Unexpected Renewal
Written by Rev. Eleanor McCormick
In March of 2019, Reverend Eleanor B. McCormick became an Ecumenical Pastor in the Protestant Church of Baden (Baden-Württemberg, Germany) and a Global Ministries Fellow. She splits her time between serving a local congregation and working in the Department for Mission and Ecumenism in the Baden church headquarters. As the first UCC clergyperson to hold this position, her efforts strengthen and support the long-standing partnership between our two churches.
I didn’t expect to find renewal. And if I’m being honest, I didn’t know how much I needed it to find me. As is so often the case, renewal came to me through work with youth in my congregation.
Late this Spring I collaborated with two young women to design a worship service within the “International Weeks Against Racism” or “Internationale Wochen Gegen Rassismus” in our city of Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Within this worship service Thandiwe (15) and Sofia (14) shared with raw vulnerability and incredible courage their life experiences with everyday racism in the city that I now call home. They brought passion and creativity to writing prayers, asking hard questions, and finding materials that would support others who had felt - or were feeling - a similar kind of pain. We cried and we laughed together.
After months of day-to-day pastoral acrobatics navigating ever changing pandemic rules within our congregation and the wider church (we’ve been worshipping in our building since May of 2020) and a deluge of zoom conference calls in a language that is still foreign, I had lost the thread of what feeds me in ministry and what has the power to keep my call to ministry healthy. Sofia and Thandiwe - their stories, their earnestness - renewed me. They inspired me to take a step back and to take “an inventory” of what I was doing in pastoral ministry.
Out of this came a renewed sense of purpose and a desire to facilitate opportunities to address racism in the Landeskirche of Baden.
To that end, from June 25-26, I led my first anti-racism weekend workshop. And today, I am about to step into a second workshop. As an added bonus this is where the resources of our church partnership and KO’s commitment to justice work truly shine. We have so much to learn from one, as we address the global pandemic of racism, and we need one another as we walk towards accountability and reconciliation. Sometimes we find renewal in solitude and silence, sometimes renewal can also surprise us in community and conversation. Thank you Thadi and Sofia.
Thank you Kansas-Oklahoma Conference for giving me the tools to do this work that is renewing, and is once again renewed, in me.
