Reverend Wright and his flock

My family has deep roots in the United Church of Christ, with which Jeremiah Wright and his parishoner, Barack Obama, are affiliated. My cousin, a long-time minister in the UCC, sent me some commentary from within the denomination on the character of Reverend Wright and his parish, Trinity UCC. I've seen some contextualizing of this controversy in response to Barack Obama's speech on his relationship with his pastor and the broader issues of race, injustice, perceptions and emotions that have bubbled up, but I found this testimony from one of Wright's white parisioners a particularly insightful window into the reality of this congregation, their pastor and their mission:

I want briefly to voice my own experience as a member of Trinity United Church of Christ. (By the way, I have spoken with several reporters about our experience at Trinity but am never referred to in print, I presume because my experience is POSITIVE!) Milt and I are members there very intentionally because it is a Christ centered, Spirit filled congregation where the worship is powerful; the preaching is spiritually insightful and prophetic; the welcome to all is warm and embracing; mission is both local and global ; tithing is encouraged and expected; members bring and read their Bibles; and disciples are nurtured in the faith. Yes, we are among just a few 'white' members. And yes, sometimes in worship I hear a painful biblical challenge to the white privilege that has been part of my own life and to the racism that is so destructive in our culture. That challenge has helped to shape my own journey in following Jesus as I try to live and minister in ways that contribute to a more loving and just world. But never---NEVER-have Milt or I felt unwelcome or unloved at Trinity because of the color of our skin. To the contrary, we consistently have felt loved and embraced because of our oneness with our sisters and brothers through Jesus Christ. Our church family has prayed for us when our granddaughter was ill and Rev Wright has pastored me through some personally challenging times. Milt and I have visited a village in Ghana West Africa where Trinity UCC has helped to build a community center with a library, provided computers for a classroom and a generator for the small hospital and they have strongly supported our UCC related Inanda School, for girls, in South Africa, in addition to significant support of Our Church's Wider Mission.

Let me close by telling you one story from our experiences at Trinity that demonstrates the kind of radical hospitality the Spirit offers through the congregation. On one Sunday we went to worship with a group of young Germans, about ten people who had come to Chicago as 'emerging leaders in Germany'. A friend of mine was hosting them and wanted to give them an experience visiting an African American church. We were able to arrange for Pastor Wright to meet with them before worship and after he came into the room he greeted them in German and prayed with us, in German. After sharing some background of the church, the UCC and the African American church tradition, we all went to worship. The service was, as always, uplifting---lively gospel singing by the 300 voice choir, a moving infant dedication service, etc. Then, part way through the service, we noticed that Rev. Wright was again speaking in German, welcoming the German guests (in addition to the usual warm welcoming of all guests). The next thing we knew, the choir was singing God's praise in an anthem in German! (Wunderbar, Sie Nommen Wunderbar!). Tears came to some of the guests' eyes and to mine. Radical hospitality. A reality quite different from the cruel characterization of the church as hateful or separatist.

Do I agree with every word from Rev. Wright's mouth? No. (No more than I agree with every word my husband says! ) But I have seen and experienced the dominant direction of his whole ministry which is toward love and justice and peace for all people in the name of Jesus Christ. That is what I respect.

Holy Week Blessings,

Jane Fisler Hoffman
Interim Conference Minister

I've posted an additional commentary on Trinity's spirit of openness and outreach below the jump...

Jeremiah Wright needs no defense from me. Anyone who has built a congregation from 87 members to some 8000 and whose congregation has modeled ministries to one of the poorest areas of Chicago has provided a body of work that speaks for itself...

I am struck with...the Acts text for Easter: “And Peter …said, ‘Truly I perceive that God shows no partiality, but in every nation any one who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him…. And he commanded us to preach to the people, and to testify that he is the one ordained by God to be judge of the living and the dead. To him all the prophets bear witness that every one who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”

Put yourself in the study at Trinity and look out on a city of African American people stretching for miles in nearly every direction, and juxtapose those texts for Easter Sunday and find your voice in the context of poverty and racism and lack of education and health care. Any word of hope in such a situation will be a ‘hard’ word. It won’t be an easy word to hear. But an easy word isn’t likely to be a saving word, and that is something that Pastor Wright knew. An authentic word of hope will be hard to hear. Good news cuts through life and it can wound, but Easter tells us that God in Christ heals those wounds and “makes us strong at the broken places.” (snip)

(T)his past Sunday, Palm Sunday, I was in Milwaukee to share in the 2nd anniversary service of Grace United Church of Christ on north Sherman Avenue. It was a wonderful celebration, and it reminded me of Grace’s story and the significant role in it of Pastor Jeremiah Wright and Trinity. As you know, the congregation of Mt. Tabor United Church of Christ voted to end its ministry, but with the guidance of the Southeast Association, it determined that it would give its building to the Conference with the Easter hope that a new ministry could arise on this location.

About a year after we received the Mt. Tabor building, I made an appointment and drove down to 95th Street on the south side of Chicago and visited with Dr. Wright. I told him that the UCC had 21 churches in Milwaukee in 1957 and that at that time there were five. We needed and wanted to start a new African American congregation, but we had no idea how to do it. I told him that we had engaged in a capital campaign and had money to start a church, and that I knew that the financial requests to Trinity must be endless. I said we were not asking for money but guidance and help in identifying leadership for this new church.

We met for more than an hour, and as I got up to leave, Pastor Wright handed me a card. On the card was the name of the Rev. Wanda J. Washington, at that time a senior Associate on the Trinity pastoral staff. He indicated to me that he thought Pastor Washington would be interested and would be a good new church start pastor.

Not long after this meeting, I met with Pastor Washington and then she and her husband, Wayne, came up to Milwaukee to see the church building and to meet with some members and Association and Conference leadership. She discerned that God was leading her to this new challenge, and we began to make plans for a new church.

Once Pastor Washington indicated her willingness to come to Milwaukee, we received a letter from the Mission Board of Trinity, indicating that they would support Pastor’s Washington’s entire salary and benefits for the first year. In the second year they also have given the Conference and Grace another significant gift. As Pastor Washington prayed to discern her call to Milwaukee, there was a group of Trinity women who met with her and prayed for and with her regularly, calling on the Holy Spirit’s guidance in this life-changing decision.

When plans were moving forward to have an opening service for Grace in 2006, a carload or more of Trinity people came from the south side of Chicago to the north side of Milwaukee nearly every weekend to clean and paint and sort through files and materials and equipment and to prepare the building for the first Grace service. When Palm Sunday 2006 came, Trinity sent more than 300 people to Milwaukee to insure that the first service would be packed and spirit filled. They sent more than 20 deacons to serve. They sent a team of trained ushers and security people. They provided 15 women who prepared a feast to follow the service. They sent one of their women’s choirs, and for the first months of Grace’s life they sent musical leadership to lend their extraordinary gifts to Grace’s worship. Some individual members of Trinity tithed to Grace for the first year to offer additional financial support.

Ann and I went in the fall of 2006 to say ‘Thank you” to Trinity, and we couldn’t have been welcomed more warmly. I was given time to speak at a quarterly meeting of the congregation and we received more appreciation and hugs than we could have imagined.

Last Sunday there was a coach from Trinity that brought a group to the 2nd anniversary service. There were trained deacons from Trinity that came to again serve the spiritual needs of the congregation and to support the pastor. I counted somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 people from Trinity at the celebration.

All this support, financial, spiritual, physical, material, came out of one visit to Jeremiah Wright’s office. A new congregation. A critical new ministry to a large north side African American population came from one visit. I might suggest that my hour with Jeremiah Wright was probably even less than .0000012 of the time he spent in meetings over the past 36 years. I wish some clips of grace and generosity he and Trinity showed to us in Wisconsin would make some video clips somewhere.

As you know, Dr. Wright was the preacher for our Annual Meeting last June. He was invited, because Grace led our worship and we wanted to show our appreciation for Trinity’s exceptional gifts. Prior to the service, Pastor Wright and I were eating dinner together in one of the dining rooms. His phone buzzed, and he looked at it and discovered a text message telling him that someone in the Trinity congregation had died. He asked my pardon and then for the next 20 minutes made phone calls to his assistant and to members of the pastoral staff. “Who’s on call tonight? Remember, we need to respond to the family in one hour! Who is available to do the service? Let me know when someone has followed through.” Here he was, 200 miles from his church, speaking to us, and he was still fully pastorally engaged to see that the church did what it is committed to doing, that is, surround a grieving family and bring a word of hope and a presence of love.

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s preaching, in its totality; in its African-American context; in its willingness to struggle with the hardest of biblical texts; in its recognition of the essential role of confession in forgiveness and judgment in grace; in the middle of vibrant and challenge African American life in a world city; in all of these his preaching helped to build a church. But to me that preaching would not have brought the kind of fruit in the Lord’s vineyard that it did without the absolute clarity of mission that brought a new congregation in another state to life and the deep compassion and clarity of the pastoral vocation that pauses in a busy speaking schedule to see to the ‘going home’ ministry to a family who has lost a loved one.

To me, “the rest of the story” is essential to the telling of a fair and just story of ministry. The reflections I shared in opening this letter are up for debate and diversity of opinion. The “rest of the story” is not. It is lived experience, and I will never forget it and will be, as our whole Conference will be, forever grateful.

I wish you all a faith filled journey through these days of Holy Week and then the full measure of joy on Easter Day.

Your colleague,

David Moyer

David S. Moyer
Conference Minister
Wisconsin Conference UCC

Comments

[Albert Johnson Jr]

The most disappointing thing about the Rev. Wright incident is the complete failure of our news media. I was familiar with Wrights preaching before the brouhaha, so when it happened I was truly puzzled. How could anyone draw an opinion of a mans, and especially a pastors words with just a 10 second sound bite, and from that sound bite draw the conclusion that the speaker is hateful, or a racist. I knew then that no one who did actually had seen or read a Wright sermon.

What was insidious about the Rev. Wright story is that every report of those videos on TV, and in the reports of print media the description of the sermons as hateful etc were repeated over and over again. Many Americans view the reports of the media as actual truth. So regardless now of the actual context and meaning of his words he will be forever thought of as hateful and the career of a stalwart man of God is forever sullied.

That should disturb me, but I think I can estimate the heart of the Rev Wright. If only one soul is saved by hearing more than just 10 seconds of the word of God he will consider the condemnation worth it. That the storm over his sermon led to Obama’s speech on race he would consider a blessing.

These so called responsible journalist and not just those who represent the right wing owe both the American people and the Rev. Wright an apology, and the pledge to refrain from viral journalism.

[Reg]

Thank you for your good thoughts.

[renee]

These are the last days. I believe that Wrights GOD DAMN AMERICA was a prophetic word letting this nation no through the media that America is about to go through some difficult days. Remember God works in mysterious ways. This was purly a prophetic word delivered through revernd Wright. Maybe the part about NIGGER was not appoporiate, but oh well still was true. We are about to face some turbulent times people. At first I was sick to my stomach listening to Wright, but after getting much revelation about it from God, I realized that this was a prophetic word and the prphets messages are not always nice. Americans are looking for the govern ment to save them and to keep up their polished lives, but the trutch is that too many Americans have forgot about GOD. This message came right on time.