The People vs. The Death Penalty Film Series

Death Penalty Action, in conjunction with Red Letter Christians and The Wonder Brothers, has been working for over a year to fund and produce a documentary series about the people impacted by the death penalty and those fighting to abolish it. We are creating eight compelling mini-documentaries, each one focusing on the voices of experience. The first four episodes have been released and can be viewed here. The third video is shared below.

The next round of filming started on March 1 in Texas, so it is not too late to become a sponsor. To support this project, visit the website to learn more and how you can help with this crowd-funded effort.

EVENT OPPORTUNITY! You can schedule any of the people featured in these videos to come to your school, faith community or civic group by using this form.

Ron McAndrew works to stop executions and end the death penalty, and he does so from the unusual platform of having carried out executions in the name of the people of Florida. In this brief film, Ron shares how his role as an executioner shaped his life and turned him from a staunch advocate for executions to a leading voice against the death penalty. Ron is active in the Catholic Church and serves on the Advisory Committee for Death Penalty Action. He is also active with Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. Ron no longer travels, but he may at times be available to share his powerful story virtually.

Support Ron and others through this GoFundMe page.

The People vs. The Death Penalty Film Series

Death Penalty Action, in conjunction with Red Letter Christians and The Wonder Brothers, has been working for over a year to fund and produce a documentary series about the people impacted by the death penalty and those fighting to abolish it. We are creating eight compelling mini-documentaries, each one focusing on the voices of experience. The first four episodes have been released and can be viewed here. The second video is shared below.

The next round of filming started on March 1 in Texas, so it is not too late to become a sponsor. To support this project visit the website to learn more and how you can help with this crowd-funded effort.

EVENT OPPORTUNITY! You can schedule any of the people featured in these videos to come to your school, faith community or civic group by using this form.

Derrick Jamison works to stop executions and end the death penalty, and he does so from the unusual platform of having been wrongly sentenced to death for a crime he had nothing to do with. In this brief film, Derrick shares about how twenty years on Ohio’s death row impacted him and his work to stop executions for both the innocent and the guilty. Derrick is a member of Witness to Innocence (bio here), an organization comprised of exonerated death row survivors and their families. He is also an Advisory Committee member of Death Penalty Action and active with Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, Ohioans to Stop Executions, and other organizations.

Support Derrick through his GoFundMe page.

The People vs. The Death Penalty Film Series

Death Penalty Action, in conjunction with Red Letter Christians and The Wonder Brothers, has been working for over a year to fund and produce a documentary series about the people impacted by the death penalty and those fighting to abolish it. We are creating eight compelling mini-documentaries, each one focusing on the voices of experience. The first four episodes have been released and can be viewed here. The second video is shared below.

The next round of filming started on March 1 in Texas, so it is not too late to become a sponsor. To support this project visit the website to learn more and how you can help with this crowd-funded effort.

EVENT OPPORTUNITY! You can schedule any of the people featured in these videos to come to your school, faith community or civic group by using this form.

Derrick Jamison works to stop executions and end the death penalty, and he does so from the unusual platform of having been wrongly sentenced to death for a crime he had nothing to do with. In this brief film, Derrick shares about how twenty years on Ohio’s death row impacted him and his work to stop executions for both the innocent and the guilty. Derrick is a member of Witness to Innocence (bio here), an organization comprised of exonerated death row survivors and their families. He is also an Advisory Committee member of Death Penalty Action and active with Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, Ohioans to Stop Executions, and other organizations.

Support Derrick through his GoFundMe page.

The People vs. The Death Penalty Film Series

Death Penalty Action, in conjunction with Red Letter Christians and The Wonder Brothers, has been working for over a year to fund and produce a documentary series about the people impacted by the death penalty and those fighting to abolish it. We are creating eight compelling mini-documentaries, each one focusing on the voices of experience. The first four episodes have been released and can be viewed below. The next round of filming starts on March 1 in Texas, so it is not too late to become a sponsor. To support this project scroll down on how you can help with this crowd-funded effort.

EVENT OPPORTUNITY! You can schedule any of the people featured in these videos to come to your school, faith community or civic group by using this form.

For more information, visit the website. 

SueZann Bosler works to stop executions and end the death penalty, and she does so from the unusual platform of having witnessed her father’s murder and being stabbed and left for dead herself. In this brief film, SueZann shares how she and her father were attacked in their parsonage, and how she came to realize the healing power of forgiveness that was taught to her by her father, Rev. Billy Bosler, a Brethren minister.

SueZann is active in the Brethren Church. She is a co-founder of the Journey of Hope… From Violence to Healing, an organization led by murder victim family members opposed to the death penalty. She is also an Advisory Committee member of Death Penalty Action and active with Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

Support SueZann through her GoFundMe page.

The following article is adapted from KTF Press’ new book, Faith Unleavened by Tamice Spencer-Helms. You may also listen to the podcast episode of Shake the Dust to hear Tamice reading this excerpt.

I arrived as a new intern at the mission’s base of a large, Midwestern, mostly white ministry in 2007. I had full confidence in the organization I was joining. People in charismatic circles knew it as a place where God was moving. It had an atmosphere where Heaven was “open” and the “fire on the altar” never went out. People who joined saw themselves as “special friends” of Jesus, like the disciples in his inner circle. 

Of course, I was the lonely only in many meetings, but I was used to that by this point in my journey with White Jesus and his followers. Being Black in a white ministry in a red state hit different during the Obama years, though. Barack Obama’s campaign was an exciting time for my family and for many people with skin like mine. My brother and sister-in-law stood in line outside for hours early in the morning so they could vote before classes started at their HBCU. My mom and dad texted me pictures with grins and stickers saying “Yes, We Can” and “I Voted.” They even sent me a picture of my nephew holding hands with Obama at the Democratic National Convention.

The Obamas made me feel proud, but I was too ashamed of that pride to tell anyone at the ministry. It would have made them question my devotion to Jesus. The relatively few Black staff were all at war within ourselves in one way or another. The white people kept reminding us that we were different by laying their hands on us unprompted and praying for “your community.” The Black ministry leaders, who didn’t seem to be at war within themselves at all, constantly exhorted us to show allegiance to Jesus above all else. 

Many of my Black siblings walked out during this time. I should have, but I didn’t think I could. I was so afraid of being wrong about God. I was going to be faithful to Jesus even if it cost me all my friends and family. 

When MSNBC announced that Obama had won the election, the leaders of the ministry called everyone into a Solemn Assembly. I sat down and was pulling out my Bible when my phone rang. It was my grandmother. A wave of remorse and regret came over me. 

Her name was Dr. Leah Naomi Omega Goldsborough Hasty. I called her Mom-Mom. She grew up in a segregated town on the eastern shore of Maryland. She was the second youngest of twelve siblings. They hunted their own food, and they all shared one outhouse. Mom-Mom had seen so much, done so much, and this election victory must have felt like her experiences had not been in vain. But here I was in a quiet room of devastated white people. I was grateful for the opportunity to step outside. 

“Hello?” I answered the phone. I could hear people in the background cheering and crying.

“Hi … Meecie?” 

“Yes! Hi, Mom-Mom!”

“Are you watching the news?”

“No, Ma’am. I’m at a prayer meeting.” 

“A prayer meeting?”

“Yes.”

It took a moment for her to reply. 

“Oh, well, it’s a momentous night, and I was just calling to celebrate and say I love you.”

“I love you too, Mom-Mom. Thanks for calling. Tell everybody hi for me.”

“I will. Take care of yourself.”

“I will.”

Click.

I headed back into the assembly. The juxtaposition between my life before and after I met White Jesus was never more jarring than the moment I opened that door. The room was an echo chamber where white intransigence obstructed Black jubilation. My family was celebrating. My church was crying. 

As I sat back down, I pushed away the rumbling of roiling memories of stories my grandmother had told me that were threatening to erupt inside me and disrupt the noiseless gathering. I remembered her telling me that my great grandmother, Ida Jane, worked for a wealthy plantation owner as a laundress and maid. One day while ironing, she laid a white sheet out on the board and saw two holes. It was a Ku Klux Klan hood. She folded the uniform up, put it in a drawer, and gave the missus her notice. 

Then there was the time Mom-Mom took the train to hear Mary McLeod Bethune speak at a convention. She had complained that she looked ugly because of a scar that developed on her face after she fell onto a metal can. Ida Jane dragged Mom-Mom to the convention to show her that worth comes from the heart and mind, not outer beauty. 

Mom-Mom marched for voting rights and participated in the sit-in that desegregated the ice cream shop in her neighborhood. She always said she did the latter because Ida Jane loved French vanilla. 

White Jesus needed me to forget these stories in order to follow him. Myths like him can only function in the absence of reality. Story is too powerful. Notions, fabrications, and falsehoods cannot withstand the test of a testimony. White Jesus cannot endure the presence of people who need real-life liberation because his architect was the imaginations of the privileged. He needed me to downplay my inheritance because he could not stand up to it. 

It was the last year of Obama’s first term when Trayvon Martin died. After his reelection, he went on national TV and said Trayvon could have been his son. I wondered if the president wasn’t getting any sleep either. He may have been the only person who spoke to what I was feeling at that time. The pastor sure as hell didn’t. That was the moment I finally let the dissonance in my soul take the reins. The heat from my tears washed the scales out of my eyes. Someone—and certainly not just anyone—in a position of power had actually named my experience and validated the pain I was in. 

There is hardly anything I regret more than missing out on the joy of Obama’s election—such a crucial moment in the story Blackness is telling—because I was bowing to White Jesus. I can’t help but feel a little like Ida Jane when I think about how Trayvon woke me up to the white supremacy in my theology. I’d stretched white evangelicalism all the way out over the years, and I, too, found holes. 

I think my grandmother always knew that day would come. Mom-Mom died while I was in the middle of writing this very essay. I find comfort and redemption in the fact that I drove her to the polls to elect the first Black, female Vice President of the United States. I held her storied hands while Kamala Harris was sworn in. A cancerous tumor had grown in on the jaw where the scar was. She was having trouble talking, but she managed a “go girl!” when Amanda Gorman let her literary light shine. She squeezed my hand when Michelle gave Kamala a fist bump on her way out of the arena, and I squeezed back. I’d finally come home. 

When I told her I wanted to write about my journey one day, Mom-Mom winked at me. I’m winking back at her now.

Excerpt from Tamice Spencer-Helms’ Faith Unleavened, published February 2023 by KTFPress.com. Used by permission.

Shane Claiborne and Diana Oestreich in an impromptu and powerful revisiting of the events of the Iraqi bombing from 20 years ago.

Editor’s Note: This piece was originally published by Jeff Hood at Patheos and is published here with permission.

*This is my account of the final conversation I had with Arthur Brown, Jr. (as his spiritual advisor) immediately before he was executed by the State of Texas on March 9, 2023.

Danger always seems to lurk in spaces where we don’t know what’s next.  I guess that’s the nature of danger…the unknown.

Door after door opened and shut.  I didn’t know where I was going.  I just knew that I had to walk by faith and not by sight.  When the last one opened, I didn’t even know it was the last one.  I just knew I had to walk through it.

A few steps in front of me, Arthur Brown, Jr. sat in a small cage.  Immediately, Arthur stood up and placed his hands against the bars.  I quickly reciprocated.  To be honest, I didn’t come in with much to say.  How do you plan for a conversation that?  This brother had just an hour to live.  I felt a huge burden to offer something meaningful…something worth the usage of such precious time.  So, I uttered one last prayer.  Then, I opened my mouth.

Innocence is a loaded word.  Arthur used it often.  How can someone be innocent and be in such a circumstance?  Whether we admit it or not, that’s how most of us initially respond to such claims.  I don’t think we can help it.  Skepticism is a big part of who we are.  From the moment I met Arthur, I felt like there was something different about him.  I told him, “When the Spirit in me met the Spirit in you, I knew you.”  Throughout time and space, God has always had a way of joining us together.  We started with the Spirit…and in that difficult hour we were going to finish with the Spirit.

In that dark dungeon, I told Arthur that I felt like the Spirit was especially strong with him tonight.  “Dr. Hood, I’m just ready to go home.  Can you tell me about home?”  I didn’t hesitate.  The mood lifted a bit.  It was like we were waiting on a bus to pick him up.  I guess we were both waiting on the route that would take him home.

Over the years, Arthur had known love.  When I asked him what love felt like, he pointed his finger in every direction and sarcastically replied, “The opposite of this.”  I agreed.  We were in a place where people killed each other.  I mean the door to the execution chamber was right behind us.  Until it was time, I invited him to live into the opposite of all of this.  Perhaps, we could make heaven appear on earth.  In that moment, he began to relax.

“I think people should be jealous of you right now.”  Arthur couldn’t believe that I’d said such a thing.  Sensing his surprise, I explained, “You are about to die for something meaningful and real…your principles…your truth.  Most outside of these walls will waste away with no clear purpose whatsoever.”  I could feel his Spirit growing stronger.  “Home is about the fulfillment of purpose.  Your purpose is to speak your truth.”

“I feel like Dr. King must have felt in Memphis the night before his assassination.”  I found the connection to be incredibly powerful.  King died knowing that his death would point to the promised land of freedom.  I too knew that Arthur’s death would point in the same direction.  “Keep pointing people home.”  I could feel the strength rising in his voice.

“What do you think I should say in there?”  I knew that Arthur was talking about his final statement.  I didn’t hesitate.  “Say the words that God has placed on your heart.”  “I got words of liberation on my heart right now Dr. Hood.”  “Say that then.”  “But how?”  “Just tell your truth.  God is in that truth.”  “That is the way home.”  “I think I know the way.”  “You are the way my friend.”  “Listen to the God who is in you.”

Leaning forward, I prayed, “God, give Arthur Your strength in this moment of trial…put Your words in his mouth…and seal his soul in You…the Home of all Homes.”

In that moment, I looked into Arthur’s eyes and told him I loved him.  After making me promise that I’d keep up the fight of abolition, he replied, “I’ll see you at Home.”

Editor’s Note: This piece was originally published by Jeff Hood at Patheos and is published here with permission.

I used to think that God was everywhere…but God don’t live in spaces like this.

I’d seen it all in pictures before.  The dim lights.  The harsh colors.  The small windows.  I don’t think it would’ve mattered how many times I’d studied those pictures before.  Nothing could have prepared me for standing in the midst of it all.  Death was now a place…a physical reality.  There would be no going back.  The valley of the shadow of death was more than just metaphor now.

I started to shake from the moment I entered the room.  What else was I supposed to do?  How else was I supposed to deal with all of the emotions bottled up within?  I was about to explode.

Completely immobilized, Arthur Brown laid on the gurney in the middle of the room.  When he saw me, he started to shake his foot.  I could see the white sheet moving rapidly.  I knew this was his way of telling me to stay strong.  I was trying.

My rosary cut into my hand.

Though the protocol had been shared with me, I was lost.  I couldn’t remember when I was supposed to speak.  It was so strange to have an order of service for an execution.  Propping my back up against the wall, I kept my legs straight.  On multiple occasions, I looked to the agent that was in charge of escorting me for guidance.  Then, the moment came.

I read as loudly as I possibly could.

Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and began to teach them. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and, making her stand before all of them, they said to him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground. When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, sir.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.”

Nobody seemed to listen to the words of Jesus.  “Let anyone who is without sin…”  Either that or all of those who were participating were sinless.

The time came for Arthur to give his final statement.  In our visit before the execution, I’d encouraged him to use this opportunity to speak his truth to the world.  He did.

What is occurring here tonight is not justice, it’s murder of an innocent man for a murder that occurred in 1992. For the last 30 years I’ve proven my innocence to the courts, but the courts blocked me and then refused me access to the ballistics for 20 years; I’ve proven facts and ballistics to be false. It’s been 30 years now, the state refused to turn over evidence. Nine of the ten trial motions were filled for discovery of evidence, but each were denied each time. I asked for DNA, I was denied DNA. My co-defendant was executed in 2006 and if I’m innocent he was innocent and they killed an innocent man, and the state doesn’t want the truth to come out. They won’t allow me DNA. The victim’s son identified on audio tape it wasn’t me or the co-defendant. The state hid the evidence so long and good that my own attorneys couldn’t find it. Tonight, Texas will kill a second innocent man for a murder that occurred in 1992. I have no further words.

Before the poison completely took over, I told Arthur that he was loved.  “Keep fighting!  Use my truth…”  Right before he lost consciousness, he told me he loved me too.

For the next few minutes, I watched Arthur struggle to breathe.  In the midst of it all, all I could do was shake.  As the minutes grew longer, I kept asking God to forgive us.  Close to 17 minutes passed before Arthur was pronounced dead.  Those were some of the longest minutes of my life.  I couldn’t figure out what was taking so long.  How hard can it be to kill a man?

Just as quickly as it started…it was over.

The agent who had escorted me the entire night walked me out the door into the night.

I hugged him.  While I’m sure he thought it was strange, it felt like the most human thing to do on such an inhumane night.

I’m still looking for God…

*Last night, I became the first spiritual advisor to accompany the condemned into the execution chamber in two different states, Oklahoma and now Texas.  I was with Scott Eizember when he was executed on January 12, 2023.  Now, I’d been with Arthur Brown on March 9.  I’m still processing what it all means.

Prophetic Voices in the Public Square, a collaboration between Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice and University of Pennsylvania’s Office of Social Equity & Community, focuses attention on the life and practice of people of faith doing good and prophetic work in the world.  In this series, faith leaders, activists, and educators reflect on their faith journey, calling, and impact of pursuing justice in their contexts.  Launched during the holy seasons in spring 2023, this interfaith collection offers time and space for individual and group reflection on the prophetic calls to action within our sacred traditions.

Resistance always begins with curiosity, with questions. We often do not ask our questions, not because we are afraid of the answer, but because there might not be a clear answer waiting, or because our communities have taught us that questions are a sign of weakness.

So, what is resistance?

The scientific term resistance refers to a force, such as friction, that operates opposite the direction of motion of a body and tends to prevent or slow down the body’s motion. It is a measure of the degree to which a substance impedes the flow of electric current induced by a voltage.

Resistance is measured in ohms, named after German physicist Georg Ohm, who studied the relationship between voltage, currents, and resistance.

I’d like us to understand resistance as the way we use our everyday lives to exert energy against the dangerous status quo of our time. But resistance cannot only be about what we are against. When we choose to resist something or someone, we are also choosing something else on the other side. Perhaps we are choosing ourselves; perhaps we are choosing an inclusive love or a more just society. We resist ableism or racism because we know there is a better way—this is the way resistance works, and we must both find and create that better way together.

We begin to recognize these currents in our lives, not by ohms, but by the change we notice in ourselves as we choose love and solidarity, as we resist hate. But it must begin with us, in our Personal Realm of resistance. It must begin with our questions.

The fear is in that in-between space of not knowing, the emptiness where we have to wait for an uncomfortably long time to come to any sort of conclusion about who we are or what sort of world we live in. Often, it’s not at all about the answers but about our willingness to step outside of what we know and ask the question in the first place.

This first realm we find ourselves in is an important one— foundational even. That doesn’t mean we always live in the Personal Realm, but this time of going inward, of showing love for ourselves, saying as Lizzo sings, “I’m my own soulmate,” takes a lot of courage and a lot of time, and our questions are always a part of that resistance work.

In the past, I had questions like, Why am I so scared all the time? Is God really this patriarchal guy with a gavel and a list of my sins, waiting in heaven to damn me to hell? What lies have I believed about my body? (I am still asking these questions! That is the journey.)

Curiosity takes root in us as children; I truly believe that. But as we get older, we are taught to trade curiosity for security, and often that security is baked into the status quo of society, of capitalism, which in reality is anything but secure for many of us. Instead of engaging with Mother Earth and the creatures around us, we are taught to commodify the land. We are taught to trust our religious leaders, parents, and teachers more than our own sacred instincts. As a result, we stop listening to our gut, to our hearts, to our own knowing. As Sadhguru writes in his book Karma, “We have frittered away our freedom, bartered and sold it to external authorities, whether parental, religious, cultural, or political. Instead of exercising the freedom of consciousness, of choice, we have bought into the voices that have told us that to be human is to be limited, even sinful.” I learned in sixth grade how to balance a checkbook, but I was never truly taught how to speak with our nonhuman relatives in a sustainable and relational way.

So as adults, many of us on the path of healing are realizing that we must reclaim our curiosity toward ourselves and the land around us; we must start asking questions we didn’t ask before. As we do so, things begin shifting, and, naturally, resistance follows. For many of us, this is also where we begin the journey of deconstruction. This questioning and deconstruction journey can be difficult and messy, but it is a start, and it is holy work, even if in the end we no longer believe what we believed before.

I have experienced different seasons, different layers of deconstruction throughout my life. In college, I took a world literature class that burst the small evangelical bubble I’d experienced growing up and helped me (painfully) realize that the holy texts I took literally are not holy to everyone but are complex works of literature to read, examine, and critique when possible. My Jewish friends have taught me that their sacred texts also matter to them because they can fight with the texts, ask questions, and go on a journey with themselves and the Sacred. But because I did not grow up knowing much about critique or critical thinking, I was scared of opening up my worldview in some ways. But once I did, I found it liberating.

Later, I began a major in social work that forced me into powerful, nuanced conversations about culture, trauma, belief, sexual orientation, poverty, and so much more. The questions that had been buried deep inside me began to rise to the surface and ended up becoming the beautiful beginnings of my deconstruction journey, the chance to ask questions and along the way to critique my childhood faith and my experiences in America, and to ask what my story means to me.

Content taken from Living Resistance by Kaitlin B. Curtice, © 2023. Used by permission of Brazos Press.

“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’” Matthew 25:34-40 (NIV)

Church didn’t prepare me for this.

Oh sure, the Church taught me this scripture, drilled this parable into my head with marked intensity. My evangelical church organized monthly “serve days” at our local food pantry, collections of toiletries and basic care items for halfway houses, a coat drive the the cold that served double duty as both “ministry” and “cleaning out the closets before Santa fills them with more stuff.” To be fair, these efforts were always well-intentioned, the projects often championed by those who were deeply committed and connected to the benefitting organizations. I can’t deny that thanks to these events, canned goods got rotated, men and women transitioning from incarceration had clean hair, and children were kept warm with snuggly-soft-from-wear coats church kids had outgrown. But by and large, Church gave me a list of projects to complete, boxes to check off my to-do list for being a good Christian.

Jesus’ famous sheep-and-goats parable, however, isn’t about doing the right things. This would have frustrated my younger self, because obviously Jesus has just given a list of things to do! It’s right there in black and white (and red, if you’re old school like me): feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, visit the sick and imprisoned. Boom, boom, boom, boom, now I’m a sheep (baa baa baa baa), not a goat (nope, nope). I can collect canned goods for VBS (always cans of corn because they weigh more than boxed macaroni for half the price apiece), make cookies for a new neighbor, donate my old/worn out/dated clothes to a charity, call my grandma when she is sick, and… prisoners, hmm, they’re dangerous and probably a bad influence, so maybe I’ll just visit a nursing home or something for extra credit instead.

Earlier in Matthew, Jesus told another story that used to terrify the version of me who thought like this:

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’” Matthew 7:21-23, NIV

Jesus clearly says that there are people who follow him, who do great things because of him, even perform miracles – real miracles! – in his name, but somehow they are excluded from his kingdom. People can be doing the right things, but that’s missing the point. Church taught me all the right things to do, but it didn’t teach me how to love my neighbor. It was more worried about how to fix them.

Truthfully, and by God’s grace, I learned love from my parents, my neighbors, my 3rd grade Sunday School teacher and my 5th grade public school teacher. These are people whose names you will never see in lights, who probably won’t win any awards for their service, and many of whom don’t even realize what an impact they had on me. Because Church has taught us we have to “do something BIG for God,” we often feel like nothing we do matters if it doesn’t at least earn a 2 minute segment on the local news channel. I spent years addicted to these grand events, meanwhile paralyzed by a sense of inadequacy in the everyday moments, but in truth:

• Love is volunteering to teach CPR classes on weeknights so maybe someday someone might save a life
• Love is walking up to someone’s door for a conversation rather than texting
• Love is playing board games with the shy kid in youth group who doesn’t want to play basketball with everyone else
• Love is making dinner and remembering your friend really likes this dish, so you make an extra one and take it over
• Love is calling a single mom and inviting her teenager to come over while you’re changing your oil so he can learn to do it for her
• Love is reading a book your mother-in-law loves just so you can engage with her over something she finds important
• Love is holding a baby while her mom takes a much-needed nap
• Love is spending 20 minutes listening to a kid geek out about Minecraft/dinosaurs/parakeets/baking/whatever thing they are immensely passionate about, even if you have zero interest in that subject
• Love is inviting people into your messy house to eat hot dogs off paper plates, because hospitality is more important than presentation
• Love is showing up
• Love is doing something you don’t have to do
• Love is not actually that hard. You just have to say yes.

The last few years, it has been incredibly difficult for me to go to church, but I have found serving Jesus is remarkably easy. To be certain, it’s almost never convenient, almost always means saying no to something I wanted or planned on, and oftentimes there is no immediate payoff or reward. Loving my neighbor doesn’t fit into a 2-hour block every 5th Sunday of the month, it usually doesn’t involve an Instagram reel of highlights, and if I’m doing it right, almost no one will notice at all (Matthew 6:3). But when we pray for Holy Spirit to open our eyes to opportunities around us, it turns out she is incredibly willing to oblige. 

The heavily programmed and strategically marketed projects churches put on do give people chances to connect with organizations and individuals in need. The best case scenario [that pastors repeat to themselves when repeatedly working these into their church calendars] is these events spark passion in participants to continue serving beyond that one-time event. But let’s be honest: most of the time people use church-sponsored events to pat themselves on the back for doing a good deed – usually with a strong bent toward privileged white saviorism – and then get back to the regularly scheduled busyness of raising money for expensive overseas mission trips, attending worship conferences more ostentatious than a Lady Gaga concert, and planning grandiose church festivals complete with carnival rides, helicopter egg drops, and door prizes like the latest gaming system or semi-automatic rifle. Church gave me a list of chores that consumed so much of my time and energy I didn’t have time to notice my literal neighbors that live on my street or in my community. It taught me that a Big God deserves Big Love, so I couldn’t waste time on little things like being present to notice the needs around me. This way of serving Jesus led me straight to Matthew 7:22, doing many impressive works in his name while completely overlooking actual obedience.

To be sure, the big things bring much glory to God as well. Founding justice organizations and spearheading policy change and making a difference on a large scale matter. But all of those great accomplishments are the culmination of thousands of small ones – single guns turned to garden tools, individual phone calls made to legislators, initial conversations with stakeholders, moments listening to the marginalized. It all began by someone opening their eyes to the people around them and saying yes to love.

Lord, when did we see you as someone in need and offer you simple love and kindness? The King will reply, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these, you did it for me.”

When I was thirteen, I had a green faux leather Living Bible with illustrations of a very 70s Jesus. For whatever reason, I flipped to the beginning of the New Testament and read the sermon on the mount for the first time. It changed the direction of my life. It also ignited my love for the Bible and theology. To this day, I enjoy reading, studying, learning and discussing the Bible and what it means. At one time I thought these were a sign of spiritual maturity. I even went to seminary to study. I soon found out that the Bible and theology have its place and purpose – to point us to Jesus Christ and to foster our love for people.

Throughout the years, I learned to measure everything I heard – messages from pastors, books, and individuals – with the person of Jesus Christ. I never got the bracelet, but I was a “WWJD” guy. Although I frequently failed, my Christian walk was measured by how I lived, not just what was in my head.

One of the things I liked about Jesus was his fierce adherence to love, even in the face of upsetting the religious status quo.

These religious leaders wanted to protect the system. They believed God wanted them to be gatekeepers of behavior. In the gospels, Jesus was showing them another way.

Today, many Christians worry about compromising with sin, becoming like the world, or going down a slippery slope. They live the Christian life walking through what they see as a minefield of temptation. The warnings are often manifested from a deep dread of becoming like secular culture. Terms like “social justice,” “deconstruction,” “gender issues,” and “liberal theology” spark a christianized fight or flight response.

Sometimes, these Christians feel victimized, because they believe their culture and country have become less “Christian” in the past 60 years. For them, society, and even the church has compromised, given in, or become more like “the world.”

So their focus is to set oneself apart from the world based on behavioral codes and following theological categories. Besides believing in Jesus, one must believe in the “Biblical” definition of marriage, male headship, the role of government, racism (or lack thereof), human sexuality, etc. It’s a long list.

Like Jesus, the apostle Paul got a lot of pushback for following a message of love and dismissing religious trappings. To those that would focus on these, Paul gives a simple, summative statement: “The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.” Galatians 5:6. 

In Galatians, Paul was writing to a group of Jewish followers of Christ that was trying to hold onto a religious practice meant as a symbol for God’s chosen people. Circumcision was instituted during the time of Abraham and reinforced later under Moses. It was repeated in Scripture and was a physical hallmark of faith. Paul was warning them that this observance of circumcision was getting in the way. What had started as a symbol of obeying God had metastasized into a distraction from following Jesus. Adhering to these commands had become central, instead of Jesus of Nazareth. 

And that’s what’s happening today.

Instead of centering on the person of Jesus Christ, there is a focus on knowledge of the Bible, finely tuned theology, and an arbitrary moral code. This is where it gets tricky. Every Christian has a set of beliefs. At one time or another, they have to determine which of these beliefs are central to their faith. Call it deconstruction, call it Bible meditation, or just call it thinking – every Christian has to determine which beliefs are essential, and which are not.

Sadly, In the evangelical world, any examination of faith, rethinking of what the Bible says, or asking difficult questions is usually met with correction born of fear.

In reality, Jesus and Paul were the most radical deconstructionists compared to many ex-evangelicals today. Jesus abolished the dietary law in the gospels and in the book of Acts (Mark 7:14-23, Acts 10:9-16). Jesus redefined the Sabbath (Mark 2:23-28). Jesus and the disciples broke down walls between Jews and non-Jews.

But won’t that focus on love devolve into people behaving however they want? That was probably the question posed to Paul. In Romans 13, Paul reassures the believers that “the law” is fulfilled by obeying one command: “Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. The commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery,’ ‘You shall not murder,’ ‘You shall not steal,’ ‘You shall not covet,’ and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfillment of the law.”

It seems too easy to be believed. It’s certainly simple, but a faith of love is much more demanding than box-checking. It’s a lot easier for me to refrain from murdering my neighbor than to actually love them, care for them, and work for their best.

When we stop living by “Christian rules,” and simply follow Jesus in the way of love, the Christian life becomes less about us and more about God and others. We become more compassionate, more loving, and for all intents and purposes more “Christian.”

And when we let go of the fear or the need to control those around us, we look more and more like Jesus.

At this point, I’m often accused of ignoring God’s judgment and wrath in the Bible – that I’m picking and choosing which parts of the Bible to obey. They have a point. I was taught to take the Bible as a whole and look for overarching themes. It seems that occurrences of God’s wrath were slow, rare and had the purpose of restoration, not retribution. God’s higher purpose was and is redemption, relationship, and yes, love.

The Bible is a complicated and ancient manuscript. In fact, Christians that use the phase, “the Bible clearly says” without explanation is a sure indicator they haven’t read much of it.

When I made my convictions on LGBTQ issues public, an old friend, who happened to be an evangelical pastor, reached out to me. He was kind. He was respectful. He questioned me, and later recommended a book I should read.

I assume his motives were good, but it had been decades – decades – since we had spoken. And this was the issue he wanted to catch up on. I got the feeling he was trying to straighten me out for what he thought was my own good. 

I still consider him a brother and a kindhearted fellow, but it made me think that perhaps he’s missing something important in Christianity — something that the church is missing.

I wish that day I had told him to not be afraid. That Jesus was bigger than our theology. That the only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.

In the Sermon on the Mount, I read we have to walk through the narrow gate to receive life: “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” (Matthew 7:13-14)

As a young Christian, I thought the narrow gate had to do with personal morality, purity, and living a “sin-free life.” As I’ve grown older and hopefully more mature, I’ve learned the wide road has more to do with legalism and religiosity, vs Jesus’s narrow gate of love.

What Christianity needs is not the fearful, careful gatekeeping of behavior, but the robust, courageous, life-giving faith Jesus modeled, and his followers wrote about 2000 years ago.

Until speaking with Columbus megachurch pastor Rich Nathan, I never knew about the “gloomiest city in America” list. I live in Charlottesville, VA, which regularly makes the “happiest city in America” list. But Columbus, Ohio’s largest city, gets less sun, more rain, and more snow than Seattle. Gloomy. 

Nevertheless, Rich Nathan has brought the light of the gospel to this city as a pastor for 34 years, until stepping into a pastoral training role in 2021. His journey to a large and thriving 8,000-member congregation spans four decades, and part of that story culminates with a staunch advocacy to repeal the death penalty.  

In our conversation he mentions the 190 people exonerated from death row since the death penalty was reinstated in 1973. This means 190 people were spared from being wrongfully executed, and those were only the mistakes we caught. “That’s stunning,” he says of the number. “That in itself should stop anyone in their tracks. That’s just not a price that America ought to pay. That’s not acceptable.”

But it was only seven years ago that he deeply began to consider what he thought about the death penalty. The road there was long, one that Nathan urges all evangelicals to consider. 

Vineyard Columbus, where Rich Nathan pastors, is part of the Vineyard movement – a denomination of thousands of churches worldwide that places the kingdom of God at the center of their theology. His congregation “began to explore the various rooms of this huge kingdom house.” Their theology allowed them to apply a kingdom mindset to a number of matters, including immigration and racial equity. 

Vineyard Columbus has been a “pro-life church from the beginning,” Nathan says, one “wrapped up in a commitment to life – life that begins with conception.” This was not a partisan matter for them but simply a result of how “our concerns flow from our theology.” 

Life is a key theme in Christian Scripture. “Everything about God is associated with life!” Nathan insists. He then lists several examples: God speaks and there is life; God breathes life into the dust of the ground to make humans; there is the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden; Jesus came so people can “have life and have it abundantly (John 10); Jesus calls himself the “bread of life”; Jesus offers the “water of life.” Nathan concludes, “To know Jesus is to know life. Salvation is all about life, and condemnation is all about death.” 

As Nathan saw the truth of this, so too did his congregation. If God is a God of life, “Then it’s natural for us to protect life… Life in the womb, life on the margins.” 

For life on the margins, Nathan was approached by people in Ohio who asked him to consider a deeper theology of the death penalty. He would have said he held to a position of caring for life from “womb to tomb” – Vineyard Columbus spoke about and worked within abortion and euthanasia spaces – but it took a specific call to see that caring for those on death row is a “natural extension of our consistent pro-life stance.” Not only was this extension logical – life is life – but it is theological. “God’s salvation plan is to restore everything,” which means that “part of the restoration is the restoration of justice.” 

The death penalty is not a restoration of justice but rather a gross application of injustice. Nathan spoke on this at length:

“The death penalty is nearly exclusively applied to those who are poor than to those who are wealthy. It is applied to Black people more than white. It is applied in far more cases per capita involving white murder victims than Black murder victims. When we consider the ultimate penalty of capital punishment, we Christians should care about the inordinate weight of injustice that is present.” 

But the death penalty is “not even on the evangelical radar screen,” Nathan observes. Why not?

First, many evangelicals – and that’s 90-100 million Americans, Wheaton College estimates – think of being an evangelical as a political or cultural matter, while, Nathan insists, being an evangelical “is a theological stance.” 

The word “evangelical” is 500 years old and is based on the Greek word evangelion, meaning the “good news” of Jesus coming to defeat Satan, sin, and death. Being an evangelical means loving Scripture, centering the crucifixion of Jesus, wanting others to be “born again,” and being socially active. “Most people don’t start with theology,” Nathan argues, but rather begin with their political affiliation. “Political affiliations are a better prediction of our views regarding the death penalty than our theology.”

Since many political conservatives support the death penalty – though increasingly fewer and fewer – evangelicals often just go along with fellow political conservatives.  

A second reason evangelicals land on a pro-death penalty stance is a “natural read of the Bible.” Nathan talks about how the death penalty seems to have biblical approval, especially in the Old Testament, and that the New Testament does not seem to reject it. A deeper read of Scripture requires more effort and time, and “there are only so many things people can hold in their head.” Nathan says to think of it like holding bowling balls in your arms. You can only hold so many before dropping some. And the death penalty often gets dropped. 

But the death penalty is not a bowling ball. What’s being dropped from the evangelical agenda by their failure to talk about this in the church is not just an issue. This is about fellow human beings who are made in the image of God. 

Since historically evangelicals have cared about the poor and more recently about racial equity, they can extend this to repealing the death penalty. Aside from the myriad reasons for repeal that are data-supported and reasoned (i.e. the death penalty is racially discriminatory, expensive, arbitrary, fails to maintain public safety, inflicted upon innocent people, and unfairly applied to those with intellectual disabilities and mental illness) many Christians take theological issue with the state meting out death. “After all,” Nathan points out, “we evangelicals worship someone who was falsely arrested, tortured, illegally tried, unfairly sentenced, and executed by the state.”  

Nathan is determined to build a theological space for this logical, theological, neighborly approach to death penalty repeal. “As pastor I must pull on as many doors of this big house as I can, and then instruct others to explore these rooms.”

The biggest barrier is not legal – 23 states have repealed it already, with more on the way – but what Nathan calls “tribal identities and badges of belonging.” While “evangelicals claim that we’re shaped by Scripture,” the reality is that “all of us are shaped by things way beyond Scripture.” A rule of thumb for Christian pilgrims and exiles living in a strange land is to be comfortable being uncomfortable. Christians “ought not to fit comfortably in any pre-packaged political box.” Nathan literally wrote the book on this. In fact, “if you feel really comfortable, there’s something wrong” and one’s political ideology is trumping one’s theology. 

He exhorts congregations to “have discussions about these public policy issues beyond Sunday mornings.” Sunday is a rich space for dialogue, yes, but we need to extend our evangelical fervor beyond a pulpit pronouncement and into our homes, the streets, and legislatures if we are to care for life comprehensively.   

For fellow pastors, who too often solely focus on individual holiness, they must remember that they are also “responsible for discussing the other side of the coin – social holiness.” The pastoral goal should be “to create full-orbed disciples with a thoroughly Christian worldview who approach all of life through the lens of Scripture.”

As evangelicals we regularly pray that God’s will would be done on earth as it is in heaven. For that prayer to be realized God has work for us to do. That work is the construction of spaces, rooms of hospitality, where we welcome people and offer life, both spiritual life that is eternal and physical life that is just. 

After all, we serve a Savior who invites us into the “many rooms” of his house (John 14), a God who “tabernacles” with humans (John 1), a God who welcomes every nation, tribe, and tongue (Rev 7) so that they “may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10). 

That is evangelicalism. That is the good news.

Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. – John 15:4 (ESV)

Sometimes I wonder if we really believe that. When I look around and when I look within, I see us striving to bear fruit on our own. I see us competing and comparing and trying to prove our worth through what we can produce. From the beginning, our call has been to bear fruit. Yet, just as Adam and Eve grasped for the fruit that wasn’t theirs, we fall into the same temptation. We want the fruit, and we want it now.

But bearing fruit takes time. It is a slow and painful process as unhealthy pieces are stripped away to make space for new growth. It requires trust and dependence on our Source. We must recognize and accept that we cannot bear fruit on our own – at least, not the kind that is pure and long-lasting.

We live in a society where fruit is measured in dollar signs and followers, but the fruit that Jesus is talking about won’t be found in the numbers. It can’t be measured or weighed. The fruit that Jesus desires for our lives is love.

Love is what sets us apart as those who follow Jesus. And the love that remains – the love that requires us to lay down our lives – comes from God. That kind of love is not always easy. It’s not something we can fake or force. It’s not something we can strive to produce. The love that Jesus calls us to is cultivated within us when we abide in him and allow him to abide in us. We have to release our grasp on the fruit that we desire in order to allow God’s love to do its work in us.

I’ve been sitting with this quote that continues to draw me into the space of abiding with God…

Any approach to the Christian life that seeks self-improvement as the end goal will fail. A life of prayer, fasting, and spiritual disciplines can easily be a life of empty religious effort if the goal isn’t communion with God. We don’t need self- improvement. We need to come home. – Mike Cosper*

Self-improvement is my inclination. It’s the fruit that I so often seek. I see my lack, my deficiency, my brokenness. I want to be better. I want to do better. So, I strive to fix myself, to change my behavior, to figure it out and bring about the results I desire.

But the gentle whisper simply invites me to come home. It’s a reminder that the Spirit is within and around me. I can trust that I’m surrounded in God’s embrace, that His Spirit is as close as my own breath. I can trust that as I abide in God’s love that I will be made whole, and from that place, I will naturally bear fruit that lasts.

This is an excerpt from the devotional, Lent Reflections. To purchase a digital copy of the weekly devotional and follow along throughout Lent, visit onthesideofgrace.etsy.com.

* Cosper, Mike. Recapturing the Wonder. Illinois, IVP, 2017.

Gracious and Eternal God:
You are the God and Father of our Lord and Savior,
Jesus, the Christ.

Lord God, I thank You for Your grace and Your mercies;
And I thank You that Your faithfulness is everlasting;
enduring the tests of trials and tribulations that
we must endure because of life’s challenges,
and the subtle oppositions that we face throughout our lifetimes.

Lord God, and I thank You, that Your love does not vacillate.
Your love remains steadfast, unmovable,
and always abounding,
unchanged by the multitude of our faults.

Father-God, I lift up those among us that are afflicted with mental illness,
and even demonic possession.
Though we ourselves may not be able to discern the difference,
Your Spirit can!
I pray for these, O Lord God,
that You will loose them from these binding and tormenting oppressions,
and that You will deliver them back unto their families and communities,
free and clothed in their right minds.

Father-God, and I pray for men and women, boys and girls,
that are incarcerated everywhere.
That there will be reformations and restorations
and that this mass incarceration machine may be brought down!
And that this wicked industry, and this vile business,
will be stopped!

I pray also, Father, for those of us that are on death row,
the most crucial of this vile business because of politics.
I pray that You will make a full end of it, O God, and bring to pass your own Word,
“…to deliver those that are appointed to death…” (Psalm 79:11)

Finally, Father,
I pray for Your people (the Church)
that You will stir up in us, O God,
a fire and a compassion for the incarcerated,
and those of us on death-row.
That being led by Your Spirit;
the Church and the Pastors,
may take their place, “the lead,”
in the charge for reforms and restorations.
For so have You ordained for us to do.
That Your compassion and Your mercy, and Your glory
may fill the whole earth.
In the name of Your Holy Son, Jesus,
I pray and I thank You Father,
Amen and Amen.

It all started with an article in my local newspaper.

The article stated over the next 13 months Tennessee would carry out 11 executions! It had been over a decade since the last execution. Now, in a relatively short time, Tennessee would murder 15% of the total population of men and women on death row. Not long after I read the article, I heard the Spirit say, “Go to death row.” At the time I did not know where death row was in Tennessee. Knowing I heard God speak, I did some research, made some phone calls, and by the end of that summer, I made my first visit to Unit Two at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, the home of Tennessee’s death row. That was almost 10 years ago. While 11 executions over 13 months never happened, over the last five years there have been eight executions. I’ve said goodbye to eight friends, all of which were image bearers of the Divine.

I remember my first visit to death row. It was a Friday, and I was to meet with several of the men in Unit 2 who gathered for prayer at noon. While I had been involved in prison ministry off and on since I was a teenager, I knew visiting death row would be different. I was nervous. I didn’t know what to expect. What was it like sitting in prison waiting to die? What would we talk about?

After clearing a metal detector, an x-ray machine, several secured gates and metal doors, I walked into a room where several guys in prison uniforms were sitting around a table. The prison’s chaplain introduced me, and before she could finish the introduction one of the men got up from his chair, approached me with a huge smile, hugged me tight and said, “I have been praying for you.” I was speechless. I stood there and wept. It was a holy moment. With that embrace I knew I was accepted and loved. I went to death row expecting to take Jesus with me. Instead, I met Jesus there. The writer of Hebrews words became real, “Remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison” (Hebrews 13:3).

The name of the man who said he had been praying for me was Kevin Burns, TDOC# 254315. (TDOC stands for “Tennessee Department of Corrections”.) Someone once told me when God gives a gift, God usually wraps it in a person. One of the greatest gifts God has given me is Kevin Burns, also known as “KB.”

KB has been on death row for over 25 years. During much of that time he has served as the chaplain’s assistant to the men in Unit 2. It’s a job in which he gets paid 50 cents an hour. KB and I quickly became friends and co-workers. At least once a week, KB would make his rounds, going cell to cell talking, praying, and encouraging each man on Unit 2. I started join him on these rounds. Over time, through KB, I met all the men on death row. I consider all them my friends. The conversations I have had with each men has been priceless. But the times I have spent talking and praying with KB are treasures I will hide in my heart as long as I live.

One day, after making our rounds, KB and I had an intimate conversation. He expressed how much our friendship meant to him and how all the guys respected me and how I had become the pastor of Unit 2. I told KB how much I loved him and what he meant to me, but I told him he was wrong. I said, “No. I’m not the pastor of Unit 2. You are the pastor to these men. Unit 2 is YOUR church and you are an excellent pastor.” This time KB wept.

As I drove home that day, reflecting on my visit, I heard God’s voice say, “Kevin, if you really believe KB is a pastor, you need to ordain him.” Now I’m weeping…uncontrollably. I pulled my truck to the side of the road and just sat in the presence of Almighty God.

I shared all this with the elders of my church. Without hesitation they agreed KB needed to be ordained. Over the next two years we licensed and ordained Kevin Bernard Burns for the full work of the Gospel Ministry. He is now Rev. Kevin Burns and is one of the associate pastors of Franklin Community Church. The first thing KB did after his ordination was to serve communion to the 40 plus people who witnessed his ordination service. There is nothing more sacred, biblical, and appropriate than receiving the Eucharist from a man condemned to die. If that is not a picture of Jesus, I don’t know what a picture of Jesus is. Personally, KB has become my pastor. I have shared my burdens and struggles with him and sought his wisdom and counsel numerous times. In God’s sovereignty, God allowed me to ordain my own pastor.

A few months after his ordination, I told KB we needed to start a church on death row. There are lots of groups and churches who minister beautifully on death row. There are several times over the course of any week where the men of Unit 2 can gather for Bible study, prayer, and group discussions. But there was no “official” church service. I told KB we needed to start a church, not another Bible study or small group meeting, but a church that followed a liturgy of prayers, Scripture readings, songs, communion, and sermon. Our vision was to start a church for the men on death row, led by the men on death row. And that’s what we did. The church is called, The Church of Life and has been meeting now for five years. Pastor KB preaches every week. During COVID, there was an 18-month period where all programs stopped inside all Tennessee prisons. During that time no volunteers were allowed inside. There were no classes and no Bible studies. However, on Tennessee’s death row there was a church, with their own pastor, that continued to meet (The Church of Life.) Even the guards call Kevin Burns, “Pastor KB.”

Remember when KB hugged me and said, “I have been praying for you”? One day I asked KB what he meant by that. I asked, “How could you pray for me when you did not know me?”

KB said, “For several months I had been praying that God would send a local church pastor to Unit 2. We have a lot of good church volunteers who visit us, but there was no Senior Pastor who came to visit us. I prayed for God to send us a Senior Pastor. That day, when you walked into the room, God said to me, ‘This man is who you have been praying for. I have sent him here for you.’”

I am humbled how God has allowed me to minister to the men on death row, and how they have ministered to me. Recently, the men on Unit 2 gave $500 to my ministry to people experiencing homelessness in my city. These men, all created in the image of God, have changed my life. I will never be the same.

This year, during Lent, reach out to those behind prison walls. Not because they need you, but because you need them.

“May the groans of the prisoners come before you; with your strong arm preserve those condemned to die” (Psalm 79:11).

Editor’s Note: This piece originally appeared on The Corners by Nadia Bolz-Weber. Shared with permission. 

As I write this, I have a YouTube livestream open and playing in the background, listening to the singing in the chapel at Asbury University in Kentucky – where a regular chapel service that started 12 days ago has not yet ended. From everything I have seen, the “revival” is a quiet one – it’s mostly just singing led by college students – on simple acoustic guitar and piano. I cannot claim to understand it, all I know is that every time I have tuned in over the past few days, it has made me a little teary. Which surprises me. I have not always been prone to mixing sentimentality and religion. Irony and religion, fine, but this Gen Xer usually recoils from anything that smacks of sap. But here I am, longing to sing in that room with 1,000 other open-hearted people.

What is happening in that chapel (and now in several overflow buildings that surround it), is being called the Asbury Revival. And people from all over the world have now streamed into a small town in Kentucky to join in.

Noticeably absent from the front of the chapel are: flashy praise bands, lighting systems, projectors and screens, celebrity worship leaders and people over 25.

There is such a simplicity, and dare I say, a humility to it.

And then there’s the commentary all over the internet about the revival. A simple search will bring up predictable critiques from both liberals and conservatives questioning the righteousness of what is happening in that chapel – based on very different criteria, but in a very similar spirit. I swear that social media should just be called “Joy Stealers Anonymous”. Analysis has its uses, but I’ve been left over the past couple days wondering: can we just absorb something with an open-hearted awe and curiosity for one &$?@! minute?

I actually wonder if exhaustion from culture wars, purity codes and the idolatry of ideology on all sides have led these young people to seek revival in the simplicity of constant prayer and singing in the first place. Yet it feels like the YouTube comments and think pieces ABOUT the revival are smearing it all back onto them.

I’ve often felt uncomfortable with praise and worship music due to lack of familiarity, an aversion to things that feel like performance in church, my own cynicism and need to feel in control, and memories of church camp and the spiritual manipulation of being whipped into an emotional state when I was young, away from home, sleep deprived and in need of acceptance.

But there is something in my soul which longs for what I am seeing on these live-streams. Or what I feel I am seeing.

So rather than make big stroke proclamations about what the Asbury Revival is or is not, I’m trying to just pay attention to what longing inside of me is being drawn up in buckets each time I tune in.

I long to sing with others

I long to be open-hearted

I long to trust something for once

I long to be un-self-conscious in my devotion to God

I long to witness something real

In a couple hours I will leave to go worship in the women’s prison, led by . . . a praise and worship band of incarcerated women whose need and love for God has changed something in me. I simply cannot be cynical about the music they lead us in – one of their favorites being a song titled, Chainbreaker.

If you’ve got pain He’s a pain taker
If you feel lost He’s a way maker
If you need freedom or saving
He’s a prison-shaking Savior
If you’ve got chains
He’s a chain breaker

I know that there can be a lot of cringe-worthy, ego-soaked performance-y stuff in church. I know that when it comes to Christianity there are legitimate reasons for commentary and critique at every turn. But, as I like to say, nothing is only ever one thing. Because there is also God’s Spirit, who I believe is still stirring in the hearts of God’s people (is that what is happening at Asbury? Maybe). And while I remain suspicious of most human claims of a human project having “God’s favor” or being “Spirit led” (because it feels conveniently like using divine camouflage for human ego trips) I do trust more and more what I feel in my spirit and in my body.

I know we are all in different places around our own faith and deconstruction and reconstruction and church baggage and all that. So, I will just say this: May we all continue to pay attention to how we might already be changing. May we not just impersonate old versions of ourselves. May we be open to gently walking away from hills on which we have planted flags, but carry with us a compassion for the person we were when we needed to put it there.

Editor’s Note: This piece originally appeared in Religion News Service.

Students have packed the chapel and overflow spaces at Asbury University for nearly a week, holding round-the-clock prayer and worship.

Last Wednesday (Feb. 8), students at Asbury University gathered for their biweekly chapel service in the 1,500-seat Hughes Auditorium.

They sang. They listened to a sermon. They prayed.

Nearly a week later, many of them are still there.

“This has been an extraordinary time for us,” Asbury President Kevin Brown said during a gathering on Monday, more than 120 hours into what participants have referred to as a spiritual revival.

The revival has disrupted life and brought national attention to Asbury, an evangelical Christian school in Wilmore, Kentucky, about a half-hour outside of Lexington. Videos of students singing, weeping and praying have been posted on social media, leading to both criticism and praise from onlookers. News of the revival has also drawn students and other visitors to the campus to take part in the ongoing prayer and worship.

“We’ve been here in Hughes Auditorium for over a hundred hours — praying, crying, worshipping and uniting — because of Love,” wrote Alexandra Presta, editor of The Asbury Collegian, the school’s student newspaper, who has been chronicling the services on campus. “We’ve even expanded into Estes Chapel across the street at Asbury Theological Seminary and beyond. I can proclaim that Love boldly because God is Love.”

The ongoing meetings in the chapel — which have none of the flashing lights, fog machines or other trappings that accompany many modern worship services — have also brought back memories of a similar revival in the 1970s, which is recounted in a video produced by the university. The gatherings also come at a time when many young Americans have lost faith in organized religion — with a recent study finding that 43% of adults under 30 say they never attend service.

Officials at Asbury did not respond to requests for comment.

Michael McKenzie, associate professor of religion and philosophy at Keuka College in upstate New York, said revivals have long been a staple in the Methodist tradition that Asbury belongs to. The school is named for Francis Asbury, a circuit-riding preacher who helped Methodism grow from modest beginnings to the largest Christian group in America during the 1800s.

The denomination often grew through revivals, large group meetings that stressed a personal experience of God and a return to the basics of Christianity. One of the most famous revivals in American history took place in Cane Ridge, Kentucky, about an hour northwest of Asbury, where thousands gathered in 1801.

Methodists in America have fallen on hard times in recent decades, with the largest denomination in the tradition — the United Methodist Church — declining precipitously in membership and facing a schism over LGBTQ inclusion.

McKenzie, who has studied early Methodist revivals, said that revivals often happened when people felt things had gone wrong and were trying to recapture something that had been lost.

Online accounts of the meetings at Asbury, he said, seem to “fit all the historical signposts of previous revivals.”

“I think a lot of people sense that America and American Christianity have lost its way,” he said. “And they seem to me that they are looking to get back to Jesus in a profound experiential way.”

Like revivals in the past, said McKenzie, the one at Asbury seems to have happened spontaneously. They often bypass leaders and start from the grassroots. That makes them harder to predict or control. They can also be a way of separating spiritual experience from the baggage of organized religion, said McKenzie.

Many of the nation’s colleges were founded by church groups that hoped revivals would be a regular experience in the lives of students, said Andrea Turpin, associate professor of history at Baylor University. For some students, she said, the revivals were a place to experience religious conversion, while others may have experienced a deepening of their faith at such revivals.

“You would cancel classes, you’d have prayer meetings and it would sweep through the school about once a year,” said Turpin, who studies religion and higher education.

An 1806 revival at Williams College in Massachusetts, known as the “Haystack Prayer Meeting,” helped launched the modern international missions movement in the United States. At Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, founded in the 1800s as a seminary for women, many of the school’s early students went on to work in Christian service, often prompted by revivals, said Turpin.

For the Rev. Matt Erickson, pastor of Eastbrook Church in Milwaukee, a five-day campus revival at Wheaton College in the mid-1990s was a life-changing event. Erickson had come to the school in hopes of preparing for the ministry, but that calling had faded during his studies.

He recalled that during a campus missions conference, students began coming forward to ask for prayer and for spiritual renewal. That led first to an all-night prayer service and then to a series of evening meetings that ran late into the night. The last evening of the revival was a commissioning service for people who wanted to go into the ministry. Erickson said that experience led many of his friends into the pastorate or other Christian work.

“There was a sense of the presence of God,” he said, adding that it went beyond simply an emotional experience. He said he hopes what’s happening at Asbury can lead students there into lives of service to God and others.

Erickson said he’s been a bit dismayed at some of the social media criticism of the revival —saying it will take time to see if the gatherings lead to real change in people’s lives.

Author and activist Shane Claiborne is also optimistic. He has been following the revivals and talking to students from afar and said a revival can lead to action. Claiborne, who has friends on the Asbury campus, pointed to the revivals of Charles Finney in the 1800s. Many of the people who responded to Finney’s altar calls for salvation also joined the abolitionist movement.

“I believe in social transformation,” he said. “I also believe in personal and spiritual transformation.”

Howard Snyder, a retired professor of the history and theology of mission at nearby Asbury Theological Seminary, which is separate from the university, said revivals can provide hope in difficult times. They become real if they lead to people living out the values of Jesus’ teaching.

“Authentic revivals return the church to what it is supposed to be,” he said in an email. “The people of God faithfully following Jesus.”