A Word from Pastor Lisa: Do Better
“Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good.”
—Romans 12:9 (NRSV)
When injustice in the world keeps me awake at night, I blame my mother, but not for the reason you might think. For better or worse, I’ve inherited her desire not to rest until wrongs are righted. Her particular passion is around people who are unhoused, and she has devoted countless hours and resources to try to help them and change systems in Indianapolis. While my passions tend to rotate, I feel called to help the churches and organizations of which I’m part to do better.
By “doing better,” I mean loving God and loving our neighbors fully as we usher the kingdom of Jesus here on earth as it is in heaven. I have to toss aside my desire to don a cape and save the world. Instead, I remember Jesus has already saved and redeemed us. We are working alongside him as midwives to birth the new creation, one that is peaceful, loving, and just for all people, not just some.
The first step to doing better is a willingness to do better ourselves. Jesus put it this way: “Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:3, NRSV) The other week, a close friend held me accountable for a sermon graphic I had approved and we had distributed that was racist. She helped me understand why it was inappropriate. I immediately apologized and asked our amazing communications staff to create a new one the next day. We changed the graphic for the whole series. As I white person, this is just one of so many instances where I could do better. How do you respond when people hold you to a higher standard of love, justice, and inclusion?
The next step is to call our institutions to do better. One of my mentors claims that in America today, we allow our institutions to do our sinning for us. What does it look like for them to be redeemed? A few weeks ago, Pastor Teri and I joined 14 other clergywomen in our Annual Conference as the original signers of an open letter asking our leaders to do better. The particular situation was a lay person who was assigned to serve in supply for two congregations in Anderson. Essentially, he would be their pastor for the next year. In 2015 this lay person had been convicted of misconduct with minors that under our Safe Sanctuaries policy would prevent him from serving as a children’s or youth volunteer in a local church. We were granting him trusted access to children as the supply pastor of two churches. The conference responded to our open letter. This man has been removed from this position, and the conference superintendent who assigned him is on 10 to 12 weeks of leave.
These are only the first steps. We have met with the bishop and extended cabinet to improve our vetting process for those who serve in supply, enhance training with help from the Committee on the Status and Role of Women (COSROW), increase accountability for leaders, and shift the culture of our conference. It will be a hard journey, and it has already been much more complicated than this blog post can detail. I am prayerful we will make essential changes to protect vulnerable children and offer healing space for those who’ve been wounded or preyed upon in our churches.
I hope you’ll reflect this week on a time when you were called in your life to do better, and perhaps when you called a person or institution to do the same. What was that journey like for you? These personal and systemic changes never come easy, but they are an essential part of our discipleship. They are one important way we live into the apostle Paul’s exhortation to “let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good” (Romans 12:9).