Kevin Ressler is Executive Director at Meals on Wheels of Lancaster, Pennsylvania and co-founder of the Lancaster Action Now Coalition. He attends Community Mennonite Church of Lancaster and is the newest blogger at TheMennonite.org.
Like many a good historical Mennonite, most of the foundational texts to my lived theology come from the Gospel of Matthew. Matthew 18:20 “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them,” and Matthew 25:31-45 which for space I’ll summarize as the text wherein Jesus tells his followers that their duty is to visit the imprisoned, clothe the naked, feed the hungry and when they did so to the least of society they had done the same for Jesus.
When I say “church” I can almost certainly assume that you are thinking immediately of a place. Perhaps that place is where you go every Sunday, perhaps it is the place you went to every Sunday as a child, or perhaps it is a series of places you drive past on a near daily basis heading toward whatever errand you need to accomplish for the day.
Jesus didn’t have a regular pulpit. There was no discussion about the acoustics of the walls and whether the organ was best set at the front or the back of the sanctuary. Jesus’ church was “in the wild” wherever people needed some form of spiritual renewal. Today, many middle class Christians in the United States have become so landed, so full of wealth in the wealthiest empire in history, that it is our need to maintain a place to hold our pseudo-spiritual social events secluded not only from the world but all the people in it.
For Americans at the age of establishing themselves, like myself, our desire to shield our children has often (sadly too often) meant a wariness about taking them to church. And while the institutions are (rightfully) instituting open windows policies and background checking all volunteers, we are as concerned about their spirituality as their physicality. Assaults on one’s well-being are not limited to actions, but words. I (we) don’t want our children so consumed with a heaven focused theology that they are paralyzed by a fear of making mistakes (or being mired in sin). Too often our theological frameworks prioritize not being in or participating in the world and so we raise children in the church who do not engage in the Christ-called work of building the Kingdom of God on earth.
So where do some of us find ourselves? We find ourselves at protests, chanting “Black Lives Matter.” We find ourselves wrestling with whether to watch the NFL, not because the players protest but because we want to support them and feel uneasy about a sport so violent that its participants’ life expectancy rates are shortened. We find ourselves in town squares under war memorial statues decrying the vacuous moral bankruptcy of a President who wants to deport our children’s playmate’s parents, send our friends to die in wars of ego and rip from us the only healthcare options we have. And it is too rare that these gatherings are organized or advertised as official functions of churches (who are often still too busy fighting over whether to play hymns or 1980’s contemporary worship music).
Jesus never would have been found at a church in a building regularly. Yet our understanding of separating church and state has meant that faith is the focus only one morning every seven days. Living out a “Church in the Wild” premise means gathering in town squares for vigils, in community center basements for anti-racism trainings and other gathering spaces seeking something greater and better for one another.
This happens in my town of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Frequently groups gather in response to current events that worry the community. I cannot help but notice how frequently the people gathered are brothers and sisters that I know from Mennonite churches. But I have to ask, where are their houses of worship? Are we so afraid of angering people in the pews that we do not utilize the power of the pulpit for the righteousness that even a secular population sees clearly?
The Civil Rights movement in the 1960’s did not happen randomly. It was organized largely by leaders of faith (and no, not always by the pastors and too rarely by white community members). Sit-ins and other protests were rehearsed and practiced to ensure the intended outcome actually happened. Our social justice movements today require the same levels of attention, organization and resources. Will we welcome the justice warriors into our spaces just as Jesus preached in synagogues, coming in from the world he was more frequently found?
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