October 30, 2022 | Jennifer Guerra | Acts 12

Recap from Pastora Inés:

Sunday at The Church We Hope For was magical and I keep rewriting this post 100 ways. If you weren’t there, it’ll be hard for me to translate the JOY, movement, and liberación that was had. Please watch on YouTube because we are constantly trying to reimagine Iglesia, and there are no words for how the Spirit fell upon us and danced among us.

In Spanish, “joy” is both a noun and a VERB which makes it difficult to translate. I imagined over a month ago and wanted our Iglesia “to joy”. In this justice work, we need to fight for joy and joy to lead the way. I imagined something I’d never seen before.

This is where the brown church is a means of grace, movimiento, gozo y liberación.

• Jenn arias welcoming our familia bilingually
• Praying for a new Latinx church plant in the city in a spirit of collaboration not competition
• A MARIACHI band singing songs connected to moments and memories of quinceañeras, weddings, funerals, a loved one, a holiday
• I felt the Spirit move me to dance and I just went for it, and grabbed Jenn, and pretty soon we were all dancing including the people in the sound booth in the back! (Listen…this is taboo for many Latinx traditional churches.) Sandy Schaupp bringing one of the babies up to dance. Just. JOY!
• My amazing comadre, amiga, pastora, profesora @jennifer_guerraaldana preaching Acts 12 like you’ve never EVER heard before. She brought her full, free, Guatemalan, bilingual-Spanish-first sermon cooked with cantos de liberación y vigilias de oración. Halfway through I decided to retire from preaching. Almost threw my chancla 17 times.
• We celebrated a new pastora Sarah Dornbos getting licensed after years of preparation!
• Lastly, my bestie Nicola Patton prayed over us both pastors, my first Pastor Appreciation Month in 20 years of pastoral ministry!

I’ll finish with words of affirmation about how Bobby perceived this day as “disruptive in love and surprising in joy… un canto de liberación y poema de alegría”.

Here’s to all the dreamers asking the Holy Spirit to reimagine church. If you let the Ruach lead, She will meet you where She leads you. And She will heal you.