On Sunday, Feb. 16, people gathered after worship in our church’s fellowship hall. It looked, in many ways, like a regular potluck. A large pot of soup was set on the buffet, someone dropped off a bag of clementines, and people brought lots of baked goods. As the food came in, folks who know our church kitchen as well as their own pulled out plates and serving utensils.
There was a mix of people — some of the 125 folks were members of our congregation, but many were neighbors, friends and co-workers. Word had gotten out.
Earlier that week, we sent out an all-church email with the subject line “Organizing Against Cruelty.” It was one way we could respond as the church to the radical disruption in our community caused by the new presidential administration.
Our church, a 375-member PCUSA congregation, is located about 3 miles from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. We have 15 to 20 families in our church whose livelihood depends on work for the CDC, which was among the first targets of spending cuts by the new administration. The agency had become a “public enemy” during COVID because it advocated for restrictions on personal freedom in order to save lives. Now I was receiving emails and text messages from people afraid of losing their jobs.
You don’t cut “an agency.” The CDC is not nameless or faceless. It is a collection of rather remarkable human beings. I am a pastor for some of them. They sing in our choir, play games with our youth group and lead our congregation as elders. They also keep humanity safe from illness. In my experience, they are people of deep faith, who love God and others — commitments that align with their work at the CDC.
My CDC-affiliated congregants were not prepared for this. They all know that when a president is elected, priorities can change; several had shared stories about job pivots under a new administration. But they are stunned that a president could demonstrate such disregard for something as foundational to the common good as public health, and they mourn the loss of the programs they have worked so hard to build.
“Those of us in global health and development are not in it for the money or to push some sort of radical agenda. We want to ensure that people do not die of things like contaminated drinking water, measles, polio, mosquito bites or HIV,” one of our CDC-affiliated congregants told me.
The people I spoke to for this essay asked to remain anonymous, fearing repercussions.
Virtually all their work has been put on hold as they await impending cuts. There has been no explanation from the administration about where there is waste or fraud at the CDC or why the positions being eliminated are not essential to public health — some of the reasons the administration has given for the cuts. It’s randomly inflicted harm.
“The field of global health and development is being decimated like a toddler swiping at a Jenga tower,” one congregant said. “I feel such grief over the lives of U.S. citizens and people across the world that will be lost or irreparably harmed by these changes.”
They are grieving the loss of lives and the loss of programs that have proved to work. They also are grieving the loss of their vocation. Each knows their calling is aligned with the ministry of Jesus, an itinerant healer, who made healing the sick a sign of the inauguration of the kingdom of God.
“My career is truly how I live out my faith — using my hands and feet to care for those whom the world would rather forget,” one told me.
Another said, “I’m a resilient person. My job is hard — I travel to places where I deal with health emergencies, and so I work all the time with people experiencing real trauma. I can deal with a lot of things — I usually just put my head down and think, ‘We’ll get through this; it can’t go on forever.’ But this feels different. I’ve never had my fundamental worth so questioned.”
What can a church do in a moment like this? Pastoral care, for one. Not only the one-on-one engagement with the pastors but also the strength that comes from belonging to a community of people who love you. That is the real help in a time of trouble. We need to be seen. We need to feel valued.
When authority figures question your worth and have the power to make you feel worthless, you need a community of people that affirms a truer narrative: “The work you do is amazing. You are amazing.”
Some of our church’s retired members are among those who now stand outside the gates of the CDC holding signs saying “We love the CDC” and “Protect Public Health.” Several people have mentioned how much this small gesture of support buoys their spirits.
Our finance team at church has a reserve fund ready to help members who lose their jobs pay their bills and rent. We are also quietly preparing for a loss of income if our CDC members are fired.
The Organizing Against Cruelty community gathering was a second kind of response, bringing people together to act. In the first few weeks of the new administration, many people expressed something like, “This feels terrible. What can I do?” Older adults especially may not be online and may not be plugged in to networks for action and activism.
At the gathering, we invited people to share resources with one another — one hungry person telling another hungry person where to find bread.
We talked about how to contact our legislators and what groups are active in our community. We set up breakout rooms for specific needs — support for transgender poeple, caring for immigrant neighbors — and a room for federal employees to share their experiences and talk without fear of recrimination.
While this role for the church, as a steward of the power of grassroots organizing, is important, there is another, perhaps paradoxical role the church can play: we can hold our human suffering as part of a larger story.
One of my CDC members said, “Lent always feels timely, but this year, my soul desperately needs it. Observing Lent helps prepare for loss, and the reminder that Christians have been marking this season through different crises and times of fear and change is welcome at this moment.
“We don’t have to do everything perfectly, but we do have to take care of each other, knowing we will all meet the same end that Jesus did on the cross.”
Not all suffering is redemptive, and the suffering of my congregants and other federal workers right now feels particularly unnecessary. But the church, when we are faithful, helps us understand that our suffering is woven into the great story of God’s love.
Our sensitivity to this suffering helps us be agents of healing. When I asked one CDC employee how she is holding up, she said, “It’s awful. … But I know that I am going to be fine.”
She told me about her volunteer service with a partner organization supporting refugee families and said, “There are so many people who are much more vulnerable in the face of this cruelty than I am. It’s them I’m worried about. I’m going to be taking care of them.”
You need a community of people that affirms a truer narrative: “The work you do is amazing. You are amazing.”
Chicken Little — that prophet of doom — creates mass hysteria with the ominous proclamation, “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!”
The panicked frenzy that ensues in the well-known folktale is both unfortunate and instructive for incredulous readers who are privy to reality: this apocalyptic declaration and dread of Armageddon is, in fact, sparked by a falling acorn.
Often, the story of Chicken Little resonates with our experiences as pastors or leaders in congregations where problems are pervasive. Financial stress, aging facilities, discord among members, technological challenges, scarcity of resources, lack of volunteers, crises in the community — these all have the potential to keep leaders pacing the floor at night.
Congregational leaders and their teams can find themselves in a perpetual posture of chasing and triaging problems, becoming deflated and exhausted because they never reach a point where everything seems to be fixed. The pessimism that wafts through the air of the organization is more insidious than the problems themselves, creating a culture of despair where everyone seems to be glum and on edge, waiting for the sky to fall.
Pastors don’t surrender to God’s call because of an insatiable desire to simply “put out fires,” so remaining inspired as visionary leaders under such circumstances is extremely challenging. The yes we give to God, generally after intense, internal wrestling, is because we believe, as professed in the simple grace prayed over our meals as children, “God is great, and God is good.”
Pure, unrelenting hope is found in this great and good God who will perform wonders to drive out evil and bring about God’s good purposes in this world. This conviction ignites a fire and passion for participating in God’s redemptive work. After all, we are proclaimers of the euangelion — the good news — who seek to galvanize others around a common dream for good.
In my own context, it was our compelling vision to disciple the next generation that opened the eyes of two staff members to the possibility of outside funding toward this effort. Lilly Endowment Inc. was seeking applicants for its Nurturing Children Through Worship and Prayer Initiative; they saw the alignment with our vision and encouraged us to apply.
We had never pursued a grant of this magnitude before, but our faith in the power of God led us to magnify possibilities over potential impediments. We prayed, applied, prayed some more. In God’s abundance, we were notified that the church was awarded a $1.25 million grant!
I share this to encourage any pastor or leader who is doing the good work of galvanizing God’s people to pursue good. Continue pointing and looking upward, because God’s blessings still rain down.
Orienting our congregations and ministries around promising possibilities and expectation of good is more personally rewarding and congregationally enriching than staying in a constant orbit of the ominous. This orientation, which really is a reorientation for many congregations, does not happen on its own but rather through great intentionality on the part of the leaders in shaping a culture of expectancy and hope.
Working strategically in this vein is critically important, because the culture of our organizations will determine whether we are prepared to receive God’s generosity or whether God’s goodness will be missed or dismissed by doubts and fears. As evidenced in Numbers 13:25-33 when the negative report of the spies infects the Israelites’ hearts with doubt, it is possible to be on the edge of experiencing the miraculous and talk yourself out of seeing the good. How many times has this happened in church business meetings?
Leaders, therefore, must first cast and continue to reiterate a God-size vision that is rooted in a deep conviction of the truth of God’s powerful ability, as communicated in Ephesians 3:20 (ESV): “Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us …”
As nervous as this might make leaders, who are equally susceptible to being overly pragmatic or pessimistic, such a vision supplants problems as the new goal to run after and inspires congregants to offer their gifts and talents to see it come to fruition. A compelling vision can also be the seed for collective creativity in addressing challenges.
Yes, problems will arise, but problems can be viewed as barriers to overcome in pursuit of a greater purpose rather than as the purpose themselves. And problems can become further impetus for expectancy that God will “show up and show out.”
After casting a vision, our proclamation must set the people’s gaze upon God and encourage them to look with anticipation for God to give provision for the vision. We should keenly focus people’s hearts and minds on God’s omnipotence.
Acknowledging God’s power challenges our own doubts and insecurities. If God’s potency surpasses our impotence, then we cannot tailor dreams to fit what we deem conceivable or possible in our strength. This power causes the seams of our intellect to come undone, and the only appropriate response is awe and wonder; what we cannot explain or fully comprehend, we must simply believe.
Finally, our belief should be heard in our corporate prayers and seen in our response when God answers them. We must not be like the church that, praying for the imprisoned Peter in Mary’s house, decried Rhoda as being “out of [her] mind” when she reported that the liberated Peter was knocking at the door, their prayers answered (Acts 12:15).
Hope-filled congregations don’t pray puny prayers. As we pray big prayers, we must also encourage our people to open the door when God’s answer shows up. Through casting vision, proclaiming God’s power, and praying with expectancy, leaders are encouraging their congregations to look up — not at a falling sky — but at a good and great God.
Working strategically in this vein is critically important, because the culture of our organizations will determine whether we are prepared to receive God’s generosity or whether God’s goodness will be missed or dismissed by doubts and fears.
While various denominations have established policies regarding women’s roles, the number of women serving in religious leadership capacities has surged in recent decades.
According to research conducted by theologian Eileen Campbell-Reed, 20.7% of American clergy were women as of 2016 — up from 2.3% in 1960.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which represents 4 million members, reported in 2022 that 40% of its pastors were women. In the Assemblies of God, 27.6% of its ministers currently are women.
The Rev. Dr. Kamilah Hall Sharp, who is affiliated with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), exemplifies a growing trend among women embracing roles as congregational leaders. Even as some question whether — and how — they should lead, women like Hall Sharp are pursuing alternative pathways to their religious calling.
Hall Sharp, along with the Rev. Dr. Irie Lynne Session, co-founded The Gathering, a womanist church in Dallas. The two ordained ministers planted the church in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) denomination, after determining that they could fill a void by bringing to the forefront Black women’s voices. On its website, The Gathering describes its context this way: “As more preachers, pastors and ministers of the word intentionally do the deeper exegetical work of interrogating the sacred biblical texts to raise up the muted voices of women, the theological landscape for womanism continues to expand.”
“We obviously still see women who are having to fight to be in spaces and to be affirmed in spaces,” said Hall Sharp, who also is the director of the Doctor of Ministry in Public Ministry Program at Chicago Theological Seminary. “But I also see a trend in which women are welcomed and starting to create their own tables. My church is an example of creating your own table — within a denominational setting.”
Hall Sharp, a former practicing attorney, pursued a theological degree because she felt a call to ministry. After earning her master of divinity at Memphis Theological Seminary, she moved to Texas to pursue a doctorate in biblical interpretation with a focus in Hebrew Bible at Brite Divinity School.
Despite her credentials, she encountered roadblocks. “In Texas, there aren’t a lot of spaces for women,” Hall Sharp said. “I struggled with finding a church home for a while.”
As a result, Hall Sharp and Session started brainstorming about creating a new space where people could experience womanist preaching. “It eventually evolved into a church. Because we’re both ordained in Disciples of Christ, it became a new church of Disciples of Christ.”
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The two didn’t initially consider planting a church. “As it is for a lot of women, we started the church out of necessity,” said Hall Sharp, who co-authored the book “The Gathering, A Womanist Church: Origins, Stories, Sermons and Litanies.”
“We didn’t have support from our denomination to start the church. And even when we did get financial support, it wasn’t a lot,” she said.
The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), which has ordained women since the 1880s, recently appointed the Rev. Teresa Hord Owens to a second term as general minister and president in the United States and Canada — the first person of color and second woman to lead the denomination — but women continue to have fewer opportunities than men, Hall Sharp said.
In her experience, she said, women are typically assigned to or hired at churches that aren’t able to pay as much. “As a result, they’re never able to really be a full-time pastor,” Hall Sharp said. “So many women in ministry have to have other jobs, because they typically don’t get the churches with all the resources.”
Hall Sharp’s experience highlights a common theme of continued inequity among women taking on leadership roles, according to Campbell-Reed, a visiting associate professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York and co-director of the Learning Pastoral Imagination Project.
“Many women are doing great, but there’s still controversy and conflict everywhere they go,” Campbell-Reed said. “We still have inequities in pay and disparities about where women can start and the extent to which they can grow. They’re still more likely to get associate roles or roles in very small churches.”
Rabbi Dr. Rachel Mikva, a professor of Jewish studies and the senior faculty fellow of the InterReligious Institute at Chicago Theological Seminary, has observed similar patterns in rabbinic roles. She noted that women are leading two of the major rabbinic seminaries. In 2020, Jewish Theological Seminary appointed Shuly Rubin Schwartz as its new chancellor — the first woman to hold the role since its founding in 1886 — and Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld became president of Hebrew College in 2018.
Those types of developments obviously have been helped by women’s movements across the United States, Mikva said. “However, it’s not without bumps. Women have been moving into rabbinic positions, but not every community was immediately ready to hire a woman to be the rabbi,” she said.
While planting The Gathering was challenging, Hall Sharp said, the rewards were worth it. She said one of the major benefits was providing other women a platform to develop. “It’s difficult to create new spaces, because you don’t necessarily get the financial support that you see others getting,” she said. “But it’s been very rewarding, because people have found a place where they can feel whole; they can come as their complete selves.”
Hall Sharp envisions a future in which women are embraced in their roles as leaders. “I hope to see more women be OK with who they are, to be able to walk authentically, and to see more spaces where they are affirmed and appreciated and their leadership is respected,” she said.
As a millennial who came of age in the early years of Facebook, I hold a complicated relationship with social media. While I appreciate the connectivity that it creates — the ability to meet people from around the world and sometimes build genuine relationships — I dislike how it serves as a vehicle to present images, videos and messages that can push me to a place of envy and low self-worth.
Recognizing that social media was created as a form of self-directed mass communication that allows people to bypass the channels set up by institutions, I also understand that it affords extreme creative liberties that can cultivate toxic desires to appease an audience in hopes of affirmation.
In a season of ever-increasing division, social media presents an opportunity for Christian leaders to share their perspectives on policies, legislation and social norms in ways that direct people to their understanding of what God is saying.
These platforms allow people to rapidly publish their thoughts, ideas and opinions, relatively unencumbered by censorship — or checks for credibility. While the immediate feeling of uninterrupted thought may create some sense of freedom, in reality, no one can express opinions without consequences.
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat — you and your congregation probably have at least one of these. Technology has always been a useful medium for faith leaders to spread the gospel to communities, so it is not surprising that we have embraced social media platforms as an essential tool in our ministry.
The mandated COVID-19 lockdowns made social media a necessity to communicate with faith communities while physical gatherings could not take place. But with an uptick in our posting, tweeting and creating reels to stay in regular contact with our congregations, this rapid expression of published opinion calls for a theological ethic that guides faith leaders’ involvement on social media.
How can social media be ordered to generate a common life with God and neighbor as we seek to bear witness to Jesus Christ in the world? This task should be grounded in the virtue of humility.
It has taken me years to remember that my identity is not affirmed through what I post or share on platforms. As a Christian leader, I have had to recognize that embracing the world’s affirmation can lead to a life and ministry of trying to please everyone, allowing my public witness to drain the energy needed to accomplish the work of God’s desired plan.
Social media platforms are an extension of voice that must be managed as such. Our voices are tools for how power is wielded in society. Audiences can perceive our voices through the offices we hold, so we must always use them as instruments to give witness to God’s involvement in our communities and our lives.
Humility is essential, because it is the recognition that all we are, all we have and all we will ever be or obtain is a direct result of God’s provision and sustenance. Christian leaders should not disregard how, even in social media, a posture of humility is a tool to reject the false notion that success is possible without total reliance on God. To embrace humility is to fight against the celebrity culture often associated with social media, which can entice modern-day Christian leaders to boast of their social media following and the expansive reach of their digital platforms.
As our audience grows, our impact is amplified. By office, Christian leaders have an inherited audience on social media, which gives us the ability to influence users and even change their mindset, character and attitudes. This influence can go toward good (what some researchers call “reality perception”) and ill (what they call “deceiver perception.”)
Audiences can perceive our voices through the offices we hold, so we must always use them as instruments to give witness to God’s involvement in our communities and our lives.
Positively, leaders can present solid facts and data through social media that illuminate reality — informing people and helping them learn to give their opinions appropriately. Negatively, leaders can present false “facts” and data that promote deception — misinforming people and encouraging them to malign others’ character, sowing chaos and cultivating an environment with limited tolerance.
Christian leaders have always been influencers, and as such, we have participated in either illuminating reality or promoting deception. The voices of Christian leaders have always carried a burden of responsibility. In “Three Books on the Duties of Clergy,” St. Ambrose wrote, “Let there be a door to thy mouth, that it may be shut when need arises.”
The influence that Christian leaders carry on social media platforms is another form of power that can be used responsibly or manipulated. If Christian leaders are called to help curate and cultivate systems and communities where people can bear faithful witness to God, then our social media engagement needs to be seen as a place where we express faithful discipleship.
In speaking for God, the prophet Isaiah recounts, “The Lord God has given me a trained tongue, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word” (Isaiah 50:4 NRSVUE).
In using our voices to speak to societal ills, we need to cultivate a practice of humility that allows for prayer, reflection and intentionality. Just as we prepare our sermons, presentations and publications, our social media posts should seek to sustain the weary with a word.