LONG BEFORE the coronavirus inspired congregations to gather outside of a sanctuary, Emily M.D. Scott and Anna Woofenden birthed congregations (St. Lydia’s Dinner Church in Brooklyn, N.Y., and the Garden Church in San Pedro, Calif., respectively) that shed pageantry and focused on the basics: bread, cup, and looking-a-person-deep-in-the-eye connection.
Around a dinner table and in an urban garden, these two scrappy congregations grew through environmental disasters (Hurricane Sandy and a multiyear California drought), confrontations with external and internal classism and racism, and the joys and griefs of bringing a new vision of ekklesia into the world.
It is rare to see the tangled roots of a church plant. Yet, both authors share insecurities about failed worship services, unstable budgets, and the long loneliness that comes with church leadership. The vivid character development, precise detail, and theological depth of both narratives make the reader feel at home in the possibility of worship beyond pew-lined sanctuaries.
Woofenden’s narrative has two foundations: her Swedenborgian heritage’s call to see God anew in each generation, and the undeniable connection between the soil of the earth and the soul of God. Meanwhile, Scott brings to life the people of St. Lydia’s with such detail that the reader can smell the rosemary Communion bread.
Whatever or wherever church may be in the future (post-pandemic future and also heaven-future), these two books show God coming alive in communities when people are invited to move their hands along with their spirits. Whether washing dishes in a soapy basin after a communal meal or using a garden hoe to plant tomatoes, when our physical hands move, our souls more easily connect. Woofenden quotes her grandfather, also a minister, who understood this embodied faith: “Love, by its very nature, must be doing something.”
Both authors ultimately departed the communities they planted, leaving them to bloom on their own under new leadership. Finishing the final chapters of both narratives, I held the grief of Scott and Woofenden tightly. Just as it was difficult for both pastors to leave, it was hard for me to walk away from the people of St. Lydia’s and the Garden Church after getting to know them through the story of their becoming.
Scott paraphrases Flannery O’Connor in the introduction to her book: “If communion is symbolism, then to hell with it.” Both these memoirs have convinced me that if the church is not offering people an invitation to use our hands (to plant, to paint, to bake, to create) then to hell with that too.
For All Who Hunger: Searching for Communion in a Shattered World by Emily M.D. Scott. Convergent Books.
This Is God's Table: Finding Church Beyond the Walls by Anna Woofden. Herald Press.
Rev. Kaeley McEvoy is the the fellowship program director and staff chaplain at Sojourners.
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