Photo: Rachel Held Evans. Photo by Vada Snider. 

“Death is something empires worry about, it’s not something resurrection people worry about.”

With these words, spoken during Thursday morning adult worship, Rachel Held Evans, New York Times bestselling author and popular Episcopalian blogger, began a process of challenging those gathered in the packed worship hall to not fear shifts in the church.

“Maybe God is just doing what God does,” she said. “Let it die to the old ways of power, dominance and control and be raised up like Jesus Christ. If the white, powerful church is dying, let us look to the margins where the Spirit has always been active and look for leadership from there.”

She followed this advice up with an adapted version of 1 John 4, where she substituted the word “right” for the word “love.” “Dear friends, let us be right,” she read. “Whoever is not right does not know God, for God is right.”

Evans emphasized that too often in the church, this is how we work. “That instinct to be right at all costs remains pretty intense,” she said.

Evans noted that winning an argument is often not a way to change someone’s mind or transform beliefs, but that people are more likely to be persuade when they feel “seen and heard and confronted with a story.”

Evans noted that sometimes loving like Jesus may actually look like losing.

“You have to be willing to lose some ground, which Jesus took as far as death on a Roman cross,” she said. “The powers and principalities are doing everything they can to bring us down to our ugliest selves.”

She encouraged those gathered to meet fear, capitalism, racism and other oppressive forces with love, which she distinguished from simply being nice.

“I’m not talking about being nice,” she said. “Love turns over tables. Love marches with Black Lives Matter. Love tells the truth especially when the truth is treated as irrelevant. And to do these things with such compelling creativity that it draws people in.”

“Own doing right over being right,” she said. “And keep on loving even when it looks like losing.”

She also emphasized that we have doubts, but that faith is “behaving as if something is true and organizing our life around the strange and subversive idea that Jesus Christ is Lord.”

Following Evans’ talk, the worship band led the group in singing the song, “Build your kingdom here.”

Pastoral recognition

Terry Shue, director of leadership development for Mennonite Church USA, and Nancy Kauffmann, MC USA denominational minister, led the group in a time of honoring pastors.

“The longer I serve the church, the more I am convinced that leadership matters,” said Shue. “These are persons who have responded to the call of ministry in their lives. To the call of loving their people even as they love their God.”

Shue asked all the pastors in the room to stand and be honored.

Kauffmann led the group in a litany of lament and hope, naming the losses of three area conferences since the previous convention, past mishandling of sexual abuse and other issues the church wrestles with. Attendees responded with the words, “We are God’s beloved church. You are our beloved God.”