some thoughts on local partnerships and politics

I love getting a chance to explore and expand on the prayerfulness and intention behind the ways our church practices faith. Today I want to share some thoughts on public theology and the ways that our representative democracy offers us opportunities for faithful reflection and action. If you have heard me preach for any length of time, you know that I am disenchanted with partisan politics. I will spare you the rant, but if you want to hear more about this, then let’s go get some coffee and chat. As more and more of our public life gets swallowed up in all the boring language of politics-as-entertainment, we can forget that at a root level, politics is simply the ways that people self-organize within increasingly complex societies. Our church has an internal political structure, with our Board of Deacons and its relationship to our staff and congregation. Politics comes from the word polis, the Greek word for a city. We cannot avoid the world of politics, but we can be thoughtful in how we engage with the organizational structures of our neighborhoods and cities. We should also remember that the realm of politics is seductive, tempting us to move from wise engagement to full out worship. I would ask you to consider how many hours a week you have spent reading, watching and listening to partisan political content. You can see the dilemma.

We are called to be within the official structures of the world (including representative democracy) without being overcome by those structures and their desires to overwhelm the imagination. At First Baptist Church we want to share a few ways we are choosing to engage in this kind of public theology, which is markedly different from partisan politics. First off, let me explain the term Public Theology. Our spiritual lives have both private and public dimensions, and we want to be a community where our entire lives are engaged. Sometimes our public theological witness will mean that we collect canned tuna or school supplies for our local partners like Friends in Deed. Other times it will mean meeting with elected officials to encourage and challenge them to attend to the folks often left out of power arrangements and denied access to the common goods of our shared life. It might look like meeting with local churches for prayer and encouragement when the community work gets exhausting and change is slow. Other times we might feel called to help our neighbors grieve, like when a life is lost to gun violence or another tragedy.

Today I want to introduce you to two new partners in this public theology work: Clergy Community Coalition and LA Voice. Our goal is to bring both of these ministries into our local missions budget in 2023 and to build paths of engagement for you all to share in the unique work of each of these groups (they overlap in some cool ways, too!). We have taken our time to develop a relationship with each and to determine their fitness for our congregation and ministries at this point in time. In the case of LA Voice, we have been lowkey working with them for years, but without the formal partnership agreement that would really expand our capacity to engage and connect more broadly with their work. So, we present these ministry opportunities with confidence in their potential and curiosity about how each of us will engage in this work in our own unique ways. 

Before I introduce the two newest local partners, let me share some values that will guide our work together in this realm. Anything that resembles partisan politics can make us a little anxious and queasy (an official theological concept), so the means of communication and how you engage this work are really important. We want to continue to hold the sanctuary and our liturgical worship as sacred space that is accessible to all people and generous in its invitation. When you come into worship, you are trusting us to lead you without coercion and not to treat you like a trapped audience that is forced to take political stances while in the pews. In the past we have honored this value by creating space outside of our main worship service for issues related to elections, ballot measures, City Council opportunities and other issues of this type. When some of our older members asked to share about a Pasadena Rent Control effort recently, we set up a table just outside and invited people to stop by and see what their brothers and sisters were excited to share. We also know that you get inundated with political ads and mailers by the fistful, so we want to allow you to opt in to the more direct action work that these ministry partnerships will make possible. There will be several opportunities for you to get signed up and stay aware of new opportunities so that you can engage in the areas that most speak to you. Remember that our public witness relies on a wide variety of gifts. Some of us feel compelled to march and protest. Some feel called to pray and serve water to those marching. Some of us have skills and vocations that make you a natural leader in partnerships with elected officials and city leaders. And some of you are deeply suspicious of anything that the government does (like our Anabaptist ancestors), so you will have a holy suspicion about anything that smells like Caesar’s politics (to use the New Testament analogy of power). However God has made you, there is a place for you in bringing your faith into the public sphere. Protesters, evangelizers, stay-at-home parents, people with a hug to offer and people with a righteous prayer to scream: we need you all. A lot of you have been asking for us to create just these kinds of partnerships because you are already involved in this work and would love to have your faith community join you in it. We will be creating some leadership teams for those of you who are the most energized and ready to go!  

Clergy Community Coalition (CCC) has a long history in Pasadena and has been led for years by our friend Pastor Kerwynn Manning. Recently they adopted an expanded budget and hired their first full time director, Pastor Mayra Macedo-Nolan. The CCC is focused especially in Pasadena, and it is ecumenical in its makeup. They meet once a month with local clergy and leaders, elected officials, and civic leaders from our area to pray, plan, and act for the good of our communities. We have hosted a few of these monthly gatherings, and I (John Jay) have been a part of their inaugural pastoral cohort called Reconcile Pasadena. In an exciting new development, our church building now hosts their office headquarters! We are able to contribute to their financial health by providing donated office space, and we receive the benefit of housing some really compelling community work inside our walls. When our building hums with sacred energy and activity, good things happen. Pastor Chip has been working with this group for over a year now to see how we might partner with them, and he continues to help keep this partnership healthy and vibrant. Soon we hope to have Pastor Mayra join us in worship to share her vision and receive a blessing from our congregation.

LA Voice is another new partnership we are planning to officially join in 2023. LA Voice is a multi-racial, multi-faith community organization that helps to mobilize faith communities throughout our region to transform broken systems and power arrangements for the dignity of all. LA Voice is especially skilled in navigating electoral processes and legislative priorities. Places like City Hall and the State House in Sacramento can feel like worlds away to many of us, but the decisions made in these halls of power impact all of us. LA Voice helps to bring our communities and faith organizations together to shape the way that the common goods of our democracy are accessed by all peoples. This is especially true for those peoples whose voice has often been left out of these power arrangements. The Executive Director of LA Voice, Zach Hoover, is also a member of our church and is ordained as a local organizer by our American Baptist Church regional leadership. Andrea Vocos is our congregational organizer within LA Voice’s staff, and she has become a good friend to many of us. LA Voice will be more directly involved in how we imagine our roles as citizens in a representative democracy. They will help us to understand what ballot measures and bills we should pay extra attention to and how issues in City Hall and Sacramento affect the most vulnerable in our church and neighborhoods. Around big elections, when lots of confusing and competing messages are pouring into our lives, LA Voice will be able to host informational forums so we can all engage more prayerfully and intentionally as voting citizens. Again, this kind of work will be accessed largely outside of our weekly worship setting so that you can opt in with excited and open hearts. Currently LA Voice is encouraging all of their partner congregations to commit to voting in the upcoming midterm elections. If you want to let LA Voice know that you plan on voting, you can use the button below to fill out a form on their site. They are also asking people to pay special attention to two measures in this upcoming election cycle. I just filled out the pledge myself (it took 2 minutes), and I encourage you to do the same if you are feeling led. Their site is especially helpful for those of you who want to vote but are confused by the process. You can use the site to find your polling location, and soon they are releasing a voting guide, which I am excited to read since the amount of information is overwhelming each election cycle.  

We talk often about the ways we shape one another with our presence and in our sacred gatherings on Sunday mornings. We come together to be re-formed through worship and our relationships, and then we are able to carry blessing back into the world. These new partnerships will help us discern how to continue moving blessing and benediction into our neighborhoods and our city in particular, an embodied practice of our conviction and prayer, "In Pasadena as in Heaven." We are grateful there is good work to do together, and we hope you hear the open invitation to bring your own gifts and passions into these kinds of opportunities. In this work, as in all areas, we are certainly…

less without you,

Pastors John Jay Alvaro and Lindsay Dorman