Envisioning the church of our ‘radical imagination’
Summer fellows from the Presbyterian advocacy offices lead hopeful and creative worship service
LOUISVILLE — A church is the people.
A place where scripture guides our imagination into new life.
A place where everyone belongs.
A place where people can ask all the questions they have.
A place where all of life is woven together.
A place where the community wants to come, to share and to be.
That was the collective picture of a church envisioned by attendees of a midweek worship service recently led by summer fellows from the Presbyterian Office of Public Witness and the Presbyterian Ministry at the United Nations.
Attendees of the July 23 service were asked to share their ideas on a digital whiteboard as part of an exercise in radical imagining.
“The UKirk college ministry I participated in as an undergrad started the year with our leadership team with a similar prompt” to imagine a church that serves your needs, fixes what is broken and makes you excited to attend, said Isabella Shutt, a fellow pursuing a master of divinity degree from Princeton Theological Seminary.
Wednesday’s whiteboard filled with elements like “transformative and powerful preaching" and “racial equity" as well as qualities like “celebrates the gifts of every person" and “opens the door and the community is welcomed in.” The board also included drawings of things like the sun and trees, a loaf of bread, a fish, a cup and other doodles.
The exercise was part of a sermon based on Ezekiel 47:1-12 in which Ezekiel first sees visions of calamity but later is led to the banks of a river, where God lets him in on something more hopeful.
The Lord “explains that the healing power of the river will cause fish to become abundant, that the river will heal all things, that the trees will bear fruit,” said fellow Alex Pickell, a PC(USA) candidate for ordination who helped give the sermon. “Note that Ezekiel is not seeing it with his own eyes. God is sharing this vision with him. Maybe Ezekiel won’t ever see it all for himself. All he sees is the river before him. But through God’s vision, Ezekiel is being opened up to the idea that there could be a new, full life for his people, one that’s abundant and vibrant. Ezekiel’s task then is to imagine the possibilities.”
Why the need for radical imagination today? “Radical imagination is a collective process of play and exploration, used to conjure new choices where there appeared to have been none before,” Shutt said. “It is rooted in lessons from the past and present and is deeply concerned with the future.”
Shutt went on to say, “Radical imagination can lead us to ask questions like, ‘If we are rebuilding a temple, why not expand its impact beyond the people who worship there and plan for the land around it as well? If we are building on a river, why not consider the needs of the fish and the plants that make that river its home?’”
The 30-minute service, mostly attended by employees of entities of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), was one of the final activities of the fellows, who are college students and seminarians serving in the advocacy offices and engaging in a summer of writing Action Alerts, attending policy briefings and working with ecumenical partners.
This year’s fellows have served at a tumultuous time, marked by divisive policymaking in Washington and war and famine abroad. Some of those struggles were acknowledged by fellow Isaiah Grady, a senior at William Peace University, as the service opened.
“In recent times, the tides of change seem to have risen,” he said, and there have been natural disasters, civil unrest and other chaos, but “we await the wonderful rainbow at the end of the hurricane.”
Later, during the sermon, Pickell noted that the Ezekiel passage raises serious questions, such as “Where is God in our rapidly changing world?” and “Who are we being called to be in it?”
“In our own world, like Ezekiel’s, we are experiencing a disordering of life,” Pickell said. "Our country, our world, and our denomination face changes and terrible loss. It can seem almost too much to bear at times.”
However, that is where radical imagination comes in, Shutt said.
After the whiteboard exercise, she advised attendees, “As you continue reading the news, adjusting to your changing roles during unification, and working towards a better future, remember that, like Ezekiel, you are asked to imagine. Amen.”
Later, fellow Grace Kromke, a senior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, prayed, “God of abundance and love, we gather here today to celebrate your promise of prosperity. Lord, we thank you for the good news that you have given us a sanctuary in the brokenness. You paint a vision of a peaceful land where all of God's children and all of God's creatures live in harmony and healing.”
Read more about the summer fellows here.
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