A Season of Change

**Disclaimer — The events I write about in this are the ways in which I remember them. I know others may have experienced these events differently, but this is my truth, my story as I remember it.

For everything there is season, the write of Ecclesiastes tells us. There is a time for every matter under heaven. A time to laugh and cry. A time for war and peace. A time for love and hate, and so forth and so on.

In our United Methodist system, there is also a time to stay and a time to move. For me, this year it is a time to move. For the beautiful people at Brownsville UMC, it is a time to say goodbye to one pastor and embrace another.

This move is hard for me: not because I am not looking forward to what God has in store for me at Stanwood UMC, but because for the first time in my career and ministry, I found a people at both North Mason UMC and Brownsville UMC who embraced me in a way I never thought possible.

I’ve been quiet about many of my experiences in Mississippi because I don’t want to give credence to the misconceptions and the biases that many people have against Mississippians. The fact is, there are no perfect churches and there are no perfect pastors.

But to show the depth of love and embrace I’ve experienced with the churches I came to serve in 2018, I need to share a few of the hardest parts of my ministry in Mississippi.

On July 14, 2013, a day after George Zimmerman was acquitted and found not guilty in the murder of Trayvon Martin, I had the privilege to preach in the fairly progressive church where I was an associate minister in urban Jackson, Mississippi. I did not preach on the verdict or even on the sin of racism, but before I preached, I named that I was saddened by the hurt and pain that many of my friends were feeling because of the verdict. It was pathetic on my behalf for not exactly stating how I felt, but I was trying to “tow the line” even in this “progressive church.” There were people who got up and walked out and said they would not come back to church when I was preaching. One person told me I needed to be a pastor or a prophet, but I couldn’t be both. Another person told me that the pulpit was not a place to talk politics. In my hesitation and cowardice to not piss people off, I still pissed people off. I found very little support from pastoral leadership in the church who themselves had been very political in the pulpit because several of the folks who were upset, were big givers. Looking back, I wish I would have been even more vocal in that moment, and yet, I still find sadness that people wrote me off so easily and that the support was lacking.

I’ve never felt written off or not supported at Brownsville. Even people who differ from me politically have not written me off and they have supported me. After George Floyd was murdered by police, we as a church spoke up and out against injustice and racism. There was no, “Don’t be political,” but “Tell the Truth.” “Speak the truth that Black Lives Matter.”

The most harm though, that I ever felt in the church on behalf of myself and others was in my last church to serve in Mississippi.

I went into this church recharged and ready to go after a year of Sabbatical. There was so much work to be done, and the church was truly full of people who said they wanted change. They said they wanted to be recharged for God’s mission in the Mississippi Delta.

At first, it was cute to have the young single minister in town who got involved in the community. However, the honeymoon didn’t last long.

When I would preach and teach about racial equity and how to dismantle racism (in the gentlest of ways to try to reach many of these folks drenched in the waters of Jim Crow), I was told that there was no racism in the church because black folk wanted to worship with their own and white folk wanted to worship with their own. It wasn’t about race, but about “worship style.” One person in my office said, “Jesus may have died for all people, but that don’t mean you have to preach that we are equal and should mingle together.”

When our community based recovery committee came together, the church leadership approved me of being the United Methodist representative on the committee and to help find UMC dollars to help rebuild houses after terrible flooding in 2016. I did. And with the help of others, we raised over $200K in actual money and much much more in labor in order to restore and renovate over 40 houses. Someone told me that was a waste of my time because I was helping the poor people who didn’t ever help themselves. (Poor people = black people).

The hardest and harshest thing I’ve ever faced though, was when a few of the men, who thought they had all the power, tried to say I was a child molester who had sexually assaulted a teenage boy in Mississippi back in 2008/2009. (There was a Justin White who did do this, but he was not me, nor I him, and I was living in North Carolina at the time.) Instead of coming to me to ask me about it, one of them said something at a holiday dinner. His adult daughter heard it, told her friend (who was friends with me), who then told another friend who talked to me about it. It was absurd. I don’t blame my friend who was hesitant to talk to me about it, because she didn’t know. She had just heard, and she had children of her own. It sucked. It hurt. I was devastated.

I never got closure with those men, but I did let them know that it was not me who had done that, and I was grieved that they would even say something like that.

There were those in the church who definitely came to my aid, and helped me work through the difficult time. Many people didn’t know it had happened because I was told “ If you talk about this Justin, people may ask you hard questions and we don’t won’t to stoke any fires”. There was also very little support from leadership of the Mississippi conference outside of two district superintendents.

The only reason these men even went searching for something was because they wanted to “out me” as a gay man in the worst way possible, preying on stereotypes of the gay man who preys on younger, underage, guys. I’d have rather them asked me straight out and I would have told them the truth. That had been my stance since I became ordained. Ask and Tell.

A year later, when I had asked to move, instead of celebrating the gifts of my work with UMCOR, and raising money, and being on the arts council, and adding 4 new members, and baptizing babies, the conference told me that I was going to a three point charge, getting paid the minimum salary for an elder, and I would have to raise more money to help a small Wesley Club at a community college find it’s footing.

After all the shit I had been through, I was done. I was ready to turn in my credentials and start a PhD program at Mississippi State.

I don’t share this because I want to belittle people, but to illustrate where I was spiritually and mentally when I came to the Pacific Northwest in 2018.

By the grace of God and because of a friend who persisted that I not turn my credentials in, I did find my way to Bremerton, WA, where I was instantly loved and embraced.

When I met with the leadership of North Mason and Brownsville UMC, the first thing I said when I was talking about my family was that I was in a relationship with a guy, but he wasn’t moving up with me because we needed to figure things out. You all were worried, but not because I was in a relationship with a man. You were worried that us not moving up here together would make me sad. I was floored.

Throughout my time here, you have been amazing. When that relationship ended, you were there with me as I mourned that ending. When I “Came Out” officially on the floor of PNW Annual Conference in 2019, you stood and cheered and cried tears of joy with me as I shared my truth. You wrote me letters of encouragement and love. You told me you were proud of me.

Yes we’ve struggled. It hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows, but the obstacles we’ve faced have not been about politics or sexual identity, they have been the struggles of money, of what banners we should hang, what color the altar flowers should be, etc.

You have loved me.

The prophetess Dolly once said, “The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.” I have found a new rainbow and way of dancing, even in the rain, as I’ve been at Brownsville.

I said the week I announced I was leaving that I had found a new set of wings at Brownsville, and now it is time to fly to a new place. And these wings I have found, will forever be my North Mason and Brownsville wings.

I love you all and I take you all with me! I know you will welcome Greg and Nolie with the same open arms in which you embraced me.

You are a beautiful and wonderful people.

I will think of you often and pray for you all.

There is time for every season under heaven, and it seems it is time for our relationship to change. It is not an ending, but a new beginning. A different way of being. And so I leave with you this blessing by Jan Richardson,

This Day We Say Grateful : A Sending Blessing

It is a strange thing
to be so bound
and so released
all in the same moment,
to feel the heart
open wide
and wider still
even as it turns
to take its leave.

On this day,
let us say
this is simply the way
love moves
in its ceaseless spiraling,
turning us toward
one another,
then sending us
into what waits for us
with arms open wide to us
in welcome
and in hope.

On this day,
in this place
where you have
poured yourself out,
where you have been
emptied
and filled
and emptied again,
may you be aware
more than ever
of what your heart
has opened to
here,
what it has tended
and welcomed
here,
where it has broken
in love and in grief,
where it has given
and received blessing
in the unfathomable mystery
that moves us,
undoes us,
and remakes us
finally
for joy.

This day
may you know
this joy
in full measure.

This day
may you know
this blessing
that gathers you in
and sends you forth
but will not
forget you.

O hear us
as this day
we say
grace;
this day
we say
grateful;
this day
we say
blessing;

this day
we release you
in God’s keeping
and hold you
in gladness
and love.

“© Jan Richardson. janrichardson.com.”

With Love,
Pastor J.