To Astonish the Earth

by Dr. Gregory Thompson

My new people,

Thank you so much for the kind welcome you’ve shown to me in my new role as Visiting Theologian for Mission.  I’m grateful to be among you and hopeful that my presence here will support you in your various labors to see love made flesh in the streets of the city.

As my title suggests, my particular role among you is to support you in the work of mission; to further equip you for the work of loving your neighbors and blessing your communities in the name and in the manner of our Lord.  It is exciting work for all of us, and I’m thrilled to be a part of it.

In thinking about how best to do this, my mind ranged (as it often does, as you will soon see) to the faith-animated civil rights work that took place in America in the 1950’s and 1960’s.  In particular, my mind turned to the Reverend James Lawson.

In case you don’t know him, James Lawson has one of the most impressive Civil Rights resumes of anyone out there.  He was imprisoned as a conscientious objector during the Korean War.  He was a missionary in India where he gave himself to the deep study of Gandhian non-violent direct action.  He was one of the architects of the Nashville sit-in movements of 1960.  He was directly involved in the Freedom Rides the following year.  He helped to develop the philosophy of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the student organization which led voter registration initiatives across the South. And he was the leader of the Memphis Sanitation Worker’s Strike in 1968 (famous for the I AM A MAN signs) in which his friend Martin Luther King was murdered.  His impact (and he’s still going at 90!) is incredible.

At the heart of his impact, indeed the center of his ministry, was the conviction that people needed to be trained for mission; that the work we do in the world is the direct fruit of who we are.  As a result, most of Lawson’s work in the Civil Rights movement was the work of formation—of gathering small communities of people and helping them grow into the kinds of people that could bear love into the world.

Over the past years, as I’ve labored to understand Lawson’s vocation of missionary formation, I’ve come to see that his goal through these trainings was to provide those under his care with several things:

First, eyes for our world.  He wanted to help them see the complexity of their current moment and the implications of that moment for themselves and their neighbors.

Second, honesty about ourselves.  He wanted to help them come to terms with the ways in which they—in both their hearts and their behaviors—contribute to the complexity and violence of the world and obstruct its healing.

Third, practices for our growth.  He wanted to provide them not simply with insights, but with patterns of behavior that, if embraced and embodied, could transform them into people with, in King’s words, “the strength to love.”

Lastly, models for action. He wanted to give them—both through examples and through experiences—a vision for what they could actually do in this world.

While I’m no James Lawson (I’m sorry to say), I see my work among you in just this way: I am coming alongside your leaders, and alongside each of you, to support you in the work of understanding your world, discerning your hearts, transforming your practices, and enlarging your imagination for what might be possible in your community.  

Your leaders and I are still talking about the exact shape my work will take among you, especially under the conditions of COVID.  And no doubt, this shape will change and mature as I learn more of what you need.  That said, we do have a few initial ideas, and I want to invite you into them.

First, and of relevance to some of you, I will regularly meet with Russ, the staff, the elders, and the deacons in order to learn their hopes and, in time, resource them as best I can.

Second, and of relevance to all of you, I will be offering an online Fall lecture series for the church (and any of your friends and neighbors) in October.  We’ll be looking at the faith-based civil rights movement (see, I told you!) in more detail and learning what they have to teach us. Please be on the lookout for information about time and dates in future communications.

Third, and most immediately, I will be writing a weekly post for you directly related to Lawson’s themes above.  Sometimes these posts will be oriented toward helping you understand the context in which we live and labor.  At other times they will be oriented toward helping you identify and engage with the reality of our inner lives.  At still other times they will be oriented toward specific practices that we can engage together.  

And lastly, at other times they will be oriented toward providing you with models for action, inspiring examples of possibility.  But in all things, they will be oriented toward supporting you in the work of Christian mission in the world as we find it.  

As I learn more of you and as the world begins to take on some sense of normalcy (whenever that is) my work will certainly change shape—not least in my ability to join you on some Sunday mornings.  But for now, this is the plan.

And what will be the fruit of our work together?  I don’t know, of course.  But I have hopes; hopes best summarized by something James Lawson once said to me.  It was March of 2019 and I was in Memphis.  I was standing inside Historic Clayborn Temple, the site of the Sanitation Worker’s Strike, waiting for him to arrive for a training with our small staff.  Looking nervously through the window, I saw him make his way up the stairs and through those historic doors.  Straightening my tie and extending my hand, I awkwardly told him who I was and how grateful I was to meet him.  After shaking my hand, he put both of his hands on my shoulders and, after looking me in the eye for a moment, he said to me, “Young man, I hope that you will do things here that astonish the earth.”  

That is my hope, for myself, for you, and for our life together: to astonish the earth.