I've Joined the Forefront Church Leadership Team

This month, I began a three-year term on Forefront Church's Leadership Team (LT). I took on this role after about a year of discernment. Central to this process was a very long series of essays I wrote in response to some application questions about my faith background and theology. I've put some of my application responses in another blog post so you can get to know me a little more. However, I wanted to spend this blog post talking about why I decided to join in the end.

Progressive churches like mine struggle to fill our leadership ranks. "Post-evangelical", reconstructing Christians like myself tend to come to church with great trepidation and one foot already out the door. To be invited to lead such a church is to confront a world of my own hurt. We come back into church with a natural distrust of authority. A term on LT comes loaded with responsibility but little power. We operate with a fraction of the budget of our established peers. Our church has no permanent space and our meetings look like staring into a shoestring spreadsheet searching for money underneath the proverbial pillowcase. So why join?

I am joining because churches like ours are one of the final lines of defense against the privatization of human connection. In a city where you never know how much lighter your wallet will be every time you leave your house, it's refreshing to belong to an institution that charges absolutely no money at the door. In a world where the Match Group monopoly algorithmically prices your next date and selective social clubs promise access to the exclusive elite, it is an act of rebellion to sustain strong communal institutions that welcome everyone without exception. Faith and organized religion are not for everyone and the Church is not and should never be the end-all-be-all for community, but it should be an option.

I am joining because every Sunday at our service in the Roulette in Brooklyn, magic happens. I have lived in three US states and four countries on three continents and believe me when I tell you, there is nothing in this world like Forefront Church. When my mother visited me earlier this year, she said she could hear in our choir the sound of a different kind of faith. She said "all my life, the churches I've been a part of have always prescribed to me what I can or can't do. Your church is the first one I've ever been to where the focus is not on rigid rules, but on what the world could be". Like Orpheus, I want "the world we dream about to be the one we live in now". Service every Sunday is an act of collective dreaming.

If you find yourself without something to do on a Sunday morning in the city, come swing by the Roulette Intermedium. It'd mean the world to me. Come see what we're building together.