Spiritual Refugees

I’m a refugee magnet. My always-expanding circle of people includes a bajillion women and men who have been tripped up, stepped on, talked about, kicked out, and left alone to the point that they don’t know if they can keep going.

(If you’re reading this and you’re one of my friends, I’m probably not talking about you. You are the exception; you are actually fine. No worries.)

When I say “refugee” I’m not thinking of actual refugees who smuggle their babies across borders in the middle of a war-torn night. If I lived in a different part of the world, maybe. If my life were more open to the literal refugees that end up in the DFW metroplex, probably.

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No, the ones who come to me are the spiritual refugees, the ones whose hearts yearn for God, whose minds cling to memories of love shared in families and churches. They are the ones who have been pushed away, pulled away, torn away from the relationships and institutions that once gave them the life they imagined God wanted for them.

They are women whose churches taught them to love God with their whole selves, their hearts and souls and minds and bodies, but then told them they had gone too far. They should not imagine that God wants them entirely, in the servant-leadership of the church, because they are women, and God knows, women are not cut out for this kind of service. Serving food from the church kitchen at a potluck dinner, yes; serving the body and blood of Christ from the table in the sanctuary, no.

They are women and men whose churches cultivated the Spirit of tenderhearted love within them, only to say later that such love is only meant for certain ones, not same-sex ones. They should not imagine that God is the source of that love, the love that wanders outside the bounds of our heteronormative expectations. Suppress it, ignore it, repent of it, exorcise it – whatever it takes to banish that love from your heart. And if you can’t do that, go away. We'll pray for you.

They are people whose churches didn’t or couldn’t make room for them in their difference, like their difference was disruptive, or too big, or too loud – like it was hurting the church somehow to have to live with it. They are people who at some point in the not-too-distant past believed that about themselves – that they were hurting the church they loved just by being the people they are. And so they left. And felt some relief, for a while, just being gone.

Spiritual refugees. Samaritan women minding their own business, drawing water at the well in the heat of the day. Pregnant, unmarried teenagers wondering if anyone will stand by them in their shame. Sick people with diseases so foul or fearsome that no one will touch them. Those who grieve too loudly and too long. Those without means to buy their way back in; those without advocates to fight their way back in. Who misses them? Who wants them? Where do they go?

Not a few of them make their way to me, and now to Galileo Church, because with us they find a place to rest, and consider whether God’s love might still be the realest thing in the world. They find a tight-knit group of former refugees who are no longer homeless, but who count each others’ living rooms and lives as home for their restless, hungry spirits.

I was a refugee once. I could tell you about that some time, if you like. But God and the people of God have taken me in, have brought me home. And now, mi casa es su casa. Come on over.

Make Some Room at the Table

This sermon was preached to a few hundred ministers at our biannual denominational event early on Monday morning. On Tuesday, we would face a vote concerning the inclusion of LGBTQ people in our church’s worship, work, and leadership. You’ll be able to guess how I voted. 

No Silverware in Malcolm’s Kitchen: the Early Days

They only agreed to meet one time. Seven or eight young adults in their twenties, curious about the conversation I promised, curious to see whether I could cook, curious to know each other. They said yeah, they’d come over to Malcolm’s house on Thursday night.

I wish I could remember exactly who was there. Malcolm, of course, the quietly hilarious engineering student at UTA who asked the guy he rented a room from if we could use the living room for a couple hours. And Kaytee B, the part-time secretary at the traditional church I was serving, with whose innate kindness and generosity I had fallen in love. And a handful of others who were not exactly lost, not exactly found, but kind of in between, wondering what kind of earth they were inheriting, wondering whether God was still paying attention.

I also don’t remember what I cooked for that night in July 2012. The story I tell is “a pot of chili,” but it could have been any of the four or five entrees I started making on a regular basis for Thursday gatherings. It had to be something I could pack in the back of my station wagon, along with the plates and napkins, cups and drinks, serving utensils and silverware. There were no forks in Malcolm’s kitchen, at least not enough for a gathering of any size, so we carried it in and carried it out, every week for what seemed like a long time. A good, very good, long time.

Every week we ate, and drank, and got to know each other a little. I would posit a question for consideration. “What is the state of your physical health? How about your spiritual health? How are those related, or not, for you?” “Are you an ethical monotheist? How do you know?” “Do you find it easier to connect with God when you’re alone, or with people? Why do you think so?” “What does ‘church’ mean to you? What do you like most about that idea? Least?”

The answers were unlike anything I could have predicted. The people sitting around Malcolm’s living room, on sofas or the floor or the giant beanbag called – I kid you not – a “Lovesac,” were disarmingly honest. One night we were talking about contemporary idolatries and I passed around Play-Doh so we could shape our own idols for smashing later. A couple of people formed their credit scores, their credit card woes, their student loans, their vocational anxiety, their relationship blunders. Oh, the honesty! It took my breath away.

After a couple of months someone suggested that we could, if we felt like it, read the Bible together… after all, if this was “church” we probably should crack open the Good Book. I was startled – I had been thinking of Galileo as a side project, a diversion from my church work. But soon after a young woman in the group took a call from her dad during supper and told him, “I can’t talk now; I’m at church.” And it hit me that what we were doing was not a side project, not a diversion, for the people who had come together in Malcolm’s living room. For many of them, it was the singular communal expression of faith of their adult lives. Galileo was their church. And it was going to take more than silverware and chili to keep it going.

Press Release After General Assembly 2013

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) Officially Welcomes LGBTQ Members

Mansfield, Texas – July 22, 2013 – At its biannual General Assembly in Orlando, Florida, last week, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), a mainline Protestant denomination, voted by a wide margin to approve Resolution 1327, “Becoming a People of Grace and Welcome to All.” While the resolution speaks broadly of the theological grounds for extending welcome to all people, the main focus of discussion was on the penultimate paragraph, which reads:

“BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the General Assembly calls upon the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) to affirm the faith, baptism and spiritual gifts of all Christians regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity, and that neither is grounds for exclusion from fellowship or service within the church, but we celebrate that all are part of God’s good creation.”

Immediately following the passage of Resolution 1327, General Minister and President of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) Sharon Watkins sent a pastoral letter to congregations, saying, “The intent of the resolution is to urge Disciples to welcome into our congregations and other ministries all who seek Christ. It serves as a reminder that among Disciples we do not bar the church door or fence the [communion] table from those who desire the embrace of God’s love.”

Mansfield has one congregation of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Galileo Church, which began meeting in June 2013. Galileo Church includes LGBTQ members and welcomes interest from all, says pastor Rev. Dr. Katie Hays.

Contact:

Rev. Dr. Katie Hays
email katie@galileochurch.org
phone 817-773-3147
1520 Hampton Drive, Mansfield, TX 76063

Building It Backwards

Galileo Christian Church: Building It Backwards

This is going to sound ho-hum to some of you, but here’s something I finally figured out after 20 years in ministry with traditional churches: for some people who aren’t “churchy” people, relationships come before worship. I know, right?

See, in traditional (established, historic, existing!) congregations, we already have times and spaces and routines set up for our one true purpose: to glorify God and enjoy God forever. We worship with joy, sometimes, and with lament, sometimes, and with “meh” much of the time. We can always invite a stranger or a neighbor to worship with us because that’s what we’re already doing. “Come on in,” we say, “and bow your head and raise your voice and attend to scripture with us. And maybe afterward someone will invite you to lunch. And maybe then we’ll become friends.” Worship, and then the possibility of relationship.

But what if, for new (potential, possible, lovingly imagined) congregations, we have to reverse the order? Relationships first; the possibility of worship later? What if a new generation of seekers wants to know, before they ever walk into a service of prayer and song and scripture, whether they will have friends there? Whether they will be loved as they are? What if they are not going to take a chance on the established routines of the traditional church, for fear of being rejected (or bored or out of place)? Could we reverse the order so that we make friends first, and then join together in worship of the one true God?

That’s just one of the experiments Galileo Church in Mansfield is working on. We’re spending the first six months of our existence making friends – within the small team we started with, and with the neighbors we’re meeting in our town. For now, we eat and drink together, we talk to each other, we share our life stories, we read the Bible in a way that is inclusive of everybody’s “take.”

Let’s be clear: it’s not worship, not really, not yet. Indeed, some of us are attending Sunday services elsewhere to make sure we remember to engage our whole selves in loving God and praising God’s name. (Thank you, established churches, for welcoming us to your tables.)

We hope that when the friendships are strong enough, and broad enough, the hallelujahs will have built up in our hearts and will burst forth from our throats, and God will receive our worship with joy.

Pray for us, friends. Many thanks, and peace – Katie.

Rev. Dr. Katie Hays began a church-planting endeavor in Mansfield on June 1 with the support of the Trinity Brazos Area of the Southwest Region of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).