Did You Know?

The Thirty-seventh Annual session of the National Christian Missionary Convention of the Disciples of Christ convened from August 17 to August 23 in 1953 at Loudon Avenue Christian Church in Roanoke, Virginia. Black Disciples met annually rather than biennially (as they do now) to take account of their shared ministry in each state. The church (i.e. congregations, regions, conventions, general assembly) is one church in many places with a shared commitment to shaping and sharing what “love looks like in public,” the definition Cornel West ascribes to justice. This convention meeting took place in a season of rampant mis-education about Black life and Christian possibilities. More than 500 Black Disciples congregations had been established and each state was asked to report on the status of their ministries in the service of the future.

As R.L. Peoples reflects on his work in evangelism in Indianapolis, the “highlights of the report were the following:

What does it mean to be in the Thomas stage? Following the unjust, world changing, traumatic death of Jesus, the disciples encountered Jesus in multiple settings in different ways. They gathered. Some of them gave an account of belief and hope born out of an encounter with Jesus, while Thomas voiced curiosity and doubt. Jesus arrived amid their quest for faith, understanding, and service. Did Rev. Peoples invoke the Thomas stage to suggest that we were in the stage of gathering as people of faith, yet wrestling with doubt born of a different lived experience of justice-making? Or the stage where we long to learn from our shared wounds? Or perhaps he was lamenting that we are people of faith and prayer often uninformed by living revelation of “just” and peace rooted relationships with each other and with God?

Edith W. Bristow, Third Vice-President, NCMC, remarked:

“Dear Fellow, Christian Workers: In the past year I have thought much about the vast amount of work to be done by our churches. EVERY member is needed in this task. The minister's job extends through the entire week if his perspective is clear and definite. A well-informed laity completes the picture… Surely each of us has seen many people, like Haman, fall in the ditch they dug for others. Our one endeavor is to do right at all costs. All persons should have a conviction; should take a stand - then they will not be swayed, like blades of grass, by every breeze. ‘Be still’; listen to everyone; ask questions if necessary; then consider the evidences and arrive at a sane solution.”

Reflecting on “Displacement and Trauma,” Emilie Townes invites us to:

"allow ourselves to practice the faith-act of lament and allow our days to be shaped by hope rather than walking around the rib bones of nothingness/lament can be a gateway into hope/and hope, in this case, is another way to say faith/a faith that is forged on the hard work of living it/rather than have it handed to us in doctrine or dogmatics/lament, earnest and soul-deep searching, can hold us when we begin again and again/to step out of the folds of old wounds/and live anew.”

     The Thomas stage is a mediating and formative stage before the wholeness stage. Our full identity as Christians and as humans cannot be recognized without attending to our questions and our wounds. Elder Bristow calls us to be ministry and movement driven not personality driven or power-driven disciples. All persons are needed for our shared wholeness. It is possible to organize our lives around policies and practices that enable the full flourishing and provide support for everyone, not just the privileged or the popular. Justice-making is not an episodic commitment, but an outgrowth of everyday Thomas stage audacity to dare to gather and act even amidst impossible odds.

Rev. Yvonne T. Gilmore
Interim Administrative Secretary of the National Convocation
and Associate General Minister of the Christian Church
(Disciples of Christ) in the United States and Canada