Rhetoric Race and Religion
Recently I was blessed to join in a ceremony on behalf of theProgressive Christian Alliance church where I serve, Diversity in Faith: A Christian Church for All People. We as a church laid hands on Jowancka Mintz, a woman whom the church felt God calling them to set aside as a pastor in the church. Jowancka’s ordination came after living as a person whose faith had been forged and strengthened in the face of persecution and discrimination folks face in the south when they grow up lesbian & bi-racial, while choosing to openly embrace both parts of who they are. I was blessed in my ministry to see Jowancka open up and begin to be out and proud of who she is, strengthen her walk with Christ, find her life partner, and begin taking those first stumbling steps toward ministry. Her ordination came after years of serving others with God’s love and being devoted to God’s Word. It also came after hard work: about two years of training and being a selfless servant in our particular congregation, including some time serving as Diversity’s first deacon. Watching Jowancka emerge as a minister has in many ways felt like watching a butterfly struggle out of its cocoon and begin to stretch its wings to fly.
Joining our church members at Diversity in laying hands on Jowancka couldn’t but lead me to think about my own experience of calling and the process that led me toward ordination. I experienced my call to ministry as a teenager, after finding Christ and his love with a Youth For Christ group at my high school. In my own stumbling way I began to try and share God’s love, to awaken in others a love for Scripture and for intimacy with God through prayer. That led me to study undergraduate at a Christian school, where I could study Christian ministries as one of my two majors. Eventually I remember knowing deep in my heart that God was calling me somewhere different – away from my home state of North Carolina, out of the southeast, to southern California.
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