5 Questions Most Churches Ask Only Partially

by

Practicing Faith

In August, 2017, 13 members of the clergy and laity of the Mountain Sky Area attended Cetlalic, a progressive Spanish language school in Cuernavaca, to learn the language as well as learn from practitioners of Liberation Theology. This is post is one of Bishop Karen Oliveto's reflections from the experience.

Today I found myself convicted, over and over again, by the Gospel's demands. Listening to our teacher talk about the practice of Base Christian Communities, which gather people together:

  1. To see – what is going on in our lives and in our community?
  2. To think – what can be a response that ushers in equality, justice and wholeness?
  3. To act – to engage one another as disciples of Jesus, extending God's beloved community in the world through communal action.
  4. To evaluate--what did we learn from our actions, from one another, and from those we are now in relationship with? and
  5. To celebrate! And then to start the whole process over again.

So many churches I have been a part of do #1 and #2, but we seldom get beyond that. How can we engage one another in the full theological practice and participate in God's liberating acts? For me, this is how our churches can truly be agents of hope, liberation, and transformation.

Later, when I listened to our lecturer talk about Bishop Sergio Arceo I was again convicted. Arceo opened himself up to be converted over and over again by staying close to the people, to hear their voices and the truth of their lives. He allowed himself not to be a distant observer but to be so deeply moved by what he heard that it became the starting point for his vision and leadership. I pray I might embody this same kind of leadership.

So, too, Arceo found that this kind of orientation to ministry is dangerous--for it is not the "powers that be" that have authority any longer, but the lives of the people. This compelled Arceo to take stances that were unpopular to both the Church and the government. The result of his faithfulness to the Gospel and how it was rooted in the people is that it still lives on as people cross lines of difference to work for justice and fairness.

This convicted me deeply. In just the last couple of weeks/days, our nation has seen a failure of leadership in our country and in our churches. We are not calling out racism in Charlottesville and across our country with clear, unyielding voices. We have not protested the creation of a ban against transgender people serving in the military, the removal of a White House web page with statistics and resources about sexual violence, the discontinuance of an equal pay initiative which collected salary data based on gender, race and ethnicity, and an assault against LGBTQ people by evangelical leaders. We are not standing solidly with the more than 600,000 young people who came to the United States as children who are anxiously awaiting their fate as the president prepares to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

Today, I was reminded of intersectionality. During a time in which we are being divided by gender identity, race, class, sexual orientation, and ethnicity, we who follow Jesus must do as he did--reach out across lines of difference to create a movement of liberation and unity. We must do so embodying Love's power. We know it is risky and might come at a terrible cost, but this is what God expects--it is the cost of discipleship.

God, make me worthy.

Bishop Karen Oliveto serves as the episcopal leader of the Mountain Sky Area (Rocky Mountain and Yellowstone annual conferences) of The United Methodist Church. This post is republished with permission from her Facebook page.