Called to Act with love
Beloved Community: One Church’s Journey
by Kay Lindahl
Our goal is to create a beloved community, and this will require a qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives.”
– Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
“In Beloved Community, radically inclusive and resilient love is the norm. It is a community in which we are constantly seeking to build and restore right relationships.”
– Adam Russell Taylor, A More Perfect Union (2021)
What is a beloved community? How do we become a beloved community? For the past four years our church has been intentional about engaging with these questions. This is the story of our journey so far.
We are St. Luke’s/SanLucas Episcopal Church, a racially, linguistically, and culturally diverse congregation, in downtown Long Beach, California. We have two English language services and one Spanish language service on Sundays as well as several combined bi-lingual services throughout the year.
A common thread in our history is a focus on justice issues in one form or another. In recent years we have assisted over 30 Ugandan refugees to settle in our area. We are a sanctuary church and have housed undocumented people awaiting hearings. Every Saturday morning for the past 30 years, over 100 people show up to take a shower, get clean clothes and a meal. We have a history of serving the community beyond our walls.
One of the tenets of our faith is God’s message to love one another. In 2019 the Episcopal Church created a program called The Way of Love, a commitment to bear witness to God’s way of love in the world through practices of Turn, Learn, Pray, Worship, Bless, Go, Rest. We gathered in small groups to learn, deepen our spiritual connections and discover resources to guide us along the way. How do we show up in the world? How are we being called to engage? It grounded us as we began this exploration.
Then Covid happened. March 2020 changed how we did everything! We adapted to Zoom church very quickly – and found it kept us in community, even though we couldn’t be together in person. We invited members of our congregation to write their personal epistles to our church, which were read during the Sunday services as well as published in our weekly newsletter.
“How much I miss seeing you in person and sharing hugs with you! This is such a strange time we are in – a global pandemic and civil unrest, with everything that comes along with them. I think we are all yearning for this to be over with – and wondering what life will be like when it is. One thing we know for certain is that it will never be the same as it was before.
“What does this mean for our church community? Who are we called to be now? How do we hear God’s word anew as we do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with our God?”
Then the murder of George Floyd happened. Here is a portion of a letter our vestry sent out to the community:
St. Luke’s rectors, Mother Jane and Mother Nancy standing in support of the Black Lives Matter movement - Photo: St. Luke's Episcopal Church, Long Beach Facebook
“We invite our St. Luke’s Community from youngest to oldest and from ‘every tribe, people, language, and nation’ to hear God’s word anew as we explore how God might have us ‘do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God.’ (Micah 6:8) Now is the time for us to reject systems and structures that undergird white privilege and perpetuate racial inequity, to seek to understand the race-based premises that have for 400 years choked the foundational freedoms on which the United States was built, to examine our own selves and our church to uproot persistent cultural and racial biases, and to commit ourselves to an action plan that allows us to become more fully the beloved community inaugurated by Jesus.”
Deconstructing Racism
The urgency of our journey became clearer. We began a season we called Deconstructing Racism, learning about the history of racism and exploring the impact of that history on our experiences now. We started with a program developed in the Diocese of Los Angeles called My Work to Do, an online affinity group designed to help White people build stamina for discussing race, racism, systemic injustice, racial healing, reconciliation, and justice in their everyday lives. Black, Indigenous and People of Color allies were welcome with an understanding the course was White-centered, and therefore not always safe, space. The following is from an epistle written by a BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) member of our community.
“Being a loving community takes co-creating a safer and braver space. In anti-racism or any anti-oppression work, it requires commitment to centering those made most vulnerable through structural oppression. If our experience has been one of privilege, we are used to teaching, being the speaker, the judge of truth—so discomfort, even anger will come up to become the listener, the student who is completely lost and without expertise. Discomfort, guilt, and fatigue will come up, keep engaging in the work anyway.
People who have historically and generationally been subjected to trauma and oppression do not get a break and do not owe anyone the labor of comforting on this subject. A good intention does not guarantee that your actions or words will not do harm. As we are the body of Christ, we need to be protective of all that makes up that body. Building a culture of justice means allowing those targeted to tell their own stories and taking the risk to believe their lived experience. Be vigilant of the urge to discount, minimize, or demand more of folks doing the painful, heavy work of dismantling systems of racism and oppression – they have carried this far longer and been far more uncomfortable than many can imagine.
May we co-create a c ulture where we are gentle and always ask permission to engage when the subject is the painful reality of oppression for other parishioners. Let us be open to giving grace and compassion to ourselves and each other in this process.”
From another parishioner:
“I encourage each one of us to look at the assumptions, attitudes and biases that guide the way we view others so that we can be transformed to see them not through our eyes, but through Christ’s. This is a time for us to do our own work.”
In January of 2021 we offered Sacred Ground, a ten-session race dialogue series sponsored by the National Episcopal Church. Through videos, books, articles, and challenging questions, we learned more history, as well as important narratives that shape the collective American story, including White, Indigenous, Black, Latino, Asian and Pacific American. Most of us were astonished at what we didn’t know, what we hadn’t been taught.
From an attendee:
“I wonder if this is not the perfect time to take a good hard look at how we can live into becoming the beloved community, a place where all people feel like they belong. Are we really as inclusive and welcoming as we say we are? Where have we fallen short? What have we missed? What have we not seen?”
Our next learning opportunity came in reading the book, Church Cracked Open, by Stephanie Spellers. Sometimes it takes disruption and loss to break us open and turn us back to God. This book explores the American story and the Episcopal story to learn how communities steeped in White privilege and empire can re-center on God, release privilege and become Beloved Community.
Change is hard. As human beings we like the comfort of knowing – or at least the feeling that we have some sense of what to expect. For over a year and a half now we have been in change mode. And it’s not over yet. Life as we knew it changed almost overnight. We had to adapt to new ways of being - social distancing, masks, handwashing and hand sanitizers and the isolation of self-quarantine those first few months. We also learned how to do Zoom calls, breakout rooms, FaceTimeLive, not to mention the mantra of “You’re on mute.” We got used to saying – I don’t know – to almost any question about future plans.
We are still in that challenging time of uncertainty, moving from what was to what will be – it’s a liminal space –a place of transition – one where we often feel unsettled or anxious. Life is not as it was before, but we don’t yet know how it’s going to be.
Reframing
It seems to me that this is also an opportunity for reflection - who are we and what are we called to do now? How can we see things differently? Reframing is a practice that helps me do this. It’s like putting a familiar picture in a new frame. Suddenly you notice things you hadn’t seen before, and it feels new again. This same process applies when we can imagine seeing any situation in a different frame – wider, longer, maybe from a different angle or even from above, with an eagle’s eye view. It’s kind of like a wide-angle lens on a camera – what you see expands – and provides a new range of possibilities for focus. We see things differently.
How does this relate to St. Luke’s? What if we reframed how we talk about our church and how we serve our community? What if we saw ourselves as a place where people come to explore their deep spiritual needs – a center for spiritual resources – where everything we do is seen through the vision of spiritual resource – for us, for our neighbors, for our community.
What if we thought about ourselves as spiritual resources for each other as we gather in small groups, at worship, during coffee hour – and whenever we share our time, talent and treasure – and notice what gives us joy as we do so? We learn that when we give of ourselves we also receive.
As St. Luke’s becomes a place where we practice giving and receiving in all aspects of life, we begin to understand stewardship in a new way. It’s the container that holds everything – our physical space, human resources, formation, worship, social justice, finances, community service – and our call is to be good stewards for all the gifts we have and all the gifts we share. It is the way of love.”
One of the results of this season is our new Vision, Mission, Values statement, which is unlike anything we have done before.
“For the last few years, St. Luke’s/San Lucas has been grappling with what it means for us to “become beloved community.” As a result, this year’s vestry has made such a vision for our church a priority and have spent our monthly meetings, including two Saturday retreats, focusing on how becoming beloved community might guide us in the future. We have come to see BBC as our mission, offering a roadmap which will guide every aspect of the work we do in Christ. This concept will provide a lens for leadership and a frame for articulating who we are as Christians. Furthermore, it will guide our program development and budgeting. Ideally, it will help us to see the world as Jesus saw the world, bringing a spirit of love, forgiveness, justice, and radical welcome to those we serve and with whom we worship. In August, the vestry culminated months of soul-searching work by voting to confirm our newly created vision statement, mission statement, and core values in relation to Beloved Community.”
Where We Are Now
Vision:
We are a Beloved Community that aspires to live and love like Jesus Christ to create mutual healing and transformation in the world.
Mission:
We journey with a loving, compassionate, and justice-seeking Jesus, striving to fully affirm everyone; joyfully embrace diversity; courageously pursue spiritual and social transformation; willingly accept challenges; repair the hurt we cause; and equip everyone to make God’s vision for the world a reality.
Core Values:
Radical Inclusion
We believe that all human beings have a place in God’s eternal love, which leads us on a journey of inclusion made real by loving one another as God loves us. We seek a radical love that transforms our differences into the beautiful body of Christ. We intentionally invite all into a meaningful, deeper, and collaborative faith journey as part of the St. Luke's Community.
Joyful Faith and Spirituality
We believe that God loves diversity and commonality, joyful noise and silent peace. We continually strive to develop a personal understanding of God’s presence within and around us. Our faith is both a personal journey, and a fulfilling fellowship with those we know, those we may not see, and those who we find hard to love. Through God’s grace we discover ourselves and the exuberant joy of being.
Relentless Doing Good
We believe that we take out into the world both what we do, and what we receive in worship and community: the body and blood of Christ, forgiveness, awareness of God’s grace and mercy, and the joy of communion with God and one another. Thus, we are called to relentlessly actualize love, grace, mercy, and justice as we do good in our church, our neighborhood, and the world.
Authentic Discipleship
We believe that everyone at St. Luke’s brings unique and diverse gifts and talents that can be used to live into the reality of being God’s Beloved Community. By fostering an environment in which people claim their unique identity in Christ, their special gifts, and their personal calling, we strive to invite and equip disciples to humbly live into their life in Christ. We seek spiritual and social transformation as we offer ourselves as Christ's heart, hands, and feet in the world.
Divine Transformation
We believe that for us to continue to grow into Beloved Community, we must be open to being transformed by Christ. We strive to live in a state of awareness, willingly acknowledging and embracing the discomfort that comes when our egos are challenged. We know that in the journey to becoming Beloved Community there will be changes and losses, and we accept them as part of the newness into which Christ invites us.
On our website we proclaim:
A heart filled with love has no room for hate.
St. Luke’s/San Lucas is a Sanctuary parish and is a safe place for all.
We welcome the LGBTQIA+ community, our unhoused siblings, and anyone still exploring their relationship with God.
As a millennial member of San Lucas put it …
“I am uplifted, challenged, surrounded by people seeking meaning in life, as we learn how to love each other and take that love out into the world. My church family has been there for me through good times and bad, supporting me, comforting me, sharing my joys and sorrows, successes, and frustrations. We laugh together, we cry together, we grow together. It is this foundation that gives me the strength and courage to strive to do better, to do good in this world, to follow the way of love. There’s something about being in communion with others on a regular basis that feeds my soul and helps me to become a better person.”
Header Photo: St. Luke's Episcopal Church, Long Beach Facebook