CONGREGATION + COMMUNITY NEWS

PEOPLES PRESS

Joyfully Defiant for the Sake of a Just World

a congregation of the United Church of Christ, the Alliance of Baptists & the American Baptist Churches

INTERIM INSIGHTS

If you’ve seen the movie classic, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (Spencer Tracy, Katherine Hepburn, Sidney Poitier, Katherine Houghton), you know that initial meetings can be fraught with anxiety. There is a lot at stake when we start down the path of a relationship, especially when we live in the liminality of transitions and the tensions of a polarized culture. My goal in writing this little blurb is to help you to know me better and ease any anxieties about my work among you.

While I technically became your interim minister on July 18, my wife’s positive Covid test made it prudent for me to delay my physical presence among you until July 24, so I have been working at home and joining meetings via Zoom. Now my work enters the “face-to-face” phase as you look for a pastor who will serve you in a more settled position. The interim time is not simply a matter of making sure that a pastor is covering Sunday services and calling on the sick. It is a time in which the congregation and interim minister work together to prepare for a new phase of ministry and mission under new pastoral leadership. I will do my best to see that we are so prepared and will do more explaining of this process as we travel this road together.

Before being trained for interim ministry as a specialty, I served churches in western Nebraska, and southern Illinois. I then did interim ministry in Indiana, serving churches in Fort Wayne, La Porte, South Bend, Elkhart and Goshen. After ten years of interim ministry, I accepted the call to be a settled pastor in Urbandale, Iowa, a suburb of Des Moines (yes, even Des Moines has suburbs!).

We now live in Mt. Pleasant where my spouse, Susan, and I are laying the groundwork to start a house church. I will back away from that a bit while I work at Peoples Church. We have two children, Captain Anthony Sickelka, U.S. Army and Shannon Pike, married to Austin. We are also grandparents of Dean Sickelka and Jackson Pike. That last bit I will not be backing away from, as those of you who are grandparents will understand. More of my story will unfold as we spend time together but suffice it to say for now that my values and theology seem to be in tune with what I know of Peoples Church, so I am excited for the synergy that will spring forth as we live in the challenges and joy of being faithful to our gifts and callings.

And so it begins…. Pastor Dave

GOOD THINGS are HAPPENING in and AROUND US

Transition Update, Hello Peoples People! This Sunday, July 31st, will be the first week our Interim Pastor, David Sickelka, will be sharing the message with us at Peoples Church. We hope you can either join us in person or tune-in online to hear him. Please feel free to reach out to Pastor Dave either via the church office at 810-767-4911 or through his email at davidsickelka@peopleschurchofflint.org . If you would like to schedule a personal meet and greet with Pastor Dave please call Karla at the church office. His “in-office” days are Tuesday and Wednesday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Also, at Pastor Dave’s request we have brought together a few members to be his support while he is amongst us. They will be present for him as he learns about us and our needs, and help him with his needs. Pastor Dave will also be communicating with the Search Committee.

And as always, the board and I are here to help you as you need.

FYI: for weekly sermon information, please refer to the calendar on our church webpage:

https://peopleschurchofflint.org/

Blessings,

Jamie Schmidt, Moderator

Thursday Book Group, is starting a new book this week, The History of the Bible is Black by Dr. Theron D. Williams. This book is described as, “An unveiling of truth captivating, thorough, and culturally liberating!” For more information please contact Jay Cummings at 517-392-0209.

DID YOU KNOW?

The UCC’s Connection to the Environmental Justice Movement

Our Adult Forum group that meets on Sundays before morning worship, is reading The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together by Heather McGhee. It is a fabulous read and I highly recommend it. The chapter we recently read contained a paragraph that I found interesting about the United Church of Christ:

“The birth of the Environmental Justice movement in the public consciousness was in 1982, when the state of North Carolina’s decision to dump contaminated soil in the small Black town of Warren was met with civil disobedience that resulted in five hundred arrests. One of those arrested was a leader of the United Church of Christ’s Commission for Racial Justice, Dr. Benjamin Chavis Jr., who would go on to publish the first nationwide study on environmental racism five years later. The church’s groundbreaking “Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States” report found that race was the most important predictor of proximity to hazardous waste facilities in America and that three out of five Black and Latinx Americans lived in communities with toxic sites. Forty years later, government data still show that Black people are 1.5 times more likely to breathe polluted air and drink unsafe water than the overall population.”

Because Peoples Church is part of the United Church of Christ denomination, I felt proud to read this paragraph. Let us watch for examples of environmental injustice that we need to speak out about. It is in our genes!!

Article by Leslie Cummings, of the Creation Justice Team

SPEAKING TRUTH to POWER

To avoid having rotten tomatoes tossed my way, let me start with a spoiler alert/warning: If you haven’t already heard Serial Production’s investigative podcast series “The Trojan Horse Affair,” you will get a preview here. Then again, perhaps a spoiler alert isn’t needed at all since this tale has been told time and time again, with minor variations in actors and settings. But this specific tale, as told by Brian Reed and Hamza Syed, begins in 2014 with a mysterious, partial letter landing on the desk of a Birmingham (England) city council member’s desk. The letter, it appears, outlines a secret plot by Islamic extremists to infiltrate Birmingham schools by way of “Operation Trojan Horse”, radicalizing students and outing non-Muslims from school leadership positions. The letter was picked up by the media and political actors alike. Counterterrorism and educational policy were significantly altered in response, and those named in the letter were permanently banned from working in education. Seems like a fairly exaggerated response given that the letter’s first and last page have never been found, and the author never revealed, no? Yeah, it doesn’t surprise me either. But I digress. Hamza Syed hypothesized that if only he could identify the author of the letter and understand their intent, perhaps he could shine a new light on the story. Perhaps he could alter people’s presumptions about British Pakistani Muslims, and about Islam in general. He enlists the help of Brian Reed to get to the bottom of the letter. And guess what? Syed and Reed were able to definitively right a nearly decades long wrong by revealing the author and their lies, reversing harmful policy, and reenlisting the educators who were falsely named in the Trojan Horse letter! Just kidding—that would be too easy, wouldn’t it? Syed and Reed do come up with a very plausible explanation for the letter, which I will not reveal here (listen-I promise it is worth it!), but they ultimately were not able to obtain confessions or persuade much of anyone they talked to that actions were taken prematurely, and those actions had profound impact on people’s lives. While the story ends with a sense of frustration, it at the same time reminded me of something, something that Pastor Deb also reminded me of right before I made the decision to officially join Peoples Church:

“that speaking truth to power, no matter the outcome, is our duty.”

Here below is a snippet of conversation between Syed and one of the individuals dismissed from a former post as a result of the Trojan Horse letter.

Achmad Dacosta: In Islam we are taught that when you are oppressed, you have to speak if you can’t change it physically. The only alternative is to speak. One of the highest forms of, I don’t like to use this word because it’s not understood very well, the word is jihad. But one of the highest forms of sacrifice is to speak against the dictator or an oppressor and tell him to his face that he is an oppressor and a dictator.

Hamza Syed: I believe in this too, the value of speaking if there’s nothing else you can do to change something. I went to journalism on that premise. This series is what that sounds like. But while the implication of that guidance, to me at least, and I’m no scholar, is that speaking truth will lead to change. I don’t know if the prophet, peace be upon him, actually said that, and actually said where it would lead. He just said speaking truth in the face of oppression was one of the greatest forms of jihad, forms of struggle. And so that’s where I’m left, wondering if all of this, what we’ve told you, is headed towards change, or if this is just another profile of the struggle.

Achmad Dacosta: For me, the goal is not the end. My goal is just the struggle. And if you have that vision, then you’re never completely defeated…

Dacosta is urging Syed (and unintentionally all podcast listeners) to reframe our thinking. He is urging us to fight complacency. To do when there is something to be done, and to speak in defiance when action fails. When I am feeling a sense of burnout and disillusionment, which admittedly I do feel from time to time, I will do my best to reframe my thinking. While I can never be sure at the outset that my voice or my actions will contribute to change, I should speak up and I should do nonetheless. Why? Because God calls us to be committed to the struggle and to one another.

Article by Lindsey Evans

PEOPLES PLAZA SURVEY

Hey Peoples Church! The Peoples Plaza team is gearing up to pursue grant opportunities to bolster this exciting work. To be well positioned to secure funding, we need your help. If you could respond to this brief survey (should take no more than 5 minutes to complete) by August 7, we would very much appreciate your input. Thank you in advance for your time and consideration.

Survey link: https://nau.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_24SQ5wKTXx2if0W

SEARCH COMMITTEE UPDATE

As you have been reading these updates you know that much (all!) of our efforts have been concentrated on putting together our church's profile, the document that lays out who we are for prospective pastors. Working on a document such as the Church Profile involves paying attention to a lot of details about our church, and we find ourselves, appropriately, focusing on the trees for a time, and paying less attention to the forest, or the big picture (although that is always hanging in the background of our conversations).

Now and then it is good to step back and get a good look at the forest. This week I shared an article by Jim Wallis (of Sojourners) with the Search Committee team that zoomed way out to reveal the momentous role that Christian churches, that Peoples Church, has to play in the challenging times we face ahead.

"The rising heresy of White Christian nationalism – alarmingly being promoted by more and more right wing churches – has become the chief threat to genuine democracy in America. It is grounded in the racism and White supremacy of America’s original sin, which is the bigger lie underneath Trump’s big lie. A German church that supported the rise of Nazism to power is also a historically relevant phenomenon, as is the Confessing Church of resistance to Hitler led by theologians like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Niemoller, and Karl Barth. And that will be the spiritual test of faith communities in America going forward."

May we be a "Confessing Church of resistance"...

*Jim Wallis, Darkness and Lies Need Truth (God's Politics with Jim Wallis, 22 July 2022)

Thanks so much!

Carla Pierik, Chair Search Committee

IN THE CONGREGATION
Links are on the church calendar. Need more info? Just ask!

Adult Forum, 9:30 am Sundays, is reading Heather McGee's, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together. Join in by zoom or in person at church. And let us know if you need a book.

Vigil for Racial Justice is still gathering 1-2 pm Thursdays on the Genesee Courthouse lawn.

New Text Alert System. We have shifted to a new text messaging service. If you're in our church directory, you're all set. If you're not, go here to sign up!