Blog Posts
Enfleshing Witness: Winnie Varghese
Be not conformed to this world, the Bible says, but be transformed by the renewing of your hearts. Or, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. What are those conforming things that we should be watching out for? What keeps us from freedom?
The following is a lightly edited transcript and a video of Reverend Winnie Varghese’s talk from our 2021 Enfleshing Witness gathering. Winnie preaches because God has given her a love for words and images and a heart that is changed by the words of others. Winnie preaches to American Episcopalians because she has found her home there. And because she believes the word held in the context of communal prayer creates a space for her to encounter profound truths, personal clarity, hope, and community. Winnie preaches among people who seek to walk with Jesus on the way of liberation.
Hi, my name is Winnie and I'm an Episcopal priest, and I've just moved back to Atlanta, Georgia.
When my dad was on the phone with his sister (my aunt) he told her that I was moving to Georgia, she replied, “Winnie's moving to Russia?”
My aunt lives in India, but when I was a child, that family lived in Tripoli, in Libya. There's a picture of her in our photo album. By herself, with her hair in a high, loose, very glamorous bun, early 1970s, with a Ghazi sari on, on the beach, on the Mediterranean, on the Africa side, in Tripoli. From my perspective, in Garland, Texas, just impossibly glamorous.
How amazing that she would assume that I was equally cool and international. I mean, I guess I am her brother's daughter, but... My Georgia is in blue and red America, and of course, it is perfect for me to be here again. I came here for the first time as a 17-year-old and among the first generation in my community of immigrants from India to have their college education in the United States.
So, “be not conformed to this world,” the Bible says, “but be transformed by the renewing of your hearts.” Or, “it is for freedom that Christ has set us free.” What are those conforming things that we should be watching out for? What keeps us from freedom?
My pursuit of freedom, of vocation, of purpose, and my own curiosity about what my life should be like or could be like, took me far from my family and community at the same time that racialized identity started to act, and starts to act in most of our lives. All the forms with race start to appear right around college. The clubs that you have to join, the organizing, the potlucks around identity. What does it mean to be Asian American or Indian or Malayali if you have no place in those communities?
The Bible reads to me as a story of people who migrate and move and wonder about identity. People that move away from the place and people they know. Sometimes they say it’s because God calls them, which I think means that whoever was writing it down couldn't figure out why they had left that great home. Or that the writers are a generation that experiences themselves as interlopers in a strange land, still, and who needed to tell a story of their own legitimacy. Or because of empire, or war, or political upheaval, or violence, or famine. The things that cause migrations of people today. At the mercy of powers greater than our own little families, we are seeking a way through for this generation and maybe stability for the future.
To people who know these stories well and live in the midst of occupation, Jesus and Paul say: Live in freedom now.
I've tried to take that very seriously in my life and I've noticed a few things along the way.
1. The systems that restrict freedom are sophisticated and can confuse us into believing that freedom lies within those systems.
Climbing a ladder or sitting on the panel, admission to the college, a seat at the table, acquiring some of the access to voice or decision-making that people in power seem to have.
Equality and representation matter a lot, but they have nothing or very little to do with actual freedom. With your freedom. It might make the world appear to be more equitable, but it won't ultimately feed your heart.
2. I feel most at home in communities, I've found, that are multiracial and multicultural.
That's the kind of church and neighborhood where I feel most like myself. I don't feel at home in monocultural church or community of any kind, including the churches of my origin and my family's origins.
Now, I love those communities. I like to hear their language and their music. It brings me to tears often. It is my personal history in some ways, but I literally don't speak that language, and I think that's fine. And more importantly for me, my parents never probably felt fully at home there either. They chose to wander out. Our story is not an ideal, and probably no one's is, right? They too look for other communities, and I inherit those choices of exploring and questioning.
3. No one gets to tell us, me or you, what home is, who to love, what is authentically you.
The Bible actually seems to say you will struggle and journey in that space your entire life. Have integrity there. Communities of origin or identity are very important for political organizing, for solidarity based on experience. No one is going to fight for our rights, but us, we're all told. That is probably a practical reality. And in that context, yes, I am Asian American. I am Indian. I am Malayali. But let's not confuse that kind of identity marker with freedom, or even with embodiment. Whether my mind can seek knowledge and wisdom freely within that community, whether I can be myself, as my body tells me to be, in that community I come from, where so many men claim that their need for authority within the community is essential to community identity.
I know none of you know what I'm talking about. There's now a robust new round of patriarchy among young adults in my community, as they embrace a more evangelical Christianity, or root themselves in a nationalist lane of orthodox Christianity, or just plain old secular patriarchy, which also we call tradition, culture, and to our shame, faith.
Paul calls that the ‘powers and principalities,’ and ‘the ways of the world.’ Sin that is disguised as tradition and culture, as a racialized excuse to subjugate women, base culture on the unpaid domestic labor of women, to physically and emotionally abuse women and LGBTQIA persons in our communities, to define our community as caste. Sin becomes the ultimate separation from and demonizing of the flesh of our bodies.
So this return to Georgia for me, the U. S. one, has taken me back in my mind to when I was 17 and wondering what it meant to be an adult American from India. Trying on Asian American for the first time, realizing I was a queer person, walking around self-consciously in dark brown skin in George Bush's America that was about to go to war with the parts of the planet that my family is from. That aunt and her family left Libya, not long before the U. S. bombed a neighborhood they used to live in. We are told here that those were precision bombings, targeted, which it makes it sound like it was a military installation or something, far from babies and mothers.
But this one was catty-cornered to my aunt's house, like when the U. S. invaded Kuwait and our relatives fled, leaving everything they owned behind, never compensated, some missing for months. In that good war. ‘We won that war,’ they said on TV. ‘No one was harmed. We were invited in,’ they said.
For those of us with families impacted by U. S. foreign policy and the shifts in the 1990s, there is a new solidarity of otherness and outsider. Those were the years I started to get stopped in airport security lines for the extra long checks with guns and dogs sometimes. ‘For your own protection,’ I was told over and over again. And I'm one of the super lucky ones that was actually never hurt or detained.
But I remember all the people who walked by and looked away. That multiracial America. Everyone, right? No one stopped. Some people shouted, people stopped. And sometimes in Spanish, to each other, assuming that I could not understand.
The powers and principalities are everywhere. The ways of the world, we read in the Bible. Take care of your own, we are told today.
I believe our freedom in Christ is far more than that, and offers us so much more than that. Entangling human connection through the boundaries of identities, generating wild possibilities, for beautifully connected living that we discern in these bodies, in these contexts, over and over and over again.
Now I don't know that there will be anyone to look at a faded photo in a family album of me in 20 years, but if there were, I hope they would see a woman whose image says that there are many ways to be in this world. This beautiful world of seashores and continents stretching the limits of our imaginations.
A photo of someone enough like your own flesh and blood. To know she could love you and already imagines for you much more than you might think to ask or imagine.
We are excited to announce a new chapter in the Enfleshing Witness movement: “Enfleshing Witness: Rewilding Otherwise Preaching.” Learn more about this new grant opportunity and sign-up to stay connected as the project unfolds.
Rev. Winnie Varghese
The Rev. Winnie Varghese is the rector of St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Atlanta. She co-hosts the (G)race podcast with The Rev. Azariah France-William and is on the leadership team for Church Anew’s Enfleshing Witness movement.
Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.
As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.
The Case For Reducing (Temporarily) Church Technology Usage
In this trajectory, the church takes a temporary step back from its current tech usage, in order to reflect on the resources most aligned to a ministry’s purpose.
Photo by Ales Nesetril on Unsplash
The rapid development of AI will change digital ministry. It’s possible, perhaps even likely, that the digital ministry in 2026 will look nothing like the digital ministry of 2023, which looks nothing like the digital ministry of 2020. We cannot know for certain how or even if church leaders will learn to do ministry alongside AI. But we know that change is coming. If we are to give ourselves and our communities sufficient time and energy to experience and experiment with these changes, a digital decluttering may be necessary.
AI tools will certainly disrupt and in many cases displace the technologies of today. The technologies that we relied on during the pandemic will, in many cases, not be the technologies we use five years from now. By decluttering our digital toolkits, we make space for experimentation and discernment on how to thoughtfully use AI for ministry.
GIven the magnitude of the shift to AI, I would argue that the church needs to adopt a practice of experimentation, to both learn and critique these systems. We cannot learn to use AI in a way that complements our mission if we are too busy posting to last year’s trendy social media site. And if we are to experiment with what AI could look like in the church, we must change the current trajectory of digital ministry.
2020 represented an abrupt lurch forward, with most ministries adopting new digital tools. While some churches have stopped live streaming services and offering Zoom options for meetings, many continue to offer some form of hybrid ministry. Today, churches continue to add new tools to their technology stacks: better cameras, more sophisticated streaming software, new social media channels, upgraded A/V equipment, and more recently, generative AI tools. This technological addition comes at a cost. Three years of continuous technological growth has called into question the sustainability of digital ministry efforts, leading in some cases to burnout.
But just as continuous digital addition is not the ideal trajectory, complete digital disconnection is equally problematic. Visitors continue to experience churches for the first time through live streaming. Members continue to worship online when they are unable to attend in-person. Messaging and social media technologies continue to extend conversations and story-sharing beyond the walls of the building.
There is a third trajectory that represents a compromise: a trajectory of purposeful technology usage that is aligned to mission and vision, that provides sufficient space for experimenting with AI.
In this trajectory, the church takes a temporary step back from its current tech usage, in order to reflect on the resources most aligned to a ministry’s purpose. Likely, this will involve stepping back from some of the live streaming efforts we have adopted in the last three years. Churches should not continue to use every app, service, or software added during Covid. Nor should we be bound to offer a digital format for every church gathering, as some attempted towards the end of the pandemic. What we once thought of as digital ministry essentials: social media, live streaming, and digital content, ought to be revisited in this moment.
Live stream worship, arguably the standard model for digital ministry, is a resource-intensive effort requiring considerable coordination and staffing. If we are to make the space for AI experimentation we may need to reduce the level of effort currently allocated to online worship. For some ministries this might mean broadcasting one service time, rather than all. For others, this might involve streaming some weeks rather than others. Some may choose to automate the live streaming process entirely, utilizing A/V resources like a pan-tilt zoom camera or the Mevo webcam to reduce the overhead involved with worship production. This is the time to compromise on production value in order to free up energy and resources for trying new technologies!
By reducing technology usage in the short-term, we create the bandwidth to experiment with emerging tools that will help us to foster a greater sense of connection and belonging across our communities. While we don’t yet know the specifics of what this will involve, AI will give us tools that can make online worship more immersive and spiritual practice more enriching. It will give us the tools to create new types of content that deepen the bonds of Chrisitan communities, and provide us the means of articulating our faith stories.
In addition to creating the space for AI experimentation, this moment of intentional digital pruning ensures we are not using technology for the sake of using a trending tool. This leads us closer towards a more purposeful vision of technology in the church. At a time when it is so easy to subscribe to new software, upgrade to new hardware, and test new digital platforms, purposeful ministry requires us to say no. At a practical level, churches could resolve to end next year using the same number, or fewer, digital tools than they are using today.
The work of Cal Newport can be instructive to today’s church leaders, which provides a philosophical foundation that we can apply towards our experimentation with AI. Newport, a computer scientist and author, has written extensively on purposeful uses of technology that lead to greater alignment with vision and values. In his 2019 book, Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World, Newport writes:
“Digital minimalists see new technologies as tools to be used to support things they deeply value—not as sources of value themselves. They don’t accept the idea that offering some small benefit is justification for allowing an attention-gobbling service into their lives, and are instead interested in applying new technology in highly selective and intentional ways that yield big wins. Just as important: they’re comfortable missing out on everything else.”
Now is an opportune time for ministries to revisit their values, to reflect on mission and vision, and to ask if our digital tools lead us into mission or merely make us busier.
Three and a half years since the start of the pandemic, the church ought to re-evaluate our relationship with technology, ensuring these systems take us to where God is calling. AI represents an immense change. Hearing the voice of God can be challenging during periods of transition. By temporarily reducing our technology usage, we provide space to hear God’s voice as we step into the unknown.
Ryan Panzer
Ryan Panzer is the author of “Grace and Gigabytes: Being Church in a Tech-Shaped Culture” (Fortress Press, 2020) and "The Holy and the Hybrid: Navigating the Church's Digital Reformation" (Fortress Press, 2022). Ryan has spent his career in the worlds of church leadership and technology. He received his M.A. from Luther Seminary while simultaneously working for Google. Ryan serves as a learning and leadership development professional in the technology industry and as a speaker and writer on digital technology in the church. Ryan also serves as the Resident Theologian at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Madison, WI. For more writings and resources, visit www.ryanpanzer.com.
Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.
As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.
Planting Gardens of Belonging
The task at hand for young people of faith is to draw from our traditions to steward this change—this social transformation—towards the redemptive possibilities of loving exceedingly, seeking justice, practicing hospitality, and giving generously. In doing so, we might reimagine and create anew the means through which our communities join together across differences.
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
This post originally appeared on the Fetzer Institute's blog and was written by Church Anew and Enfleshing Witness collaborator, Amar Peterman. Read more from Amar on his Substack, This Common Life.
Our cultural moment is marked decisively by a bitter, national upheaval. The ramifications of such division are evident in the ongoing reformation of social and civic life that has fundamentally reshaped the American landscape for the next generation of public leaders, particularly those who are deeply rooted in a spiritual tradition.
As someone born between the conclusion of the Millennial generation and the genesis of Gen-Z, this decade of social animosity, political hostility, and religious skepticism is my only experience of political and religious life. I navigated the complexities of voting in my first primary election in 2016 while enrolled in a theology program at a conservative, evangelical bible college in downtown Chicago. I studied American religious history and public theology in seminary during a global pandemic that put the worst of my tradition on display for the public to see. Today, I work at a civic, bridge-building organization that seeks to elevate the constructive role of faith in public life at a time when the integrity of both organized religion and democratic systems are under heavy scrutiny.
While these experiences have produced long seasons of pain, frustration, and grief, my engagement at the intersection of faith and public life over the past decade has also taught me an important lesson: change is not only possible, it is inevitable. Indeed, our country and those who reside in it are constantly shifting and changing. We are ever caught in liminal spaces: of devastation and building, of death and life, of grief and joy, of pessimism and hope, of death and new life, of what is and what might be. The collective spirit of America is a malleable energy that is impossible to contain.
Framed another way, this decade has—for myself and many others—removed the illusion of permanence. Desipte their present grandeur or platform, no person, institution, building, or system will stand forever. The clarity and freedom that accompany this realization are the beating heart of great social movements that have prophetically envisioned new designs of habitation and built new possibilities for our shared life marked by belonging, community, and inclusion. These movements of change directed by and towards love resist the bifurcation of buildings from bodies and systems from citizens. Most importantly, these movements of change are not destructive in their end; their vision is one of redemption and justice.
We meet God drawing us and showing us the life of one who yields and listens, and in this way, the yielding and listening prepare for us a life together of dreaming and building.
—Willie James Jennings, “Addressing the Hateful Condition of the Line”
The task at hand for young people of faith is to draw from our traditions to steward this change—this social transformation—towards the redemptive possibilities of loving exceedingly, seeking justice, practicing hospitality, and giving generously. In doing so, we might reimagine and create anew the means through which our communities join together across differences. In my experience, this joining work often looks like bending down and digging our hands into the earth to cultivate the soil of our cultural landscape with the nutrients and environment to bring forth a garden of dreaming, building, and flourishing together.
This begins by telling good stories that can transparently name both the tensions and promise of a shared, common life. At their best, stories like these remind us that difference does not necessitate division. They can name where our experiences diverge while also binding us together through a shared vision of who we can be together. Stories remind us that, although we may be strangers, we are deeply connected—and connection is the seedbed for a robust, generative community.
Second, planting a garden or building an institution requires identifying a space to lay a firm foundation. If we aim to draw in our communities towards a constructive vision of our common life, then we must build and plant at the site of public gathering. Truly, our moral and civic formation is not located in prescribed rules and legislation but in communion and belonging. If we want to shape and direct the malleable energy of our communities and society, we must place ourselves where individuals and habits are formed: churches, mosques, temples, synagogues, gurdwaras; and museums, hospitals, schools, potlucks, food pantries, and community centers.
Moreover, in these spaces where people gather across lines of difference, young people of faith must lead the way in cutting through the fog of ideological isolation and tribalism by uplifting the hopeful majority of individuals in every community who genuinely want to their neighbors to thrive. Of course, this is incredibly difficult when we are implicitly formed to treat disagreement within a moral frame—where “you are wrong” necessitates “you are evil.” It is the task of the leader to foster the space and opportunity for shared action towards belonging and a common good.
Finally, no garden grows without the gentle care and fervent love of a passionate gardener. As young leaders strive to make constructive change in their communities, they must draw from their spiritual traditions to love tangibly—to till and plant, water and weed. Anne Synder says it best when she writes, “There’s a growing awareness that love can never be abstracted—we’re touched by incarnational living and doing, less prescription from on high.” The image of a garden is beautiful, just as a vision of belonging is powerful, but both remain incomplete until real fruit is borne and real flowers bloom. Our striving for a meaningful community must be materialized—incarnated—through proximity, hospitality, generosity, and collective action.
Described theologically, the action of love opens people to participate in the divine love that is constantly sustaining and making the world fresh and new.
—Norman Wirzba, This Sacred Life
In the Christian tradition, the potential of prophetic social change is never rooted in the individual leader. Instead, the spiritual source of this work is found in an eternal, permanent God who wombs and breathes out beautiful things and, in return, compels us to join in this creative action. This is the mission set before the person of faith engaging in their community: to cultivate, create, and nurture a faithful, hopeful, and loving way of being alive that compels others to join in this way of life.
There is no question that a great deal of work lies before us if we seek to build beautiful and loving communities through healthy civic and democratic practices. I believe that young people of faith are exactly the kind of leaders we need paving the way. Equipped with the experiences, wisdom, knowledge, and energy to transform communities, young leaders of faith have the incredible opportunity to lead us into a better way of being in the world marked by love of God, neighbor, earth, and self.
Amar Peterman
Amar D. Peterman (MDiv, Princeton Seminary) is an author and theologian working at the intersection of faith and public life. He is the founder of Scholarship for Religion and Society LLC, a research and consulting firm working with some of the leading philanthropic and civic institutions, religious organizations, and faith leaders in America today. His first book, This Common Life: Seeking the Common Good Through Love of Neighbor is forthcoming with Eerdmans Publishing Company. You can learn more about him at amarpeterman.com.
Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.
As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.
Unlikely Saints
All Saints Sunday gives us a very personal way to talk about the present and future by talking about the past. Who are we? Who do we want to be? Those saints from our past give us a way to talk about where we are and where we are headed.
Personal Saints
On All Saints’ Sunday, I can’t help but think about all the blessed saints who gather around me in my memories. And believe me, there were plenty of characters in my family and in my life. Looking back, I see they were saints indeed. Not officially entered into sainthood perhaps, but saints nonetheless—people who were set apart by God to make a difference in the world, as they did in my life.
I grew up in West Virginia as a PK—a preacher’s kid and grandkid. Sunday dinner was always a big affair for my family, and more often than not Grandmother and Granddaddy Yoak would join us for pot roast as my parents, two brothers and sister and I gathered around the big dining room table. My Granddaddy, Dr. J.B.F. Yoak, Jr., was a beloved Methodist minister, as was my dad; in fact Granddaddy is the one who encouraged my father to pursue ordained ministry—as well as to pursue his daughter, my mother!
Granddaddy would tell knee-slapping stories about his experiences growing up, or as a young, horseback circuit-riding preacher in the hills and valleys of West Virginia—stories he collected later in a book I treasure. And of course my parents and grandparents would have to catch up on the Methodist conference gossip with him. Granddaddy would often bring the latest issue of The West Virginia Hillbilly weekly newspaper—I was enamored of that eccentric, fascinating, unique tabloid—so much so that after I graduated from college I was thrilled to go work there—but that’s a whole other story.
Also visiting us occasionally was Aunt Grace, Granddaddy’s sister, an opinionated widow who rarely smiled, as I recall—though when she did you felt it; her deep, commanding voice often kept me behaving myself.
And Aunt Maude, who I have to say was my favorite great aunt, a sweet spinster, retired teacher, she loved to read stories to my sister and me. I prize a copy of A. A. Milne’s book, When We Were Six, which she gave me when I was, yep, six years old.
Most every summer when I was a kid, my family spent a month at Sunken Meadow beach on the James River in Virginia—and every summer we would see Dad’s side of the family nearby in Hopewell. I never knew my Dad’s father, who had passed away. Dad’s mother, my other grandmother, we called Nana.
We kids were fascinated by Nana’s oddly crossed toes and her lush, haunted back yard with an algae-tinged goldfish pond and heavy vines of fragrant muscadine grapes. Like many Virginians of the time, Nana smoked—and consequently had a gruff voice. She was a wonderful Southern cook, and she would not let you leave the table in any way hungry. “Have some more,” she would urge gruffly, and if you hesitated, “What’s the matter, don’t you like it?” Only because she loved us.
Then there was Aunt Ida, who had worked in a chemical plant whose odors permeated Hopewell, “The Chemical Capital of the South.” Ida was somewhat mystical, loved cooking, reading mysteries, and telling ghost stories in her syrupy Tidewater accent.
And Aunt Martha—she too was a widow who had worked in the plant. My sister and I would usually stay a night or two with her and our cousin Billy. We’d watch old horror movies, go to the store to get comic books and candy. She spoiled us lovingly.
Many other beloved family members come to my mind, but another saint in my life was Mrs. Robinette, a dear soul who was a member of the church I grew up in, where my Dad was pastor. When I was in elementary school, she taught Vacation Bible School one summer. She seemed ancient to me then but was sweet and full of life. And she had a big impact on my life.
One of the VBS projects she had us do was to create a newspaper as though it were published during the time of the Apostle Paul. I relished that assignment—creating news stories about Paul’s latest ruckus, ads for chariot dealers, even a comic strip. I count that experience as planting the seeds that set me on the path to study journalism in college, to fall in love with writing, and to discover a calling to communicating the faith.
All these saints, and so many more, come to my mind. I share them with you to prod your own memory of the dear saints who have blessed your life. Maybe there are some you’ve forgotten, or realize you need to be in touch with to tell them you love them.
Of course, I look back and acknowledge these saints’ flaws, peccadillos, and occasional mistakes, and I realize they were just ordinary human people like you and me. But there was something more about them. When I was a kid, they were giants to me. Salt of the earth. They truly believed and loved God. They tried to live as followers of Jesus. When I look back, I see them as saints. Saints of God.
Who are your Saints?
So, who are your saints? Who comes to your heart and mind on All Saints Sunday?
All Saints Sunday gives us a very personal way to talk about the present and future by talking about the past. Who are we? Who do we want to be? Those saints from our past give us a way to talk about where we are and where we are headed.
One huge thing I missed deeply during our pandemic worship was coming to the communion table with the family of faith and together eating the bread and drinking the wine, the body and blood of Jesus Christ. When I go to the altar rail, I always sense that the saints are with me, singing and praying, praising God; these compassionate souls who nurtured me in the faith and set me on the path of the way of love.
Think about the dear saints in your life—your family members, Sunday school teachers, mentors, those you honor in your heart.
Of course, those we remember as saints were not perfect, and often far from it—but we can relate to them because we, like they, are flawed human beings. For instance…
Mother Teresa was known for her kindness, her generosity, her monumental work on behalf of the poor, but she was also known for her sharp temper, and her personal journals reveal a woman tortured by decades of inner spiritual conflict and doubt.
The desert fathers and mothers, revered for their spiritual depth, in many cases fled to the wilderness, not because they were saints, but because they were so plagued by the gremlins of temptation that they had to go be by themselves, and even then, alone in the wild, they still wrestled with anger, pride, dejection, and depression. Even so, they were saints. Full of life and love, full of God.
Vietnamese monk and author Thich Nhat Hanh explains that, in Buddhism, the energy that helps us “touch life deeply” is known as smrti, it’s the energy of mindfulness. Jesus is full of smrti. Because Jesus knows himself. Jesus is mindful of his feelings and expresses them clearly and directly. He allows his emotions to empower his life positively. And, he invites us to join him in this authentic way of living.
Jesus began his teaching ministry (Matthew 5:1-12) on a hill surrounded by hungry, wounded people who yearned for meaning and fullness in their impoverished lives. They may not have even had a glimmer of understanding why he came and what he was about to do. Yet, they were drawn to him, and he connected directly and intimately with them as he shared the blessings of God.
In contrast to Moses, who brought the law down the mountain from on high to the people, here is Jesus, beginning his teaching ministry by bringing blessings up the mountain, to the people, where he sits down with his disciples and teaches.
“Blessed are you,” he says to the poor in spirit, to those who were mourning, to the meek who would inherit the earth, to those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for the merciful, peacemakers, and others. They were all saints! Blessed saints.
These blessings, the Beatitudes in Matthew 5, focus on our emotional life—our mourning, our passion, our fear, our suffering. All the grief and fear and pain and anger we are feeling even now in our country and in our world. In the midst of all that, we hear Jesus speak to us: “Blessed are you.”
Roman Catholic priest and author Richard Rohr writes, “Suffering is the necessary deep feeling of the human situation. If we don’t feel pain, suffering, human failure, and weakness, we stand antiseptically apart from it, and remain numb and small.”
Sometimes it seems the saintliest among us are those who have suffered the most—right?
Jesus, however, refuses to numb himself from human emotions. And so should we.
Rohr goes on: “The irony is not that God should feel so fiercely; it’s that his creatures feel so feebly. If there is nothing in your life to cry about, if there is nothing in your life to yell about, you must be out of touch. We must all feel and know the immense pain of this global humanity. Then we are no longer isolated, but a true member of the universal Body of Christ. Then we know God not only from the outside but from the inside.”
So, those we remember lovingly as the saints in our lives? I think they got this. They lived their lives knowing they were beloved children of God, called to love and serve God, no matter how they struggled, no matter what pains they strove to overcome. And as a result, they made their mark on our lives and no doubt on many others.
While you’re at it, consider others in our society and history who have also made an impact on your life. For instance, the late, great Civil Rights icon and United States Congressman, John Lewis, served the district I live in. He continues to beckon us to get into “good trouble,” as he would put it, and that’s my goal. He was a hero to me and to so many others for all his good work and strong faith.
Blessed are these saints in our lives. Blessed are you. Blessed am I. Jesus himself gave these Beatitude blessings abundantly to anyone who would receive them, anyone who would open themselves up to risk experiencing them.
But, once those blessings are received, they are ours to do something with—we are blessed to be a blessing in this hurting, divided, terrifying world. One day—who knows—maybe we will be the saints remembered and honored by others, because we took the blessings we received and gave them away just as extravagantly as did Jesus, and as did all the saints who followed him.
Let’s live unafraid to honor those dear souls who helped make you and me who we are. Remember those who have come before us as a way of considering prayerfully who we are, and who we want to be.
And one day, may we be remembered for the positive influence we left in others’ lives. As impossible as it may seem to us now, may we ourselves be remembered as unlikely saints. Let’s live every day in a way that will make it so, in the power of our loving Lord.
Sources:
Peter Wallace, The Passionate Jesus (Conclusion)
Lisa Cressman, Backstory Preaching, “What Not to Preach on All Saints’ Day,” October 23, 2017
Richard Rohr, Daily Meditation, "Suffering," March 27, 2012, adapted from Rohr, Radical Grace, 209.
Peter M. Wallace
Rev. Peter M. Wallace, an Episcopal priest, was for 22 years the executive producer and host of the “Day1” weekly radio program and podcast (Day1.org). He is the author or editor of 15 books, including most recently A Generous Beckoning: Accepting God’s Invitation to a More Fulfilling Life; Bread Enough for All: A Day1 Guide to Life; Heart and Soul: The Emotions of Jesus; and Comstock & Me: My Brief But Unforgettable Career with The West Virginia Hillbilly.
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.
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.
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. In other words, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus was saying, pray and do something.
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.
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.
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.
Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
Leadership Lab: Winnie Varghese
We've had to rebuild all of our systems for who we are today. I don't know that we would've had permission without that kind of isolation to rethink some things that probably needed to be rethought, frankly.
Over the past year the Church Anew team has been working to connect and build resources for church leaders to see what their colleagues are doing around the country. With that the Leadership Lab was born. We have interviewed several church leaders doing innovative and amazing things, and we want to share their knowledge and wisdom with the world.
Church Anew recently caught up with Rev. Winnie Varghese whose name you might recognize from our Enfleshing Witness project. We are excited to share a deeper dive into the roots of her passion and the richness of her experiences serving Episcopal congregations in Los Angeles, New York City, and now in Atlanta, Georgia.
Church Anew (CA): Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Winnie Varghese (WV): I am an Episcopal priest and the rector of St. Luke's in Atlanta. I grew up in Dallas, Texas, and I served as a priest in New York City for about 20 years and in Los Angeles before that. I've been here in Atlanta for two years.
CA: Can you tell us a little bit about your current ministry context?
WV: St. Luke's is a downtown church in Atlanta. It was founded in 1864, the last year of the Civil War. This is its fourth building, and it's moved within maybe a mile downtown. This building is from 1906. 1906 was the year of the Atlanta race riots, and it was a massacre of black people by white people. That was called a riot, and many happened all over the country at that time. And so this building opened that year, and the rector at the time, Kerry Wilmer, invited W. E. B. DuBois, who was a mile away at Clark Atlanta, Spelman, Morehouse, to come and have a conversation about what had happened. I feel like that's a really iconic piece of who this church is.
We didn't move out of the city during white flight, or when the highway tore through the city during that era of segregation, of disenfranchising black people and emptying out neighborhoods. We're right at that court junction. We've had the kind of leadership that could do things, like have a conversation with DuBois, at that level of conversation in our church on the broad step in a brand new building when things like that just were not happening, but also it feels shameful to read the conversation today. We're ashamed, you know, you couldn't be proud of that conversation, but it happened.
So, I feel like we sit on seven acres in downtown Atlanta that is booming, that is ripe with development possibility, and it has the ministry founded at the church that serves people who are unhoused, that has mental health services that are very accessible and that are linked to spirituality. The food bank for the city was founded here. It has this great sense of service to the community and is thinking about what belonging means and what it means to be a powerful institution in the center of the city with access to all the leadership of the city with an endowment that's robust and booming that actually speaks the truth and creates space for the city we're becoming.
CA: What are some bright spots currently of the ministry of St. Luke's or your own ministry personally?
WV: What's really fun about the city, this church and the city, is two years out of pandemic isolation, which in our church, across the board in the Episcopal church, bishops took a really firm hand in telling people to close their buildings, to not gather in the buildings. So it means that coming from an empty building, an empty site a couple of years ago to coming back to full functioning has been a journey. We are right at the point where we now again have hundreds of people on a Sunday morning and we've got 20 babies in the nursery and we're coming back and you see people on Sunday, so happy to see each other because it's been three years and we can do that again.
It feels just really energized because people are coming back, and we've had to rebuild all of our systems for who we are today. I don't know that we would've had permission without that kind of isolation to rethink some things that probably needed to be rethought, frankly. We've tried to take that opportunity to get it right about what people need, what they can handle, and really to get back in the business of inviting people to be together because it feels good to be in community. On Sunday morning when I asked people to greet each other before we start the opening hymn, it's just raucous, which feels really good in a very big building for it to feel full. It's a really happy time at St. Luke's.
CA: What have been some of the challenges that you've faced in either your current ministry context or previously? What have been the challenges related to creating an equitable, diverse environment that is inclusive of everyone?
WV: I think one of the pieces that we might work with leadership on, lay and ordained, is to really think about belonging and equity. You've got to do your personal work.
We all carry a lot of baggage. I think what I've watched in the church is either one version where it’s kind of resigned: ‘Why would anyone want to come here? Church is so lame, so dull, we're so problematic.’ This self-defeating almost cynical version of church. Or, the other extreme of that would be scolding people that ‘y’all are just getting it wrong and that we've got to get it right.’ Whether you're the kind of church that scolds people on their personal behavior, or on the systems that we live in, and the struggles of the world that we live in.
I think being a grounded Christian leader, a faith leader that has thought about their, and worked on our own, points of pain and trauma that trigger in our own lives. What we're trying to accommodate and account for in leadership, what we're scared of, our own sense of what is good and what makes us good, which is often a very shallow place for most of us. Our desire to be good is probably why we are in church. That's actually a destructive place to act from because good and innocence and all those things are deeply problematic. Really having done the work of thinking through how we function in complex societies, are complicit in those societies, are rewarded for that, are privileged in that. Really doing that work so that we stand in pulpits and in leadership with a lot of humility work, working out our salvation as we are collectively. Speaking modestly and boldly the truth.
That's what prevents people from becoming burned out, from becoming cynical, from becoming resigned to the way things are from or not believing in the power of the gospel to transform the world or the church. I feel like I've just encountered it over and over and over. Both self-righteous and ragey leadership. They're just frustrated with the system, or really sanguine, just kind of, ‘ah, we tried and we couldn't get there’ or burned out or defeated. I feel like I've encountered that character over and over in my adult life. Clearly that's where I'm supposed to learn something about myself, and so I think the capacity to be self-reflective and learn while also being a leader, not using that to be passive, is the trick. That's the journey, and it never ends.
But I think that's the heart of it. I guess another way I'd say that is I remember meeting an older priest when I was a new priest who said that you couldn't be an effective priest unless you had had an encounter with the living Christ and been born again. And she's a mainline Anglican. What is she talking about? Right? I'm not fundamentalist or evangelical, but I think I know what she means now. She had been a priest for a while before she figured that out. If the journey of faith isn't true and active in your life, if you're not on that journey and changing - changing before God, changing yourself - you burn out.
CA: You said a lot of the people, in clergy and church leadership are coming in because they want to be good, but that's not the goal. Can you elaborate a little bit more on that idea?
WV: Often people that want to be in religious leadership…deep down what's happening is you want to be right, you want to be good. And that's often tied to a sense of innocence: that we are good, that there's bad things out there or bad ideas out there, but we are good. And I think it's really naive, and it's an American identity as well. And it's not true. And so if we do something wrong, it's a mistake where we wouldn't have meant genocide or slavery or class oppression. We're good and our hands are clean.
I think it's part of the fallacy of the American identity that because we didn't mean it then it doesn't matter, it's not part of us. I think a true Christian identity is much more about standing in the truth of who we are, and what we inherit, and what our responsibilities are, and then seeking the guidance of the gospel message; seeking to be followers of Jesus as we find our way. That's always going to be messy. There's not a way to step out of that mess.
I've had friends that talk about their call that way. Like ‘I was a lawyer, I was in finance and that was just so conflicted and complex. And so I came to the church where things were on the side of the good,’ and then they're disappointed by how there are still the same old people in the church that were everywhere else. Everywhere we go is just people trying to figure out how to be people together. There's nothing more holy or different in this space except that we're more clear that we're trying to follow this path of Jesus. But it's the same old people in the same old struggles everywhere. We are still making decisions with all the complexity of ourselves.
So I think that desire to separate ourselves from the rest of the world, and I come from that idea of a commune or a utopia or somewhere where we're not having that much impact on the land and we're not causing harm. I have that in me, and it's just not true. There's no version of life that's like that. But I think a lot of people that choose church leadership, we have that idealism in us that there's some way that we can really get this right separate from the world. And I feel like that so much of the story of Jesus is that he steps away for relief, but he's just constantly in the messiest part of the mix where we see the life of God.
CA: Where have you found support and encouragement for some of the harder work that you're doing?
WV: I remember when I was a student at Union watching James Cone, like the great James Cone. He was in his sixties still lecturing. Watching him literally learn with students in class with this amazing lecture, these amazing readings, and then asking questions in such a way that meant that we were learning, and he was learning, and we were learning from each other together.
I remember thinking, I want to be an adult like that. I want to be someone who's always curious and knows how to learn, that can know how to draw teaching out of people.
I learned this in my third congregation. I wish I had learned it earlier, to talk to other leaders here. And it's really interesting to me to watch them guide me and guide themselves to a better solution than I would've come up with myself. And if it is something I might come up with, it's faster and better than I would've done if I had been sitting by myself trying to figure it out. Staying in a real, solid relationship with the people in our community.
I'm answering this very differently than I would've 15 years ago, I would've said, ’here's my colleague group of people that are not attached to where I work’, or ‘here are my friends who are not church people or not in ministry who are my safe place.’
I find that now in our lay leadership, in our staff, like our people, but importantly not just clergy people. Being as inquisitive as Dr. Cone was, and inviting that from them, and being curious brings so much clarity. For me it's really important that it's within the context I'm in, that it's not like a little cabal of clergy are the only people that have answers, or that a little group of people so separated from the church are the people I can really trust. That we do that here, I'm finding, is really important for me.
CA: What words of encouragement, advice, or challenge would you have for ministers and church leaders right now?
WV: There's this beautiful writing: “the response to anxiety is awe and wonder.” [In] our baptismal prayer, we pray for a sense of awe and wonder in God's creation. We are in such an anxious time – for very good reason. What a clown show of a world we live in right now, just hate everywhere. Fascism everywhere. All around us are such strong reactions that feel violent and are violent. We are right to feel anxious. And I think part of being a church leader is that you feel the anxiety of your people. It is so important that we stay in the awe and wonder space. It doesn't mean that we deny anxiety, but that we notice those things that facilitate our being, and those things that make us thankful, and that we make time to notice in those ways.
We don't counter anxiety by repressing it or denying it. We counter it by noticing the great beauty of life. You need creativity to feel courageous. It's not like I have a moment where I think, ‘oh, I'll be brave and say some brave words. I'll be courageous.’ I have moments where I think, ‘oh, this is what needs to be said. This is the truth. This is actually a beautiful truth.’ And I can do that with some humility, say something that feels true. When I get that right, the community comes right back with, ‘oh yeah, that's so true.’ And some people will be mad at us, but we've got to feel creative to do those courageous things. We can't do them out of anxiety, so we have to find ways to step out of our things that take us out of our anxiety. Sometimes that's speaking it, but, often it's getting myself to a more creative place.
I often don't feel confident, but I want people to feel like we can be calm, and go together. That we can make mistakes, and we can come back. Everything in our culture is designed to make us feel like we're alone, and that we need to buy stuff to feel less alone. Whether we're alone or not, really deeply, it's a choice we can make. If we can invite people to be with us, even in those things that we think are our decisions alone, and be with us in those things where it's obvious, we don't have to be alone. To me, that's where courage comes. It's where the spirit works when two or three are gathered. And I think we should resist everything that tells us we must be alone or isolated.
Special thanks to Elizabeth Schoen, one of our Church Anew interns over the summer, for her work conducting many of the Leadership Lab interviews and getting the series launched!
Winnie Varghese
The Rev. Winnie Varghese is the rector of St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Atlanta. She co-hosts the (G)race podcast with The Rev. Azariah France-Williams.
Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.
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.
Leadership Lab: Erika Spaet
A one on one interview with Pastor Erika Spaet exploring the challenges of planting a church and building relationships between the congregation and the community in an ever-changing world.
Over the past year the Church Anew team has been working to connect and build resources for church leaders to see what their colleagues are doing around the country. With that the Leadership Lab was born. We have interviewed several church leaders doing innovative and amazing things, and we want to share their knowledge and wisdom with the world.
Church Anew recently caught up with Pastor Erika Spaet in Bend, OR to discuss her ministry and the Story Dwelling community that she has helped to build there.
Church Anew: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Erika Spaet: Sure. I'm an ordained pastor in the ELCA, and I live in Bend, Oregon. I would say it’s a rapidly growing small city, maybe you've heard of Bend. I don't know. It's kind of a hot thing right now.
I am married, and I have two very young children. I have a three year old and a three month old. I moved to Bend in 2017. This is my first call, I moved to Bend as a mission developer under a call through both the Oregon Synod and the United Methodist Church. So those two denominations invited me to come to Bend because it's a quickly growing city and to listen since I have some background in community organizing, particularly in the criminal justice system and local politics. They wanted me to come and weave some of my organizing experiences along with a call to word and sacrament, to uncover what the longings are here in this place, particularly among young people and working people and queer folks.
I was really open to what the call might evolve into. I didn't know if a faith community would be the thing that this place needed. And what has emerged is Story Dwelling, which is a faith ecosystem. We talk about it as a web, or a network of people, who are walking together with shared commitments around liberation and real relationships that care for one another and for our neighbors.We have a Sunday morning gathering, but we also have these other kinds of gatherings and other ways that the work expresses itself as a faith community. Not everybody would describe themselves as Christian. Many people would describe themselves that way. But what brings us together are these shared convictions around relationship and justice.
One of the pieces of work that's grown out of that, (I wouldn't say I’m bi-vocational for me it's all connected), is the midwifing of childcare organizing. We set up childcare co-ops in churches, and part of that has been getting these co-ops off the ground and figuring out what it looks like to build that organization for more equitable, affordable childcare here in this place. Because as we were listening, not only was “meaning making community” something that people were longing for, but childcare was an urgent, urgent need, as it is everywhere. So that’s what my days look like, I'm a pastor and a childcare organizer. Yeah, that's me.
CA: You've talked a little bit about how your faith ecosystem started and evolved. If you had to encompass what makes Story Dwelling different on a day-to-day basis from an average ELCA Lutheran congregation, how would you describe that?
ES: Yeah, I think the question for any congregation, whether you're the average traditional or you're a mission development, is like, ‘oh, this particular group of people, what's our work to do together?’ And so that's kind of how I think about it. What's our vocation together as a group of friends and as a group of people walking together? What's our work to do? And I think our work to do is increasingly around three perspectives that are really centered in our community. Those three perspectives are working families with young children, queer folks, and people who, in church jargon, we might say they're ex-vangelicals.
Bend is a place with unbelievable wealth disparity. And so the focus on working families is really intentional, and there's a lot of overlap. We have a lot of queer ex-vangelical young working families. So those three groups of people, what is their work to do together? I think it is to center their experiences, as well as the experiences of other people who have been wounded by church, or who have never experienced church or people who feel like the church is called to do actual tangible in-the-flesh work in the world and in our neighborhoods.
So our work together is to make that a reality. It’s to center the perspectives, our own perspectives and other people who have not found their place in traditional western Christianity. And out of that comes a real commitment to childcare, for instance. Childcare is a faithful issue because if we don't feel supported, if we don't have a place for our children to be nurtured, then I think that's a matter of faith, a matter of community, and a matter of love and justice. To center walking alongside local efforts to elevate and be accomplices alongside BIPOC folks. What does racial justice look like in a very white city, in a very white-centered city?
When we prioritize and center those voices, working families, queer folks, and ex-vangelical voices, what emerges is our own kind of special vocabulary of faith, our own theological vocabulary: What do the sacraments look like for people who didn't grow up with communion? What do rituals look like as our children are growing up? How do we come alongside them with ritual? What kind of music do we sing? I mean, I'm the only one who would identify as Lutheran in my congregation. So what kind of hymns are we singing? What's our musical kind of expression in the world? Our work builds out of our own experiences as working families, queer folks and ex-vangelicals. Cultivating that work in the world together and practicing a liberatory theology that comes out of our experiences is the goal.
CA: You’re creating an individualized faith community that is so centered on the people and the individual experiences of the people.
ES: Yeah. We're doing life together based out of our own experiences for sure. And that's part of the name, Story Dwelling. A lot of what is important to us is not only drawing upon ancient stories, biblical stories, and ancient wisdom, but doing a lot of our own storytelling and being in touch through one-to-one conversations as well as through a public kind of storytelling. But to see those stories as sacred, there's nothing that's not sacred.
CA: You moved to Bend for this project in 2017. What have you found to be the biggest challenges in establishing Story Dwelling and keeping it alive?
ES: Maybe there are three that are coming to mind right now. The first is walking alongside people who are coming out of, to be frank, patriarchal, homophobic contexts (church contexts), but who long for a ritual and community and maybe don't want to identify as Christian ever again. There are challenges, but also there's a lot of beauty inherent in creating community out of what we don't want. So I think, again, I would describe that as a really beautiful, really rich fertile challenge is how do we create community about what we're for? Not just what we're against, but both are very important. It's very important to know what we're saying no to. And to be really clear about our no. But then the evolution of this community has been what are we saying yes to? So that's one I would say a beautiful challenge.
A couple of challenges that are contextual about here, but probably a lot of places in the United States, are, and these are not so beautiful challenges, space and resources in a city that is incredibly expensive to live in. Our people, some of them struggle with whether they can continue to call this place home because it's so expensive to live here and the values of this city can be so different from the values we are trying to live as people and as a community. So gathering space, for example, is very difficult to find gathering space that we can afford. We met in homes for a long time, but at a certain point it was very difficult to pay a pastor and to have a gathering space and to have enough resources in this very expensive city. And that's connected to the final challenge that I would say. And I think that other mission developments are struggling with this, but this is a question for the church, for any denomination who's doing new church plants, is if we create community and accompany young working families.
Millennial families on the whole, I would say, cannot afford to pay a pastor. And so there's a rub there of calling pastors to new church plants. Beautiful, vibrant work, as you said. We have lots and lots of children in our community, which I would say the average typical ELCA church would say like, wow, that's wonderful. And yet if you don't have wealth in your congregation, you cannot pay a pastor. And so that's a rub that I think that the denominations will have to reckon with. It can be a beautiful challenge because perhaps we discern in the future that we're going to rely more heavily than we already do on lay ministers and elevating the leadership of folks in the community. I find that millennial working families are pretty at capacity, so it's valuable for us to have a full-time pastor. So there's a tension there. And it's not just a bad one, it can be a very good one to discern, but I think something for the denominations to get really serious about. In the United State to be an ELCA congregation, do you have to have wealthy membership to survive? And so far up to this day, the answer has been yes. And do we want to change the answer to that? And that the question of the hour.
CA: What would you say when so many pastors are feeling burnt out, especially with the pandemic and all of these growing questions and concerns about the church dying out? Where have you found support and encouragement to keep going and keep working towards something better?
ES: I don't feel burnt out. I feel lucky enough to be pastoring a young, excited, and imaginative group of people that is growing. I think of one woman in our community, and their family's pretty new. They've gotten really engaged over the course of the past year, I would say. I met them last summer. The mom in the family and I are about the same age. Her parents moved to the United States while her mother was pregnant with her from Vietnam. They were refugees from Vietnam during the Vietnam War, and they moved to the United States. She grew up Buddhist, and is now in what she might describe as an inter-faith marriage. And they never knew what church or any of that might look like for their family until they found Story Dwelling. And now she feels like this just feels like the right fit for her family. And for me that’s one of the greatest joys of my life to be pastoring in a context where I have a multi-faith family looking for friendship and community and mutual support and church is where they have found it. And to get to be the priest or the pastor of a family like that is a great joy for me. So I would say I'm not burned out around that. My friendships and my people, we have more that we want to do at the end of the day, but we just don't have the energy to do. But we have a lot of excitement, and a lot of conviction. But I'll come back to the previous question of fundraising, grant writing, hustling to just make ends meet for this beautiful group of people for their sake. That does kind of burn me out.
We have more community than I have the capacity to pastor to. I have more children than I certainly have the capacity to pastor to. Having to use my time grant writing, fundraising, hustling for resources does not feel like it brings me life. Yeah, that is the only part. I mean,there are so many granting agencies that are so generous and such great partners. The Synod, my Synod, I love my Synod. But yeah, that doesn't feel like at the end of the day what I want to be using my time to do. My people give me life , hustling for money does not.
CA: What does your gathering space look like right now?
ES: Well, in the pandemic, we had a lot of really cautious folks in our congregation and a lot of children. So we met outside at our local Unity community. They have a fire pit and a labyrinth. So we met outside all winter, and Bend is probably just as cold as Minnesota. This past winter was the first winter we gathered inside at our local Latino Community Association. They have a community hall where they do events. So we rented space from them and in the summer we meet in a public park that's got a playground. So that's really wonderful. And then we're hoping that this fall for the first time, we might have a semi-permanent partnership gathering space at one of our local mental health counseling facilities. So we will see. It's been a very flexible adaptive group of people.
CA: What is a bright spot in your ministry area?
ES: Yeah, maybe something that I haven't mentioned yet that is definitely a bright spot is partnership. Story Dwelling doesn't think of itself just as Sunday mornings. This is a kind of web of relationship. We are also in relationship with other congregations and other entities in our city, and that feels like exactly the way that it's meant to be for us. We're partnering with three other congregations to do ecumenical youth group work, which has been so valuable. We partner with two other congregations to do our childcare work. And so to be doing all of this in teamwork, not only for my congregation, that feels really good. It's not just us. We've got other groups of people who are following their vocations in the world. It takes all of us. One church is not better than the other. Hopefully we are listening to where Spirit is calling us. As a pastor it offers me a lot of grace in my life, relieves a lot of pressure in my life, and together we've been able to do some pretty incredible things that no one congregation could do by themselves. So that's a bright spot.
CA: You talked a little bit about your background in community organizing. What lessons did you learn from that background that you would want to share with other ministers and leaders in the church?
ES: I think the primary one from these really fundamental points of community organizing is listening. I think that's something that I've tried to really center rather than being a kind visionary who's got a vision for a church that I want to make. It was really important to me to come and listen. It was less like casting a vision and more like putting my ear to the ground. That feels like a skill I learned in community organizing. You don't pick an issue and then try to get people to work with you on that. You listen and then people will say, ‘come on, let's get together and work on this together’. The fundamentals of basically one-on-one relational conversations is a lot of where that listening happens. Listening for what people need, what gets them up in the morning, what keeps them up at night, what stresses them out. Really thinking of everyone as a potential leader and accomplice together. I don't think of myself as being in service to the people in my congregation. I think of us as a bunch of leaders together listening to one another and operating out of that listening. So leadership, listening, one-to-ones.
CA: You talked about the idea of ex-vangelicals and people who have been hurt by the church, whether it be queer folks, people of color, women in general, or people who identify as women, or people assigned female at birth. If somebody were to come in, whether it be a congregation or a faith collective or just a minister's life, what are tips that you would give to try and make them feel more welcome and comfortable in a space that has hurt them in the past?
ES: So one of the ways that we think about this in Story Dwelling is not so much that ‘you are welcome here’, but that ‘we are welcome here’. We need all of us in order to feast in the spirit of Jesus. That's our affirmation statement, we don't have a welcome statement. We have an affirmation statement. And part of the spirit of that is, and I've heard this, I didn't make this up, not like you are welcome here to join this thing that we're already doing, but that this was designed with you in mind, and this is designed with your experiences in mind. So that's one piece of the way that we talk about the space that we create together.
Another piece that felt like the right thing to do, that spirit was calling us to do, was to invite people with all of those experiences into leadership, so that they are making the decisions and they are designing the spaces with their own experiences in mind. We have people on our board who might not describe themselves as Christian because we want to make sure we have spaces, and we want to have people making decisions with that perspective. It's a little bit of a shift from “you are welcome here” to this thing that's already happening, but we are designing this out of our own experiences with people with similar pain or similar joy.
Special thanks to Elizabeth Schoen, one of our Church Anew interns over the summer, for her work conducting many of the Leadership Lab interviews and getting the series launched!
Erica Spaet
Pastor Erica Spaet is an ordained pastor in the E L C A and the founder of Story Dwelling, a faith ecosystem in Bend, Oregon. She moved to Bend in 2017 as a mission developer to listen and uncover the longings of the community, particularly among young people, working people, and queer folks. Story Dwelling is a network of people committed to liberation, real relationships, and care for one another and their neighbors. They have a Sunday morning gathering and also focus on issues like childcare and racial justice.
Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.
As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.
The Meaning of Life: A Parable
Journeys are less often about the goal, and more frequently about the experiences it takes to complete them. Such are the spiritual journeys that we embark on, but they are more than they seem. They can reveal things we do not expect, and like a dream, hold a unique significance for each of us.
Photo by Clint McKoy on Unsplash
This is based on a dream I had. What do you think it means?
In a town far away, a young man approached an older man known to be wise. "Sir, I am told that you know the meaning of life. Will you share it with me?"
"Yes, my son," the older man said. "Come with me."
After a walk of many miles, they came to the shore of a large lake. The older man pointed to an island of rocks in the middle of the lake. "Do you see that island in the lake?" he asked the young man.
"Yes, sir, I do. Is that where I may find the meaning of life?" the young man said excitedly.
"We shall find out," the older man replied. "First, we must get there."
The older man reached down and scooped up a handful of wet sand from the lake shoreline. He threw it out into the lake toward the island, where it landed with a splash. He did this a second time, and a third.
The young man was perplexed. "Sir, what are you doing?" he asked.
"I am building a bridge of sand to the island," the older man replied. "Help me." The young man reached down and scooped up a handful of sand and threw it into the lake toward the island.
"Each scoopful of sand represents a word of wisdom," the older man explained. "We must walk to the island on a bridge of wisdom."
Twenty years later, enough sand from the shore had built up a bridge enabling the two men to walk to the island of rocks.
"Finally, now, is this island where I will find the meaning of life?" the younger man, now twenty years older, asked.
"We have another journey ahead of us, my son," the older man replied. "Do you see that mountain on the other side of the lake?"
"Yes, sir," the young man replied. "Is that where I may find the meaning of life?"
"We shall find out," the elder replied. "First, we must get there."
The older man reached down and picked up a rock from among the countless rocks on the island, and threw it in the water toward the mountain, and it landed with a splash. He did this a second time, and a third.
Again, the young man was perplexed. "Sir, what are you doing?" he asked.
"I am building a bridge of rock to the mountain," the old man replied. "Help me." The young man reached down and picked up a rock and threw it into the lake toward the mountain.
"Each rock represents an act of caring love," the older man explained. "We must walk to the mountain on a bridge of love."
Twenty years later, enough rocks from the island had built up a bridge enabling the two men to walk to the mountain and climb to its summit.
"Finally, now, is this mountain where I will find the meaning of life?" the younger man, now forty years older, asked.
Just then a ferocious storm arose. Heavy rains and fierce winds buffeted the lake, the island, and the mountain. The lake was filled with treacherous waves, dissolving the sand bridge they had built. Great winds blew the bridge of rocks into the waters. Forty years of work vanished in a matter of moments.
The younger man was heartbroken. "All that work we have done is gone!" he said, "and I have yet to find the meaning of life!"
"No, my son, you are well on your way to finding the meaning of life," the old man said calmly. "You have walked the way of wisdom, and you have walked the way of love. But you have another journey ahead of you."
"Where must I go now, sir?" the younger man asked.
"You must climb down this mountain and return to the town and wait there for a young person to approach you and ask you to share the meaning of life. And then you must guide them here just as I did you," the older man explained.
The older man smiled and added, "When you have shared this journey with another, then you will have found the meaning of life, as I have just found it myself now. Thank you, my son."
The two embraced, and then the younger man, his eyes brimming with tears and his heart full of wisdom and love, climbed down the mountain to return to the town.
Peter M. Wallace
Rev. Peter M. Wallace, an Episcopal priest, was for 22 years the executive producer and host of the “Day1” weekly radio program and podcast (Day1.org). He is the author or editor of 15 books, including most recently A Generous Beckoning: Accepting God’s Invitation to a More Fulfilling Life; Bread Enough for All: A Day1 Guide to Life; Heart and Soul: The Emotions of Jesus; and Comstock & Me: My Brief But Unforgettable Career with The West Virginia Hillbilly.
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.
"This Generation"
Trying to make sense of “this generation” can be fraught with misapprehension. Many things are different, yet many things remain the same. The Gospel of Matthew helps to reinvigorate our notions of modernity, and remind us of the place that children hold as descendants of faith and the new foundation for future discipleship.
Photo by Benigno Hoyuela on Unsplash
Inspired by the play-based curriculum of my children’s preschool, I used to turn my kitchen over to Desmond, Anna, and Ozzie, when they were barely toddling around and gurgling a few words at a time. I would get out all the pots and pans, every possible cooking utensil, and many large bowls of random ingredients: uncooked rice grains (to my mother’s chagrin), flour, baking soda, various shapes of dried pasta noodles, water, vinegar, food coloring. The shrieks of joy and frustration at the experiments we were concocting together punctuated the constant music of spoons clanging on bowls.
We would go at it: straining and combining, kneading and splashing, and if there was ever an image for the strange mixing of images and stories that often happens in so many of the stories of the Bible, (and especially the stories that Jesus tells us), this might be one possibility. I love the Jesus of Matthew’s Gospel, and the chance to sit with his version of Christ’s life and ministry, a version that includes all the familiar stories ranging from the parables about the kingdom of heaven to the feeding of the multitudes.
Speaking of children, they actually play a striking role throughout most of the gospel of Matthew—they’re received and blessed by Jesus, they participate in miracles, they are recipients of healings. This is not surprising as Matthew’s focus is firmly rooted in one’s roots—the relationships between ancestors and descendants, and making explicit the line from Jesus to all the familiar characters beginning with Abraham to King David to less familiar names, then to “Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah. So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David to the deportation to Babylon, fourteen generations; and from the deportation to Babylon to the Messiah, fourteen generations,” (1:16-17). Matthew wants us thinking in terms of generations. Of the stories of ancestors. Of dreams of descendants. And all the beautiful ways we’re tied together.
There’s the moment in chapter 11, though, when he seems especially exasperated with “this generation.”
“But to what will I compare this generation?” (v. 16). He answers this himself with a parable about children who do not respond to the celebrating or to the wailing. Are the children who play and wail in the parable to symbolize the prophets of their tradition—Elijah, Moses? Or do they represent John the Baptist and Jesus? They were on opposite ends of the spectrum: John played the part of societal misfit, a throwback prophet whom many supposed was demon-possessed (v. 18). Jesus, on the other hand, associated himself with sinners and tax collectors, and was viewed “a glutton and a drunkard” (v. 19). John called for mourning and repentance in the face of judgment whereas Jesus proclaimed joy because of the presence of the kingdom. In both cases their messages encountered unbelief or indifference by “this generation.”
Having read this passage countless times over several years I always found myself nodding at the overall frustration that Jesus may have felt towards “this generation.” Why haven’t they figured it out?
The message of God’s kingdom was practically a bright, flashing neon sign with John the Baptist, and they had a front row view of the nearness of God’s kingdom enfleshed in Jesus: in all the teachings and miracles of healing and raising from the dead, of feedings and calming of storms and walking on water.
In other words, “this generation” in Matthew’s gospel seems easily swayed, capricious, even fickle.
At the same time, I can’t help but feel some empathy for them - the crowds, the people, the disciples… ”this generation.”
Chapter 11 is part of a narrative section following Jesus’ launching of the disciples out into the world – their commissioning to proclaim the good news: “The kingdom of heaven has come near;” and the work: to cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. Not only does “this generation” have this work, but there is the extra burden of the constant tension with the wider community; and not only the established religious community, but pressure from neighbors, relatives, colleagues and co-workers, and friends. There is judgment, rejection, persecution.
But this story isn’t just about the disciples, it was written to include Matthew’s community, (those reading the gospel at the time), that is, “this generation” includes Matthew’s people: those who’ve witnessed the destruction of the temple, the displacement of their people, and the emerging question of their own identity as God’s people in the midst of cultural upheaval, and governmental and political corruption. There was disease and poverty, and ongoing social inequities.
It feels familiar, doesn’t it? The world was heavy then, and it remains so today.
At the end of the prayer, Jesus offers an invitation. It is tantamount to turning from the narrative world to the writer’s world to the reader’s world, what we sometimes call “breaking the fourth wall.” Matthew intentionally includes future generations. That is, “this generation” is the church today, meaning all of us here. When Matthew has us thinking in terms of generations, it’s because the story is constantly extending out. The circle is constantly widening to include more and more of us.
“But to what will I compare this generation?”
I reflect often on this last year in which we’ve attempted to recover some semblance of pre-covid normalcy by returning to the speed and intensity of life before. Or maybe we tried not to because we did learn that our pre-covid lives were untenable – not for us, not for our planet. But we got swept up anyway into all the activities and work, the programs and commitments, and this on top of regular life with its new babies/grandbabies, illnesses, and travel—most of it good, wonderful and purposeful.
Suddenly, our calendars became fuller than ever. Maybe it’s just me. No doubt much has shifted not only in the last three years but even in just the last year. In hard ways. There are a lot of conversations now about “this generation,” and the impact of all that has happened - is happening in the world - on them. What can we do, or should we do with “this generation”?
It struck me that at least one thing has remained the same. All around us there are narratives and stories, voices and sources claiming answers: the formulas, the plans, apps and tools—proffering and asserting a “wisdom,” a certain way of operating in the world, of living, of being, of choosing. To be pushed and pulled in so many different directions – this too weighs on so many in “this generation.”
And so we have Jesus’ countercultural words at the end of the passage: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”
Before this invitation Jesus gives thanks to God: “You have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants.” What does God reveal to “infants,” to the most vulnerable, to the least likely, to the powerless among them? To “this generation”? :
“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”
We are invited to rest. And certainly this resonates in profound ways during this summer season. But the kind of rest offered here is, (typical to Jesus’ vision), a radical alternative. Rest as a response of love. Rest as an offering of care. Rest as a way of being in this world when everything says “do” and “go,” and “scroll” or “download” or “buy”?
‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me.”
This invitation to rest is radical because it is also an invitation to a particular kind of discipleship.
According to NT scholar Colin Yuckman: Despite all the warnings about rejection and suffering (10:16-22), Jesus speaks of a discipleship characterized by “rest,” “light” burdens, and an “easy” (or “good”) yoke.
But light burdens and easy yokes appear oxymoronic. They produce a tension in our understanding of Matthew’s Gospel, in which Jesus elsewhere reminds disciples that “the gate is narrow and the road is hard” (7:14). Less than a chapter ago in Matthew we hear a different tone: “whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me” (10:38).
The command to “learn from me” in the Greek (mathete ap’ emou) is related to the word for “disciple” (mathetes). The invitation to discipleship, however, is more than cognitive learning, or overcoming a gap in knowledge; it is the adoption of a way of life. And this way of life is expressed in terms of doing and being something in relation to Jesus.
In other words: to learn from Jesus is to rest in the person of Jesus. To follow Jesus is to rest in the person of Jesus.
The promise of rest is not guaranteed vacation time, but a beautiful theological affirmation. Of who we are. Of who is with us and for us. And it has precedence. Yuckman goes on to explain: The language clearly recalls Moses’s own vocation (Exodus 33:12-17). To ease Moses’s anxiety about the uncertainty of the wilderness journey, God promises to accompany God’s people along the way: “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest” (Exodus 33:14). God will fulfill the promise for this people whose existence has known little rest (first enslavement, then wandering, later exile and captivity).
Discipleship then, according to Jesus in Matthew’s gospel, is the ongoing return to the person that is the source of all we are and do in this world. It is as the prophet Zechariah says in the passage today: a return to the stronghold and to the promises of God’s restoration. It is the simplicity of the child-like dependence on God who sees us and all we carry, and loves us.
I think often of the young people in our midst, in our churches, who especially participated this past summer in the work of the church, (whether at church camp or on pilgrimage). How might we affirm all their journeys, their work, their experiences because they too need reminders that God’s invitation to rest is an invitation to discipleship? But they also show us a particular kind of wisdom as “this generation,” which is their adventurous response to these invitations, this summer, engaging their belovedness.
Perhaps this is why children are an important motif throughout the gospel. We read elsewhere that “unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” To read about feeding the hungry is one thing; to give a cup of water to one of these little ones is quite another; but to receive that gift is a part of our faith.
This is an invitation to enact wisdom by redirecting our lives. Because the truth and wisdom of our faith is in the living. One discovers the wisdom of Jesus by following, (and yes, sometimes), doing, and also sometimes napping, (Google the Nap Bishop and the Nap Ministry). It’s also making space to dream and to imagine and to hope, and we do so by adopting his spirit and living his imperatives, that is, first to rest in him.
It is fitting that Matthew’s Gospel ends not with Jesus’ departure, but with the assurance of his ongoing presence: “I am with you, even to the end of the age” (28:20). We rest in Jesus, we respond in love so that through him we might be the flesh and blood, the hope and joy of his kingdom in this world.
Mihee Kim-Kort
Rev. Mihee Kim-Kort is a Presbyterian minister, agitator, speaker, writer, and slinger of hopeful stories about faith and church. Her writing and commentary can be found in the NY Times, TIME, BBC World Service, USA Today, Huffington Post, On Being, Christian Century, Sojourners, and Faith and Leadership. She is co-pastor with her spouse of First Presbyterian Church in Annapolis, MD and a doctoral candidate in Religious Studies at Indiana University.
Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.
As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.
The 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.
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.
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.
Leadership Lab: Jessica Liles
A one on one interview with Jessica Liles exploring the challenges of planting a church and building relationships between the congregation and the community in an ever-changing world.
Over the past year the Church Anew team has been working to connect and build resources for church leaders to see what their colleagues are doing around the country. With that the Leadership Lab was born. We have interviewed several church leaders doing innovative and amazing things, and we want to share their knowledge and wisdom with the world.
Church Anew recently sat down with Jessica Liles, Deacon and Director of Faith Formation and Education at the Neighborhood Church in Bentonville, AR. She has also been recently named as the Director of Youth Ministry for the ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) and Director of the 2027 Youth Gathering.
Church Anew: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Jessica Liles: I live here in Bentonville, Arkansas. I'm a deacon in the ELCA, married to a pastor. We started the Neighborhood Church about 11 years ago. We planted this church straight out of seminary. We have two kiddos. I particularly love traveling a lot, and national parks are our thing. Joe and I get to do a lot of other fun work for the larger church. We've been part of Mission Developer Training and helping lead the church planning component. We've been doing that since 2018. I've been connected to the Youth Gathering since 2009 and working in the Interactive Learning Center. I've been recently working on a special project with a network called Formation Co-Op, to think about reimagining youth ministry and what that would look like.
CA: Can you talk a little bit more about your ministry context?
JL: Yeah, absolutely. Joe and I planted the Neighborhood Church. He was called here in 2011. We started in an elementary school in a Cafetorium [cafeteria/auditorium], and we rented the space for three hours. We had three hours to get in, set up, have service, and then tear down, but one of the neat elements that we kind of wrapped into worship was fellowship in the middle of service, kind of also holding to the larger framework of worship that gathers the word at meal sending.
And we took the elements of that, and the Lutheran hymnals, and revamped it to feel kind of non-denominational. When folks walk into worship at the Neighborhood Church, they're like, wow, this is non-denominational. And you have these great songs that you hear on the radio with a great prayer and a great message. After the message, we roll right into traditional worship including the Apostle's Creed and the Lord's Prayer and communion. Lots of folks find this is engaging when we have this mix of hitting their spiritual needs in a variety of different ways.
CA: What has been a bright spot in your ministry, whether it be through the Neighborhood Church or through your work with Churchwide, statewide, or synod-wide kind of work?
JL: Being a deacon is this interesting space where you act as the bridge between the church and the world, or the larger context of the church. I think one of the brightest by spots of my ministry is living in that space.
I think another one of the bright spots is the Youth Gathering. You just plop in a city, see 30,000 youth participate and embrace the unknown, embrace the city, embrace everything. I really love interactive learning. It’s amazing to watch young people walk into that space and be able to try to tangibly interact with their faith. They get to see other places in this world where they might connect that maybe they don't see in their home congregations, or they learn about a new ministry and make connections with other folks in other parts of the country, or the world.
CA: What have been some of the challenges in your journey of building the Neighborhood?
JL: Building a church from ground up is some of the hardest work you will ever do. I think part of that challenge is trying to figure out and navigate the space in which you land. This is where you're going to plant a church. You’ve got to get connected to the right ministries, other churches, and create a support space in and around everything you do.
I think for mission starts, one of the bigger challenges often is the movement of people in and out of the building process. The first couple years you have these really impactful, involved, and crucial leaders that helped you start this thing. And then you realize that they must go on to their next thing. That's a really unexpected challenge that I don't think Joe and I were prepared for at the beginning. Now we realize that every ebb and flow of folks within the ministry has come and gone at the right time. The spirit is just moving in this ebb and flow of people because of the gifts they bring are what we needed at that moment to move us to the next spot.
As you grow, just sustaining is a big challenge for mission starts. Part of it is that movement from the pastoral congregation to the programmatic congregation because when you're the person that has done everything and then you start to move into the next phase things get tricky. There are other people that are doing the work and allowing the congregation to see them as knowledgeable and as important as the pastor and the other leaders. Navigating some of those components gets to be a challenge, not just in a mission start, but in a lot of churches that are growing.
CA: So, throughout all of this, where have you found support and encouragement?
JL: I find that camaraderie with other mission planters, people that are in a similar space as you, creates a really supportive and encouraging space. Pastor Anna Johnson at Churchwide has been one of our biggest supporters, encouragers, and cheerleaders. Reuben Durand has also been another one that has just been a phenomenal support for us, as well as some of the other staff at Congregational Vitality. But really getting in and getting connected to other folks living it really has been super life-giving for us. It feels like you're not the only one living these things. They understand the bigger picture of what's happening and are willing to give you compassion, and support, and encouragement. That's been huge to have folks that just have your back and understand the hard work of starting a thing from scratch.
CA: What spurred you and your husband to start the Neighborhood Church? What hole in the community were you trying to fill when you originally decided to create a church plant?
JL: It goes back to our calling together in seminary. I came from a super small town in the northeast corner of North Dakota where our pastor was shared with two congregations. It was a two-point parish. Joe came from Phoenix and Las Vegas where his dad was a pastor of large, massive churches. We kept trying to figure out how we would do ministry together when we came from such different places. For us, it ended up being a great space for us to think about how to merge our experiences.
When we got in the space of starting a church, we needed to just sit and listen for a while. There’re some really important conversations you need to have with city planning, with school districts, school boards, a variety of the other nonprofits in the area, and other churches in the area to figure things out: Where are the gaps? What do we need here? And I think what we intended to bring to Arkansas was this idea of a church for young families, partly because we were in that space and stage of our life of having young children. We embraced that idea of ministering and focusing on young families. Just this idea of providing something new and something different in the lens of the Lutheran world.
When we got to Arkansas, there were all these churches that didn't have any particular denomination in their name. That was a component that we both thought was super important. We don't have Lutheran in our name, and that was intentional because we wanted folks to not be afraid to walk in our doors if they didn't understand what Lutheran meant.
CA: What makes Neighborhood Church so approachable?
JL: Yeah, you walk in and everyone's going to say hello to you. It’s that sense of hospitality and welcome that is so important to us. When you start a church, you think all about what the culture of the church is going to be? What are we going to do? Our folks have realized that at one point they were a visitor, and someone walked up to them, and said hello, and had a fantastic conversation with them that made them feel welcome. Then they feel empowered to go and do that for the next person. Anyone can walk in and be welcomed.
Also, we’re super focused on kids in regard to our worship. We greet the kids and try and engage with them. Then we talk to the parents. If you're focusing on young adults, you have to engage in conversations with young adults, not with their parents. That's been a big part of us really trying to be a welcoming, approachable congregation.
CA: Many parents struggle to get their kids interested in to church. How can adults foster a love of faith and community in their kids?
JL: Yeah, that's a great question. And it's so foundational to faith going beyond the childhood years into the teen years, into the college years.
Our catchphrase is this: parents don't bring kids to church; kids bring parents to church. If you think about that it means that you are engaging, and you're tailoring the experience to children. On Sunday morning when mom and dad are tired, and the kids wake up excited for church, mom and dad will go to church because the kids want to go to church. Think about walking into the space, from the parking lot all the way in. What elements screen children? What elements engage children?
We have a super engaging children's ministry. Again, a lot of this has changed because of COVID, but I think what was so successful for us was that in our form of worship, if you will, families start with worship together. We do this two or three song opener where families are together worshiping. Joe comes up and does a welcome. He invites kids forward for a quick sermon. He provides a super engaging children's message, and he does a fantastic job getting the kids excited. He engages the kids and asks them to bring their parents up. So, if we're doing a pushup contest, Joe's not going to ask the kids to do the pushup contest. He's going to ask the kids to go grab their parents, and their parents are going to have a pushup contest engaging the family in worship. We also create opportunities to keep children engaged in the traditional aspects of worship.
Some people love it and stay forever, and some people are mortified and will never come back, but I think being comfortable in that is an important piece. We're not trying to keep all the sheep; we're trying to feed the flock. If they are not being fed here at the Neighborhood, we know all the other pastors in the area, so we can help find the place where you're going to worship and be connected the most.
I think another successful thing that we've done from the very beginning is expanding church use. Walking into church is a super scary thing for a lot of people, so we built the church as space to be used for more than just a Sunday morning service.
We do popcorn theologies on Friday nights. We would play whatever popular Disney or Pixar movie was happening at the time. We would have food and they would watch the movie as a family. And then the only thing we did at the end of the movie was ask the question, “where did you see God in this movie?” And we wouldn't let the parents’ answer. We wanted the kids to answer, and then we circle up and we pray and that's it. It was easier for families to invite friends to something like that rather than on a Sunday morning. It was an easy stepping point for an experience of the church without it being a worship service.
We had an experience before we planted the church. Like I said, I think I was pregnant with Landon. Kaleigh was probably year and a half, almost two maybe. And we were sitting in a church in the area, a traditional Lutheran church, and she's a year and a half. She does not sit still. She won't go to the nursery. So, she's literally crawling up and down the pews, and then a lady turned around and shushed us, and I thought Joe was going to lose his ever-loving mind. Then we walked out of the room, he's like, we will never ever have that happen to the Neighborhood. That is a no-go for me. Kids are a huge part of our life. So yeah, it's playful.
CA: The Neighborhood has really innovated in using the internet and social media. Especially since the pandemic, when everything was shut down.
JL: Yeah. Joe does a great job being aware of what's happening next. We were streaming when COVID hit in March. Joe knew how important it was to be there and to be streaming from that very first Sunday. It was supposed to be our largest Stewardship Sunday of the Neighborhood's history. And it was that Sunday we chose to go completely digital.
We realized how hard it was to pivot for a lot of other congregations. By that May, we had reached out to, I think, all 65 synods at that point offering to teach them how to use streaming tech. I think we had between 100-150 churches join in on that. That's where a big catalyst for our outreach towards that ministry started. We met Matt Short, who's at Milwaukee Synod, and he got us connected to a grant with the Missouri Synod and Wisconsin Synod churches in Milwaukee.
We did a tech conference for them. We did three lead-up events, and then a big one-day conference on Digital Reformation, that’s what we called it. And then helped install tech into probably 15 different churches in Milwaukee. We’ve continued to install tech, and cameras, and switchboards, and all the things that you need to stream. So not only was it important for us to be there, but it was also important for us to help others to get to that point because the larger Church understands now too. Your reach is now farther beyond your town or even your county. You have people watching from all over the country, from all over the world.
It is so important to continue this ministry in the digital sense, whether it be streaming, or social media, or little video clips on YouTube, whatever it is.
CA: As we wrap up, what words of encouragement and or challenge would you share with other leaders in your faith community or in another city?
JL: What we've taken as the vision of the Neighborhood is grounded in Philippians 3:12-14, and it is that we strive to change church and create relationships. If those are two foundational principles that church leaders or churches can live by, it gives them permission to do a lot of things that I think folks might be nervous about. It empowers you. Creating relationships foundationally with God is so important. And like I said, the foundation of all of that is so that you can go out to the community and build relationships there, and then build relationships within the congregation. That changing church isn't scary when you're doing it, when you've created relationships on a great foundation. Change is hard. And we went through a lot of change in 2020 and beyond.
My encouragement would be to continue to embrace change and to try something different and to think and move outside the box. Joe and I did the keynote speech at the North Texas North Louisiana Synod Assembly this spring, and we like to do this paperclip activity. We call it “clip art”. So, we all know that the paperclip has one use, but we want you to tell us as many uses you can have for the paperclip. Write 'em all down. Now apply that process to the church: What are the uses of the church? How is your church building being used? How is your ministry being used? Then we give you a pile of paperclips, and you to build something out of paperclips that's functional, or art, or whatever.
Church leaders should do the same thing for ministries. It’s okay to stop doing something. It's okay to do something completely different. Try something for six weeks. If it doesn't work, try to fix it and move on, or scrap it. Always being willing to change, to move, and embrace the culture and the world around you.
Special thanks to Elizabeth Schoen, one of our Church Anew interns over the summer, for her work conducting many of the Leadership Lab interviews and getting the series launched!
Jessica Liles
Jessica Liles has served in many different roles; children's ministry, youth director, admin, and overall master organizer of all things church. Ordained as a Deacon in 2021, she is the extension from the church out into the community! She currently serves as the Faith Formation and Education Director guiding people to understand how to live out their relationship with Jesus!
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.
Leadership Lab: Wesley Morris
Our first interview in the Leadership Lab series with Rev. Wesley Morris.
Over the past year the Church Anew team has been working to connect and build resources for church leaders to see what their colleagues are doing around the country. With that the Leadership Lab was born. We have interviewed several church leaders doing innovative and amazing things, and we want to share their knowledge and wisdom with the world.
Our first interview is with Wesley Morris, who was involved in our Enfleshing Witness project. He has roots in community organizing, and is currently serving as pastor of Faith Community Church in Greensboro, North Carolina. We were honored to have a Zoom conversation chock full of wisdom we wanted to share.
Church Anew: What is your ministry context?
Wesley Morris: I am the senior pastor of Faith Community Church. The second pastor of this church, the founding pastor, and pastoral team emeritus are my elders, my mentors. I still see them, and they are members of the church. I came to this work of pastor through being a youth pastor and a child of the church, and also being someone who effectively became disenchanted with the church for a while. Then I had a journey of self reclamation, raising my awareness of who I was, and who I was becoming. And so a lot of that was exploration into religious engagement, and understanding that when I came back to the church it was really under the salvific scripture of Matthew 11:28. “Come on to me, all you who are heavy laden and burdened down with care. and I will give you rest”. So that is part of my scope of ministry. There are folks who live in the continual need of rest. These are some inner needs that I think about when I think about our ministry. Our ministry is geared towards children, number one. Creating and having a sustainable viable environment where children get to be children. and don’t have to rush into adulthood.
Another aspect of our church is geared towards a justice ministry, a ministry of fairness, a ministry of looking that is not abstract, but practical. Attending our city council meetings, and protests [if need be], and calling in when you have the opportunity to speak out, and proclaiming liberty for those who have been bruised. That's the Lukean [Luke is often viewed as the social justice gospel] approach to Jesus’s ministry that we take in here. It's generational in nature, but also by circumstance because we are an older congregation. The Beloved Community Center is in our church, as well. It is a nonprofit that we have a very close relationship with. Sometimes people even say, Beloved Community Church, even though we are the Faith Community Church. Beloved is anchored in the truth and reconciliation work of the city of Greensboro and so is our ministry.
CA: What have been some challenges in your ministry area?
WM: The model of churches and of being a senior pastor. I was in seminary learning, and I thought a lot about Christian education and how I would deploy what I learned. But then it came to a point where I realized there are 52 weeks in the year, and that's 52 sermons. If you're one pastor, and then there's Bible study, and there's pastoral care. A lot of my peers, myself included, have to be bi-vocational.
There's a strong cultural impact of emerging as a church anew within a church that has a very strong, a very powerful ministry and history, and so I think I would name the challenges as the stretching, the tugs, and the pulls that happen in the pastoral position. The setup of a church, and the many roles of a pastor, are struggles that I still deal with.
CA: When did the Matthew passage really become part of your call and your ministry?
WM: Before I joined the Church in 2008, I had left and gone with other spiritual and faith communities. Those spaces I still highly honor, and they became integrated into what I do now. I was physically worn out. Looking at my life, I was zipping around traveling, organizing. I was intimate with burn out. That was an invitation from Jesus to let me speak with you and sit with you and talk with you. I often relate to the the man who was possessed. He was chained outside the the city limits by the tombs. The conclusion of that story was that Jesus related to him and just sat with him, and then they said he came to himself. Basically just sitting down and talking and acknowledging who he was, he was released from some of that burden.
I found myself needing rest for my body and rest for my soul, because while I was greatly impacted positively by my time with other spiritual traditions, it felt like I was kind of on a road trip. It didn't feel home. Coming back to that Scripture was where I found a renewed sense of self, and that helped me to start seeing my mentors living the Word of God differently. They told me, “We're gonna be rewiring how you understand some of the things that you hear and the things that you see, and that rewiring really was this re-description of love. In practice, what does love do in a housing struggle? What does love do in the middle of a tobacco field? When there are folks coming together? When people’s human rights are being abused? What does love do in the middle of street conflict?” Those are literal examples that I actually have by way of being with this community.
CA: Can you share some of the wisdom that you learned from your time at Union Theological Seminary either from mentors or your own spiritual journey?
WM: I went wanting to step back and to be more invested in the reading and research aspects of seminary, which was totally blown up in my first month because of the killings all throughout the country. My first month was 2014, and Michael Brown was killed by the police in Ferguson, and then Eric Garner was killed in New York, and that's where our school is. My first semester, they interrupted our studies, and we went out to Ferguson, Missouri by bus to bear witness and to answer a national call to join them. During this time, I'm studying with Dr. James Cone as my advisor, and he's teaching black liberation theology in this context. It was the election of Donald Trump, and the embattling of Republicans and Democrats, and all that. So my seminary experience was bookended by a city in total uproar, and a nation and a country pretty much full of conflict. Sandwiched there, I'm reading Bonhoeffer and the traditional seminary text and getting real-time application. That's one thing I took from this super-concentrated experience. It was a super experience, for folks who care about social justice for sure, but I learned there are so many nuanced ways of approaching liberation. That to be able to learn what liberation looks like in this part of the country, and to listen to classmates who came for that call was eye-opening. What I realized is that it's not the place. It's actually the people that venture there, and the spirit that they believe is there.
CA: How has your other vocation of community organizing informed your ministry?
WM: There's a phrase that I got when I was younger, that everything is one thing. When I'm doing a diversity of projects, or wrangling a multiplicity of ideas, I can settle back and say this is about community, or this is about building relationships. That's the one thing. It's about building relationships, quality relationships. So when I was a community organizer, it was on the front of homeless hospitality. It was on the front of economic justice and housing justice and peace treaty work, but in all of that we're just building community. I'm not shrugging it off, but it helped me to dial back, to focus.
CA: What advice do you have for pastors and ministers who are trying to broaden their outreach with congregations who may be more insular?
WM: I love this question because I always say the same thing. Go to the library, and look at the bulletin board, and see what people have questions about. Ask librarians what's their sense of the community? What's their sense of what's been going on or what's happening? The other thing is, I'm a child of working in community centers. The person that runs the community center, that's another person. Go talk to them. If you can just spend 30 min with them and talk about what's their sense of the neighborhood? Also watch the local news or the public access channel. Those are the things that have helped me when I go to other places and want to be respectful. The last two are things are something I just do. I don't necessarily recommend them. Whatever you like to do, whatever you want to do, it's happening somewhere in the place, and it's probably not too far away from you. And so when we're in meetings we can talk about these things and understand where everyone is coming from.
CA: What words of encouragement or challenge do you want to share with other church leaders?
WM: Do the best you can. Others have experienced what you're experiencing right now, so you’re not alone. Try to read. I read Howard Thurman and Renita Wes. They were writers out of the pastoral tradition that I think squeeze a lot out of it. It's like, you know, you squeeze an orange and a lot of juice comes out, but if you squeeze a little bit more, a little bit more will come out. I think they do the extra squeezing on the pastoral experience because I'm trying to be as gentle and nice as I can on understanding that part. Also, remember that it's okay to stop, and not do something. That it's okay to change your course. All those things, I think, should be said much, much more. Failure isn't what you think it is, you know. Don't think of yourself as a failure.
Special thanks to Elizabeth Schoen, one of our Church Anew interns over the summer, for her work to get the Leadership Lab series launched!
Wesley Morris
Wesley Morris is the Senior Pastor of Faith Community Church in Greensboro, NC. Also, he is a dedicated coach, facilitator, community organizer, chaplain and internationally recognized leader who uses his dynamic speaking talents to inspire all who have the opportunity to hear his voice.
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.
Upending the parable of talents: bodies over profits
The parable of the talents then would become a commentary at large about an economy that uses people and values things rather than values people and uses things.
“God forgive me for seeking a place at a table you would have overthrown.” Mikayla Bates, viral post accessed August 2023.
Since the pandemic, I have been drawn to stories that, for better or worse, have shaped me. Seeking a sense of myself in the midst of uncertainty, I wanted to find meaning between the words and hope in the story arcs. I asked myself what were 3 books that significantly impacted the way I viewed myself or the world that I read as a youth. I’ve spent the last few months rereading them. In the midst of so much grief and change, I wanted to tap not into nostalgia or memory. Rather, I wanted to remember who I was, what I cared about, and who I wanted to be. In the lines I remembered how characters became, albeit imperfect and rather one-sided, mentors. These stories were powerful; they shaped life.
At the same time, an online congregation I am a part of entered a time of learning about the power of story through the lens of the parables. Parables are powerful; in their interpretation we find layers of wisdom and purpose. Psychologists talk about how we translate new information and fit it to align with our internal narratives. It’s how a single event, say a conversation, can leave individuals with very different recollections.
When hearing parables, we can often feel bound by our own narratives. Often our first readings are the ones that stick. They shape how we hear it moving forward and the complicated truths are lost. While it does the work of rooting one’s identity, it also can tie us to problematic narratives that keep us from receiving the liberating love of God.
It was in this context that I prepared for the upcoming parable of the talents in the lectionary:
Matthew 25:14-30
Jesus said, “It is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. The one who had received the five talents went off at once and traded with them, and made five more talents. In the same way, the one who had the two talents made two more talents.
But the one who had received the one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money. After a long time, the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them. Then the one who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five more talents, saying, ‘Master, you handed over to me five talents; see, I have made five more talents.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’ And the one with the two talents also came forward, saying, ‘Master, you handed over to me two talents; see, I have made two more talents.’
His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’ Then the one who had received the one talent also came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.’ But his master replied, ‘You wicked and lazy slave! You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter?
Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him, and give it to the one with the ten talents. For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’”
Fall is coming, and with it will come many a story of how Time, Talent and Treasure are used.
With fall will come a season of exploring what we believe about money and…what we believe God thinks about money.
How do we unpack or release narratives that prevent us from the liberating love of God?
Often, when this text is interpreted, it is thought that God is embodied by that of the master and we are to learn something about our own gifts and abilities. Used as a stewardship sermon, I`ve been exhorted to use my talents to grow other gifts for the benefit of the Christian community.
However, in this recent reading I began to ask myself, why would Jesus ever compare the Divine in such a way as “Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; so I was afraid.” And where else does the Divine say such things as “For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.”
I believe this story was not told for modern-day Christians to determine how best to get a return on investments. Jesus did not come into the world to form a kingdom built on acquisitions and bottom lines. Rather, this powerful parable was once again a commentary on those in power who would use a person’s fear to intimidate others into production and profits.
Jesus, formed in the way of covenantal relationships, sought to build a kingdom that upends our narratives and shifts our understanding about money. The parable of the talents then would become a commentary at large about an economy that uses people and values things rather than values people and uses things.
As we enter the fall together, I invite you to share in considering these questions:
What would it mean if Jesus tells stories like the parable of the talents as a way to highlight the corruption in power?
What if Jesus tells stories of stewardship to show us, in contrast, a new—and yet ancient—way of sharing and caring for people? A way of reminding each other how to be with and for each other.
What if Jesus is giving witness to the injustice of his day and proclaiming a new way of being? What would that mean for us today?
As we enter the fall together, I invite us all to return to the stories, either internal or external that shape us.
May we repent of seeking to join tables that need to be overturned and seek to uplift the worth of bodies rather than profits.
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.
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.
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.
Photo by Nick Bolton on Unsplash
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.
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.
Defining Roads
There are many roads in this life. Some are actual roads that take us from “point A to point B.” Others are metaphorical, roads that we travel in our hearts. Many of the roads we travel, we never think of again, but some roads are so defining that they become drawn across our story with indelible ink.
The following devotion was featured in Unfinished, Church Anew’s Lent in a Box series for 2023. Learn more about the resources here.
Matthew 28:1-10
1 After the Sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. 2 And suddenly there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. 3 His appearance was like lightning and his clothing white as snow. 4 For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. 5 But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. 6 He is not here, for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. 7 Then go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.’ This is my message for you.” 8 So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy and ran to tell his disciples. 9 Suddenly Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!” And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. 10 Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers and sisters to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”
There are many roads in this life. Some are actual roads that take us from “point A to point B.” Others are metaphorical, roads that we travel in our hearts. Many of the roads we travel, we never think of again, but some roads are so defining that they become drawn across our story with indelible ink.
What are some of your defining roads?
What about the road that you traveled to the first day of school, or the road that you took as you moved from one community to the next, moving with your family, or to college, or for a new job? Or what about the road that you traveled toward a significant relationship or the road away from a relationship? And what about the road home, how would you describe that road?
In the story of Jesus, much of his life was lived on the road. He was born on the road, away from home, in his ancestral town of Bethlehem. When he was very small, he traveled the immigrant road with his family, fleeing a tyrant who wanted him dead. When he was 12, he journeyed with his family to Jerusalem, and there was a frantic search for him on the road home. And the whole of his ministry life was spent on the road, traveling from place to place – teaching, healing the sick, casting out demons, giving sight to the blind, raising the dead.
His was a life on the road.
But at the beginning of the Easter story, it is not Jesus who is on the road: it is the ever-faithful women. They have traveled with him throughout his ministry, tending to his needs, serving him, following him along the various roads he traveled. They followed down the road to Jerusalem, and they walked the road with him during the last week of his life, a road from which most of his followers eventually fled. Then, on the first day of the week, they walked the road to the grave, the road of grief, the road of sorrow, the road of despair.
As they walked this road, they did not know that the grave would not be what they expected it to be. For the first time in forever, the grave had been forever changed. For the first time in forever, one who once was dead, lives to die no more. As if that was not good news enough, the messenger from God then told them, Jesus is going ahead of you, and you will see him.
Jesus is going ahead of you.
That same promise is for you. On whatever road you find yourself, Jesus is going ahead of you. As you travel the everyday road of your daily routine, Jesus is going ahead of you. Whether you travel the road of joy or sorrow, hope or despair, anxiety or contentment, fear or certainty, Jesus is going ahead of you, and that makes all the difference in the world.
May this promise grant you strength for today’s road, courage to keep going when the burdens are heavy and your footsteps are slow, and assurance that whatever roads you travel, you never walk alone.
Prayer
God of Resurrection and Life, you go ahead us wherever the road may take us. In confidence and hope, give us good courage to trust and believe that wherever we go, we never journey alone. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
Dr. Charlene Rachuy Cox
Rev. Dr. Charlene Rachuy Cox (affectionately known as “Char”) holds a Doctor of Ministry Degree from the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, with an emphasis in Spirituality; a Master of Sacred Theology Degree from the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, with an emphasis in Preaching and Worship, a Master of Divinity Degree from Luther Seminary, and a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Augustana University, Sioux Falls. She has served as a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America for over 28 years, serving in seminary, collegiate, and congregational settings. She loves reading – especially memoirs and historical fiction, and enjoys writing poetry, travelling, and all things winter.
Facebook | PrChar
Website | Charlene Rachuy Cox
Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.
As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.
Vocare: Called to Regret
You are invited to focus on your personal regrets by both naming and reframing them, and by so doing, nourish in a particular way, God’s call for both your present and your future.
The following Vocare spiritual practice is featured in Church Anew’s Lent in a Box for 2023 and was developed by Rev. Dr. Charlene Rachuy Cox as part of the Nourishing Vocation Project of The Lutheran Center at St. Olaf College. We will be offering one piece of the Vocare practice each week.
Vocare is an ongoing spiritual practice designed to help you discern and embrace your various callings so that you can more intentionally live life on purpose for the common good.
Through guided reflection on personal life experiences via the lenses of values, openness, call, attentiveness, regrets, and experiences of God’s presence, the Vocare practice nourishes discernment of three primary questions. Who am I called to be? What am I called to do? Why am I here?
Vocare Practice: Called TO Regret
You are invited to focus on your personal regrets by both naming and reframing them, and by so doing, nourish in a particular way, God’s call for both your present and your future. When carefully tended to so that hindsight becomes insight, our regrets can be powerful and lifegiving voices of call for us. Use the time between the following guided questions for your own reflection and meditation. Bring to mind a circumstance or experience of regret from your own life. Is this a regret that still has you dwelling in hindsight, or is it a regret from which you now have gained insight? How has this regret shaped your life and its horizons?
Reflect upon your regrets
How easy it is for me to name and learn from my regrets?
What are my regrets from today?
What insight do I gain from them?
What do I need for tomorrow?
Prayer
Help me, O God, to learn from my regrets so that I might live more faithfully in each tomorrow. In Jesus name, Amen.
Check out our Instagram reel for a video version of this reflection.
Dr. Charlene Rachuy Cox
Rev. Dr. Charlene Rachuy Cox (affectionately known as “Char”) holds a Doctor of Ministry Degree from the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, with an emphasis in Spirituality; a Master of Sacred Theology Degree from the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, with an emphasis in Preaching and Worship, a Master of Divinity Degree from Luther Seminary, and a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Augustana University, Sioux Falls. She has served as a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America for over 28 years, serving in seminary, collegiate, and congregational settings. She loves reading – especially memoirs and historical fiction, and enjoys writing poetry, travelling, and all things winter.
Facebook | PrChar
Website | Charlene Rachuy Cox
Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.
As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.
Vocare: Called to Attentiveness
You are invited to focus on where you regularly invest your attention by considering what captures your time, energy, thoughts, and imagination in everyday life.
The following Vocare spiritual practice is featured in Church Anew’s Lent in a Box for 2023 and was developed by Rev. Dr. Charlene Rachuy Cox as part of the Nourishing Vocation Project of The Lutheran Center at St. Olaf College. We will be offering one piece of the Vocare practice each week.
Vocare is an ongoing spiritual practice designed to help you discern and embrace your various callings so that you can more intentionally live life on purpose for the common good.
Through guided reflection on personal life experiences via the lenses of values, openness, call, attentiveness, regrets, and experiences of God’s presence, the Vocare practice nourishes discernment of three primary questions. Who am I called to be? What am I called to do? Why am I here?
Vocare Practice: Called TO ATTENTIVENESS
You are invited to focus on where you regularly invest your attention by considering what captures your time, energy, thoughts, and imagination in everyday life. By so considering, you are invited to nourish in a particular way, God’s present-tense call in and through daily living. Use the time between the following guided questions for your own reflection and meditation. Bring to mind a specific day, or season in your own life. Is this day or season fairly typical for you, or is it an anomaly in the rhythm of your life? How has your attention in this specific day or season shaped your life and its horizons?
Reflect upon your attentiveness
How do I typically decide where I invest my attention?
What captured and held my attention today?
Where do I wish I could have invested my attention today?
Did my attention align with my values?
What do I need for tomorrow?
Prayer
Turn my attention to you, O God, that I might recognize you at work in my life. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
Check out our Instagram reel for a video version of this reflection.
Dr. Charlene Rachuy Cox
Rev. Dr. Charlene Rachuy Cox (affectionately known as “Char”) holds a Doctor of Ministry Degree from the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, with an emphasis in Spirituality; a Master of Sacred Theology Degree from the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, with an emphasis in Preaching and Worship, a Master of Divinity Degree from Luther Seminary, and a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Augustana University, Sioux Falls. She has served as a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America for over 28 years, serving in seminary, collegiate, and congregational settings. She loves reading – especially memoirs and historical fiction, and enjoys writing poetry, travelling, and all things winter.
Facebook | PrChar
Website | Charlene Rachuy Cox
Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.
As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.
Vocare: Called by God
The following Vocare spiritual practice is featured in Church Anew’s Lent in a Box for 2023 and was developed by Rev. Dr. Charlene Rachuy Cox as part of the Nourishing Vocation Project of The Lutheran Center at St. Olaf College. We will be offering one piece of the Vocare practice each week.
Vocare is an ongoing spiritual practice designed to help you discern and embrace your various callings so that you can more intentionally live life on purpose for the common good.
Through guided reflection on personal life experiences via the lenses of values, openness, call, attentiveness, regrets, and experiences of God’s presence, the Vocare practice nourishes discernment of three primary questions. Who am I called to be? What am I called to do? Why am I here?
Vocare Practice: Called BY GOD
You are invited to focus on the many and varied voices that call to you each and every day. Some of those voices are literal. Others are metaphorical. Some are external, and some are internal. Some of the voices that call to us are life-giving, and while others are life-draining. Some are worthy of our attention. Others distract us and merit being silenced. Reflecting upon the voices that call to us helps us understand which voices we listen to and why. Likewise, it helps us consider which voices we would do well to preference and which it would be wise to dismiss or ignore. Use the time between the following guided questions for your own reflection and meditation. Bring to mind a one of the voices that speaks loudly to you. Is this a voice that builds you up, or is it a voice that tears you down? How has this voice shaped your life and its horizons?
Reflect upon your openness
How do I typically decide which voices I listen to?
What voices called to me today?
Which ones did I listen to?
Which ones did I not listen to?
What do I need for tomorrow?
Prayer
Inspire me, O God, to trust in your call upon my life. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
Check out our Instagram reel for a video version of this reflection.
Dr. Charlene Rachuy Cox
Rev. Dr. Charlene Rachuy Cox (affectionately known as “Char”) holds a Doctor of Ministry Degree from the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, with an emphasis in Spirituality; a Master of Sacred Theology Degree from the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, with an emphasis in Preaching and Worship, a Master of Divinity Degree from Luther Seminary, and a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Augustana University, Sioux Falls. She has served as a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America for over 28 years, serving in seminary, collegiate, and congregational settings. She loves reading – especially memoirs and historical fiction, and enjoys writing poetry, travelling, and all things winter.
Facebook | PrChar
Website | Charlene Rachuy Cox
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