Seattle Bound (Again)

Thanks be to God (or to progressive people) for University Christian Church in Seattle, Washington. Two weeks ago Jamie and I were in Seattle for her interview with the church. During the post-worship fellowship hour, an older man approached Jamie and said, "When I heard they wouldn't ordain you in Tennessee, it ruffled my feathers." I could have cried. Finally someone gets it.

Today this congregation approved Jamie as the Minister of Spiritual Formation and Social Justice (Pastoral Resident). She will be serving there for two years, and the church will be walking with her through the ordination process in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).

It's not what you plan, really. We just graduated from an incredible academic institution and could easily find a dozen people to write glowing reference letters for us. We both had high gpa's and a series of life-broadening internships that prepared us for a variety of forms of ministry. We have worshiped with Disciples, Methodists, and Mennonites. Our experiential knowledge on race, poverty, oppression, diversity, and faithful struggle surpasses our years. You churches should be asking for people like us. But here we are after five months of searching in the system, and between us we've had three phone interviews and only one job offer and a whole bunch of churches and church leaders who've seen our paperwork and cast us aside.

It's not what you'd hope, really. Especially not when your colleagues are being ordained and interviewed and called left and right. Not everyone, not all of them, but enough to make us wonder where we went wrong in hoping for ourselves. Maybe it was our education at the "School of the Prophets" where our normal was to identify, think about, and oppose sexism, racism, and homophobia. Maybe we forgot that not everyone is a prophet, and that outside those divinity school walls are institutions that wouldn't even give theological degrees to people like us. For this I grieve everyday, if not in my consciousness, surely in my unconscious living and being.

But today there was a congregation, just one, that said we belong there. Someone even said they wished they could hire me too. Can you imagine that kind of grace and hospitality? In the meantime, we'll be packing up in Nashville and drive through Kansas for a stay on the farm before heading up past the mountains for the promised land at 4731 15th Avenue Northeast, Seattle, WA. In the meantime I suppose I'll be looking for some kind of employment. In the meantime, bless you University Christian Church and Reverend Janetta Cravens Boyd.