challenges of doing multi-vocational ministry in a Church world that too often sees vocation in a narrow way.
Additionally, quite a few of you who reached out shared personal stories of marginalization and limited opportunities in traditional parish ministry work, and most of you who shared these stories occupy distinct identity spaces that have often been marginalized and even disallowed for leadership in the church. There’s a reason why many of us who are blazing new trails in multi-vocational ministry are women, LGBTQ+, people of color, and/or people with disabilities.
For a long time in the history of America and most of the world, and still in many American Church settings, ordained ministry roles were open only to straight (or closeted) men. In my own denomination, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, it’s only in the past 15 years that churches have officially been able to call LGBTQ+ people as pastors, and it’s still the case, again, in my denomination, that women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ people have longer waits for parish calls than straight (or closeted) white men.
It’s important to acknowledge that, particularly for Mainline denominations in the U.S., the denominational push toward bivocational ministry came at the same time as pulpits were being opened to formerly marginalized folks.
As the Rev. Heidi Carrington Heath wrote to me on Twitter: “We see this happen in other professions as well. When it is painted as "a woman can do it," it becomes less valuable societally. The Church is not immune from it.”
Absolutely. I’ve traced similar trends in my other profession, journalism, which as it opened more to women and people of color, wages tended to increase and more job responsibilities fell onto journalists, who were soon expected to not only write stories, but also take photos, make videos, and post on social media. All for diminishing wages, of course.
So I think it’s important for ministers ourselves, as well as denominational and church leadership, to distinguish between a trend toward bivocational ministry as a solution to a financial problem in the Church, and the reality of multi-vocational ministry as the Church becomes de-centered in most communities and ministers find ample ways to use ministerial gifts inside and outside church walls.
Let me be clear: I don’t think bivocational ministry works as an urged strategy from denominational and church leadership. I don’t think pushing ministers to be bivocational is the role of church and denominational leadership. Rather, as we all know, vocation is a complicated discipline, resulting from deep discernment, within prayer and community, between an individual and God. Vocational choices are a response to the needs of the world and the leading of God, rather than a response to financial need, increasing health insurance costs, and dwindling church budgets.
The results of pushing overworked parish pastors into “bivocational” ministry situations simply to pay the bills - rather than as a result of looking for ways their ministry gifts could be used in multiple vocational situations - are dire. I heard a few stories from burned-out parish pastors, many of them working in rural churches on a tight budget, who were sharing full-time positions with their clergy spouses, as well as parenting young children. They wrote about trying to hold down multiple part-time jobs as well as attempting to meet the needs of a church that in the past had been accustomed to a full-time, well-compensated pastor who had a stay-at-home spouse who often spent a lot of time volunteering in the church - as well as a large stable of likewise stay-at-home spouses (mostly women, of course) to fill volunteer roles at the church that, increasingly, pastors are expected to do themselves.
One woman pastor wrote: “There isn't much time left for family at the end of the day. Any ‘day off’ I might've had was filled with other jobs or sometimes vocations. This constant 'going' leads to burnout, even when doing things I'm called to, and things that inspire and bring life. I seldom feel I have enough time to do anything well because there is always something else calling for my attention.”
Does this sound familiar to any other readers? This pastor shared a sentiment I’ve heard before from other overworked pastors, saying that she rarely felt creative or free on her “work” days, and thus had to move her sermon writing to her one precious “day off.”
As everyone reading this knows, there’s no easy solution to these problems. Health insurance costs and benefits costs in general for clergy continue to rise, pricing out many small and rural congregations. Many clergy continue to graduate with seminary and educational debt, necessitating a paycheck that can afford basic needs as well as loan bills. And most churches still have expectations for a church that ran like it did decades ago, with requisite programming, despite large drop-offs in staffing, volunteers and attendance.
Where does multi-vocational ministry fit into this mix? For my contribution, I think it’s important that we see multi-vocational ministry as a starting point - sort of a preexisting condition. Churches, leadership, and denominations should begin by seeing ministers as complete human beings with a variety of gifts to offer inside and outside the church, rather than sort of widgets to fill in to particular parish settings, while adding in a part-time job or “bivocational ministry” heading to pay the bills.
And not only this, but people who are not “professional church leaders” or ordained clergy should also be reminded that they too are full, multi-vocational human beings, with many gifts and roles they play each day of their lives. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the Church could take the lead in valuing the fullness of what human beings bring into the world, rather than just their capitalist-centered financial output?
Thanks for reading the second edition of Pastor Angela Denker’s column on Multi-Vocational Ministry. This column will be taking a summer break in July and August and will be back in September with more personal stories from multi-vocational ministers, as well as practical information, data, and trends about how to integrate multi vocational ministry and ministers into the Church at-large. If you’d like to be featured or share your story, or share an idea you’d like Angela to address in this column, please message her at https://angeladenker.com/contact.
Angela Denker
Angela Denker, author of Red State Christians: Understanding the Voters who elected Donald Trump (Fortress: August 2019), is a Lutheran Pastor and veteran journalist who has written for Sports Illustrated, The Washington Post, Christian Century, and Christianity Today. She has pastored congregations in Las Vegas, Chicago, Orange County (Calif.), the Twin Cities, and rural Minnesota.
Twitter | @angela_denker
Facebook | @angeladenker1
Blog | https://angeladenker.substack.com/
Website | https://www.angeladenker.com
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.
Multi-Vocational Ministry
Many people think I’m “not working” since I left my most recent parish call, and in my denomination, our practice of placing multi-vocational ministers “on leave from call,” reinforces this misunderstanding.
Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash
Dear Readers,
Hello and welcome to my new series on Multi-Vocational Ministry for Church Anew!
You might be thinking “multi-vocational” - hm - what does that even mean?
Maybe you’ve heard the word “bi-vocational” thrown around. Maybe, like me, you heard that word spoken a little bit in seminary, likely as a way to supplement ministry salaries that have been decreasing for years and often aren’t enough to afford basic necessities.
Maybe you’ve heard “bi-vocational” ministry compared to the Acts 18 passage about the Apostle Paul also working as a tentmaker, suggesting that those who serve the Gospel must also have a trade in order to afford their lives.
That model may have worked better in the days before most churches required their ministers to have a graduate degree, and, for seminary grads over the past 20-30 years or so, a graduate degree that necessitated taking out student loans, which would then take out a chunk of that aforementioned-often-paltry church income.
Or maybe you’re reading this passage as a lay leader in a church, a church council member or elder, and you’ve spent years struggling to balance your budget around skyrocketing costs for clergy and family health insurance and benefits. Maybe you’ve thought about a model of bivocational ministry as one that might help your church survive, but you’re not sure what that might mean for the minister’s availability to serve your church.
I’ve heard the word “bivocational” tossed around as a solution in both of these situations, and still, as an ordained clergy member and also a former church council member looking to balance a small, rural church budget, I find “bivocational” ministry sorely lacking in its ability to address the current challenges facing both ministers and churches.
That’s why, in this semi-regular column for Church Anew, I’m hoping we can explore together the idea of Multi-Vocational Ministry.
One of the presuppositions I’d like to carry into this work is the reality that most ministers, and most people in general, are already living multi-vocational lives. Certainly, those of us who are parents and home caregivers already have another vocation in addition to our paid work. Naming and honoring this work as a vocation helps lay leaders to better relate to the multi-faceted lives lived by clergy, and it helps to recognize the major shift in clergy lives since the former reality of predominately white, male ministers who lived in parsonages and were married to women who did the primary work of raising children and taking care of tasks of cleaning, cooking, and running the home.
A necessary caveat here is probably that Roman Catholic priests are among the few religious leaders who still take a singular approach to vocation, eschewing marriage and family and taking vows of poverty to serve the church.
But parenting and care-giving is not the only other vocation many Christian leaders follow. “Multi-Vocational” ministry honors the reality of 21st Century American life, that the church is no longer at the center place in most communities. Therefore, clergy leaders must define their vocational calling not primarily as one to a particular parish or even denomination but rather - as in the Early Church - to the Gospel. I personally happen to think this is a healthy and necessary change in orientation, but it is one that has been stubbornly resisted by denominational leaders and church councils alike.
To be called to serve the Gospel means that ministers must use all of themselves to serve the Gospel, as Paul advises in 1 Corinthians 9:
“For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law) so that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings.”
1 Corinthians 9:19-23
Paul recommends flexibility for clergy and ministry leaders. This flexibility means clergy can embrace multiple vocations that honor their gifts and talents and time. I know ministers who operate craft and design shops on Etsy. Others work as substitute teachers and serve their local school boards. Others work in social advocacy organizations or serve as volunteers for shelters for people experiencing homelessness. Some ministers might use their math skills and financial acumen to help people establish a household budget. Some ministers might coach youth sports teams or play in a community band.
Maybe you’re wondering about me, and why I am the minister writing this column for you.
Well, I was the woman in seminary 13 years ago who thought bivocational ministry was a scam, set up so that churches could pay pastors less, and ministers could lower our expectations despite coming out of four years of post-bachelor’s education and a year of barely-above-minimum-wage pastoral internship.
I thought pastors should run our churches like CEOs, and we should make sure our churches functioned financially so that we could pay our bills and count on a middle-class existence.
Whew, was that woman wrong - and likely following a failed 1980s megachurch model for Corporate Church, a model that has since been complicit in the rise of white Christian Nationalism. While I do know there are some who might suggest bi-vocational ministry as an excuse for lowering clergy wages, uni-vocational ministry, especially for mainline Protestant pastors in modern-day America, is just naive and unrealistic, and it also fails to meet the needs of modern-day Americans and modern-day Christians.
Today, I am a fully bona fide multi-vocational minister who has not served a full-time parish call since May of 2017. Since that time I have served a below-50-percent part-time interim staff call at a large metro congregation, and I have also served a 3/4 time solo call to a small rural congregation. I have also spent periods of time officially “on leave from call,” which I am currently on now. During those periods, I continued to serve as a fill-in pastor and preacher, including for pastors on sabbatical or churches in a short-term clergy transition.
Throughout all this time, I have continued to serve my other vocations as a mother to two young children, and also as a writer, speaker, author, journalist, and teacher. My first book, Red State Christians, came out in 2019, and Broadleaf Books published an updated version in August 2022. I host a thrice-weekly newsletter on my Substack, I’m Listening, at https://angeladenker.substack.com. I have taught courses for seminaries and universities, served as a guest on countless podcasts, and even appeared as a news pundit on CNN, the BBC, and SkyNews in 2019 and during the 2020 Presidential Election. I give keynote addresses and talks on Christian Nationalism, and I often work with pastors to support them on ministering in a divided political world, where political and religious-based violence and rhetoric is on the rise. I also speak on racism and the part it plays in white Christian Nationalism in America, and about the role of women in the church.
To support these passions, I have also done a variety of side jobs. Occasionally, I serve as a substitute teacher for Southwest High School and Lake Harriet Community School in the Minneapolis Public School district. I serve on a board for an organization promoting education on domestic violence prevention in Minnesota schools, based in rural Minnesota. I write articles for websites and magazines, and I also get to partner with organizations like Church Anew - which has fostered the multi-vocational writing and speaking skills of ministry leaders for several years now. Other organizations such as Red Letter Christians and Sojourners have also been fruitful places in which to grow my multi-vocational work.
Still, this path is one that many of us are forging for the first time, and we often face stereotypes and misunderstanding. Many people think I’m “not working” since I left my most recent parish call, and in my denomination, our practice of placing multi-vocational ministers “on leave from call,” reinforces this misunderstanding.
I am encouraged by the pioneering work of some Lutheran synods, who have made room for calls to “public theology” or other ways to affirm the work of ministers serving outside traditional parish or seminary professor calls.
Perhaps the most challenging part of being a multi-vocational minister (and you don’t have to be an ordained person to fit in this category! I know several incredible multi-vocational ministers who are not ordained) is the loneliness and the anxiety. You’re never quite sure where your next paycheck is coming from, and you never really have coworkers in the traditional sense. You might also feel a wondering if you’re doing the right thing - or if God has affirmed your call - or if you’re letting the Church down.
I’m hoping this column can serve as a place for encouragement and growth for all of us exploring this uncharted path. As part of that work, I want to address your own particular questions and concerns and wonderings about multi-vocational ministry. I’d love for you to share your stories with me and with Church Anew, and with your permission, I’ll address your questions in my column. You can submit them to me here: https://www.angeladenker.com/contact.
We can talk about your practical questions, like, how do you handle multi-vocational income during tax season? How do you start a practice of writing or speaking? How do you handle your social media platforms as a multi-vocational minister?
We can also talk theologically, about expanding the Church’s view of vocation and how it can operate in modern-day America. And we can talk about your struggles, emotions, and joys when it comes to this work. I hope through this page that we can meet one another, support one another, and continue to gain a deeper experience of Christian community.
I’ll be back in a couple of months with another column - don’t forget to send along your thoughts and questions! I’m also planning profiles of multi-vocational ministers among us: so think about sharing your story!
Rev. Angela Denker
Angela Denker
Angela Denker, author of Red State Christians: Understanding the Voters who elected Donald Trump (Fortress: August 2019), is a Lutheran Pastor and veteran journalist who has written for Sports Illustrated, The Washington Post, Christian Century, and Christianity Today. She has pastored congregations in Las Vegas, Chicago, Orange County (Calif.), the Twin Cities, and rural Minnesota.
Twitter | @angela_denker
Facebook | @angeladenker1
Blog | https://angeladenker.substack.com/
Website | https://www.angeladenker.com
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.
An Ode To The Ones Who Were There
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
This post originally appeared on Rev. Angela Denker’s Substack newsletter, I’m Listening.
There is a version of ingratitude that affects even those who claim to be anti-consumerist, especially within the church.
It extends outward from religion into creative types like artists and musicians and writers. And parents of young kids. And family members.
And … shoot. It’s all of us.
I’m talking about that notion to focus on “the ones who got away.” The ones who didn’t come. The non-RSVP-ers, which can be a large group if you’ve ever hosted an event, a wedding, or a 6-year-old birthday party.
I don’t think it’s just me, but we’ve all gotten kind of flakey in this year 3 of life with COVID-19. I noticed recently that our local salons refused to book appointments without a credit card on file, such was the huge amount of no-call no-shows impacting the books of stylists and estheticians.
I was talking to another mom/pastor friend earlier today about this great temptation to think that the thing that heals us is going to be some kind of blank nothingness-infused Netflix binge. Earlier today, I talked to a musician friend who told me that he’d realized a year or so ago that he’d entered a phenomenon called “post-burnout-burnout” where he was wandering through the world in a sort of semi-numb state, and even playing music couldn’t ignite his former sense of passion in him.
He stepped away for a bit from his full-time job, but for what it’s worth, on the morning I spoke to him he was playing music again, full of life and passion and all the things that made him feel alive.
He was no longer in post-burnout-burnout. And as I talked to him, in the quiet calm of the seminary chapel after I preached there last week, I felt the edges of my recent myopic exhaustion and overwhelm begin to melt away.
Gratitude will do that, of course. But it’s more complicated than just “giving thanks” or making lists. I think the life-changing gratitude we’re all hungry for entails a new way of seeing, a new way of remembering, and a new way of forgetting.
This is my ode and my thanksgiving to the ones who were there.
It may or may not be inspired by 10+ years in ministry, where every Sunday is like throwing a birthday party and you’re not sure if anyone will come, as well as more recently inspired by that experience I had last week preaching chapel at the seminary where I earned my M. Div.
Since I graduated in 2013, having decamped in my third year for the West Coast and finishing my final fourth year remotely/at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, I’d had mixed feelings about going back to Luther Seminary. It had long been the largest Lutheran seminary, but numbers had dwindled since I started in 2009, due to a number of factors, political tension in the denomination, a general lack of interest in post-graduate studies in a field that pays low wages with diminishing congregants, financial woes at the school, and whatever else. Life changes; the world changes; it’s not all bad.
A photo from Luther Seminary’s now-closed Chapel of the Cross
Still, sometimes I have a hard time with change. I’d want to walk back into seminary and have everything be like it once was, when I was 24 years old, engaged to be married, and generally without much of a care in the world. I’d want to see the old friends I’d listen to music on the boombox with in the basement at “God’s Gym,” or walk down to the nearby school where we played pick-up basketball. I’d want to walk to the bookstore, which no longer exists, or pray in the secondary chapel, which is also now closed.
Maybe I used the seminary as sort of a way to manage my grief about growing up, about the changing world and the changing church, and ultimately, the changing me. My thoughts and beliefs had changed a lot since seminary. I no longer imagined pastoring a megachurch or speaking at an Evangelical conference. I was chagrined about the church’s and my own potential, as well as the world’s.
And still Luther Seminary stood there, 25 minutes from my Minneapolis home, at once venerable and full of history and promise and itself too somewhat chastened by the difficulties of the past few years and by many who had been pained and damaged in its midst, for various reasons.
I admittedly was not the best chapel attendee as a seminary student, though I promise you I really did do all the reading. I did! Ask my roommate and the permanent indentation made by my behind in my living room reading chair, faded and ripped with overuse.
Anyway though, I had some memories from chapel. Students strewn across three sides of the chapel pews, with the far-right side reserved for faculty members, who would watch and judge that day’s preacher and examine the word for potential heresies. I’m kind of joking here, but it should be noted that that former faculty section was once called “the Sanhedrin.”
When I stood up to preach last week, though, I noticed that the faculty section was empty. A few professors were simply seated amongst the students present, and a few members from outside the community, one a beloved pastor who had driven in from the suburbs to say hi to me. I was struck again by sort of that empty sense of memory forever changed. What had become of those wise scribes? Some had retired, some left in disagreement, some were still there but just not at chapel that day. Some taught primarily distance students now, admittedly a much more practical way to manage seminary education. Who knows, really. It has been a number of years now. Time passes. Things change.
This writing though, it isn’t about them; the ones who got away or went away. In the past I was often one of them: spending most of my 20s and early 30s moving across the country and back again; trying out different cities and churches and enjoying every minute of adventure and love and newness.
Now, nearly six years into our time in Minneapolis and with no plans to leave the home we’ve spent countless hours fixing up, I’m part of a new group. The ones who stay. The ones who were there. And I have a new appreciation for this historically under-appreciated group.
THANK YOU. Thank you to the ones who just keep showing up. Week after week. The ones who sit comfortingly in their all-but-assigned pews or chairs in the rural sanctuaries that make up the majority of our nation’s churches. The ones who drive school buses and show up each morning and afternoon to get our kids to school safely. The ones who teach, day in and day out. Those who say, OK, I’ll serve on that committee. I’ll decorate. I’ll help with the meal. I’ll clean up.
Thank you to the ones who were there. The ones we’ve too often ignored in a quest for more numbers more eyeballs more money more consistency more security. The ones who were there get understandably tired of this constant quest for more and new and better. I think of my denomination’s drive to get “1 million new young and diverse members,” and I think it kind of smacks of this economic pressure for more more more more more. An engine that never has enough fuel. A beast that is never satisfied.
So much for gratitude.
This discontentment can seep into our individual lives as well. You find yourself obsessing about the ones who weren’t there. The rejections. The no-shows. The no-replies. The ghosting. The choices you didn’t make. The paths you didn’t take. The unanswered prayers.
And all the while, people like the folks sitting with me in chapel last week are standing there in front of you, jumping up and down.
“We’re here!” they’re yelling. “We’re right here!”
It’s my family, my husband, Ben, my kids, my parents, my brother, my longtime friend from high school, Lyz.
It’s that encouraging email, that message you forget too quickly, the mom who says her kid really likes playing with yours …
Who is it for you? Who’s showing up for you?
Sometimes, if you ask me that, and I’m in that pit, I’ll be stuck in bitterness. And if you say, “Well, God is there for you!”
I won’t be able to see God. Nothing. Legions of the ones who weren’t there stand in lines like ghosts, haunting my night and day.
So this new year. I’m going to start instead by counting. Purposefully. Slowly. The ones who were there. Again and again. And as I do so, in their faces - in your faces - I see God.
Angela Denker
Angela Denker, author of Red State Christians: Understanding the Voters who elected Donald Trump (Fortress: August 2019), is a Lutheran Pastor and veteran journalist who has written for Sports Illustrated, The Washington Post, Christian Century, and Christianity Today. She has pastored congregations in Las Vegas, Chicago, Orange County (Calif.), the Twin Cities, and rural Minnesota.
Twitter | @angela_denker
Facebook | @angeladenker1
Blog | https://angeladenker.substack.com/
Website | https://www.angeladenker.com
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.
Two Years Later: Racism In America
National visionaries, professors, and pastors provide biblical wisdom to help make sense of the world today.
Two years ago today George Floyd was murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis. We continue to mourn his death and the racism that permeates this country. We offer the following words from our network of contributors shared after Mr. Floyd’s death in the hopes they would continue to provide a witness for your proclamation and our living together in a more just and peaceful world.
We are currently collecting thoughts from our contributors regarding the mass shooting in Uvalde, TX and will be sharing those shortly.
Sincerely,
The Church Anew Team
Dr. Walter Brueggemann
Professor Emeritus
Columbia Seminary
The church is in the “Love Business.” That is what we do. We dare make the claim that “God is love” (I John 4:16). Our come back to that wondrous passion of God for the world is to love back…love God…love neighbor. Indeed the way we love God is to love neighbor. When we receive the love of God and act it out toward God and neighbor, we are not afraid. We are not afraid because
Perfect love casts out fear! (I John 4:18)
That is the strategy we use with our young children. Our love for them overrides their fears. We may pause over this stunning statement. When we are secure in a long reliable faithfulness fear, has no power over us; we are free to live grace-filled, unencumbered lives without looking over our shoulder. As we face this immediate brutality in our midst, it seems that the gospel proposition in the epistle is completely reversed:
Perfect fear casts out love.
What a mouthful! “Perfect fear!” Fear that is totalizing, all encompassing, redefining everything! Our society is now occupied by perfect fear:
The virus lands us in fear;
The disabled economy leaves us in fear;
Elementally we may be fearful that the old familiar which is precious to us is evaporating before our very eyes. The old certitudes don’t count for much.
Fear mongering has become a political strategy, because frightened people are easier to manipulate.
And of course there is always the old fear of the other, fear of everyone who is unlike us, fear of people of color.
Fear makes love impossible. Love moves us toward the other; fear draws us away from the other. Fear turns to anger under threat. Fear turns to hate; fear easily morphs to violence. Anger, hate, violence are forms of fear that we imagine will make us safe.
The community in the love business might well pause over fear, name it, pay attention to it, notice it, and dissect it. We might do well to have prayers and litanies that name, in dramatic ways, the fears that summon us and notice their power for us. It is our work in love to outflank fear by greater evidence of love, by outrageous gestures and policies of love, by foolish give-aways of life’s resources with nothing held back. Love is “the great give-away” that can be acted out in terms of health, wellbeing, education, and housing.
We are in a contest between love and fear. It is counter-intuitive for us to bet on love but that is the bet we have made in baptism. The epistle ends with an admonition:
Keep yourselves from idols. (I John 5:21)
Idols are false forms of assurance. To trust such false forms of assurance is to live in fear because we know the idols cannot keep their promises to us. Every day we are in process of deciding whether love or fear is the order of the day. Now is the time for love to make a stand against fear. We make that stand by implementing our baptism in neighborly ways. Fear cannot win against love that is bold and wise for the neighborhood.
Dr. Valerie Bridgeman
Dean and Vice President for Academic Affairs
Methodist Theological School in Ohio
Pentecost Sunday easily is one of my favorite days on the Christian liturgical calendar. The pageantry of fiery red banners and glorious music to remind us of the Spirit among us always encourages me. But as it has approached this year, I have not been excited. We are not going to gather in person for the pageantry, so we will not be able to reenact the spilling out of hiding into the full light of God’s grace and the boldness of witnessing the great power of God. We won’t be able to practice that pageantry that reminds us we are empowered and prepared to tell the story of God in Christ. But though I will miss the pageantry, that is not really why I’m not excited. The level of grief and rage that has encompassed me and so many justice seekers and workers I know has made it hard to turn toward the festival. What can we say about the power of God “fully come” to the gathered disciples in a season of sustained and increasing racialized terror? What can we say about spilling out into the streets, empowered beyond fear, in an age of sheltering in place and hunkering down? What can we say about rushing wind and little fires when Minneapolis is burning?
Acts 2:14 and following, where Peter—the one who had denied Jesus on the night of his arrest—found his voice to interpret the clamor the people in the streets were seeing arrested me while I was pondering those questions. “These people are not drunk.” Drunk didn’t make sense, especially since what was happening was that the people from the upper room, the once-hiding disciples were emboldened to speak about God’s deeds and more importantly, the people heard “in their own language.” Jerusalem was about as multinational and multicultural as they come, but these disciples were not. And maybe Pentecost in the midst of my sorrow can remind us that this gift is not nationalistic; it does not belong to one place or one people. For me, trapped in an North American nightmare, today that thought helps me say, “come, Spirit, come!”
The other piece that has me struggling is that Peter quoted the prophet Joel. “All flesh.” It’s the “all flesh” that I’m struggling with today, too. The Spirit comes and blows upon and ignites “all flesh.” That would mean that all flesh is holy, touched, anointed, called—no matter their gender, ethnicities, or economic status. It would mean that, like the scene to Toni Morrison’s Beloved, we are compelled to love our flesh. The spirit comes to “flatten the curve” of inequalities and differences in flesh, so to speak. But today—sitting in my living room, wondering about the fires alit in Minneapolis or the broken hearts of family members who have lost loved ones to COVID19, I want to both hold hope that that flesh is empowered, too, and scream to the top of my lung.
The Day of Pentecost in Acts is a hopeful scene. Today, I hope beyond the raging fires of frustration, the Spirit will blow on our embers and remind us what power we have to change the world for good.
Dr. Eric Barreto
Associate Professor of New Testament
Princeton Theological Seminary
On a Pentecost Sunday far too reminiscent of far too many Sundays for African American communities, I would start preaching this weekend by first going back to Jesus’ commission of his disciples in Acts 1:8. There, Jesus calls his followers to be witnesses, to bear witness to what Jesus has done until our feet reach the farthest extent of our imaginations. Before the gifts of Pentecost, a crucified victim and resurrected conqueror of imperial violence teaches us to witness, to see, to speak, to move, to be.
Witness, you see, is not just a verbal activity. Witness is not characterized solely by words or speech or language or even a tweet.
Witness is a bodily act. Witness walks alongside the oppressed. Witness looks into the eyes of the dying, not as a spectator but as if our lives are intertwined, for they indeed are.
Witness notes the thin, capricious, unjust line between the living and the dying. Witness marches on the streets. Witness votes with love.
Witness says, “Enough,” but then does something about it with the power some of our hands wield, the persuasion some of our voices are given, the places where privilege lets some of us stand without the threat of state violence.
The kind of witness Jesus calls for here includes our mouths and our eyes, of course, but also our ears. Witness trusts the testimony of those who have been oppressed, even without video evidence. Witness trusts those who have been harmed.
Such witness is necessarily costly. Such witness makes demands upon our lives. And let’s be clear: if we seek to be witnesses of what Jesus has done and experienced, the burden of witness is amplified.
For in the Gospel of Luke, we bear witness to an innocent man hung up on empire’s arrogance, sacrificed at the altar of law and order, vilified for the cause of the Pax Romana, executed because the powerful can get away with murder, killed to preserve the perception of social safety and economic prosperity. And in his innocent death, we ought to see that if we happen to sit in the shadow of empire’s protections, that shadow is fleeting as the whims of empire shift. And if that protection is something we never assumed, then we are reminded that Jesus lived that trauma right to a Roman cross.
My friends, hear Jesus say to us, “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.” And now hear him say, “You will be my witnesses in Ferguson and and Waller County, Texas; Baltimore and Staten Island; Cleveland and Louisville; Falcon Heights and Minneapolis; and to the ends of the earth where we imprison the masses and cage children because of profit and fear and the nation’s collective complicity in racial injustice.”
Before the flames of Pentecost, the call to the disciples was already clear: witness, see, speak, move, be.
That ancient clarion call could not be any clearer today.
Rev. Paul Raushenbush
Senior Advisor for Public Affairs and Innovation
Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC)
There is a demon in this land. A demon, whose name is legion, who has infected our collective soul since even before our birth, a demon whose logic, whose power, whose method is degradation, subjugation, death. The demon possessed souls throughout the land, well dressed, respectable, scientific, religious, passing lies as truth to make profits for a few. It is a demon that quotes scripture to mimic divine sanction, that is taught, like Gospel, passing one generation to the next, delighting in the crucifixions of innocents that need no cross to make their point.
There is a demon in the land, its power is fear, its weapon is violence, its method is lies, its name is racism. This demon has passed from generation to generation taking new forms, resulting in the same violence. “I am legion” the demon warns, “I am slavery, I am lynching, I am prisons, I am policing. You cannot kill me, for I am with you always.” The demon is certain of its survival, because we, as a country, refuse to name it, refuse to expose the demon for what it is, refuse to do the spiritual and reparation work to cast it out. Until we do, it will throw us again and again into the fire, until we are consumed.
Will we cast out this demon of white supremacy? Will we send this demon into the herd of pigs to be drown? All things are possible with God. I believe Lord, help me with my disbelief. The Lord calls to this sinful generation: Repent of the racism that corrupts your body and repair the destruction of slavery that has been rent for the centuries. Cast out this demon, and be saved.
Dr. Kimberly D. Russaw
Assistant Professor of Hebrew Bible
Christian Theological Seminary
On Monday, May 25, 2020 a police officer asphyxiated Mr. George Floyd.
As one of the human body’s reflex processes, breathing seems to be one of life’s most natural abilities. I heard one yoga instructor say that our bodies were made to breathe. Nevertheless, a police officer cut off Mr. George Floyd’s airway and denied him his natural ability to breathe.
On Memorial Day officers of the peace stood by as their colleague strangled Mr. George Floyd. On the day many paused to remember those who breathed their last breath in military service, those charged to protect and serve the citizenry suffocated Mr. George Floyd.
Breathing is so critical to human life that medical technologies have been developed to aid those who have trouble breathing on their own. Asthmatics and those who suffer from bronchitis, or emphysema know quick-relief inhalers and medications can ease restrictions to a person’s airways. Under extreme cases, breathing machines or ventilators blow air into the lungs, helping a person breathe when they are unable to do so on their own.
On May 25th, anyone with access to social media or network television heard Mr. George Floyd plead that he could not breathe. He could not breathe because his lung function was compromised. Lung function is important because, according to the American Lung Association, alongside our heart, our lungs pump oxygen-rich blood to all the cells in the body. The lungs move breath through our bodies.
This important work of moving breath through a system is not new. According to the biblical writers, when The Divine began to create, “the earth was without shape or form, it was dark over the deep sea, and God’s wind swept over the waters” (Gen 1:2, Common English Bible).
The Hebrew word translated “wind” in this verse may also be translated “spirit” or “breath.” The verse may therefore read: God’s breath swept over the waters. Before God spoke and there was light, God’s breath moved. Before there was Sky and Earth, God’s breath moved. Before there was sun, moon, or stars, there was the breath of God. It seems in the beginning, the one thing active was God’s breath.
The American writer and civil rights activist, James Weldon Johnson renders a poetic account of the origin of humanity and offers that breath is what makes us living.
“This great God,
Like a mammy bending over her baby,
Kneeled down in the dust
Toiling over a lump of clay
Till he shaped it in his own image;
Then into it he blew the breath of life,
And man became a living soul.”[1]
God blew God’s breath into a lump of clay formed in God’s own image. On May 25, 2020 a police officer denied that same breath to Mr. George Floyd who (though formed in God’s own image) lay on the ground like a lump of clay. How is it that one human can so callously undo what which God has done?
Gen 1:2 reminds the reader that even when darkness covers the face of the earth—God’s spirit, God’s wind, God’s breath moves. And when God’s breath moves, chaos acquiesces to order. When God’s breath flutters light appears in darkness. When God’s breath moves without restriction, humanity transforms. We become living souls again. The question for believers is, “Will we move with God’s breath or will we restrict God’s breath?”
[1] James Weldon Johnson’s poem “The Creation.”
Rev. Angela Denker
Minnesota Pastor and Veteran Journalist
Did we lock the front door?
Where’s your mask?
Are the sirens far enough away?
My son looked out his window last night and said he saw a dark orange light, and his dad told him it was the sun, setting, but then we realized it was fire.
Flames engulfed our city of Minneapolis last night. Angry fire, purifying fire, destructive fire, devastating fire.
In the midst of a fire, the smoke gets so thick that you cannot breathe.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
Breath keeps us alive.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
Don’t breathe my breath, or I could give you Covid, or you could give me Covid, and we both could die.
People who die of Covid often die because they can’t breathe, the virus engulfing their lungs and suffocating them. Sometimes a machine breathes for them, for long enough that their lungs can heal and gather strength again.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
Shove a tube down his throat, he coughs, saliva enters the air, the virus doesn’t care: it comes only to kill and destroy, using the breath that gives us life.
George Floyd couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t the virus but a knee, a white police officer’s knee, kneeling onto tall, strong, dark-skinned George Floyd with the full weight of racial anger and prejudice and corrupt systems and segregated neighborhoods and institutions built in liberal Minnesota that weigh heavily on all our chests.
It all came to bear on George Floyd that sunny day.
George Floyd was big, strong, black. But in Minnesota we don’t have problems with race. We pretend it doesn’t exist. We support African-American rights and privileges. Just not in my neighborhood. In theory we love black people. We wish they’d come to our churches, sit in the back and sing our white hymns and not make too much noise.
In reality we choose a different park. We ask if they have a permit for that barbecue. We say it’s about “good schools” and “crime” and “drug abuse.”
We love diversity. Below a certain percentage. Talking a certain way. Staying in our sanctioned box.
The air we breathe itself has always been racist and contaminated and threatening death and destruction. Now we can’t ignore the death in the air any longer. It burns bright orange.
Fire needs oxygen to burn. First the fire then the air clears, and you can breathe life again.
This weekend is Pentecost: the day the church celebrates holy fire, flames that brought understanding and unification and new hope.
The flames of Minneapolis these past few days signify death and destruction. No neighborhood deserves to be destroyed. George Floyd did not deserve to die.
Only God can take flames of death and transform fire into new life and hope for the future.
First Jesus enters into a locked room filled with fear. He enters into a people who have begun to give up hope, to ask if all they believed was merely a mirage.
He breathes on them. The Holy Spirit is fire. It’s also breath. Breath is life.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
The Holy Spirit is among us.
Dr. Shively T. J. Smith
Assistant Professor of New Testament
Boston University School of Theology
This Sunday, I am seated before a mirror viewing the Paradox of Pentecost. Today should be a Sunday that reflects back on us a fresh vision of hope, expectation, and power. But, for many, we stand before our mirrors trembling with other emotions:
FRUSTRATION… because yet another white person feels entitled to censure a black and brown body in a public, open space
FEAR… because attacks on Asian and Asian American communities and individuals are on the rise
HELPLESSNESS… because protecting inmates and employees within incarceration facilities from the virus is low priority since African Americans and Hispanics comprise approximately 56% of all incarcerated people, though we collectively constitute only approximately 28% of the U.S. population
RAGE… because of George Floyd’s death when law enforcement took a knee on his neck.
This 2020 Pentecost Sunday, I am not in the upper room receiving an infusion of the Holy Ghost and power. Rather, I find myself returning to the foot of the cross on “Long Friday,” standing alongside Mary Magdalene and other women “looking on from a distance” (Mark 15:40) as Jesus “breathed his last” (vv. 37, 39).
This past week, we have lived our own modern version of that ancient crucifixion story. We watched the story replay again. We viewed the spectacle of death created by the racist actions and proclivities of those living under the delusion that they are the most powerful, chosen, and righteous of us. Yet, in our faith story, those most chosen are not the ones inflicting pain and death, mocking and blaming the victim as life leaves his innocent body.
Standing as one among the Marys and Marks of today, watching helplessly as “they” kill again, I see Jesus crying out, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani; My God, My God why have you forgotten me” (Mark 15:34).
When the Bible ceases to be sufficient for capturing my lament this week, I reach for the Prophet Marvin Gaye when he crooned “Inner City Blues” in 1971:
Oh, make you wanna holler
The way they do my life
Make me wanna holler
The way they do my life
This ain't livin', this ain't livin'
No, no baby, this ain't livin'
Be clear, my friends. Though we ask, “My God, why have you forgotten us?” or we bellow Marvin’s declaration, “This makes me want to holler”—this week is NOT God’s doing. This moment is the theater and pageantry of empire that stares in the face of God’s creation and destroys anyway.
When I think about all the Floyd’s—male and female—who breathed their last and the countless witnesses that have watched in despair with little hope of recourse or justice, I return to today’s Paradox of Pentecost. During this day in which I am supposed to feel most powerful and hopeful as a person of faith, I instead feel powerless. Yet, I am animated by the random outbreaks of mixed emotion and the cacophony of sounds rising from within me and outside me. Today, I hear Jesus’ cry. I hear Marvin Gaye’s song. I hear Floyd saying, “I can’t breathe.”
I stand enveloped by the sounds of protest from every color, creed, and class challenging censorship, erasure, dismissal, divestment, and slaughter. People cry out in many forms to be seen, heard, and counted as human beings with the right to justice, equity, and flourishing. Today, I hear clearly. I see plainly. I feel deeply. Perhaps here is the Pentecost moment.
I also sense the lamenting vibrations of my ancestors running through my head, heart and hands. When they had no words, they sang a lament of truth and questions, facing death-dealers who wielded rhetoric of God and state for their own perfidious ends. Theirs is a song bubbling up from a grieving, yet defiantly resilient people. When I sing it, I remember that together, there is more than just watching we must do and my ancestors showed us the way… “Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Ooh sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble …
Rev. Meta Herrick Carlson
Minneapolis Pastor and Poet
Bethlehem Lutheran Church
Now when Adam and Eve knew each other, she conceived and bore a son they named Cain, which means their sum (to produce). Cain grew up to be a farmer who cared for the land. His brother Abel watched over the flocks of animals. When the young men made sacrifices to God, Abel's was regarded but Cain's was not received with the same appreciation. And this was deeply disturbing to Cain.
While Cain knew how to produce and strive, he did not know how to feel or fail or ask for forgiveness. This lesser appreciation for his sacrifice was enough to unravel his sense of self, his loyalty to kin, his faith in God, and his stewardship of creation. You see, when you are named for what you produce, your output can become confused with your identity and inherit value.
Cain internalized God’s silence and decided that Abel was the problem. Scripture says he acted out of his mind.
So the LORD said to Cain, “Why is your body so angry, your face downcast, your mind keeping score, your spirit justified by fear? Evil waits where your insecurities fester. Turn away from these things and live.”
But Cain’s paranoia outweighed his fear of the LORD. He lured his brother to the fields and murdered him in a jealous rage. Cain chose being right over and against being in relationship while Abel’s blood soaked into the earth.
When God asked after Abel, Cain told the LORD “I am not responsible for my brother. What does his suffering and death have to do with me?”
And God wept. God wept for the brother whose breath and beats were stolen. And God wept for the brother whose breath was wasted on violent apathy and lies.
The LORD said, “What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground. Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. You will toil and wander and struggle to produce in this land that knows your brother’s blood.”
Unacquainted with confession and empathy, Cain defended his actions and played the victim. His only concern was protecting his own breath and beats from revenge. And so he wandered away from family and farm and faith, marked by the curse of his own insecurity and isolation for generations.
Some say he still wanders, still seeking salvation without repentance, reparations, and reconciliation for the murder of his brother Abel. The fear is still breathing. The hatred is still blowing. Violence still swirls in the air between blood soaked earth and heaven’s banner.
Ms. Rozella Haydée White
Owner, Coach, and Consultant
RHW Consulting
Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” John 20:21-22
Peace be with you.
I send you
Receive the Holy Spirit.
In these two verses, Jesus provides a framework for people of faith to embody life-giving and justice-seeking faith.
The Promise: Peace.
Our imagination of peace has to expand beyond a state that is defined as the absence of conflict or a sanitized, surface level understanding that doesn’t fight to create a new reality. In the words of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.”[1] The promise of peace to always be with us; the peace that surpasses human understanding; peace that flows like a river all point to peace that is marked by justice. That which is just is that which breeds life. We have no peace because we have no justice. Lives are being taken because we have not justice. Peace and justice coexist to create a new reality that reflects the promise of God - a world where there is no more dying and no more tears; where there is no more grief and no more disconnection. The promise of peace makes way for us to do the work that God has sent us to do in Jesus’s name - the work of liberation.
The Assignment: Liberation.
I’ve been participating in an online conference this week called The Wellness of We. One of the presenters said, “I am not interested in allies. I’ve erased this word from my vocabulary. I am interested in folks who understand that our liberation is interconnected.”[2] When I heard these words, my spirit leapt and I was instantly reminded of a quote that is credited to Lilla Watson, an Aboriginal activist from Australia. “If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”[3] I don’t need you—White people—to help me. I need for you—White people—to recognize your sinfulness; your brokenness and woundedness, and to repent. I need you to turn away from the sin that is White Supremacy and the lies that fear and scarcity pedal; lies that lead you to continue to invest in whiteness rather than divest from whiteness. I need you to be born again, into your God given humanity, a humanity we share and one that reminds us that we belong to one another. I need you to understand that you have nothing that can help me. Rather, we share a reality that is dependent upon our shared liberation in order to see the Kingdom of Heaven, here on earth. And our ever faithful Creator, the Triune God, has gifted us with the sustenance and power we need in the Holy Spirit.
The Sustenance: Spirit.
Famed Gospel artist, Hezekiah Walker has a popular song, “I Need You to Survive.” The words are simple and straightforward. They speak to our bound liberation and the importance of recognizing that we are inextricably linked. Spirit reminds us of this relationship and empowers us to continually seek out the restoration, healing, and wholeness of our hearts, minds, bodies, and souls. Spirit provides the insight and wisdom to engage in the ongoing work of tending to our individual and collective wounds in order to find holistic, embodied healing. Spirit isn’t concerned with our intellect. Spirit is concerned with Knowing that is deeply rooted in our bones; Knowing that is tied to feelings of empathy, compassion, and love. Spirit calls us to nurture these feelings, to practice them, and to live them. We dive deeper until we meet ourselves again, as new beings who can see each other through Spirit lenses, ones that remind us of the promise, the assignment, and ultimately, the sustenance to be the people of faith that God invites us to be.
Our most faithful response is to trust the promise, engage the work of liberation and lean on Spirit. To not do this work is an affront to our Creator and a repudiation of Jesus our Lord.
[1] Stride Toward Freedom, 1958.
[2] Anasa Troutman
[3] Aboriginal Activist Groups, Queensland, 1970s.
Dr. Brennan Breed
Associate Professor of Old Testament
Columbia Theological Seminary
George Floyd’s was killed when a police officer knelt on his neck in plain view for over five minutes until he died. In the church, kneeling is often a symbolic act of worship, of reverence and humility in the face of the divine. But George Floyd's death was caused by someone who knelt in deference to a different authority: he bowed at the altar of white supremacy. To him, and to those who looked on and supported him, it seemed apparent that some lives do not deserve breath. We who have witnessed this brutal act are all now faced with a choice: what do we worship? At what altar do we kneel?
On the Christian calendar, this Sunday is Pentecost. The story of Pentecost as told in Acts 2:1- 41 describes a day of celebrating and witnessing to God's blessing of all the nations of the world. The nations heard the gospel preached in all the myriad languages that together in their multifaceted beauty reflect the glory of the God who created and sustains them all. Peter quoted the book of Joel to explain what had happened: “God says, ‘I will pour out my spirit on all people’” (Acts 2:17; Joel 2:28).
Pentecost is a day to remind ourselves that the God who created the world inhabits the breath and speech of all of our siblings throughout the entire earth. As Dr. Eric Barreto teaches us, Pentecost reveals that God cherishes our diversities, and that God is present in the gathering of diverse people who love and care for each other.
Pentecost is a day to celebrate God's breath, the spirit, as she renders God present in our diverse midst. In the Spirit, we understand that we are all the manifold, multifaceted image of God.
It follows, then, that Pentecost must also be a day to denounce white supremacy and the antichrist actions that it empowers. George Floyd, like Ahmaud Arbery, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland and so many other African-American victims of white supremacist violence, cannot breathe any longer. They cannot raise their voices. But like the earth itself (Gen 4:10), we can use our breath to cry out on behalf of the blood of the innocent and demand a reckoning. On the day of Pentecost, Peter told the crowd assembled the story of a man unjustly executed by the state —namely, Jesus—and then pleaded with them to repent and seek forgiveness for their sins, and to strive to separate themselves from the corrupt generation in which they found themselves immersed (Acts 2:38-40). We, too, must take a hard look at our complicity in our own culture’s corruption that time and again manifests in an event of anti-Pentecost: that is, the taking of breath from the image of God.
Ashon Crawley has written a beautiful book on the life-giving and liberatory role of breath and the spirit in the Black Pentecostal tradition that has sustained many individuals and communities who have emerged from this tradition in the midst of a world hell-bent on destroying and subjugating them. It begins with Eric Garner’s dying words: “I can’t breathe.” As Crawley shows us, the whooping and singing and speaking in tongues that one finds in Black Pentecostal spaces create a social space of shared breath and power.
But the time has long passed for the white churches in the United States to stand alongside our African-American siblings and refuse to be complicit bystanders in a system built to suffocate them. We must commit to making spaces for all of God’s children to breathe and exist, even flourish, in peace. This is the work to which the Spirit calls us. We must respond.
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