Morning Has Broken

Some fragmented thoughts on birdsong, Twitter, vulnerability, black raspberries, and a controversy over homosexuality at a Grand Rapids church

The 46th Day after Coronatide*
Grand Rapids, Michigan

Hello, friend.

I’m not a morning person. For whatever reason, though, mornings have become the times when I write best. Please don’t take that to be a measure of quality; I just mean that mornings seem like the time of day when I’m most capable of forming sentences. I make no claims that those sentences are good.

Some mornings, I prop open the one working window in my study to let the early breeze and birdsong in. Tons of robins live in the neighborhood, but I recently spotted a little yellow warbler, chirping insistently to make itself known. Especially on the harder days, the birds remind me that every dawn is a reset, every new day bringing reminders of the songs that I’m called to sing and the songs that nourish my hope.

I need some hope right now.

Twitter is weighing on me. It’s so odd that Twitter’s logo is a cheery blue bird; what I experience there is so often the opposite of restorative birdsong. While I’ve made real friends on Twitter, more often things unfold there—and things are said there—that echo the voices that tell me I’m not enough and that I’m not doing enough. Right now, the balance of my internal stereo is off; I can’t filter the noise from what’s helpful. So I’m turning Twitter off for a while. 

I’ve also been reporting a story, which you can read below, about a nonprofit here in Grand Rapids that runs an urban farm. It’s being evicted from its land by a church in my denomination. Some say it’s because the nonprofit’s new executive director is gay. And while that’s a key detail, there’s more to the story, which reminds me of the difficulty and risk of gracious, loving community. 

To live authentically in this world is to make oneself vulnerable—vulnerable to the fickleness of human relationship; vulnerable to the complexities of difference; vulnerable to the storm systems of the heart, both others’ and one’s own. How can we be wise about when, where, how, and to whom we offer the gift of vulnerability? Along with the benefits of living authentically, we often have to endure the uncertainty and the costs—and recognize what we can endure and what we can’t.

At the end of a long day, the effort might feel too much. Yesterday nearly broke me. My body was heavy. Even a mundane activity that usually delights, picking snap peas and green beans in the garden, felt a chore. Even Fozzie—dear Fozzie!—was kind of annoying.

You know I’m in a bad place emotionally when I find this little guy annoying.

Then morning came. As I sat to write you, I put on Morten Lauridsen’s O Magnum Mysterium. It grounds me like few other pieces of music. It begins softly, like angels whispering in my ear, preparing me to be enfolded completely in their seven-minute sung embrace. The song’s humbling power is magnified by its words, which are believed to date to the 10th century and are traditionally sung for Christmas Matins. 

O magnum mysterium, et admirabile sacramentum,
Ut animalia viderent Dominum natum, jacentem in praesepio!
Beata Virgo, cujus viscera meruerunt portare Dominum Christum.
Alleluia. 

O great mystery, and wonderful sacrament,
That animals should see the newborn Lord, lying in a manger!
Blessed is the Virgin whose womb was worthy to bear Christ the Lord.
Alleluia. 

These words remind me of Jesus’s vulnerability, of his willingness to endure the frailties of a human body and of the human experience. The animals’ presence—I love the animals’ presence—testifies of the witness of all creation to its own redemption. And Mary’s place tells me that we’re each invited into our own unique roles in God’s story, fallible as we might be.

Some days, we answer that invitation more wholeheartedly, more constructively—and other days, we simply have to push through. Most days, these words give me just enough hope to keep going.

What I’m Growing: Two weeks ago, I noticed the first zinnia bud in my community-garden plot. I was delighted. Last week, it appeared ready to unfurl its magenta petals, and I made a mental note to return the next day... when I found a lone petal left. Same with the next blossom. I still don’t know what’s eating them. I hope they enjoyed the flowers. In my better moments, I remind myself that cultivation comes with much hope but few guarantees. Two days ago, I finally saw my first unblemished blooms. 

What I’m Cooking: Farmers’ market find of the week: Black raspberries. They came from the same stand where I got last week’s red currants. The other afternoon, we had some leftover coffee in the pot. So I made a small batch of coffee ice cream—probably overchurned it a bit, but I don’t hate butter—topping it with some black raspberries.

In other news, I’m preaching this week, on hope and Romans 8:12-25, at Central Reformed Church in Grand Rapids. We’re still livestream only. You’re welcome to join us for worship online at facebook.com/CentralReformedChurch at 9:30 ET. 

That’s it for this week, other than the story below. I’m so glad, as ever, that we can stumble through all this together. I’ll try to write more soon.

Best,
Jeff

*Clearly Coronatide still isn’t over, but I continue to date this from June 1, when my governor, Gretchen Whitmer, lifted her stay-at-home-order. Please wear your masks. Why is it so hard for Americans to wear masks?

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Love Your Neighbors as Yourself

Can a non-affirming congregation and the affirming not-for-profit it founded find common cause or share common ground in the aftermath of hurt?

The New City Neighbors urban farm occupies about an acre and a half of land across the parking lot from Fourth Reformed Church in Grand Rapids. Greens, potatoes, garlic, cucumbers—the farm boasts row after row of verdant abundance.

About twenty percent of the produce grown at New City Neighbors goes to local food pantries. The rest gets distributed to some 200 families who participate in the farm’s CSA program. The business generates about $95,000 in revenue per year.

The farm has always been a means to an end: From the start, NCN’s primary focus has been to transform the lives of youth, teaching them life skills as well as mentoring and care. The tomatoes might provide the best picture of what New City Neighbors tries to do with its young people. In grow tunnels, tomato plants rise waist-high, green fruits weighing down the branches. The plastic provides just enough filtration to protect the plants from the harshest sunlight. 

“Honestly, this has been our best growing year,” says Lance Kraai, who started the NCN farm and is now the organization’s social-enterprise director. “Everything else has been a total disaster.” By the end of next growing season, NCN has been told, it must find new land to farm. Fourth Reformed Church has asked the nonprofit to leave. NCN believes it’s because Ricardo Tavárez, its new executive director, is gay. The church says it’s because the nonprofit, which started as a ministry of the church but is now independent, has drifted too far from its original mission.

A key dispute revolves around how to transform the lives of those youth. From the beginning, NCN has been about “holistic discipleship”—and the nonprofit and the church disagree about whether that can include an affirming view of homosexuality. The events leading to the eviction notice were even more complicated, including a history of miscommunication, mistrust, and poor management.

Ultimately, the story of Fourth Church and its tortured partnership with New City Neighbors isn’t just about the place of queer people in the church. It’s the story of parallel realities, of words that mean different things to different people, and of a family of faith that says it wants to be in community with others but doesn’t know how to do it. The question is, Are they willing to learn?

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NCN has its roots in community-outreach efforts that Fourth started more than fifteen years ago. Kids from the neighborhood, a socioeconomically mixed area where about 15% of residents live below the poverty line, began to show up at events for children and youth. “It led to a once-a-week after-school program where we were trying to feed kids healthy food; well, hot dogs showed up occasionally,” says Eric Schalk, then the youth director and now senior pastor of Fourth. “We were giving homework help. We were discipling them in really good Bible study.”

That after-school program birthed a summer day camp. Eventually, the programming outgrew the church’s capacity, so a team was formed to start a separate nonprofit. The hope was to tap more funding sources as well as a broader base of volunteers. In 2007, New City Neighbors was officially created, with Schalk at the helm.

Under Schalk’s leadership, the Breaktime Bakery was launched out of the church’s kitchen, with middle-school kids as lead bakers. (A cafe, open one day a week, was later added.) Their specialties were Oatmeal Carmelitas—chocolate and caramel sandwiched by layers of oatmeal and brown sugar—and cheesecake. Seeking an activity for high-school students, Schalk teamed with Lance Kraai to create a fledgling farm. Kraai, who has an M.Div. from Regent College, also led a weekly Bible study with the students. That first summer, he focused on Biblical teaching on money.

In 2016, Schalk unexpectedly got the call to become Fourth’s pastor. According to the NCN bylaws, Fourth’s pastor always had a seat on the board. This created an awkward dynamic. “I didn’t step into that chair right away because I wanted the nonprofit to have breathing room to figure out an identity without me,” he says. Even after he eventually took his seat at the board table, Schalk felt uncomfortable speaking up, worried that he might overstep, given his central role in NCN’s early years.

Schalk wasn’t the only board member to hold back. “A board’s role is not day-to-day operations, but you do oversee mission. This board was really, really hands-off,” says Beka McDowell, who served as board president from 2012 to 2014. “The attitude was, ‘The staff will let us know if there’s a problem.’”

The founding team hadn’t foreseen that autonomy might have ramifications beyond fundraising and volunteer recruitment. While NCN’s Christian identity was undoubtedly in its DNA, it had never developed a clear doctrinal statement or any policy articulating that staff or board members should share Fourth’s views. As the staff grew, so did the distance from NCN’s original mission.

During the summers of 2018 and 2019, families with kids in the camp began discussing the changes: While the farm remained a focal point, Bible study had dwindled. When Fourth youth asked staff whether they would be praying or reading Scripture, they were told that they could if they wanted to. “There was no gospel focus left and very little faith component,” says McDowell, whose children all attended the camp at various times. “There had always been Bible themes emphasized before, but not anymore.”

If NCN’s board knew of mission drift, they spent little time discussing it. They were preoccupied with the organization’s precarious financial situation, its high staff turnover, and a leadership vacuum left after Schalk’s successor departed.

Last summer, Fourth Church’s elders and deacons began discussing the situation at NCN. “Part of my own leadership failure in that moment was that the Consistory  wanted to write a letter or sit down with people,” Schalk recalls. “I said, ‘There is so much other crap right now that they don’t need another thing to deal with.’ In hindsight, we should have written a letter or had a conversation.”

The elders and deacons continued their deliberations throughout the fall—as NCN moved through its hiring process and as it continued to struggle with finances, which were in such dismal shape that it eventually laid off most of its staff. Consistory members were concerned that some staff seemed uninterested in the spiritual dimension of NCN’s work; indeed, some weren’t even Christians. “How important can the gospel be if your staff aren’t following Jesus?” one Fourth leader says. Still, no conversation between the two organizations’ leaders took place.

The staff was vocal that they wanted Ricardo Tavárez to be the next executive director. Tavárez is half-Puerto Rican and half-Dominican, and he is gay. And while these might be the points of identity on which both his supporters and detractors have focused, much less attention has been given to his experience as a seminary-trained pastor. 

Some board members were concerned that Tavárez had never run a nonprofit and did not have fundraising experience. Yet he planted a church in Grand Rapids called En Vivo, which he still pastors, and anyone who has worked in churches knows that they are nonprofit organizations with their own complicated constraints. And En Vivo is still supported largely by outside donors, whom Tavárez has recruited and cultivated.

Tavárez was hired in late October last year. He hadn’t even officially been onboarded when NCN’s fall auction fundraiser took place. At that event, Kraai, one of only two other staff members who had not been let go, acknowledged mission drift, saying that as a nonprofit grows, sometimes you change and forget who you originally were meant to be. Under Tavárez’s leadership, he added, NCN would revitalize its spiritual discipleship work.

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Shortly after Christmas, Fourth’s Consistory sent NCN a letter to inform them that they would need to find new land to farm. NCN board president Jennifer Wammack, who is a Fourth member, had heard rumblings of discontent about the nonprofit. But her first real knowledge came when the elders and deacons wrote to the entire congregation to inform them of the plans. That happened about a week before the letter to NCN was sent. “I wasn’t surprised that Fourth might want to address in some fashion the fact that NCN had hired an openly gay executive director,” she says. “I was surprised at what they decided to do, and the timeframe, and the speed with which they moved to implement such a major decision.” 

Tavárez, too, was surprised. He hadn’t met Schalk one-on-one or spoken with the elders and deacons. “We were focused on the financial crisis. Nobody had been watching the books well,” he says. “And we’d had no communication from the church. No one from the church had reached out or even shaken my hand before this decision was made.”

Some weeks later, Tavárez and Schalk sat down to talk for the first time. It was a painful conversation, but by both accounts, cordial and polite. There was no substantive discussion of “holistic ministry.” Tavárez says he has asked repeatedly, but still hasn’t gotten a clear understanding of what the church means by the term. “How is it different from what we want to do? I want people to look at Scripture and see what God has to say. I didn’t come to NCN to wave a rainbow flag,” he says. “I was hoping to build good church connections and partnerships that would lead young people, if interested, into a closer walk with Christ.”

Here’s where words particularly matter: Fourth Church doesn’t believe that any walk with Christ is sufficient; you can talk about Jesus all you want and even say that you’re walking with Jesus, but in their view, being a non-celibate gay person means that you aren’t really walking with Jesus. Tavárez believes that being a faithful Jesus follower and a non-celibate gay person aren’t mutually exclusive. So when Fourth talks about holistic ministry, it’s not talking about the same thing as when Tavárez talks about holistic ministry, and as long as sexuality is a dealbreaker, they’ll never see holistic ministry the same way.

If the church hasn’t been communicating with Tavárez, it has said more to its own people. In its most recent congregational letter about the NCN situation, it defined “holistic ministry” as “how the gospel impacts the way we view money, jobs, racism, relationship, sexuality, our actions, our words, and more.” Sexuality’s presence in the middle of that list clarifies that Fourth’s position is and has been about Tavárez’s sexual orientation—and that Fourth also sees it as being about more.  

Schalk characterizes Fourth’s decision as liberating for NCN. “The intent there was to say, You’re doing strategic planning for the future. It’s best if you do this apart from us. Go into that process dreaming about what would come next without having this tie to Fourth,” he says. “That was our intent. That was not the impact. The impact was a crushing blow to the organization.” 

Fourth’s elders and deacons have also been concerned at the potential confusion if, say, a family who participates in NCN’s work realizes that NCN is affirming and that Fourth is non-affirming. Yet those of us who have even a tangential relationship with American Christianity today find our own ways to navigate these challenges. Some feel that finding common ground remains possible; others consider this difference a dealbreaker. Even Fourth’s own membership is not monolithic on sexuality, so they have examples within their own body of people who have made complicated choices. 

One problem with both Fourth’s desire to “free” NCN and its wrestling with potential confusion is that these were unilateral conclusions. Where’s the acknowledgment of the value of communication in relationship? And for all the talk of holistic discipleship, one wonders too how this episode helps burnish Fourth’s reputation as a place where that happens in a healthy way. Doesn’t holistic discipleship require listening and dialogue? Doesn’t it demand some facility for navigating difference as well as bridging the cultural gaps between Fourth and the broader community?

According to NCN’s staff, a cultural gulf has grown between the organization and the church for years. Though the church staff and NCN staff used to sit down together for a monthly lunch, that practice ended in 2018. And NCN staffers say that they have experienced racial slight after racial slight, every one eroding the sense of trust a little bit more. Ayanfe Jamison, NCN’s farm-to-table educator, says that, inside the church building, she has been interrogated about whether she uses marijuana and asked for tips on cooking collard greens. “That is only because I’m a black person,” she says. “I go in that building, and it’s the white gaze, where you feel like someone is just watching you all the time.” 

Kraai has been teasingly nicknamed White Jesus by the people of color at NCN. “The joke is that the church loves me. Everything I do is amazing and special, and people barely know Ayanfe’s name,” he says. “I’m Dutch Reformed. They know my people. I know their people.”

Kraai’s comments speak to a huge difference in culture, which might explain Fourth’s failure to communicate. The white, Dutch culture in which Fourth is rooted tends not to speak openly, especially about tension and difficulty. The cultures from which Jamison and Tavárez come believe in freer conversation; Jamison spoke to me of the need for “restorative justice” and “circle processes.” 

Fourth has long participated in CORR, a local effort to train churches on anti-racism. During adult education, members worked through the book White Awake: An Honest Look at What It Means to Be White, by Chicago pastor Daniel Hill. So some in the congregation, at least, aren’t oblivious to racial justice.

One wonders whether these anecdotes about race weren’t reported because of an unacknowledged power dynamic: NCN and Fourth have never had a relationship of equals. Fourth started NCN. It remains NCN’s landlord. And though Fourth’s leadership says it wants to set NCN free, that will not be without great cost. For instance, as Kraai surveys the farm, he guesstimates that about $250,000 has gone into the infrastructure, including the one heated greenhouse and all the irrigation systems. A nearby UCC church, Second Congregational, has agreed to provide office space on a temporary basis. Other churches have offered land, but that would require NCN essentially to start a farm from scratch. Liberation would not be free.

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“Some of us are sorry for the way this has all gone down,” Schalk says. “I really do believe we’re trying to learn from our mistakes. We have apologized and really repented of the fact that we wish we would have done this differently.” Notably, he did not say that they repented of the decision. And his words raise questions: Can we learn only from those with whom we are in perfect theological alignment? And what does repentance look like? Repentance isn’t just saying sorry; it requires concrete action.

In NCN board president Jennifer Wammack’s view, it would take a miracle to keep the farm on Fourth’s land. “But I believe in miracles,” she says. “Maybe a better way to say it is that I believe in the Holy Spirit’s ability to heal things that look unhealable.”

Both Schalk and Tavárez seem pessimistic about finding common ground. “There’s a lot of hurt on both sides,” Schalk says. “I don’t know what a way forward could even look like.” And in Tavárez’s view, one miracle might not be enough. “The reality is, even if the church changed its mind, this would still be an uncomfortable space now,” he said as we stood in the shade of a tree, regarding the crops.

As I listened to them, they sounded more similar than alike—both expressing love for the community, both reiterating their commitment to the gospel. “We want to radically proclaim: Here’s the good news of Jesus,” Schalk said. And he praised Tavárez’s measured response when they did meet: “He was gracious. Very gracious.” 

Tavárez expressed sympathy for Schalk’s difficult position too. “I’m angry, but at the same time, I love him,” he said. “I’m like, Dude, you’re a pastor! That’s so hard. I get that.” And he nearly echoed Schalk, saying, “I want to help people walk closer to God and see God’s presence is with them.” 

Surely that mutual grace, that common desire, can birth some courageous imagination, if they’re willing to continue their conversation. Indeed, I can’t help but note that people on both sides of this story repeatedly professed love for Jesus—the same Jesus who worked miracles, the same Jesus who repeatedly transgressed social conventions and angered the religious authorities of his day. He honored women, foreigners, and misfits. He saw and heard outsiders—those hated by pious society, those condemned as unclean. Under the cover of night, he had patient conversations with power brokers. In the clear light of day, his own disciples disowned him. Yet if he was concerned about muddying his message, he didn’t let on. 

Instead, Jesus was focused on love—love for God, love for neighbor, love even for enemy. But what if we don’t agree on what love looks like? In one of the most oft-quoted passages of the New Testament, Paul writes that “love is patient” and “love is kind.” These are intimate qualities of a force that holds us together, even amidst tremendous difference. They aren’t characteristics of a wedge that drives people apart or diminishes them.

“Love does not dishonor others,” Paul continues. “It keeps no record of wrongs.”

We live in hope.