John Helmstadter

Summer 2008 Fellow, Glide Memorial Church

Entering into this summer, my faith had come to be tied up in orthopraxis. I had lost a lot of interest in theology that was about belief, having become far more interested in theology that was embodied in action. I wanted to find a church where activism was the norm and justice was a priority that dominated even the church budget. It just so happened that the place I ended up for the summer on my BeAts Fellowship, Glide Memorial Methodist Church, was just such a church. But, it also happened that the biggest lesson I learned turned out to be quite different than what I’d expected.

When I say that Glide prioritizes justice and action, I don’t just mean in the mission statement. Of the 150+ people that Glide employs, there are only 4 full-time staff members that work in traditional church-related positions (2 pastors and 2 admin people). The other employees are social workers, teachers, medical professionals, therapists, cooks, and the like who work in the multitude of service and justice ministries that Glide runs. Also, the worship services seek to be (and are) profoundly oriented toward liberation, empowerment, justice, and unconditional love. So, with an organization like this in mind, I headed into my internship at the start of the summer, imagining that the most important lessons I would learn were how the nuts and bolts of such an organization worked and perhaps how to convince a congregation that they should put the needs of the marginalized above the wants of themselves.

Although these lessons have been part of my summer experience at Glide, the reality that I discovered beneath the tremendous commitment to social justice was that Glide was just as broken as all the other churches I’ve known. What seems to make the difference is that the folks at Glide seem to confront that brokenness, that pain, that weakness, that addiction, that self-loathing, that oppression, that repression, that internalized racism/sexism/heterosexism/classism, that selfishness, that imperfection… and try with all their might to love themselves and the world with abandon anyway. At Glide they say, “Recovery is for Everybody.” With this in mind and with this acted out, you find yourself starting to look down on (or up to) others with a little less of a vertical slope. You start to accept the fact that sometimes you’re just feeling crabby and that sometimes other people are too. You start to find that it’s easier to listen and to be honest. Most of all, it helps you to be a bit less conditional in who you identify as acceptable. At Glide, they also say, “To be Spiritual is to Love Everybody.” Recovery at Glide is rooted in spirituality. It’s rooted in the divine image that exists in each of us and impresses an inalienable dignity and lovability in the center of our selves. It’s also rooted in our connection to our brothers and sisters, our made-for-community spiritual architecture. This sense of connectedness is enflamed through the spiritual recovery experience. It’s painful, but it helps you to be real. It helps you to love your real self. And then it helps you to love other people’s real selves, too.

At the end of the day, I suppose I came to Glide expecting to find righteousness born out of action. Instead what I found was love born out of fractured realness. Having realized the beauty and power of realness this summer, I’ll take the latter any day.

Strengthening the progressive Christian network for justice, compassion, & peace