Reflections on becoming a "local church"
On May 27, 2021, the Metro Denver Association (MDA) of the United Church of Christ (UCC) held an Ecclesiastical Council for Juniper Formation, and after a vote of the MDA, Juniper Formation was received as a local church of the UCC.
Our journey started 2.5 years ago, as a ministry. Through intentional discernment we came to understand that we had always been a faith community and this is who we were called to be together in ministry. Over the past year we have been in the formal Congregation-In-Discernment process with the Local Church and Ministers Committee of the Metro Denver Association of the United Church of Christ.
Becoming a “local church” doesn’t change our mission or ministries. What it does is provide is a clearer identity for understanding ourselves as a community of faith, for welcoming others to join us on the journey, and for us to join the wider Church in living out our faith together.
During our overwhelmingly supportive Ecclesiastical Council someone raised a question about our use of the term “prophetic” in several places within our submitted paperwork, and particularly our mission of “prophetically reimagining the Church from the margins.” The individual referenced Biblical prophets and wondered if we saw ourselves the same way, as designated by God to prophesy.
Another person asked a question, which surrounded their struggle to see and understand us as a church and why we wanted to become a local church at all.
These questions seemed to come from places of disbelief, in that we couldn’t possibly be so bold to presume ourselves as God’s fortunetellers or alternatively a community of faith that didn’t look or act like a typical church. How do we fit? And why do we want to fit?
We've received this same line of questioning throughout the Congregation-in-Discernment process from various Church leaders. I share these specific questions from our Ecclesiastical Council by way of example to illustrate a larger systemic problem and because these questions are worth sharing and reflecting on as we all wrestle with what it means to follow Christ and become “church anew” together—as was the theme of our Rocky Mountain Conference UCC Annual Celebration earlier this month.
These questions got Juniper Formation folx talking with one another in various conversations after the Ecclesiastical Council. While I can appreciate some of the experiences and lenses from which these ongoing questions emerge while being in relationship to others, there is still a pain, which comes from understanding that the real questions are: “Who are you to be so bold? Who are you to think that you are filled with the Holy Spirit? Who are you to tell us who God is?” When “you” is from the margins of the Church, meaning diversely embodied from traditional cisgender, heterosexual, white male normative Church leadership.
No one is intending to be “-ist” (sexist, racist, cysgenderist, etc.) in their thinking or questioning, but questioners and the Church-at-large are not self-interrogating about why these questions are so pertinent to them, what bothers them about who we are, and why.
This line of questioning from people in positions of power in the Church are effective in preventing new ministries, churches, and ministers who identify with the margins from making it through ecclesiastical processes across denominations. I’ve seen it many times working in theological ministry formation and we’ve been through it ourselves.
We “made it” because we spoke truth to power in love and relationship, which is not easy and requires that you be ready to give everything up, while relying on the Holy Spirit no matter the outcome. It is to be positioned to lose what you think you love and have worked hard for, so that you might always be in right relationship to the Holy Spirit, to yourself, and to others.
It is a common experience for people at the margins of the Church to work hard to be seen, experienced, and accepted, all while being ready to give everything up. By everything, I mean our faith and relationships within and to the Church. The stakes are far too high for the Church not to be continually self-interrogating its discomfort with new forms of ministry and new embodiments of ministers.
To hear these questions from the margins and have to defend yourself is a form of oppression that does not align with Christ’s inclusive love: “Who are you? Why should you matter? Why do your lives matter?”
Perhaps this is why the mainline Church is less familiar and comfortable using “prophetic” language, because we don’t always see ourselves or our faith as Spirit-filled, we are embedded in a history of supremacy that de-centers the margins, and if you look at how we live out our faith it is not clear that we truly trust the teachings of Christ.
Early on in Juniper Formation’s journey, these same questions were raised internally in well-meaning ways: Is “prophetic” too presumptuous? “Prophetic” is more used in Evangelical circles and that makes me uncomfortable. Will “prophetic” turn too many people off?
What we mean by prophetic is we seek to follow the lead of the Holy Spirit. By nature, this means we will be led to do new things, to live out our faith together in new ways, to challenge the status quo, to be flexible, justice-centered, joy-filled, and faith-filled in our journey, and to love radically as we center the margins of the Church.
We believe that the Holy Spirit resides within and among us as Jesus promised. Following the Spirit makes us prophetic in a world that teaches us to ignore, dismiss, and hide the Spirit residing within us and to dismiss and snuff it out when we encounter it in one another.
Instead, we choose to reveal the Spirit at work, to liberate, center, and celebrate all that God has created within and among us. And we do so with joy!
Below are reflections from our monthly Gathering leaders. Testimony from Minister Javon Bracy shared during our Ecclesiastical Council and reflections from Spencer LaJoye written after the Ecclesiastical Council.
I hope that in viewing and reading these reflections, we might all draw a little closer to finding joy in the transformation that the Holy Spirit brings, and step away from the threat of fear and disbelief that diversity and change can incite within a world and Church too long enamored with Supremacy, Empire, and Capitalism. For we are called to boldly live out Christ’s Gospel together!
In Partnership
Rev. Dr. Jenny Whitcher (she/her)
Reflections on Being Prophetic Church
By Minister Javon Bracy (she/her), Gathering Ministry Team
Reflections on Being on the Margins of the Church
By Spencer LaJoye (they/them), Gathering Ministry Team
To be on "the margins" of the big C Church is to have to wave my arms to get the local church's attention. It's to have to dress and talk and walk and smile the right way so that my queerness is visible but not too imposing. I've perfected being just the right amount of queer for local churches to feel comfortable with me and good about themselves at the same time.
If Juniper Formation is just a ministry of an already established local church, then its work is to be planted in a central/local place and reach out to the margins. But this is not what Juniper Formation has been prophetically called to do.
Juniper Formation has been prophetically called to center/localize the margins. It has been called to make the margins central. Local.
It is important to people like me that Juniper Formation isn't just a ministry reaching out to me, but that it centralizes and localizes me in its work. People like me are the location of this church. People like me aren't waving our arms from the margins. We're local.
So when we say we want to be a local church, we aren't saying we want to be official members of the center. We're saying we'd like to relocate the center of the church completely so that the members of the margins are officially local.
And I think that's a theological imperative.
We invite you to make an offering today. An offering is a way we share with one another in support of the whole, and as a loving act of co-creating a new way of being together and with God as we prophetically reimagine the Church.
For all of the ways you give your spirit, heart, gifts, talents, and resources, we thank you.
