Author Archives: Yetalive Submissions

When Institutions Fail You, Start Listening

Lent is all about living in a liminal place, walking in the uncomfortable space between death and life, between an untenable old way and the evergreen way of Christ. It’s hard to recognize life when all you can smell is death. But thank God, we have other senses.

Called Unto Holiness

Rethinking holiness for today and reinvigorating a doctrine of holiness for the Wesleyan tradition is sure to have generative consequences for our churches and our lives. When we begin to rightly equate holiness with love, the idea of holiness as a discipline and practice becomes much more concrete.

If You Cannot Be United, Be Holy

A new moment is here. The die is cast: schism is in full swing, and it will be significant and traumatic in many regions across the connection. It is time that the United Methodist Church decide to stand on a vision of holiness, without hesitating out of the fear of losing people and congregations on the fence. If we’re breaking up, let it be for something; let us welcome this window of opportunity to allow Methodists with incompatible visions of holiness to go our separate ways. What is unsustainable is the status quo for the post-separation United Methodist Church, even in the very near term.

Mary, the First Christian: A Commentary on the Annunciation, Luke 1:26-38

When I found out I was pregnant in mid-November, my very first thoughts were of terror. It wore off, but not nearly as fast as I would have expected. I have always been excited about becoming a parent, but the reality of it was far more terrifying than I had ever imagined. While my soon-to-beContinue reading “Mary, the First Christian: A Commentary on the Annunciation, Luke 1:26-38”

A Queer Methodist Tradition

The groups against LGBTQIA+ people in the United Methodist Church call themselves “traditional.” To start out with, tradition is not a monolith. Tradition is not a singular or consistent concept. Traditions evolve and develop and are not static. Likewise, there is ample evidence for a queer-affirming Methodist tradition—that even originates with Methodism’s founder, John WesleyContinue reading “A Queer Methodist Tradition”

Hebrews 4:1-7: Radicalizing Ordinary Time

The bliss of summer and ease of demand has come and gone along with ordinary time. Because of its length and placement in the year, ordinary time stretches on just as simply as its name implies: ordinarily. The sun beats down on the long days as the summer drags on and on. Pastors preach toContinue reading “Hebrews 4:1-7: Radicalizing Ordinary Time”

A French Baptism in Alabama

Masses gathered around the charred Notre Dame Cathedral on Easter Sunday 2019 to proclaim Christ’s resurrection. Their collective hope for the sanctuary’s future reconstruction hung as heavy as the smell of ashes. Across the Pond, another French resurrection was taking place in the least likely of places. I was leading the contemporary service at aContinue reading “A French Baptism in Alabama”

Dancing into Hope

Spring 2022 I just booked tickets to a concert for my family and me. The last time I went, it was with my then-six-month-old daughter in June 2019, the week after her baptism into the community of faith. Something about this particular concert, the Indigo Girls at the Zoo, which so frequently overlaps with ourContinue reading “Dancing into Hope”

The BoOM Heard Around the World: A Q&A with Three of the Rejected Florida UMC Provisional Clergy Candidates

Three of the rejected candidates—Shawn Klein, Erin Wagner, and Anna Swygert—sat down with Yet Alive’s Dylan Parson and Trevor Warren for an exclusive interview about the process, their futures, and their hopes for a fully inclusive United Methodist Church.

Vocations in Tension: Considering Ordination as a Trans Methodist

Now as an adult trans man, finally at peace with both God and myself, my sense of calling to the Christian pastorate—to preach the gospel, teach discipleship, administer the sacraments, care for the community gathered around Christ, and foster works of justice and mercy in the world—is stronger than ever.

Against Umbrella Methodism

Suddenly, instead of a bright and beautifully called child of God, I was an unrepentant sinner leading others to sin and death…simply because I decided I wasn’t going to live inauthentically. In my first semester of seminary, I met my wife, and the stakes got so much higher.

Justice Was Denied Them: The Ethiopian Eunuch and Hope in Representation

he conversion story of the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8:26-40 serves as a tool to address the lack of compassion and respect among many church leaders and pastoral caregivers for transgender and nonbinary youth. 

On Schism: A Proposed Ecclesiology for a Post-Split UMC

What I believe is most helpful for the Methodist church as it comes to its current crossroads is the ability to demote the definition of the church as a continuity with its past, and instead favor a definition by which the church is conforming to the vision God has for it.

Dear Olympia: Womanhood, Shame, and the Kingdom of God

Our church wants what is best for you—I believe that—but often it doesn’t know how to help its women walk through the story about ourselves that we receive from all angles, because its most overarching story about women is itself based in shame. I fear that, if you ever need consolation from the church in the form of empowerment, you may not find it.

Commodified Gods: A Reflection on Acts 19:23-41

When we create our gods in our own image and then put them up for sale, we lose the gracious reality of being creatures, the beautiful truth that we human beings are closer to the soil than to the heavens. We also lose what I might humbly posit as the spiritual genius of Christianity: that the transcendent and irreducible mystery of the divine nevertheless inhabits fleshy, human existence, joining us here in the soil.

Bias and White Supremacy

Systems of white supremacy have distorted our ability to make sense of reality and even threatened our ability survive as a species. King often said that humans needed to either “learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools,” and current events seem to prove his point, ranging from the climate crisis to the ever present threat of nuclear or biological warfare to the potential collapse of democratic societies across the world. 

Hallelujah, My World Is Caving In

“Hallelujah my world is caving in”1 I sit in classrooms waiting for my soul to be affirmed To finally feel like I belong within these walls But instead I feel dejected Cast out, set aside, and pushed away with the warm welcome and kindness of professors with the avoidance of topics that would be “tooContinue reading “Hallelujah, My World Is Caving In”

The Tomb

I refuse to sit in this tomb any longer; the stone is chafing my legs which need to run like a unicorn into springtime fields breathing in the rainbows of every blossom there where lovemaking never stops and new life is always being resurrected from the death of last year’s flowers. They say we hadContinue reading “The Tomb”

And Can It Be? Charles Wesley and the Leap of Faith

And Can It Be? is a hymn of astonishment. In light of his powerful religious experience in May 1738, Charles Wesley wrote this hymn from the perspective of someone who is utterly bewildered by the power of God’s love and the shocking events of the Crucifixion. Wesley’s reaction to this is demonstrated in the first two verses.

Advent and the General Deliverance

O Come, thou Dayspring, come and cheerOur spirits by thy justice here;Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,And death’s dark shadows put to flight.Rejoice! Rejoice, Emmanuel shall come to thee,O Israel. —O Come, O Come Emmanuel, originally in Latin, 8th or 9th century I have always said that I have an Advent soul. It is the liturgicalContinue reading “Advent and the General Deliverance”

Waiting for New Life

 “’Tis the irrational season, when love blooms bright and wild;if Mary’d been filled with reason, there’d have been no room for the child.”             Madeleine L’Engle Twenty-seven years ago, I entered the season of Advent nine months pregnant.  That year, 1994, as this, 2021, the lectionary texts that I preached beat a tattooContinue reading “Waiting for New Life”

Advent Against Apocalypse

I remain confident of this:I shall see the goodness of the Lordin the land of the living. Psalm 27:13 (NIV) Happy new year! The season of Advent is upon us, which begins the liturgical year. We light our candles, sing our hymns of preparation, and begin our Advent calendars. We decorate our homes, gather together,Continue reading “Advent Against Apocalypse”

Homesick

Homesickness is a funny kind of illness. It sort of hurts all over. In your throat when someone asks the wrong question at the wrong time. In your lungs when a reminder of what you’ve lost takes your breath away. In your core when there’s the gut-punch of knowing what you long for may neverContinue reading “Homesick”

Wesleyan Community for the Dispossessed

John Wesley’s contribution to Christian history is not primarily located in any particular doctrine or treatise, though he wrote theologically. Rather, John Wesley’s greatest gift to the Christian churches is perhaps the Wesleyan approach to community formation—with its attention to the whole human being and to every human being, however socially marginalized. Methodism began notContinue reading “Wesleyan Community for the Dispossessed”

Aromantic Jesus

(previously published in miniskirt magazine) never meant to show signs at a weddingalways meant to save until laterbut oh how it made his mother smilewhen the clear water overflowed into rich red winewhen there was abundance, a renewal of flowing fountains.it was there that celebration came to beit was there, between beloved creationsbe-loving each otherthatContinue reading “Aromantic Jesus”

Welcome at the Table: Latinidad in Methodist Churches

Our interview covered many topics, but Alfredo Santiago’s commitment to honoring the richness of Latinidad and his love of Methodism were clear dominant themes. We have tried to capture those loves in these excerpts from our interview.

Conversion and Radical Love: The Goal of Christian Antiracist Work

What is the goal of Christian antiracism? Specifically from my own context, I ask: What is the responsibility of churches that contain white people to shape those white people[toward real Christian antiracism?

Experience, Community, and the Earthly Work of the Church

The UMC Book of Discipline says that “Christian experience gives us new eyes to see the living truth in Scripture. It confirms the biblical message for our present. It illumines our understanding of God and creation and motivates us to make sensitive moral judgments.” What that means to me is that what we’re doing here matters.

What We Do

Yet Alive aims to be a church resource that highlights the intersections of pan-Wesleyan heritage with contemporary applications, claiming LGBTQIA+-affirmation, and especially seeking to elevate voices that are historically on the margins of the church for reasons of race, ethnicity, class, nationality, disability, and gender identity. Even among affirming thinkers, Wesleyan theology gives us roomContinue reading “What We Do”