Excerpt from “Acts of the Spirit: Unhindered” | November 23, 2025. Full sermon: christcitydc.org/messages/act...

Theologian Willie Jennings notes something quite astounding as he looks back on the whole book of Acts: "Almost no one is doing what they want to do. The Spirit of God is pressing every disciple to do precisely what God wants done and not what they might envision."

Paul cannot go to the world anymore—but the world comes to Paul. His prison becomes a parish. His confinement becomes a classroom. His cell becomes a sanctuary in the belly of the beast, in the capital of the empire. Because you can be in-between, and still in the flow of the Spirit’s work.

So, in the words of civil rights organizer Bob Moses: “Don’t think necessarily of starting a movement. Do what you think needs to be done, set an example, and hope your actions will click with someone else.”

Hope in our cohort—people from different churches and backgrounds choosing to face this hard history together, to lament together, to learn together—so we might be more courageous and faithful to the gospel of Jesus in the present.

And yet, I returned more hopeful than I have been in a long time. Hope stoked by seeing people who refuse(d) to wait for permission to fight for their communities—and for liberation for all. Hope in artists, organizers, and storytellers turning grief into resistance.

The same systems of greed, power, and white supremacy that dehumanized then still devalue Black and Brown—and Asian and queer and other marginalized—lives today.

As we stood in the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, a monument to thousands of lynching victims.

Heartbroken because the inhumanity we encountered isn’t just history—it’s now.

As we learned from people still fighting for dignity: BMike and Studio Be answering brutality with beauty; Michelle Browder and the Mothers of Gynecology reclaiming the very site where enslaved Black women were abused in the name of “medicine.”

As we sat with Hezekiah Watkins, the youngest Freedom Rider, arrested 109 times for riding a bus while Black. As we crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, visited Dooky Chase and COFO—sites steeped in courage and struggle.

As we met Tish Taylor fighting for her community in “Cancer Alley,” where mostly Black residents face cancer rates nearly double the national average due to petrochemical plants on former plantation lands.

We set out to encounter a more honest story of this country, and I returned feeling both heartbroken and hopeful.

Heartbroken as we were led through the Whitney Plantation by someone whose ancestor was enslaved there.

From Sunday at Christ City Church: “Faithfulness When the System is Broken”
christcitydc.org/messages/act...

It is one where love still wins, the last are first, and the hungry are filled with good things and the rich are sent away empty.

So maybe the question for us is this: Will we live like that kingdom is real?

Excerpt from "Acts of the Spirit: What Power We Have" | October 19, 2025

Full sermon here: christcitydc.org/messages/act...

Don’t discount the networks and relationships and friendships and families you are in; there is power there. The Spirit still whispers courage into ordinary people, still animates small, simple acts of faith that ripple through eternity."

Through family looking out for one another. Through those who speak up, even if it’s a fearful whisper. Through those whose names may never make it into any history book but whose faithfulness made our existence possible.