Omaha’s Urban Abbey Fends Off Threat from Grinch

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Great Plains Conference | Dec. 18, 2024

OMAHA – Urban Abbey, the coffeehouse-bookstore ministry nestled in Omaha’s Old Market neighborhood, is packed.

It’s “Festive Sweater Sunday” on the second week of Advent, with a variety of holiday-related tops, as well as a few Christmasy hats among the hundred-plus in the congregation.

But Rev. Debra McKnight, the founding pastor, was ready for more visitors.

“Someone might come in and say, ‘What the …’” she edits herself, “‘is happening in this coffeeshop?’”

She gave those gathered advice on welcoming any newcomers who might enter the door.

“Smile at them, but not too much,” McKnight said. “Be cool.”

The festive holiday atmosphere at Urban Abbey, which was founded 13 years ago, was almost derailed this year by a Grinch.

A visitor kept coming to services and making quiet commotion, beginning with clicking his pen and shuffling papers and annoying those around him.

“There wasn’t any obviously bad behavior, but it was clearly a negative presence,” McKnight said.

Week by week, he would try to engage McKnight in a public argument during services or talk sessions. She invited him to make an appointment to talk with her privately, but he would never follow through.

“You just bring different energy if you’re here to participate versus if you’re here because you want to catch someone to have an ‘I gotcha’ moment, to be hostile, to be tricky,” McKnight said.

At one point he even told a neighbor in the Old Market area that he was going to have the female pastor “defrocked.” When the neighbor said they didn’t think that was the procedure for United Methodists, he replied, “It’s kind of up to me.”

McKnight became increasingly worried about the visitor and recruited her husband to keep an eye on him whenever the man was in the building.

During Urban Abbey’s services to commemorate National Coming Out Day, he loudly heckled speakers who were sharing their stories. It was at that point that McKnight kicked him out of the coffeehouse.

“I didn’t want his loud hostility towards it to impact the rest of the room,” she said. “Part of being a safe church is also having to make boundaries.”

Ever since it opened in 2011, Urban Abbey has strived to be a welcoming and safe place for the LGBTQ population of Omaha.

The man returned weeks later for MeToo services, and heckled McKnight as she was telling her story of sexual harassment.

“He objected to my sermon strongly. He kept pushing,” she recalled.

The man reached into his pocket and, fearing the worst, her husband got in between them only to discover he was reaching for his phone, starting to videotape the service.

“I’m guessing he didn’t get anything fascinating because he hasn’t used it,” she said.

McKnight said she had feared for her safety and those at the services.

“We never know when the words are going to become actions,” she said.

McKnight ultimately banned the man from stepping foot into Urban Abbey. Law enforcement officials have watched the entrance to make sure he didn’t return.

She laughs now that she made the decision while wearing the costume of Glinda, the good witch from “The Wizard of Oz.”

“I’m sure he’s having trouble accepting boundaries, especially from a woman,” McKnight said.

The man, she said, is a member of another United Methodist Church in Omaha, where the previous pastor was in favor of disaffiliation and leaving the denomination.

“He was using the Abbey as a talking point and creating hostility,” McKnight said.

That church voted to remain United Methodist.

She suspects he also is behind online harassment through social media and a separate website that criticizes her actions and that of the church.

McKnight used the harassment to benefit the Abbey, in a fundraising campaign called “Let It Go.”

“Because of your presence in person and online we were able to raise $7,000 from 90-plus people,” she imagined writing him in a letter. “We couldn’t have done it without you!”

The Abbey staff and McKnight even turned the online hate into a positive.

“We made funny memes out of all their hateful comments,” she said with a laugh. “That’s my stance on dealing with difficult people, funny memes and a fundraiser.”

Urban Abbey also faced a challenge from another person who objected to its drag queen story hour, even though it had not had the event for a year, after bomb threats and personal threats against McKnight.

Although she wishes the event would return, it is on hold for now.

“Nationally, the temperature is too high,” she said.

Samantha Livermore, a member of the Urban Abbey board of directors, said the threatening individual brought back thoughts of the drag queen story hour threats.

“It just brought back some of those fears of somebody retaliating, and that’s a little bit scary. It puts everybody on edge,” she said. “When you come to church you want to feel safe and not sort of looking at the door and wondering if somebody’s going to come in and be angry.”

Livermore that “unfortunately, we’re a little used to it at this point.”

“We’ve learned to become resilient to that and push back through the work we’re doing,” she said. “It doesn’t deter us from what we’re doing. We’re going to keep showing up. We’re going to continue to be an inclusive and welcoming space. I don’t know if that fear ever necessarily completely goes away.”

Livermore and her family began going to Urban Abbey when they moved to Omaha three years ago.

“I just love that it’s a different feel from other churches. It feels like a family,” she said. “It feels really safe and warm and comfortable. I felt that the very first day we were here.”

David Burke is content specialist for the Great Plains Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church. This article is republished from the conference website.