the church as their own. They have vibrant ministries with young adults and are even taking steps to break through midwestern cultural silence regarding the presence of gay and lesbian people. The next frontier for St. Paul’s: seeing to it that the poor children and families streaming inside during the week for various community ministries are welcomed as a consistent, empowered presence in the Sunday worship community.
Please, preach in Spanish and then offer the English translation. It compels me to pick up a new language because I want to make friends with all these other people around me.
DANIEL MOGBO, HOLY FAITH-INGLEWOOD
Over the years, Holy Faith Episcopal Church in Inglewood, California, has bent and stretched to accommodate its Los Angeles–area community. When Holy Faith was founded in 1911, the church was just like its community: white, reserved and wealthy. In the 1960s, blacks swept into Inglewood and whites swept out of the neighborhood and, at a slower pace, out of the church. It took another two decades, but by the early 1990s, Holy Faith was half white and half black. Within a decade, Nigerians and Latinos arrived and made their mark, turning an integrated parish into a multicultural one.
With every change, members have struggled visibly with racism and classism in order to incorporate the leadership, liturgical sensibilities and voices of the new community. Now they are learning how tough it is to keep performing the balancing act and to become a strong community (and not just several cultural groups that call the same building home). “The best times are when there’s a combined service,” Nigerian lay leader Daniel Mogbo told me. “I hope we do that more often. Please, preach in Spanish and then offer the English translation. It compels me to pick up a new language because I want to make friends with all these other people around me.” Mogbo said they have to keep pushing, keep engaging other cultures and opening more fully to the discomfort of doing or hearing something new in the liturgy and leadership.
That’s what they got when they called Altagracia Perez as their new rector. The first woman called to the post, Perez is Puerto Rican and black and fully bilingual. Her leadership is far from conventional, by design. “I try to bring a different set of questions. Not just how do we get more people, but how do we share power, how do you create a culture that is flexible and fluid enough to be open, constantly evaluating and reorganizing based on the reality around you.” They will need those skills for the next frontier: welcoming the different socioeconomic backgrounds and cultures of their ever-evolving neighborhood.
One of the largest, most visible, progressive Episcopal churches in the country, All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, California, hasn’t traveled an easy road toward radical welcome. On the surface, it looks simple. During the Vietnam War, All Saints served as a center for the faith-based peace movement. Throughout the more recent gay and lesbian liberation struggle, they have become a powerful voice urging the church to move from fear to hope. Many congregations look to them for direction on how to step out on social issues while growing in numbers and financial health. What they could never face was the race divide.
We’ve put so much energy into same-sex blessings and welcoming GLBT people, so now the boundaries are a little more permeable for everyone.
STEPHEN CHENEY-RICE, ALL SAINTS-PASADENA
Until now. Over the last few years, they’ve worked to build passion for the genuine inclusion of people of color, and to confront and transform systemic racism and classism throughout the congregation’s many sub-communities. According to lay leader Stephen Cheney-Rice, that’s the hardest work of all. “We’ve put so much energy into same-sex blessings and welcoming GLBT people, so now the boundaries are a little more permeable for everyone,” he said. “Still, at base, people don’t want to give up the goodies. There’s still an uncomfortable feeling when they talk about race or class.” Leaders have taken some bold, even controversial moves in order to jumpstart change at All Saints, and those efforts are finally bearing real fruit. The next frontier for All Saints: continue spreading the critical consciousness within the congregation and building relationships in and outside the congregation, without losing their size and powerful voice.
You can connect with people at a pub or a club. God has already been there. The question is, where will the church be? Jesus has gone ahead of us into Galilee. It’s time for us to go out and meet him there.
KAREN WARD, CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES-SEATTLE
At the other end of the spectrum stands Church of the Apostles, an emerging church in Seattle’s funky Fremont District. COTA welcomes about 70 people to their main Saturday evening worship gathering, held at their arts-center-cum-worship-space, the Fremont Abbey. If you hadn’t guessed, COTA is run by and for Generation-Xers (now in their thirties and early forties) and Millennials (now in their late teens and early twenties) and seekers of any age who yearn for postmodern, electronically savvy, “ancient-future” worship, and radical, authentic Christian living.
Karen Ward serves as midwife and spiritual mother to COTA. She came to Seattle in the 1990s and sold the Northwest Washington Lutheran Synod and the Episcopal Diocese of Olympia on her dream: to create a Christian community for a generation of seekers who were wounded by the church or have simply never darkened a church door. Like others in the “Emerging Church” movement, they are trying to get back to the source and create an authentic expression of church that honors Jesus’ call and the church’s ancient traditions and speaks the language of emerging generations and the cultures they inhabit. “Some people seem to think the Devil owns certain types of music, certain parts of the world, certain venues, and God doesn’t,” Ward told me. “Our theology says there’s only one God, and God is already out there, everywhere. So you can connect with people at a pub or a club. God has already been there. The question is, where will the church be? Jesus has gone ahead of us into Galilee. It’s time for us to go out and meet him there.”
COTA has a clear vision and a strong commitment to building lay leaders who think of themselves as urban monks and apostles of Christ. The next frontier for this emergent community: convincing larger church bodies to invest in the church of the future, and convincing Seattle’s secular culture that church matters.
As you can see, radical welcome manifests differently in every congregation, mostly because we all have different centers, different margins, different contexts in which we operate. And yet, even as these congregations vary widely in their demographics, liturgical styles, social contexts, and even theologies, they share a hard-won commitment to open to the often painful process of transformation. They’ve sought guidance, engaged in careful discernment and offered each other the gift of patience. They’ve directed their energy outward—out to the community, out to God—and it has enriched their internal lives beyond measure. They’ve listened to each other, to their surrounding community, to the faithful witness of generations past, and then set a course for the future. God’s future.
GO DEEPER . . .
1. Which of the stories, quotes or ideas you just read was the most challenging? Exciting? How do they connect with your own story? With your congregation’s story? What do you feel inspired to ask or to do now?
2. What part of the dream of radical welcome sparks passion in you? Recall a specific story from your life that explains why you have that passion or concern.
3. What words come to mind when you think of “welcome”? What words come to mind when you think of “radical”? How do those associations help or hinder as you consider radical welcome?
4. When have you been radically welcomed? When have you walked into a place and found yourself completely appreciated and
