“White Americans have been traumatized by racism.”
Mark Charles, a Native American activist, lecturer, and writer, spoke these difficult words at a panel discussion of lament and racism at the 2016 Calvin Worship Symposium. I left this panel discussion convinced that lament could help the church respond to the trauma of racism. But what can one pastor-in-training do in the face of a pervasive, systemic, and institutional evil?
This pastor-in-training had to start by being the pastor. And one way for me to do that is to lead our seminary community to face difficult realities. When I returned from Calvin College, I knew I wanted to plan a worship service lamenting racism. But I also knew that this service might anger a lot of folks in our community. Because to lament racism requires that we acknowledge the presence of racism. Something our mostly white, mostly evangelical community struggles to acknowledge.
Before I thought about the structure of a lament service (how to organize the liturgy, what hymns to use, etc), I spent a few days asking our community to share with me their experiences with racism. I spoke with a Native American student about poor graduation rates amongst Native American youth. A same-sex librarian and I spent an evening researching housing disparities in our neighborhood. I spoke with a hospital chaplain about the loss of an entire generation of African American men to mass incarceration. One student preparing for social justice work spoke with me about the environmental impact of sending hundreds of plastic water bottles to Flint, MI.
It was from these conversations that the idea of prayer stations took shape. I recruited several artists from our community and asked them to use the liturgical elements in the sanctuary (table, font, pulpit, and cross) to give people a place to lament, and to teach people how to lament in worship. Other than these instructions, I gave the artists free reign to create whatever they wanted. One artist turned the area in front of the cross into a lament of education inequality. Another artist turned the legs of the communion table into prison bars to lament mass incarceration. Another artist collected water bottles from the community and used them to turn the baptismal font into a lament of water insecurity. Finally, an artist used the space behind the pulpit to post prayers lamenting housing insecurity like eviction notices.
Photos of our Lament Stations
During worship that Tuesday, instead of three hymns and a sermon, we visited each prayer station for a time of prayer and lament. While this service made many people uncomfortable, several people told me afterwards that it was the closest they felt to God in a long time.
Leading worship in chapel taught me that being a pastor requires leadership. And leadership begins with listening and discerning how God is moving in a particular worshipping community. I had no idea the depth of racism in our community until I spoke with members of our community and heard their stories. But leadership also requires a willingness to give people a vision for something, then letting them run with it. The prayer stations would have looked very different if I designed them myself. And by different, I mean much worse, because I am no artist. So while the pastor is the leader of the worshipping community, the pastor leads best when she recognizes the gifts already present in her community and presents opportunities for people to use their gifts to bless others.
