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Church Anew 5/14/24 Church Anew 5/14/24

Vocation: What do you do?

Erin Weber-Johnson and Rev. Mieke Vandersall always felt challenged when they try to tell strangers what they do for a living. Their profession is far more than a job–it's an expression of their vocation.

***Photo by*** ***Jake Weirick*** on ***Unsplash***

Exodus 36:6-7

“So Moses gave command, and a word was proclaimed throughout the camp: No one is to make anything else as an offering for the sanctuary. So the people were restrained from bringing, 7 for what they had already brought was more than enough to do all the work.”

Erin recently sat next to a Rabbi on a flight. There was a steady stream of people who would interrupt him and ask questions. He leaned over to Erin and quietly whispered, “Sometimes I wish for anonymity.” His vocational expression allowed for people to bring their own narratives, questions, and presuppositions and he became the face for their experiences.

Erin nodded in understanding.

Erin and Mieke always feel challenged when we try and tell strangers what we do for a living. We have far more than a job–but our job is an expression of our vocation.

It’s complicated. As faith-based fundraising and giving consultants for congregations and non-profits, we often hear a number of responses:

I could never do that. Ask people for the money? That feels gross.
God and money? Could you include any harder topics?
Oh you’re one of those…
My hand is on my pocketbook!
Consultants are the worst. They take your watch and tell you the time.

We've thought about trying to find another word for our vocational title. Even the inclination to refer to our consulting work as vocational may be surprising, or feel at odds with the word consultant, given the commonly held perspective that consultants "take your watch and tell you the time."

The alternatives we've imagined for consultants include: Giving Companion and Partner in the Stewardship Ministry. But what do those names mean? In our reflections, we've realized that the word fundraising itself feels imprecise.

We love our work. We love what we do. Because we work collaboratively, we don't see ourselves as mere service providers. This means that while we offer expert advice, we just as readily dream alongside our clients about what's possible. And we do this while focusing each client community's collective gaze on a common goal. We know that when we fixate on a financial goal alone, we are vulnerable to missing what we believe to be the most important point of all: the process of fundraising is itself a restorative life-giving ministry.

The Bible is filled with stories of God preparing a table for us. In many of the gospel stories, Jesus creates a table uniting communities, resources, and people in innovative ways not only build their capacities, but also their imaginations. When we re-meet each other where we are and take a better look at ourselves in relation to our neighbors, we can create powerful new ways of repairing broken systems, reinvigorating our giving and re-energizing our faith.

The spiritual discipline of fundraising within the context of the church is better known as stewardship. When we engage in the acts of asking for and giving gifts, we must acknowledge and confront our own relationships with money, which often bring up feelings of shame, guilt, frustration and confusion, accompanied by perceptions regarding scarcity and abundance.

Often, what's hidden in the acts of inviting and giving gifts is the unique opportunity to be liberated, to not let our past experiences and narratives bind us any longer. The necessary actions in raising funds can heal us, individually and collectively.

This is why we do what we do. Our purpose is not to prioritize care for bigger givers, and we do not seek status symbols for ourselves or for others.

Rather, we have a bold desire to facilitate the redistribution of wealth.

We yearn for communities to understand that what they cannot do individually, they can do together. Our work is guiding communities together to both recognize and build their collective power.

The reason our work is focused on building trust with people is because they haven’t had positive experiences with consultants – or in fundraising. When you don’t know how to raise money well, you rarely succeed, and that does not make people want to engage in this work anymore. In addition, consultants are rarely trusted and often people think we are out there to do as little work as possible and charge as much as we can. We wish there was a different way to describe that this ministry could look in its truest form, as partnership.

Before starting Vandersall Collective, Mieke worked at a small nonprofit that was fighting for queer ordination in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). As the organization’s primary fundraiser, she was face-to-face with many individuals and committees asking for funding. Over time, she began to realize that fundraising was so scary to her because when she was asking for funding, she was asking for acceptance of her as a young, queer woman. To get herself out of this dysfunctional cycle, she had to be confident in her own value, in her own identity. Then “the ask” became much stronger, as it was not a personal ask to heal herself (essentially), but instead to provide an opportunity for others to make a difference in a church that both the donor and Mieke dearly loved. This is why it is a spiritual discipline.

And it is this practice that guides our vocational work. We remain rooted in our purpose.

As we do this work, we believe in God’s call to an alternative economy. Walter Brueggeman, a theologian who has impacted both Mieke and Erin’s theological understanding says it this way: “[A] facet of prophetic imagination…is a new economy that is organized around a love of neighbor and that is committed to the viability of widows, orphans, and immigrants. Widows, orphans, and immigrants are people who in the ancient world did not have advocates who were empowered by the totalism in a patriarchal society. So it becomes a test case for the economy, and it is a redistributive economy of respect and viability for vulnerable persons, and there is no way to cover over or to hide or disguise that we are talking about policies of redistribution.”

Our vocation is so much more than raising money by whatever means necessary.

We acknowledge that vulnerability is at the heart of what we do. It is hard to acknowledge that we have needs. That we need each other. That we cannot do it alone.

Our relationships with money not only shape our relationship with God but impact our relationships with each other. The narratives we tell about our worth intersect with our ability to recognize God’s movement in the world. We are unable to imagine what belonging means in the kingdom of God and create structures around these imaginings without examining the relationship between our worth and work, without reconstructing a theology around money that is liberative.

Our prayer is that one day, as was the case in Exodus, all will have enough—so much so that the people were restrained from giving.

May it be so.

Erin Weber-Johnson

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

Rev. Mieke Vandersall

Rev. Mieke Vandersall, Owner and Principal Consultant, has over 20 years of executive leadership experience in the religious nonprofit arena. Mieke encourages nonprofits, congregations and religious leaders as they work to fund their ministries; this work comes out of a deep knowledge of the particular exhilaration and stress of working for long-term structural change and beginning and sustaining programs.

Prior to her consulting work, she was the Executive Director of Parity, where she founded a program for LGBTQ Future Pastors, as well as Not So Churchy, a new worshiping community. This post spanned from 2003-2014. Mieke and the Future Pastors Program is a feature of the documentary film, Out of Order.

Mieke is currently on the Board of Trustees of the Presbytery of Southern New England. Mieke’s work at Vandersall Collective has also been recognized as a validated ministry by the Presbytery of Southern New England.

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.

Erin Weber-Johnson 4/16/24 Erin Weber-Johnson 4/16/24

Stewardship during an election

***Photo by*** ***Element5 Digital*** on ***Unsplash***

I have been asked by a number of people about some top tips for what to do this year with giving and the upcoming presidential election. There is concern that divisive politics may monopolize the attention of those in our communities. Or, alternatively, how our communities respond to the election may cause givers to rethink their life choices and keep their annual gifts. Recently a pastor asked me if I could send a top five list for ensuring success this election year.

I want to honor that question and also acknowledge the reality that many of us are tired, feeling the relentless weight of holding too much. The truth is we often look for Top 5 Lists because we need quick help and support. Top 5 Lists offer us the promise of easy to digest information and easy to implement action steps.

Each of us deeply desires to know how to eat right, lose weight, save enough for our retirement, and raise our children. We want to know how to have/be enough. Yet, most “How to” lists are full of things we already know. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve read a magazine headline promising to change my life in three easy steps only to be disappointed when I already knew the answers. There is no silver bullet, no step-by-step process, to the perfect life.

So it is with stewardship. Really, what we need is not “How to raise money positively/effectively,” but to ask what is keeping us from living into stewardship as a holistic ministry while reflecting the context of the moment. I bet the answers to that list would be considerable!

Here is what we know about giving and the upcoming election. In the 2016 presidential election, I made a hypothesis about how the election would impact giving to congregations. I thought it would be congregations that aligned themselves with one presidential candidate or another that would see increases in giving as advocacy and “rage” giving were at a high.

However, the giving data and statistics that would emerge months and years later would show my hypothesis was wrong. Giving was high in congregations that mostly identified as one political party or another. And yet, it was also high in a number of churches considered purple or with a mixed set of views within the congregations.

Instead of my faulty hypothesis, giving was propelled in congregations that clearly reflected what was happening outside their church doors, made a connection between where people were with their giving and how their giving to the church would be meaningful given that moment in the nation’s history, and invited others to be part of the work.

What this demonstrated to me was there were pastoral needs felt by a congregation and giving became an opportunity to meet people where they were. The work of stewardship, in all its wholeness, was not about meeting a budget so the ministry could take place. Rather, stewardship was and is a contextual ministry, one that asks what are the needs of those in our congregation and how do we shape our ministry accordingly.

The work of stewardship leaders is the work of creating connective tissue between the motivations of givers in the wake of emerging national issues and concerns, and a life-giving invitation to explore how their giving can bring healing and repair in the world.

2024 began with some people concerned about the outcome of the presidential election in the United States this year. Regardless of the outcome, we as a country have seen the fallout and experienced the painful divisions from recent presidential elections.

And so, unpacking what stewardship means this year will be important. Stewardship is so much more than a fall drive to meet the regular operating costs of a congregation.

When we think about gifts, there has been a long-held focus in the church on the 3 T’s: time, talent and treasure. I believe initially the idea of holistic stewardship was amorphous, too hard to wrap our minds around. Instead, leaders offered tangible things that could be offered to God. However, our bodies, and souls are not limited to just these three T. We are more than the time we give, our skills and expertise, more than the money we provide. We are flesh and blood bodies. Our minds and souls, connected in profound ways, were created by the same divine power that made the earth and the heavens and called it good.

Stewardship is not limited to these three components. It includes the totality of our beings. In the ministry of stewardship, we bring our whole selves to the Divine.

What does stewardship of our bodies, our minds, our souls look like this year with the election?

Our family has begun having conversations about our values. What does God call us to be and to do the next day after the election? Identifying our values now allows our family to move beyond places that may feel out of our control, to plan proactively who we will be on Day One.

Once our values are identified, we articulate who the people are that may be most impacted by the election. How might God call us to invite, to manage, to give to and to thank in the midst of that reality?

In this season of the election, I invite you to consider stewardship in its totality, to do the work of connecting others' needs to the abiding values of your faith community, and to live in the hope that through giving of our whole selves, we can work for repair of the world.

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

Church Anew 3/19/24 Church Anew 3/19/24

In This Crucial Election Year What Will Your Community Do on Day One?

On Day One of the next administration (and in whatever follows), communities of faith must continue the work being God’s people. Regardless of whether you see the outcome you desire or not, the work will need to go on. You’ll either be working in alignment with those you trust, or you’ll be in the resistance against those you do not trust. Either way, there will be work to do.

By ERIN WEBER-JOHNSON and REV. THIA REGGIO

***Photo by*** ***Element5*** ***Digital***

“As for you, you will keep my covenant, you and your offspring throughout the generations.”
—Genesis 17:9

We, the people of the Abrahamic traditions, are keepers of God’s covenant. That is our charge, established millennia ago and carried on from generation to generation into the present age. It is a charge that exists both within and outside of human history.

In the moment in which we are living, with the forces of greed, fear-mongering, and power-hungriness that have always been at work in the world now amplified by media and transmitted around the world with lightning speed, it’s easy to lose sight of the longer view that connects us across the ages to our ancestors and to generations yet to come.

We are trained to focus on much shorter timelines: 24-hour news cycles, crises that hold our attention for a few weeks at a time before they’re subsumed by the next crisis, political rhetoric punctuated by election year trends.

In 2024, the U.S. is anticipating a November presidential election in which it’s not an exaggeration to say that Americans face a choice which may well determine the future of our democracy, with impacts that will be felt around the globe. With such high stakes, it’s easy to be hyper-focused on securing the outcome you believe will be the right one.

As people of faith, as bearers of God’s ancient covenant, we cannot allow our vision to be so exclusively near-sighted. We must recalibrate our focus to include a much longer horizon. We must understand that the work of God’s justice does not begin and end with an election cycle. Vote, yes. Work for the near-term outcome you desire. But remember that your commitment to keep God’s covenant will continue when the election results are in.

Rather than succumbing to a sense of overwhelm or becoming paralyzed by dread, the time is now to reflect on your values and priorities and to discern where your energies need to be focused. In addition, this is a moment to consider what groups of people may be impacted depending on the outcome. As you consider this, you can think how your strategies can show care in the days, weeks, and years to follow.

As soon as you’re able, here are steps you can take:

Gather as a community and envision together the world as you believe God desires it to be based on scripture, your tradition, and your core values.
Identify 1-3 priorities where your community can focus sufficient energy.
Call leaders to create a plan of action to support these priorities in light of each potential outcome.
Organize people to start laying the groundwork to bring the plans to life.
Prepare for a new phase of work to begin on Day One of the next administration, adapted for whichever outcome occurs.

Creating a Day One Strategy gives people a sense of agency. There are things that can be done. By allowing us to plan now, this gives us collective power.

Remember, you are not alone. God is with you. God’s promises have been active since before our history began. Powers and principalities have risen and fallen many times in God’s presence and the covenant still stands. So must we stand in God’s promise to work toward the world of peace with justice that God is calling into being—whether we live in an age that reflects those values or obscures them, God’s promise will prevail.

Rev. Thia Reggio

Rev. Thia Reggio, collaborator, seasoned pastor, worship leader, community organizer, disaster response coordinator, career discernment counselor, strategist, writer, simplification consultant, and mother of three. Thia is at her most joyful in an eclectic environment. Connecting and communicating varied aspects of life—like those between a plant pushing up through the soil and the challenges of life in a busy city, between ancient battles and psycho-social structures in organizations, between children learning a language and adults facing retirement, this is what Thia finds life-giving.
After more than twenty years as a process and communications consultant to Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations, Thia heeded the call to seminary and the ministry, graduating from Union Seminary with a Master of Divinity in 2012 and a Master of Sacred Theology in Christianity in a Multi-Religious Context in 2013. Thia currently serves as pastor of The Second Presbyterian Church in the City of New York, and on the Advisory Board of the Center for Earth Ethics.

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

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

The Hidden Secret of Winter Trees

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

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

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

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

Where might I have found this great wisdom?

Oprah? No.

Dr. Phil? Nope.

Tik Tok? Definitely not.

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

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

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

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

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

If only human beings could learn that simple lesson.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rev. Susan Sparks

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

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

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

Making 100 TikToks as Ministry

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

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

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

That’s why I started making TikToks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. TikTok Never Ends. You Do.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jean Carlos Diaz

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

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

learn more about the event

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

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

Questions have Wings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The right question has wings.

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

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

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

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

all you need for a meaningful CONVERSATION ABOUT MONEY

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

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

The body is not an accomplishment: a bodily apocalypse

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

all you need for a meaningful CONVERSATION ABOUT MONEY

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

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

Bishop Michael Curry on his Faith and Health Journey

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

God love you. God bless you.

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

Bishop Michael Curry

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

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

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

What Sabbatical Taught Me

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

What if you did less?

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

What if you did less?

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

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

So now what?

What if you did less?

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

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

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

What if you did less?

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

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

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

Sabbaticals are such a privileged gift, I know.

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

Who is with me?

Natalia Terfa

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Mark: 12:41-44)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Stewardship of Memory

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

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

Gawd at times it's pretty rough

I get these flashes from the past

The pain, the anger, the sadness

Just creeps up on me, unexpectedly…

Haunted by Memory: A poem by Kaila George

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The memories that we receive may not feel like gifts.

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

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

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

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

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

all you need for a meaningful CONVERSATION ABOUT MONEY

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

Rev. Winnie Varghese 8/23/23 Rev. Winnie Varghese 8/23/23

Lord, Help Me

It is up to people like us to reclaim and rebuild the commons, what we share of what God has given us. And some of that rebuilding is of institutions.

This post was originally shared as a sermon based on Matthew 15:21-28 on Day 1 . We share it with permission and with the hope that it is a source of inspiration and nourishment as you work to create vibrant communities of faith.

The Canaanite Woman who confronts Jesus in Tyre and Sidon is, along with Jesus, on the main stage in this week’s Gospel. I am old enough to remember when her story was the bracketed part, the optional part, of the assigned readings from Matthew.

She is a local woman, of the communities in the book of Exodus that would have been conquered by the children of Israel as they conquered and occupied their land of promise after liberation from slavery in Egypt and that long wandering in the wilderness. The Bible gives us hints that the people already there remain, and this is one of those jarring reminders that there were people there, and those people remain even to this generation.

The way they are “conquered” in this time is that, at least in words and religious philosophy in the time of Jesus, they are made outsiders, outsiders to the law, to purity, in their own place, by Jesus’ people. That doesn’t mean that we know who had more money or power or land. We don’t know if she was poor or wealthy or something else. It is reasonable to assume her town was thriving. I have read that she must have been educated because of the sophistication of the conversation, but I have met many extraordinarily intelligent and articulate people without much education. The storyteller has decided that the only thing we are supposed to know about her is that Jesus goes to her neighborhood, and she gets very close to him to tell him exactly what she needs.

Her daughter is possessed by demons. Jesus goes to her neighborhood after saying it is what comes from the heart that defiles, not what enters the mouth. And then he walks through an area where Canaanites live.

It was Vine Deloria Jr.’s God Is Red that opened my eyes to the Canaanites in the Bible. I had read right past them, because they did not fit my theology, the theology I had absorbed from reading the Bible with Christians. God promised the children of Israel that they would occupy the land of promise, and I assumed from that moment that it was so. I heard as I read that the land must be empty - God would not wish harm on anyone, much less cause it, right? - even as I read the story of the guys with the grapes on the pole coming out of Canaan, and every battle and siege.

You are probably a better reader than me. I’m a believer. I tend to lead with that, I tend to make things fit and leave out what doesn’t fit into the way I have been told life and faith work, until someone points out something else, insistently.

Today’s story is a hard one for me. Not because Jesus seems to change his mind and accept the Canaanite woman’s request. That idea is not unsettling to me, and it does appear to be just that. After calling out her request from a respectful distance and being ignored, after repeating it and being scolded, she gets very, very close and seems to beg - articulately and intelligently - but beg. And he sees her and gives her what she is asking for. Her daughter, possessed of demons, is healed.

I find it hard to read because it feels close. I know that feeling. I try to organize my life to avoid it, and most of the time I can, and sometimes I choose to be or have to be the one who insists, who will not let it go, until the blessing is granted. For some of us, it’s our superpower.

On May 18, I got to stand with Matt Oprendek, Matt Heyd, Stephen Breed, Bruce Jolly, Bob Jacobs, Stephen Lee, and the bishops of the Episcopal Church in New York for the launch of the New York Episcopal Federal Credit Union. A Credit Union is a community-held entity that is owned by its members and can loan on its own terms within its membership. It is a federally insured financial cooperative. Now, I might not be as proud of anything in my professional life as I am to have been a part of seeing it through to a charter.

In 2014, a small group of us from the Episcopal Diocese of New York took a resolution to our convention asking our diocese to permit us to explore the possibility of establishing a credit union. The diocese had attempted this before - it is New York after all; we know a financial institution.

The difference in 2014 was the big bank crashes had happened in 2009. The market crash that had to do with bad mortgages and inflated housing prices, the one that devasted so many pensions, had happened. The big federal bailout of banks had happened. Remembering there was no bailout for those pensions, the cynical or corrupt or unethical practices of banks had been exposed. One study at the time found that one-third of New Yorkers were unbanked or under-banked. At my parish in the East Village, I was meeting people with jobs that the local commercial bank would not serve with a checking or savings account. Every conference or meeting I went to about new inclusive financial services, like community lending apps, assumed you had a bank account. They were required. I remembered the Episcopal Credit Union in Los Angeles and their president, Urla Gomes, who told the stories of giving $500 loans to the woman who ran the tamale cart or a few thousand dollars for the house cleaners to get better supplies so that they could level up to grow their businesses.

A longtime member of St. James in Fordham, where the Credit Union opening was held, Raquel Davis, said many community members she talked to at the church’s food pantry while volunteering told her that they are looking forward to joining the credit union. “Most of us are not wealthy,” she said. “It’s impossible for us to get a loan from the commercial banks, so the only opportunity is to go to the loan sharks,” where the interest charged is “overwhelming,” she said. She said, “Thank you for the opportunity in the credit union because it’s giving us an opportunity to have control over our finances.”

Lord, help me, the Canaanite woman says, and she won’t stop asking.

A decade is not how long I wanted this to take. It took us time to understand how we could staff and structure this organization to serve those we wanted to serve. It took us time to agree to a model. There was an unfortunate time there when we got no response to our inquiries from the federal government. I am sure we were not alone in that. When the administration changed, again, so did the rate of engagement. We could not have done it without Dall Forsythe and Bruce Jolly who brought a lot of professional experience and persistence themselves.

There remains much work to be done to keep this thing capitalized and active. But I’m telling you this story because we need more. Adjudicatories of churches are a wonderful field of membership - the great and mighty among us, we ordinary people, and those left out of formal economy, in one group - placing our giftedness and need in relationship, the true fabric of our lives together, not in offering charity, but in building the institutions that empower those we have narratively erased - the losers. Every time the banks crash or the unemployment rate goes up or a politician decides that hating one another will help them get a few more votes, we are binding together what our public life insists must be separated.

There was a time when churches built institutions: schools, hospitals, later food banks and homeless projects. As our institutions are battered in this nation, what were once the common goods of life together - like housing, land, food, and banks - are all organized to maximize the profit of the investor, not produce the best product or service at a competitive rate with market appropriate compensation of employees. It is up to people like us to reclaim and rebuild the commons, what we share of what God has given us. And some of that rebuilding is of institutions.

At St. Luke’s in Atlanta, where I am now, it is literally also about creating more beautiful green space, maybe growing more food, gathering people in a divided city. Yes, and what if we put our resources to work for those possessed by demons today – the demons of sickness, of endless war that is like armed violence in our streets, the demon of being priced out of housing, the demon of jobs whose salaries cannot pay for the basic necessities of life, the demon of a marketplace that will take the most money from the people with the least, the demon of working children, the demon of hunger? Lord, help us.

Lord, help us and bless us with a portion of the Canaanites woman’s courage and persistence. Help us to find ourselves in this story. Maybe you are like Jesus, passing through this particular patch of suffering. Maybe it’s not for you. Are you clever? Maybe you are a disciple, disdainful of the inconvenience of this crap economy and its victims. You’re just trying to follow Jesus after all, or maybe you are like a woman whose child is lost, strategizing to get access to what you need.

May Jesus meet you where you are and go with you as you find your power to heal.

Let us pray.

Almighty God, you have given your only Son to be for us a sacrifice for sin and also an example of godly life. Give us grace to receive thankfully the fruits of his redeeming work and to follow daily in the blessed steps of his most holy life; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

Rev. Winnie Varghese

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

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Grace Pomroy 8/1/23 Grace Pomroy 8/1/23

Funding Forward: Sustainable Practices for Funding Ministry

This post originally appeared on the Faith+Lead blog and we are sharing it here to introduce you to Grace Pomroy, one of our collaborators for Stewardship In A Box, a resource created in partnership between Church Anew and Faith+Lead at Luther Seminary.

An interview between Arlene Flancher and Grace Duddy Pomroy of the Stewardship Leaders Program at Luther Seminary.

Arlene: For our readers who don’t know what Funding Forward is, can you give us a short description?

Grace: Sure! Funding Forward is the process of finding more economically sustainable models for ministry that emerge organically from the congregation’s mission. People often think funding forward is about “saving the church” or just bringing in more money for money’s sake to line the church’s pockets. In fact this process is a lot more about mission than it is about money.

A: When did you become interested in Funding Forward?

G: Before coming to Luther Seminary I worked for Portico Benefit Services, the benefit ministry of the ELCA. During my time at Portico, I heard from a lot of church leaders who said their congregations simply couldn’t afford our benefits any more. So, they would slowly reduce these benefits over time, cut them entirely, or strongly suggest that a pastor go on their spouse’s insurance. I also heard from pastors who were seeking part-time calls and hired for half-time calls, then being asked to work 40+ hours per week for a half-time wage in the name of ministry. It was clear to me that the current economic system of having a full-time pastor with full benefits was becoming less and less feasible for many congregations. While I think congregational leaders were doing the best they could to find ways to cut the budget and to get as much ministry as possible from a half-time salary, I also knew that this series of small cuts was alienating clergy and that it could eventually lead to congregational closure. I wondered if there might be a way to address the root cause of these concerns, the church economic system as a whole, rather than continuing to put bandaids over the problems in the hopes that they might heal on their own.

A: Can you share a little bit about how you collected data during the Funding Forward research project?

G: In the fall of 2022, we surveyed over 100 congregations in the U.S. and Canada who have experimented with more economically sustainable models for ministry that are aligned with God’s mission for their community. I shared some of my “ah ha” moments from the survey findings in this article from Feb. 20 and this one from Feb. 27. This winter and spring, my research team and I conducted interviews with key ministry leader(s) and a group of lay participants from 12 of the surveyed congregations. Our goal in both the survey and interviews was to answer two primary questions.

What conditions are necessary for a congregation to shift its economic model?
What practices might congregation leaders use to facilitate that shift?

A: What are some stories from the interviews that will stay with you?

G: In an interview I did with a small, rural congregation. During the lay group interview, I could sense tension in the room. A few years ago the congregation had transitioned from a full-time to a half-time pastor. While the congregation’s first half-time pastor gave them full-time ministry for the price of half-time, their new half-time minister was setting up clear boundaries around his time and inviting the lay members of the congregation to take ownership of their ministry in new ways.

One interviewee was really taken with this idea and started exploring new opportunities to connect with the surrounding community and partner with different organizations to find a more sustainable future.
Another interviewee was less optimistic, sharing that every time the church had a good idea the surrounding community seemed to steal it and secularize it. For this member, there was no hope for partnership.

I watched as the more excited member empathized with the more pessimistic one while also naming the hope that she was seeing. She shared: “we shouldn’t look at the other parts of the community as competition. We should look at it as, ‘How can we all work together to make our whole town?’ Everybody has gifts, each different organization has a different gift, and our Jesus has given us all gifts. So why can’t we combine those gifts? … [I believe the town is] looking for something and we can be a partner with that and not in competition.” This conversation reminded me of the importance of lay people who are willing to step in and lead in new ways. Often, they can have the greatest influence and impact in getting other lay members on board. Similarly, this congregation was looking to open up their building to rent space to the community; they would never be successful at renting space if they saw these renters as competition, not partners.

I also had the opportunity to talk with a lay group from a small, new start ministry in active discernment about who God is calling them to be. A key part of their mission is cultivating a network of 23 partners who rent their building, as well as embodying hospitality for all who enter their space. Given that the group who participated in the lay interview included at least one rental partner who wasn’t religious, I wondered how they might receive the final question of the interview: “Where did you see God in the process of creating and/or shifting the financial model?” Surprisingly, it was a partner from a non-religious organization who spoke up first. He spoke about the way he experienced God in the first collective meeting of the building partners in two ways. First – through a spiritual meditation ritual that started the meeting and second, through the partners’ conversation as a whole. He said,

“And being someone who grew up in the church and doesn’t attend a church regularly now but tries to stay in touch with spiritual communities, it felt like healing for me. And I think that’s a cool thing that happens for the people involved – whether they’re in a choir or attending a concert or just coming for a workshop or something. It’s the less visible parts. It’s not the cross on a building, and it’s not a Bible in someone’s hand. It’s nothing like that. And that’s really what most people I know nowadays are connecting to. [It’s the spirit of the place.] It’s subtle and not labeled.”

He also said, “It feels like that warm hug from the auntie that’s going to provide you some tea and a biscuit or something. That energy is really important, and most venues, most churches don’t have that actually. It’s somewhat rare, unfortunately.”

He appreciated that this church embodies hospitality and a calm spirit without asking every partner to share their same view and beliefs. This partner uses the sanctuary space as a concert venue. While his organization is not religious, this is a space where he felt that he and the concert attendees could engage in the spiritual practice of experiencing music together.

In a context where so many are done with or disconnected from religion, I wonder what it looks like for the church to be a place of peace and hospitality where people can experience God together in new and old ways?

A: What’s one thing you learned that surprised you?

G: Funding Forward is deeply rooted in stewardship and generosity is a key practice in this work. I have been passionate about stewardship since 2010 when I started at Luther Seminary. I believe stewardship is about using everything God has entrusted to our care to love God and our neighbors, and generosity is an important (although certainly not the only way) we can live into our call as stewards. I have often worried that this focus on funding forward would take me away from my passion for stewardship ministry. And yet, the interviews reminded me that this work is deeply rooted in stewardship. I saw how congregations were living into the three movements of stewardship: seeing the ways God had come down to them in love, looking in to identify the unique assets God had entrusted to their care, and looking out to see how God was inviting them to use these assets in new ways – creating sustainability not only for them but their neighbors.

Similarly, generosity was a key theme that came up in the interviews. We heard about:

A working class congregation that raised $1.4 million dollars (just from their own congregation) to transform their building and create affordable housing
A landlord who gave part of his building away to a congregation to create a community center for trans and gender-diverse people to gather, grow, and flourish
A large, anonymous donation that was used to create a social enterprise for nourishing Christian leaders and igniting communities of faith by setting an inclusive table of belonging and developing resources for a fresh, bold, and faithful witness in the world

Generosity was not a side project. It was a central component to making these ministries happen.

A: Based on what you learned in your interviews, how would you answer your two primary research questions?

G: First, I’ll talk about the conditions necessary for a congregation to shift its economic model. I went into this project believing that there would be parameters about how much money or what assets a congregation might need to have to get this process started. I didn’t find that to be the case. In fact, we talked to a few congregations within a year from closure when they shifted their model. While finances may have been one motivator for this work and it was sometimes what pushed the congregation to make a bold change, it was usually not the primary motivator. Overall, the congregations we interviewed had these things in common:

They had a clear understanding of God’s mission for their congregation in this time and place.
They had listened to the people God had called them to serve outside of the four walls of their congregation and had an understanding of their needs.
They had a sense of the unique assets God had entrusted to their care that they might use to both live out God’s mission and meet these needs. This might be a building or a segment of church property but it could also be the abilities of people in their community (farmers, entrepreneurs, etc.).
They were open to change and were emboldened to take risks.

As far as the things that helped them to actually make this shift to a new model, these were the four that came up most often:

a network of partnerships with organizations outside of the congregation, and community relationships
trusted pastoral leadership
empowered lay leadership
generous support in time, talent, and treasure

Outside of these four, my research team was surprised by how much discernment, communication, transparency, and consensus-based leadership came up throughout our conversations. This was not something a small group engaged in on the side, they were intentional about bringing the whole congregation along every step of the way. Similarly, I was struck by the deep spiritual nature of this work. There were 20 spiritual practices (prayer, Bible Study, listening, naming God’s action, etc.) named throughout the interviews and it was these spiritual practices that kept the congregation going when they encountered challenges.

Used by permission of Faith+Lead at Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN.

Grace Pomroy

Grace Pomroy is a financial educator, speaker, and blogger. She helps couples transform their relationship and deepen their intimacy by having open and honest conversation about money. She empowers them to connect their money and their values so they can create a more fulfilling life together. In 2017, she became a Certified Financial Education Instructor (CFEI). She lives with her husband in Gig Harbor, WA. When she's not talking about money, you'll find her exploring new cities, hiking trails, or in her kitchen perfecting her sourdough recipe. She is currently the Director of the Stewardship Leaders Program at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, MN and co-owner of Embracing Stewardship, LLC.

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

Natalia Terfa 7/27/23 Natalia Terfa 7/27/23

Announcing: Stewardship In A Box

This post originally appeared on the Faith+Lead blog to promote Stewardship In A Box, a resource created in partnership between Church Anew and Faith+Lead and Luther Seminary.

In 2022, Church Anew launched a new resource aimed at congregations and leaders, called “Lent In A Box.” The idea behind this resource was an acknowledgment that Lent often adds more on top of already busy preaching and teaching schedules, and sometimes it’s nice to be given a theologically trustworthy bit of help. Instead of each church community writing, planning, teaching, and creating everything from scratch, Church Anew designed, created, and offered helpful tools and themes for the Lenten season.

Lent In A Box was a complete success, utilized by and connecting over 350 church communities across denominations, states, and church size. We even had a few international participants! (We see you, Norway and Canada!)

With this success, the team at Church Anew decided to double down and create another “In A Box” resource around the topic of stewardship – this time in partnership with the Stewardship Leaders Program at Luther Seminary. We are excited about this partnership and look forward to August when we will bring you: Stewardship In A Box.

Stewardship has long been a challenge in the life of many congregations and their leaders but never more so than in recent years. With attendance and giving both down, it is more important than ever that we are not only clear with what we are asking, but are also clear with our why.

Just as stewardship is a challenge for congregations, we also know this subject can also be challenging for people of faith. For so many of us, even hearing the word “stewardship” can conjure up images of pastors begging for money, congregation leaders shaming people into giving more to a deficit budget, or biblical narratives about money that don’t seem to align with how we use money today. What would it look like to use a stewardship season to help people unpack some of their baggage around money while also helping them better align their faith and their finances?

The resources in this virtual box are meant to help with all of this. They will:

Alleviate the stress and fear for leaders by giving them practice making a clear and compelling financial ask to their community
Help congregations pay attention to the Spirit’s work in their midst, naming the dreams and the needs of their community while making a case for financial support
Build skills among professional and lay leaders for effective stewardship leadership
Invite people of faith to get curious about what it means for each of us, youthful and elder, to be generous from the abundance that God has entrusted to them

Using tried and true methods from fundraising experts and stewardship leaders, this resource will help congregations from the beginning to the end of a stewardship campaign. This is not an “all or nothing” resource, that everyone follows exactly and word for word. It is meant to be more of a “choose your own adventure,” setting each congregation up for stewardship success in the way that fits their context best.

Our inaugural Stewardship In A Box theme is “You Have Heard it Said…” This worship and spiritual practice series will help people of faith unpack some of what they have heard about money and generosity, reflect on how God might be calling them to use all of their money (not just the portion they give away), and discern how people of all ages might participate in God’s mission in their congregation financially and otherwise. Drawing people of all ages into conversation, it will make a compelling case for developing a spiritual practice around all forms of generosity.

A ready-made resource for congregations of every size, Stewardship In A Box will include:

Preaching Prompts for pastors, deacons, lay-preachers, synodically authorized ministers (SAMs), and anyone sharing a sermon. (preview here)
Worship and Liturgical Resources including song/hymn suggestions, calls to worship, and prayers of the day.
At Home Practices for households of every size and shape that center Christian faith in ordinary moments of life.
Stewardship Basics for church councils, stewardship committees, or rostered leaders looking to grow their toolkit.
Stewardship Campaign Tools that help church leaders communicate God’s work in and through their congregation and ask for financial support
Customizable Campaign Material that centers the mission of your congregation, shares a message from your leader(s), features photos from your church, and has a clear call-to-action for financial support.

Equipping Events

Online Equipping Event 1: Thursday, August 10, 2023 from 10:00 AM – 12:30 PM Central Time
Online Equipping Event 2: Wednesday, September 13, 2023 from 10:00 AM – 12:30 PM Central Time
In-Person Equipping Event: Thursday, September 21, 2023 from 9:00 AM – 1:00 PM Central Time.

We hope these resources give you the support you need for a stewardship campaign.

Used by permission of Faith+Lead at Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN.

Rev. Natalia Terfa

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

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

Erin Weber-Johnson 10/12/22 Erin Weber-Johnson 10/12/22

Grief, Bodies, and Worth

As people of faith we are given frameworks and images of just such alternative ways of being with one another, socially, spiritually, and economically. The kingdom of God calls to us, beckons us, to reimagine our worth, our belonging, our bodies.

“Listen to the power of your grief.

God is singing. God is singing.” Jorge Lockwood

Relentless. This is the word I often hear to describe the cascading and intersecting crises of the past years. The world, each of us, is experiencing a relentlessness that feels like grief upon grief.

Grief can be an isolating experience. Certainly each grieving experience is unique, an expression of the cumulative toll of pain and loss one has experienced in their lifetime. We may never fully understand another person’s grief or know exactly how to walk alongside them in it. In our struggle to comfort and understand, or, worse, in our desire to insulate ourselves from the pain of others, we may try to explain another’s grief and pain.

What’s more, we know grief extends well beyond individual experience. Of course we know more clearly than ever in this moment, we also hold collective grief - the pain we all carry after the lives lost to COVID-19 and the endless cycle of systematic injustice. We even experience the anticipatory grief that comes from not knowing what tomorrow might look like, and the loss of the belief that things could be predictable. All of this grief causes us all to reevaluate our lives while experiencing moments of bone deep tiredness, of what the psalmist says requires “sighs too deep for words.”

Grief shows up in unpredictable moments, making itself known at times when we least expect it, reminding us of its existence, bringing to mind all the things we have lost and for which we grieve. Which is why, on our best days, we know we need to acknowledge our grief, experience it, and heal from it and even, if we are so fortunate, to make sense of it. That is to say, in the midst of grief, we sometimes try to engage in meaning making.

As we consider our multiple losses, as we experience our own mortality more clearly, we are compelled to make meaning from what has occured. Some opt to create funds in honor of loved ones, others move to a different part of the country, and still others might opt to make major life and career decisions in response to grief and in an attempt to wrestle from it some kind of meaning. I am fascinated, intrigued, and confused by how grief influences or translates to vocation and work. Consider, for instance, how many people quit their jobs during the so-called “Great Resignation.” (1)

The New York Times reports 47.8 million people left their positions to pursue different job opportunities during the pandemic. Taken in aggregate, this shift in the workforce, resulting as it did from the painful experiences, the grief and losses, of the pandemic, is staggering. Yet, these stories also bear witness to the desire to make sense of grief as so many made decisions born of our deepest values learned or relearned through the pain of our collective loss. These answers guided many to clarify their own sense of vocation and to reflect on their own boundaries and limits. The resulting shift of the workforce raised, for me, questions of bodies and worth. I wondered, “What is the value of my body?”, “What is the worth of an individual life?” and “Why do I keep living this way—I can do better, right?”

For those who are currently employed, another trend is afoot regarding - what commentators are calling “Quiet Quitting”. (2) Here people start to quietly enforce boundaries around work/life balance, no longer working beyond reasonable boundaries or established contractual expectations, refusing to go “above and beyond” or accept “other duties” not clearly in their job descriptions. Many are quietly “quitting”, refusing to work during off hours, resisting tasks beyond the scope of their original position.

Grief, meaning making, and the resulting impact on the workforce, is also raising questions about productivity. As the exhaustion and grief of the pandemic prompt many to set or reset healthy boundaries and resist the culture of overwork and busyness, we are being asked again to consider a new way to envision the relationship between money and bodies. As we explore again these connections and consider anew what productivity means, we might realize that this moment holds a powerful opportunity for us to imagine and usher in alternative economies. As people of faith we are given frameworks and images of just such alternative ways of being with one another, socially, spiritually, and economically. The kingdom of God calls to us, beckons us to reimagine our worth, our belonging, our bodies.

Jorg Rieger (3) notes that economics has always had a moral dimension. However, alternative economies often struggle in implementation as we do not begin to factor in alternative measures of productivity. The economic vision of the kingdom of God turns our conceptions of who owns money and possessions, as well as our understandings of who has power, and flips them on their head. When we remain concerned about our worth in measurable outcomes and success measures, the framework of the kingdom of God, where debts are forgiven, the poor are given pride of place, the hungry are filled, and as Mary says, the rich are sent away empty, shifts popular cultural conceptions of the what is measurable and what success looks like.

Our relationship to our money and bodies not only shapes our relationship to God, it impacts our ability to recognize God’s movements in the world. We are unable to imagine the kingdom of God, that is, God’s economics, without decolonizing, recognizing and eliminating beliefs about our worth and work, deeply engrained as they are by a world that values profit over people, currency over connection, and belongings over belonging.

I am reminded here of advice given to me early on in my career. I was told the key to success at any organization was to accomplish enough early on to be “irreplaceable.” Here my worth, measured by my productivity, ensured my place in the economy and in society. Recently, in a group of colleagues, we all admitted to no longer feeling drawn to the same intense “hustle” as we did prior to 2020. In the wake of death and injustice, we developed a new appreciation for our own bodies - a deeper sense of value of our own selves against the cost we might assume to pursue these previously held beliefs. The cost our culture assigns to the body is one many no longer are willing to pay to meet career objectives and false ideas of success.

I seemed to be drawn

to the center of myself

leaving the edges of me

in the hands of my wife

and I saw with the most amazing

clarity

so that I had not eyes but

sight,

and, rising and turning,

through my skin,

there was all around not the

shapes of things

but oh, at last, the things

themselves.

Lucille Clifton (The Death of Fred Clifton) (4)

What if this moment calls us to the surprising reality of our worth? This notion of worth shifts our priorities and understanding of productivity, the body’s worth, not in the ‘shape of things’, but with new, focused sight, our grief giving voice to what our souls need. What if, rising and turning to God in our own bodies and skin, we see ourselves not in mere shapes or as hollow vehicles for productivity, but at last as beloved, whole.

Footnotes:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/13/business/great-resignation-jobs.html
https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/09/quiet-quitting-trend-employee-disengagement/671436/
Jorg Rieger. No Rising Tide: Theology, Economics, and The Future. Fortress Press, 2009.
Gupta, SudipDas. "The Death of Fred Clifton by Lucille Clifton". Poem Analysis, https://poemanalysis.com/lucille-clifton/the-death-of-fred-clifton/. Accessed 22 September 2022.

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

Erin Weber-Johnson 9/12/22 Erin Weber-Johnson 9/12/22

The Cost of a Body

What is a body worth to you?

What is a body worth to God?

On the surface, one might be inclined to answer that bodies are priceless. Bodies are sacred. Bodies are beloved.

Yet, this language doesn`t translate consistently. There is a tension that occurs when we talk about one’s hourly rate or the value of one’s time. When a person is injured or killed, insurance adjusters quantify what a life is worth in terms of monetary reimbursement. When considering prison reform, school reform, hospital reform, analytics are made of the cost of a single body in order to determine cost/benefit analysis. How do we make sense of this question in the modern world?

Recently, the nation was horrified at the brutal murder of Eliza Fletcher, a woman out on a run one morning. Initially described in the news at a pre-kindergarten teacher, major news headlines quickly changed to read ‘billionaire’s heiress grandaughter murdered.’ Within 24 hours new information was provided that her grandfather was not a billionaire; that initial headlines didn’t accurately reflect Eliza’s identity. In the midst of this question of her worth, others asked important questions about why this case gathered more attention compared to similar cases of women of color. Why does one human’s body garner extensive attention and public outcry while others remain unseen?

In the Twin Cities where I live, after the murder of George Floyd my family watched as the national guard’s tanks made their way through our streets. Palpable pain and loss gave way to fresh visual expressions of grief. Strangely, the national guards presence seemed to focus their protection at predominantly white owned businesses. The news began to speak of the cost of the protests to local establishments. One business owner of a nearby Indian restaurant was featured saying, “George Floyd’s life is worth the loss of my business. I can always rebuild again.”

How one views our bodies, as vehicles for productivity, as estimable by hourly wage or as beloved impacts the ability to engage in conversations about money. The powerful relationships between body and money impacts our relationship to God.

What can we say about how God moves in our world when even our notions of stewardship and giving are often rooted in the sense of ownership of our material goods. Having created us in his/her/their image, the creation story tells that God entrusted the land and animals to Adam.

Edgar Villenueva further problematizes this idea in Decolonizing Wealth by saying the concept of colonization took place around the time when humans became farmers and concepts of ownership, managing or controlling the land gave way to owning plants and animals.

Somewhere stewardship began to resemble ownership. And, in developing systems of hierarchy and control, ownership didn't stop at land and animals.

I would take Villenueva’s wisdom one step further as colonization connects to bodies. Our body’s worth, with roots from our nation’s history of slavery and the selling of bodies is embeded in our DNA. We feel it in our bodies and in our relationships with others. It translates now to overwork, insurmountable anxiety, and vocational burnout. Folks describe their fear of being replaceable, disposable, or not of worth. Overwork becomes a defense mechanism when asking, “what am I worth?”

Psalm 139: 14

I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

Wonderful are Your works,

And my soul knows it very well.

As we move into a season often called that of annual giving, stewardship or fall giving, we are often asked to consider our relationship to money. Yet, the weight of this question about the worth of a body lays heavy. How do we pray to a God who forgives us our debts as we forgive our debtors when this language is also linked to scriptures of how God loves us so much that he gave his only son? Ultimately, this drives the question: what was Jesus’s body even worth?

The question of bodies and worth emerges both in theologies of giving as well as the lived experience of those inviting others to give. In thinking of stewardship and faith leaders, I’ve both experienced and read painful stories from leaders (people of color, women, those differently abled, etc) in the church where they`ve described the impact of code switching, of leaving the identity of their body at the door in order to raise money. In other words, these beloved were forced to measure the cost of their body in order to receive funding for ministry.

What am I worth? What are you worth?

Sonya Renee Taylor writes in her powerful book The Body is Not an Apology, “When our personal value is dependent on the lesser value of other bodies, radical self-love is unachievable.” The work of monetizing bodies was historically crafted and rigorously maintained to enforce the notion that some bodies are worth more than others. Some bodies would cost more than others.

The theology of decolonizing stewardship invites us into a new way of thinking about our money in relation to both our bodies as well as other beloved of God. This moment calls us to an unpacking of the ways our minds as well as bodies have been colonized in ways that apply a cost to the body, to the soul. Our work, in exploring our relationships to money and bodies, is one of asking difficult questions, living in ambiguity, avoiding prescription, and celebrating diversity as holy.

This moment calls us to bear witness not only inherited sinful systems that would see a body as something to possess, own, or monetize. It is one not of only tearing down the colonial mindset, but of hopeful imagination as we invite the holy spirit to reorient ourselves to God and each other in the world.

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

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

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

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Erin Weber-Johnson

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

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Natalia co-hosts Cafeteria Christian, a podcast for people who love Jesus but aren’t so sure about his followers.

Erin Weber-Johnson

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

Erin Weber-Johnson

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