KAREN WARD, CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES-SEATTLE
At the other end of the spectrum stands Church of the Apostles, an emerging church in Seattle’s funky Fremont District. COTA welcomes about 70 people to their main Saturday evening worship gathering, held at their arts-center-cum-worship-space, the Fremont Abbey. If you hadn’t guessed, COTA is run by and for Generation-Xers (now in their thirties and early forties) and Millennials (now in their late teens and early twenties) and seekers of any age who yearn for postmodern, electronically savvy, “ancient-future” worship, and radical, authentic Christian living.
Karen Ward serves as midwife and spiritual mother to COTA. She came to Seattle in the 1990s and sold the Northwest Washington Lutheran Synod and the Episcopal Diocese of Olympia on her dream: to create a Christian community for a generation of seekers who were wounded by the church or have simply never darkened a church door. Like others in the “Emerging Church” movement, they are trying to get back to the source and create an authentic expression of church that honors Jesus’ call and the church’s ancient traditions and speaks the language of emerging generations and the cultures they inhabit. “Some people seem to think the Devil owns certain types of music, certain parts of the world, certain venues, and God doesn’t,” Ward told me. “Our theology says there’s only one God, and God is already out there, everywhere. So you can connect with people at a pub or a club. God has already been there. The question is, where will the church be? Jesus has gone ahead of us into Galilee. It’s time for us to go out and meet him there.”
COTA has a clear vision and a strong commitment to building lay leaders who think of themselves as urban monks and apostles of Christ. The next frontier for this emergent community: convincing larger church bodies to invest in the church of the future, and convincing Seattle’s secular culture that church matters.
As you can see, radical welcome manifests differently in every congregation, mostly because we all have different centers, different margins, different contexts in which we operate. And yet, even as these congregations vary widely in their demographics, liturgical styles, social contexts, and even theologies, they share a hard-won commitment to open to the often painful process of transformation. They’ve sought guidance, engaged in careful discernment and offered each other the gift of patience. They’ve directed their energy outward—out to the community, out to God—and it has enriched their internal lives beyond measure. They’ve listened to each other, to their surrounding community, to the faithful witness of generations past, and then set a course for the future. God’s future.
GO DEEPER . . .
1. Which of the stories, quotes or ideas you just read was the most challenging? Exciting? How do they connect with your own story? With your congregation’s story? What do you feel inspired to ask or to do now?
2. What part of the dream of radical welcome sparks passion in you? Recall a specific story from your life that explains why you have that passion or concern.
3. What words come to mind when you think of “welcome”? What words come to mind when you think of “radical”? How do those associations help or hinder as you consider radical welcome?
4. When have you been radically welcomed? When have you walked into a place and found yourself completely appreciated and valued and included, despite your expectations? Reflect on that experience.
5. When have you felt left out? When have you entered a space only to discover no room for your voice or your identity? Reflect on that experience.
1. I appreciate Sheryl Kujawa-Holbrook’s definition of power in her work on multiracial communities; she describes it as “the capacity to have control, authority or influence over others. [In particular] social power refers to the capacity of the dominant culture to have control, authority and influence over” oppressed peoples. She concludes, “social power plus prejudice equals oppression.” See A House of Prayer for All Peoples: Building Multiracial Community (Bethesda, MD: Alban Institute, 2004), 15.
2. Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness and Reconciliation (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996), 140–45.
3. Volf’s use of the phrase the other here indicates the individual one who is not the self. It is not necessarily the outcast or oppressed other, as when I use the term. I have marked the difference by capitalizing the term (“The Other”) when it refers to those who are part of oppressed or marginalized groups.
4. Ibid., 142.
5. Ibid., 143.
6. Ibid., 145.
7. Homan and Pratt, Radical Hospitality: Benedict’s Way of Love (Orleans, MA: Paraclete Press, 2004), 36.
8. Valerie Batts, Modern Racism: New Melody for the Same Old Tunes (Cambridge, MA: Episcopal Divinity School Occasional Papers, 1998).
9. A term made popular by priest and consultant Eric Law, whose works are featured in the bibliography.
God is changing things so that they finally reflect
the dream of God. It will be new to us, but it is merely
the fulfillment of what God intended all along.
THE RIGHT REVEREND MICHAEL CURRY,
EPISCOPAL DIOCESE OF NORTH CAROLINA
Life would be so much easier—and church more comfortable—if we didn’t answer the call to become radically welcoming. Why would a community go in search of transformation and dissonance, when most of us instinctively seek institutions to find stability and shelter from the storm? Couldn’t we trust that Sunday morning is destined to remain the most segregated hour in American life, that certain groups have mutually agreed not to share spiritual relationship, and leave it at that? Why rock the boat? Why cross boundaries? Why risk welcoming?
Earl Kooperkamp answers that question as well as anyone I’ve met. “Radical hospitality is one of the most important spiritual gifts,” said Kooperkamp, who serves as rector of St. Maiy’s Episcopal Church in West Harlem, New York. “Look at Abraham and his three angelic visitors in Genesis. Look at Hebrews, where they speak of entertaining angels unawares. Look at Jesus’ open table fellowship. That’s my vision for what the church should be.” Having warmed to his topic, the community organizer-turned-priest continued, “Jesus reaches out and bids us to do the same: to open our hearts and hands to those around us, to embrace the abundant life that God graciously offers to all.”
Why are congregations like St. Mary’s becoming radically welcoming? Why should any of us risk transformation? Quite simply because God did it first.
The God of Transformation
From the beginning, God has been about the business of creating, reshaping, and making things new. The record of Scripture is filled with images of a God who turns things upside-down in order to get them right-side up, and creates something from what would seem to be nothing. Open the Bible to almost any page and you will see the evidence. In the beginning the Creator God takes the formless, watery void and brings forth life with a word and a touch. Later, we meet Abraham and Sarah, the unlikely patriarch and