Central Christian Church is a community church that opens its doors to a variety of groups, organizations, and more. Central had booked the fellowship hall for a group’s Christmas fundraiser before Irie, Kamilah, and Yvette began holding services there. This meant that in order to have a worship service one week in December of 2017, they would need to move into the sanctuary. Kamilah was concerned about people she thought did not want to be in a church. Reluctantly, they moved the service to the sanctuary and put a podium on the floor so they could be with the people. To their surprise, people loved the sanctuary. A teenage boy who had been attending regularly asked Irie if services could be there from then on. Several others also commented about how they liked being in the sanctuary better. At that time, they realized “The Gathering” was becoming a church. Shortly thereafter, Irie suggested adding “A Womanist Church” to the name; they became “The Gathering, A Womanist Church,” and the three of them became co-pastors.
Challenges and Rewards of Creating a Womanist Church
Active on social media, each of The Gathering’s co-pastors knew they had to use social media to promote and reach more people. Irie used “Facebook Live” often in her own work, and they agreed to use it for The Gathering. They were concerned that if they streamed the entire service, people in Dallas would not come because they could watch online. The original compromise was to stream only part of the service. After a few weeks, they realized that many more people were watching from outside the Dallas-Fort Worth area and wanted to experience more of the service. So they began streaming the service until the sermon was completed and ended before Talk Back to the Text. At this point they thought the conversations during Talk Back to the Text were intimate, and they did not want to share them online. They began to have more ministry partners online who were consistently watching and indicating they would like to participate in the Talk Back to the Text portion of the worship. During this time they were also noticing that the number of online viewers was steadily increasing to hundreds every week. It became clear that they needed to engage this online community and to keep connected to them as well, so they decided to stream the entire service.
Everything that occurred up to this point happened with only the personal resources of the co-pastors and the support of those who were partnering with them at The Gathering. They agreed not to have members, but ministry partners. Ministry partners are those who attend regularly, either in person or online, support the ministry financially, and use their gifts in the community. Not having enough financial support limited their ability to do some things that they wanted to do. Finances continue to be a challenge to this day.
However, the rewards of creating a womanist church are many. It is rewarding to hear people talk about what The Gathering means to them. People who have not attended church in over twenty years come faithfully to The Gathering. When the co-pastors travel around the country, they meet people who say they feel inspired as they watch The Gathering online week after week. It is a great feeling for the co-pastors to know their ministry is making an impact. Another reward comes from making space for other womanist preachers to be heard. When The Gathering began, the co-pastors stated they would open the pulpit at least once a quarter to allow other womanist preachers a space to preach. The reality is there are many great womanist preachers who do not have the opportunity to preach often because there are not many pastors who afford them an opportunity. These are voices people desperately need to hear. For the co-pastors, knowing God has used them to create space for other womanist preachers to be heard is beyond wonderful. Each woman who preaches at The Gathering is paid an honorarium because the co-pastors know all too well how women are not paid equally to men, or sometimes at all, to preach. In creating The Gathering they wanted to make sure they not only preach about justice, but act in just ways.
Toward a Womanist Ecclesiology
The co-pastors of The Gathering, a new model of ministry and church plant, were committed to taking their “spiritual lives into their own hands, refusing to seek permission”25 to create a womanist ecclesial community that resists white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. They sought to implement a womanist ecclesiology as a strategy of resistance to oppression in both church and society. A womanist ecclesiology as resistance is a direct result of Black clergywomen’s experiences in the North American Church with the quadripartite oppressive realities of racism, sexism, classism, and heterosexism. These injustices are forcing them to “forge new pathways to escape religious oppression, marginalization, and colonization while remaining connected to Spirit.”26
The North American Church has been derelict in its Jesus-identified mission of liberating the oppressed. Even so, Black clergywomen, including scholars and theologians, are forming ecclesial communities outside institutional and denominational structures to find healing, wholeness, social justice activism, and the freedom to use and maximize their God-given gifts to transform church and society. Research bears out that, “for a large number of women, the patriarchal and institutional church is no longer a meaningful framework. They begin to create new forms of being church often in small informal gatherings of women (sometimes men) who celebrate liturgies, read Scripture and work for social justice.”27
When Rev. Irie, Rev. Kamilah, and Rev. Yvette started dreaming and visioning of The Gathering, they didn’t have in mind a church. In fact, because of the baggage they carried from previous experiences with church (abuse, sexual assault, and racial trauma), they chose not to call their gathering a “church.” At first, they were simply “The Gathering.” However, people who began to journey with them helped shape and name the community “church.” Rev. Dr. Irie, one of the co-pastors of this new model of church, initially led by a partnership of three Black seminary-trained clergywomen, realized she was in a perfect position to study womanist ecclesiology. She wanted to understand more in order for their ecclesial community not only to survive, but also to thrive.
Eager to learn more about creating a vibrant, thriving womanist ecclesial community that would have longevity, Irie applied for a Pastoral Study Project grant from the Louisville Institute.28 In 2019 she received a $15,000 grant to work on a research project titled “Womanist Ecclesiologies: Black Clergywomen Resisting White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy.” Then she embarked on a journey of discovery—a fact-finding mission. She set out to explore and find answers to questions that have arisen out of her ministry with The Gathering, A Womanist Church: (1) What is a womanist ecclesiology? (2) How can a womanist ecclesiology empower Black clergywomen to partner in shaping communities that resist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy and liberate the oppressed? (3) What denominational and/or funding support is needed for womanist ecclesial communities to thrive? She studied five Black clergywomen-led ministries: Middle Collegiate Church in New York City; Lewa Farabale, A Womanist Gathering in St. Louis, Missouri; Pink Robe Chronicles, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina; City of Refuge in Los Angeles, California, and Rize Community Church in Atlanta, Georgia.
To gain clarity for her research, Irie developed working definitions for key terms: “ecclesiology,” “womanist ecclesiology,” and “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.”
She defines “ecclesiology” as “the theological interpretation of what it means to be church,” highlighting the work of Natalie K. Watson in Introducing Feminist Ecclesiology. Because the theological meaning of church has been subject to patriarchal interpretations, Watson argues for an ecclesiology over against a discussion of women in the church or women and the church. She maintains, women are church.29
Until she began her research, Irie had never read a book or article that referenced “womanist ecclesiology.” She discovered a YouTube video featuring Bishop Yvette Flunder, preaching a sermon titled “A Womanist Ecclesiology.”30 While Bishop Flunder doesn’t provide a formal definition of a womanist ecclesiology, she does describe its manifestation. Flunder envisions a womanist ecclesiology in response to what she calls, “unbridled patriarchy.”31 She explains: “There needs to be an ecclesiology or a way in which we see God and ecclesia—the community of the faithful, from a womanist perspective. That means, home and heart are important; it means all our children matter; it means health is everyone’s right; it means there is no group of people upon whom everyone else can