The Gathering, A Womanist Church. Irie Lynne Session

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СКАЧАТЬ did not want to incur a large overhead expense that would take away from their ability to minister effectively. There were five responses from different churches on the day the email was sent. Kamilah, Irie, and Yvette lived south of Dallas, and the churches that initially offered them space were farther north. A few days later, Rev. Ken Crawford, the new pastor of Central Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), also responded, offering them space. Irie was a member of this church, Kamilah had attended several times, and they both had preached at Central. This was the location they were hoping to get because it was more centrally located and a wonderful facility.

      Now with a secure location they began to plan an inaugural service. Yvette, Irie, and Kamilah decided to have a one-hour service on Saturday. For them it made sense to have a Saturday service because there were many people who were interested in participating who worked in various churches on Sunday. Also, there are thousands of churches in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, but few offer services on Saturday. They then considered what the service would look like, and they agreed to have “Greet & Tweet,” weekly Communion, rotating and tag-team womanist preaching, and a question and discussion time called “Talk Back to the Text.”

      For weeks they advertised on social media outlets. On Friday evening before the inaugural service, they set up Central Christian Church’s fellowship hall. Since they knew they were creating space for people who were hurt by church, they thought people would feel more comfortable in the fellowship hall than the sanctuary. The chairs were set up in a half circle with an aisle and the podium was on the floor with the chairs, instead of up on the stage, to prevent a hierarchical visual.

      On October 16, 2017, the day of the service, they arrived and began to wait, not knowing if anyone would come. Cars started pulling up on the parking lot, and people began to come into the fellowship hall. Approximately eighty-five women, men, and children of different races attended that first service. Rev. Kamilah, Rev. Irie, and Rev. Yvette tag-team preached, and the service was complete in one hour. It was well received, so they agreed to keep going. The following week they prepared and showed up, wondering if people would come again or if it had been a one-time event. Once again people showed up. It became an ongoing joke among the co-leaders, “Is this the week no one will show up?” Nevertheless, week after week people kept coming and have continued to come every week since they started.

      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 СКАЧАТЬ