A Different Way of Being Church
This story is a part of our ongoing series called Stories of Faithful Resonance.
I didn’t want to be a church planter, or pastor.
I cannot remember a time when I thought to myself or said aloud, “I want to be a church planter,” or “someday, I’ll start a new church.” Not even, “I want to be a church pastor.” Just never crossed my mind. In fact, more often I thought about how I didn’t want to be these things. Yet here we are after five years of ordained ministry and starting Juniper Formation, and two and a half years with Juniper Formation as an official church of the United Church of Christ.
What I have often thought to myself is, “There has to be a different way of being Church.” This rumination has been with me since I was a teenager, wrestling with the Gospel and the reality of the Church and world.
I planted the Juniper Formation church alongside amazing people like those whose stories you’ve read over the past weeks, and more people whose stories are yet to come, because we all share the audacity to imagine that there has to be a different way of being church.
Doing things differently can easily translate into relationships and practices that are antagonistic with people and institutions that are part of the status quo or tradition—both unintentionally and intentionally. Doing things differently, also forces us to interrogate our expectations, comforts, and willingness to take risks and stretch into new ways of being that are unknown, uncertain, and often difficult to communicate to others.
What I love about Juniper Formation’s leaders is they are able to live within the tension between what is and what is to come. They seek to see the whole picture—the histories that brought us to where we are, the habits and patterns that both sustain and constrain us, and in the lead, the wildly prophetic Spirit inviting us into transformation.
Our leaders are wise in discerning how to navigate tension and barriers, while maintaining relationships. They are honest and driven to seek truth for themselves and others. Willing and interested to hear how other people’s experiences complicate their own understanding of the world, bringing new depths and insights that are life and faith changing.
As a pastor, what feels unique about Juniper Formation is that I have full support to be in discernment about my and our ministries; the grace to be fully human, rather than super human; and the space to question alongside everyone else.
I don’t feel forced to lead in ways that are incongruous. There is flexibility, openness to try new things, support and curiosity about failure without emotional heaviness.
I experienced this freedom and support most intensely over the past two years as I navigated becoming a mom to Luca and grieving the unexpected death of my mom, while also being pastor in a new church start.
One of the most important aspects of Juniper Formation is the great flattening—a deconstruction of hierarchy molded out of trust, vulnerability, flexibility, and surrender to the movement, timeline, speed, and grace of the Holy Spirit in our relationships with one another.
One example of this is how we live into grace together.
I am by nature someone who wants to do everything, and do it well. My ADHD brain is lit up by novelty and challenge. By geographic (North Boston suburbs), family, and professional upbringing, I am driven, rational-intellectual, reserved, and achievement-oriented. Perhaps by the same token, I am drawn to the mystical and magical of the Holy Spirit; I am creative and emotional, thrive when I have freedom from reservation, and relationally-oriented. These are just a few descriptors identifying some of the tensions I struggle with, such as rational-intellectual vs. mystical-magical thinking and being in the world. They represent the great “Both/And,” I am both complex and paradoxical, like the rest of you.
Prior to being a church pastor and planter with Juniper Formation, I have not been able to, or not felt that I had permission to, be all parts of myself. For example, working in higher education for over 12 years meant prioritizing rational and intellectual approaches to the world, and downplaying the mystical, emotional, and deeply relational. The relational approach only went so far without full reciprocation in the academic institutional culture set up for competition, rather than collaboration.
Perhaps what has been most healing about ministry with Juniper Formation is being able to show up fully human, as a woman, as neurodivergent, as a complex being with various gifts and talents, curiosities, and fallbacks.
In the great flattening and amidst my personal seasons of grief with postpartum depression and the unexpected death of my mother three months after childbirth, I gave myself more grace for not showing up than I’ve ever had to in my life.
The times I have prioritized showing up was in relational and personal care and connection to other people who were in need or who needed to be present for me. Those times I’ll never regret.
The times I couldn’t show up, someone has shown up on my behalf, taken something off my plate, or we’ve collectively decided that whatever it was could wait.
It is a different rhythm of life, to have such grace with one another by forgiving yourself for the times you don’t or can’t show up, and forgiving others for the same. Not personalizing the times you can’t, knowing that there are many times that you can show up. I know that others at Juniper Formation feel the same way and are grateful for the more graceful and forgiving rhythm of ministry, especially as we became a church during the pandemic when every part of life changed quickly and we each suffered and continue to suffer our own griefs along the way.
This rhythm of ministry also illuminates the opportunities to slow down and wait until the season is right for our energies to match the lead of the Holy Spirit, which always, always, always is the right choice. You’ll know it is the right choice because life and ministry blossom in the most spectacular ways, what emerges is beyond your wildest dreams and hopes.
Alternatively, when you try to control a situation, it becomes smaller, less inspiring, and withers instead of thriving. This is a lesson that I have to remind myself of regularly, and it is at times a great spiritual struggle.
I say “I love you,” more, and I hold more gratitude for the presence and relationships of others. As opposed to privileging completion of the many and unrelenting tasks of life and ministry.
I’m not afraid to cry anymore. There was a time when I curated myself from sharing “too much” emotionally in work spaces. One time, in a previous career, I cried at a going away event for a colleague, the most senior person at the institution saw me and came over to ask if I was okay and to see what was wrong. They thought something bad must of happened to me. I was befuddled, and blurted out, “I’m going to miss them,” which was met with surprise. You’re not supposed to wear your heart on your sleeve at work, especially if you are a woman.
I care less about who I am supposed to be, how I am supposed to act, and how I am supposed to be a pastor. It is not that I don’t think about these things, but rather that the dialogue is shifting towards excavation of these “shoulds,” elimination of those that are truly irrelevant, exploration of those that seem pertinent, and a reimagining of what is left in conversation with our center—the margins of the church where the Holy Spirit resides. The “shoulds” transform into ongoing prophetic reflection and discernment around, “Where is the Spirit leading me and us now, in this moment, this season, and within these relationships?”
The Holy Spirit doesn’t speak in “shoulds,” that language is from institutional church.
I’ve never felt freer. I wish more of my clergy colleagues and congregants experienced Church this way, as freedom in the Spirit. I especially wish more children and youth experienced church this way. Just imagine who they might become. Who we might become. I don’t know what that looks like, but I’m doing everything I can to find out in the time I have and within the faith community of Juniper Formation. Together we are reimagining Church, letting go of the “shoulds” of institutional church, and allowing ourselves to follow and respond to the Holy Spirit.
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