Liberty Community Church heals through a womanist ethic
April 1, 2024
The Rev. Dr. Alika Galloway
As womanist theologians, the pastors of Liberty Community Church in Minneapolis are seeking the healing of their Northside neighborhood through co-creating spaces of rest and resistance with individuals victimized by the sex trafficking trade and within a community suffering from the effects of systemic poverty and structural racism.
In the third of a series of videos on Liberty Community Church, co-pastor the Rev. Dr. Alika P. Galloway discussed the transformation of one of Liberty’s campuses into a healing space for victims of sex trafficking. She described the need of people who practice “survival sex” (engaging in sexual exchanges for survival needs such as food and shelter) to have a place to rest, to remember who they are, to revisit and to resist objectification. “The sin is not that you are selling your body,” said Galloway. “The sin is that we live in a culture where you have to.”
Northside Healing Space is just one of many initiatives that the Matthew 25 congregation has supported over the past 25 years in its efforts to address the multiple layers of oppression experienced by its neighbors through cycles of systemic poverty and the historic realities of structural racism. Liberty operates its ministries out of two campuses that were once other PC(USA) congregations. These congregations closed in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and the majority of their remaining members moved their membership to suburban congregations.
Growing up, Sheila Sheldon was a member of Highland Park Presbyterian Church, which is now the site of Liberty’s Northside Healing Space. As part of the research conducted in the creation of the videos, Sheldon spoke with Presbyterian News Service about the beginning of the ministry that would become Liberty and what it means for her to see the new healing ministry in the space where she was baptized and confirmed.
“I was a teenager at the time that it was a new church development using our basement,” said Sheldon. “I would go downstairs after worship with Highland Park, and kind of hang out a little.”
Sheila Sheldon is the Educational Ministries director at Valley Presbyterian Church in the greater Minneapolis area. (Photo by Rich Copley)
In 1999, when Highland Park celebrated its last worship service in the space on Pentecost Sunday, Sheldon decided to stay and participate in the new congregation, volunteering with the children’s Christian education program. “I grew to love the congregation, and they helped me transform from a teenager into a young adult,” said Sheldon, who calls Galloway a mentor and a guide.
Sheldon now serves as Educational Ministries director at Valley Presbyterian Church in Golden Valley in the greater Minneapolis area, where most of the remaining 30 members of Highland Park, including Sheldon’s grandmother, moved their membership.
That congregation continues to partner with Liberty to support its ministries with volunteers and finances and by participating in the Anti-Racism Task Force of the Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area. Liberty’s co-pastor, the Rev. Dr. Ralph E. Galloway, acknowledged the importance of partnerships with Valley, Westminster Presbyterian Church and the Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area in providing volunteers and financial assistance to sustain and expand the ways the church serves the vulnerable in North Minneapolis when so many of his own congregants work two or three jobs. Both money and free time are tight.
Sheldon learned a lot about faith through the closure of her childhood church and the transformation of it into Liberty and specifically Northside Healing Space. “I was the youngest member at age 18. I remember watching the elders make the decision to say goodbye to the building that they loved and had cared for. To let it go was hard. But it showed me that after death comes new life,” said Sheldon.
Sheldon described how through Valley’s partnership with Liberty, the members of Highland Park appreciate being able to watch the ministry of Liberty and its impact on the community grow. She finds hope in how a space so dear to them continues to serve the community. “We don’t own the building of our churches; they’re really not ours,” said Sheldon. “It belongs to the community; it belongs to Christ. You should never hold onto it too tightly but be OK with letting it go so that something new and wonderful can be born out of it.”
Beth Waltemath, Communications Strategist, Presbyterian Mission Agency
Daily Readings
Today’s Focus: Liberty Community Church
Let us join in prayer for:
PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Jhanderys Dotel-Vellenga and Ian Vellenga, Mission co-workers serving in Nicaragua, Presbyterian Mission Agency
Susan Dudgeon, Operations Specialist, Presbyterian Foundation
Let us pray
Gracious God, help us to continually look for you in all of Creation and help us always to be a blessing in your sight. Amen.