Delighting in Our Stories Together, Even in Uncertain Times
BY MICHELLE HETTMANN
I work as the Community Curator at Neighborhood Church in Atlanta, Georgia, a church plant that formed out of a merger between two declining congregations. Our story is one of letting go of our fear of death to risk letting God show us new life. It’s a story of years of prayer and discerning, hours upon hours of creating and dreaming in community, and an immense amount of trusting each other and God.
Neighborhood Church, formerly New Church, began in late 2015 as two congregations located less than a mile apart merged, realizing their best chance at survival was through coming together as one. The church's new pastors decided to have a year of fallow time. This meant no weekly worship took place, but rather small groups met, focused on grieving the loss of the old congregations and dreaming about what new life could look like.
Monthly preview services were launched in fall 2016. Then, in spring 2017, this new church became Neighborhood Church, proclaiming a community of faith that was pro-LGBTQ and anti-racist, and whose
purpose was to serve as a space where the community could gather. Since then, we have continued listening and learning with the community. Hearing the stories of friends and neighbors has shaped who we are as a community and guided our decisions along the way.
I will never forget the first Sunday I went to a Dream Team meeting. We were in the process of visioning what this church could look like, still months away from launching weekly worship. I sat in the fairly empty sanctuary with donated church chairs and a communion table we found on the side of the road. Everything felt old and familiar, yet new and unknown. I saw a tiny baby in a carrier next to one of the women on our team. This baby was fresh, just a few weeks old. I had just met her mom, but even with no name and no story, I saw in her the promise of new life. New life for this child, and the excitement of new beginnings for this family translated into a story of new life and the excitement of new beginnings for our emerging
community of faith.
The story of Neighborhood Church is powerful and important to share, as are all stories. Stories capture and convey all of who we are—individually and as folks who live in community. As communities of faith, it’s important that we tell our stories both internally and to the wider community. They delight us and fuel our ministry and our living. We must tell our full stories, too, not just the easy and shiny parts. All of who we are and what we’ve experienced is valid and important.
Our stories are constantly being added to, with different chapters in different seasons, fluid and individualized. Yet, communal experiences such as global pandemics add to our stories in a way that is connected and standardized. We are all experiencing COVID-19 in different ways, yet this pandemic will mark time in our world and our church forever. It’s easy to forget about the excitement of new beginnings when we’re bogged down in the mess and grief of chaos and the unknown.
We asked ourselves: what would it look like to lean into sharing our stories during this time as a way of connecting and pairing hope with this tangible uncertainty?
At Neighborhood Church, we're building from the ground up to embody the love of Jesus in a wall-shattering,
life-changing, authentic way. The core mission of our church is to work for restoration through relationship with God and community. We focus on these key parts of our mission in everything we do—including our programming and community life during this time of being physically distant from each other.
As we’ve transitioned to online-only worship, small groups, happy hours, and kids/youth meetups, embodying these core ministry pillars looks a lot different, and comes with its own set of challenges. Zoom fatigue is real these days. Folks are on so many video calls a week, yet are still craving the connection of handshakes and hugs. Personally, I’ve even been craving sitting at our local coffee shop, seeing people I know and chatting with new neighbors—there’s something special about being in close proximity with other folks.
At Neighborhood Church, we asked ourselves: what do we do when that connection is gone? What do we do when we don’t know when this season will end? How can we change lives in the midst of so much trauma and collective grief? How can we shatter walls when it feels like new walls are built in our world every day? How can we be authentic when sometimes all we’re feeling is despair and doubt? What does restoration look
like in the middle of quarantine? What does relationship look like through a computer screen?
We began to answer this question when our staff decided to commit together to be spiritually grounded during this time. We resisted the temptation to go into hyperactive overdrive mode. We decided that, in this season, what we really need is to keep it simple—to share stories and delight in them together.
Sharing our stories is a way of connecting and encouraging one another as we continue to live as folks in the
world who seek to live like Jesus lived. Connection looks a little different right now than we ever could have anticipated a few months ago—before social distancing, overcrowded hospitals, headlines sparking fear rather than facts. Even though we know we are resurrection people, journeying through Eastertide together, death is real and resurrection may seem far away.
We've found that delighting in our stories doesn’t mean ignoring the hard parts. It means respecting variety and diversity in the stories of others. It means honoring the rawness of peoples’ authenticity when they invite us into both their joy and their grieving. It means showing up for and with people, using healthy social distancing and self-care boundaries, to listen and provide support. It means sharing ways we’ve experienced joy in community in the past, and leaning on these memories to sustain us through this season.
As Rev. Anjie Woodworth said in her Easter sermon during online worship with Neighborhood, “The story of Easter isn’t that everything is happy and that everything has a happy ending right away . . . the story of Easter is that even when we are in the most horrific, hard, impossible moment of our lives, God is there too. And God doesn’t abandon us even in death. God’s love is bigger than we can ever imagine.”
Might we believe this story of Easter these days? Might we trust that God is with us always? Might we delight in the stories of our friends and neighbors, both in our neighborhoods and around the world?
We are living in a time of uncertainty in many ways right now. None of us knows what is emerging structurally or functionally in our denomination. What I have seen emerging, though, is a church where folks support one another in times of distress and share resources when people are in need. I’ve seen people on social media sharing tips and tricks, joining clergy COVID-19 support groups, checking in with people across the connection to see how they can be in ministry together and praying for one another in their respective countries/states/towns. From what we’ve learned at Neighborhood Church in the past few years, I pray that what is emerging across our connection is a sort of wall-shattering inclusivity that models resurrection life rather than clinging to the fear of endings. We must continue to amplify voices and delight in stories of folks who have been excluded from the conversation or, if they are “included,” have been tokenized. We need to
study the teachings of Jesus—to discern the ways we are being called to live out the gospel message in today’s world and in each of our own communities. We need to recognize and repent against the harm that has been, and continues to be done, to our LGBTQIA+ and same-gender loving siblings in Christ. We need to
support, connect with, share resources with, and create a community where we continue being justice-seekers together and where all people know they are loved and are treated with dignity.
Your story is important and matters, both to our denomination and to God. Might you be open to delighting in someone else’s story today? Might we delight in the story of the gospel that calls us to love all of our neighbors today? Might we delight in our collective story of being created by and living with a God who made each one of us and called us good—just as we are, embracing who we love, how we identify, what our gifts and passions are, how we choose to show up in the church and the world?
As I think about the possibilities for our denomination, I remember the new baby I met at Neighborhood Church's first Dream Team meeting, and her promise of new life. I invite you to embrace that same wonder and delight as we journey together in this season of social distancing, of continuing the journey towards General Conference and towards hard conversations, messy endings, and beautiful, hope-filled new beginnings.
In addition to her work at Neighborhood Church, Ms. Hettmann recently graduated with an M.Div. from Candler School of Theology. She is a certified candidate in the Virginia Conference on the path to become an ordained elder in The United Methodist Church.