The Current

Melissa Florer-Bixler - How to Have an Enemy

• Chris Nafis • Season 1 • Episode 16

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How do we navigate the challenging concept of enmity within the Christian faith while remaining committed to justice and peace? Join us for a profound conversation with Melissa Florer-Bixler, pastor of Raleigh Mennonite Church, as she unpacks these complexities through her experiences and insights from her book, "How to Have an Enemy." We examine the nuances of defining true enemies, especially in the context of systemic power dynamics, and discuss how to address these conflicts with the grace and teachings of Jesus. 

Anger plays a pivotal role in social change, but how can it be managed and channeled productively? We explore this influential emotion, drawing parallels to movements like Black Lives Matter and the civil rights era, showcasing anger as a driving force for societal transformation. The discussion delves into gender and racial dynamics in societal responses to anger and highlights the importance of understanding these responses to foster environments where anger can catalyze positive change. 

The conversation takes a deeper look into the power of community and collective action in processing emotions like anger, emphasizing the significance of genuine connections over the isolating nature of social media. Through real-life examples, such as ICE detention and systemic issues like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we reveal how authentic community bonds can inspire advocacy and transformation. As we strive to build strong, accountable community relationships, we find hope in acts of generosity and the transformative potential of faith amidst global chaos.

Chris Nafis:

Hi and welcome back to the Current. This is Chris Nafis, pastor of Living Water Church, and today I'm very honored to have special guest Melissa Flora Bixler, who is the pastor of Raleigh Mennonite Church in North Carolina. She's graduated from Duke and from Princeton Theological Seminary. She writes for the Christian Century and a whole bunch of other publications and she's got two books. One is called Fire by Night Finding God in the Pages of the Old Testament Very good and one that we talk about today is called how to have an Enemy, righteous Anger and the Work of Peace. Today we talk about anger, we talk about enemies, we talk about working toward justice and about the work of the church Find some hope and find some inspiration to be the people that God calls us to be. Here's our conversation. Well, pastor, melissa, thank you so much for spending a little bit of your time just talking to us and helping us. This is a discipleship-focused podcast and really just kind of teaching us and giving us some direction and some inspiration.

Melissa Florer-Bixler:

Thanks for having me on today.

Chris Nafis:

For sure. So you're a Mennonite and Mennonites are. You know. You're primarily known, at least in my mind. You're primarily known as, like peacemakers and you know for commitment to nonviolence and and all that kind of stuff. And I don't think everyone would assume that like peacemakers would would want to write about how to have an enemy. So how'd you like, what made you want to write about having enemies?

Melissa Florer-Bixler:

Yeah, I, you know, I really thought about enemies in a more concentrated fashion during the Trump administration and that was a time where people in my church community were feeling different levels of threat from policies and things that were occurring during the administration.

Melissa Florer-Bixler:

We had a person from our congregation who was in ICE detention during that time and other folks who just felt really afraid, muslims in our community who were afraid, muslims in our community who were afraid, and I just began to sort of realize that I didn't think I had the resources that I needed to be able to work through this question of having enemies, which again felt a little ironic, because loving your enemies really felt like it was at the heart of the Christian tradition, but certainly in a baptism, and I realized I didn't actually know what we were talking about. When we said enemies, we always skip to the love your heart, but we didn't spend a lot of time there. So, like everything I write, I write this for myself, because there's a question that I need answered and I am grateful for other people who want to join me in thinking about that thing, and that's where how to have an Enemy came from.

Chris Nafis:

Well, yeah, we're grateful for your thoughts on it. It's been helpful to wrestle through it For me over the years. I've followed you on Twitter for a long time. I think you're off of there now, which is sad for all. Well, all of twitter kind of sucks now, but, um, but uh, I you know it's been helpful for me to wrestle with your work, not only this book, your other book and some of your writings in the christian century, um, and so, yeah, thank you for wrestling with it openly so that we could all join in.

Chris Nafis:

I mean, enemy is such a strong word. You know like I always feel reluctant to call anyone my enemy and I think I'm too soft. I'm learning from congregants and from advocates how to, how to kind of stand up a little stronger in the face of. You know justice issues, oppression and, and you know bad behavior and different things Like what I mean. What is an enemy? You kind of asked that. You know, know, so that was what you set out to write how do you define enemy and how do you determine who you're comfortable calling an enemy?

Melissa Florer-Bixler:

those are great questions and great thoughts, because it's a term that I think we hear used loosely right, and especially in sort of the way that our politics have just splintered in many ways over the past five or six years. It feels like a very common sort of word that people go to as a way to show their particular disdain for another policy or person, and so I completely understand that sense of wow. We really need to be a little more cautious with this word, which is why I also felt like I needed a little better grounding for that language, which, in very Mennonite fashion, meant we need I needed to know what Jesus thought about this right. Um, that, if I'm really good, I want to use this word in the way that the tradition of scripture uses it, both as a way to give some shape to that word and to make sure that it's not being misused of enmity to describe the relationship between Jews and Christians and how what it felt like a misapplication of that word became a very violent otherizing of a tradition that we actually share a lot in common with Judaism.

Melissa Florer-Bixler:

And so when I went back and looked at sort of the texture of the language of enmity in scripture, and particularly for Jesus. What came up over and over again was enmity. The language of calling someone, someone, an enemy comes up in the context of a differentiation of power between those who are being pushed under by those who have amassed power through money and military and political posturing. Enmity is rarely used between equals. In scripture there's a power differential that separates enmity from differences or rivalries or misunderstanding that happened between parties.

Chris Nafis:

So like the person who you know sits in your seat in the worship service is not necessarily, you know, it might be your nemesis in a certain way, but not, we're not talking about enemies in the terms of like just someone that I have a disagreement with, or like a family member that I have a dispute with, or something. We're talking, at least in the context of scripture, when Jesus is calling us to love our enemies, for example, or you know, he says more than you think about enemies, right, he's talking mostly about people who have power over you know, especially others who are marginalized or who are kind of under that thumb for a while, marginalized or who are kind of under that thumb for a while. Um, what so? Like if you, if you've identified an enemy and I still feel like there's lots of wiggle room and openness and like, well, who? Who determines what that power dynamic is and what that looks like?

Chris Nafis:

But like, what's involved in? Like once you say like okay, I have, I can have enemies, right, uh, and it's these people that hold the power. Like what does it mean? Is it just like contempt for them? You know what I mean. Like what is it? What is involved in claiming that?

Melissa Florer-Bixler:

I think it has more to do with recognition of that, the power in that relationship. So to be able to say this person has been empowered or has the power to structure destruction over another person in the way that I described that relationship as a relationship of enmity. And I think what we see in scripture that has different sort of ways about it. Right, there's different sort of flavors that takes on. There's enmity that looks generational, like we have the Amalekites and Israel, right, there's this generational enmity that's taking place. You have the kind that arises out of political circumstance so the Roman occupation Rome is the enemy of the people of political circumstance. So the Roman occupation Rome is the enemy of the people of God, right. And then you have sort of the sort of personal enmity that arises David becomes an enemy to Bathsheba in many ways, right, I would describe that as the relationship of enmity, even though I think the circumstances around this can change. Those are some of the things that we see, but I also think something that you said as well is something that for us to attend to is we also recognize that all of these relationships or dynamics of enmity, they don't happen by just by individuals.

Melissa Florer-Bixler:

Right, it's the prophet Nathan, who really names that. This is a relationship of enmity. There's someone else. We live in communities that help us to better understand. Are we making a claim of enmity to this relationship? That's really a misunderstanding or is a place where we are slipping into a form of life that doesn't actually match up with the kind of response that we would need if we were looking at a relationship of enmity and so community. I think it's really important for us because, you're right, it's a discernment, right, we are actually discerning this question together, and so we need other people to do that work alongside us.

Chris Nafis:

Yeah, I mean, and that gets complicated right, because when you're discerning where to, where to kind of hold and take a stand against things.

Chris Nafis:

So for us, you know, homelessness is is all over our community.

Chris Nafis:

We're the epicenter of homelessness in San Diego and so we find ourselves and people in our congregation doing a lot of advocacy work around housing issues, housing insecurity, criminalization of homelessness and those kinds of things.

Chris Nafis:

And it feels like anyone who comes into power in the city of San Diego, even if we have high hopes for them, like they end up essentially becoming like a sort of enemy because they hold that power and they use it against people that we love. And you know, in some ways, like that's for us in our community, it's an easy place where we all, we all pretty much agree that like this is not what should be happening. But so often, like it's really hard when the community itself doesn't really know like will we fall on different sides of a of an issue, or how to resolve an issue, or or even in you know so, like our mayor right now is kind of a liberal mayor and he's doing some decent things, but but he's doing other things that are really, really hurting people. And so you know, like the complexity of it. I mean, I don't know how do you deal with the complexity of of like those relationships and like the communal discernment? Do you have any suggestions for like how to navigate that?

Melissa Florer-Bixler:

I, yeah, I mean, I think one of the places where I'm sort of shifting gears from from scripture to organizing work is, you know, we. We organize in the model of the industrial areas foundation, and one of Saul Alinsky's phrases that has been very helpful for me is no permanent enemies, no permanent allies. Right, that they're, that the this is also their shifts that happen here, right, and they can shift policy to policy. They can be shifts that happen here, right, and they can shift policy to policy. They can be. You know that you are against us on homelessness, right, but you do seem to want to work with us on this other issue over here, and I think the question is within communities, how can you respond to that with something like accountability, right, can, especially with people in power.

Melissa Florer-Bixler:

We live in something akin to a democracy, I guess in the United States, so we have some different tools to work with than I think they did in the ancient world in terms of the way that we can work within the structures of power in our own communities and still, I think, be able to hold out the seriousness of these consequences for real people, right, I think there is something powerful for elected officials to hear you have become an enemy to unhoused people in our community.

Melissa Florer-Bixler:

Is that the relationship you want here? And we want to call you out of that enmity and into life and into wholeness? And I think that's sort of what really is at the basis of all of this right is we are not content with our enemy relationships. What we believe sometime in ways that feel totally absurd, is that God is able to transform the powers of this world and that somehow we have something to do with that. I think that begins with truthfulness, right About what those relationships are. It's hard to transform a relationship that is painful or broken without being truthful about the extent of that damage. But really that feels like an act of repentance in some ways, an invitation to repent of that relationship and to move on to something else.

Chris Nafis:

Like naming it truthfully feels like an act of repentance. To start, is what you're saying, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that's where some of us so like you know I think I may have already said this, but I'm too cushy, I'm too soft you know, like my, especially the recovery folks are helping me to see that, like we know, you need to be able to like stand up and and call out things for what they are and speak truthfully to people when they're, when they're manipulating or when they're, you know, I think, both within the community and also beyond and sort of the advocacy work. And like I love what you do in the book and and you kind of mentioned it or kind of went that way a little bit already here but the purpose is, like the hope is ultimately to to not just to save the people who are like under the thumb of the oppressor, but also to save the one who holds the power themselves right to see how that is actually a dehumanization of them also, you can say a little bit about that.

Melissa Florer-Bixler:

Yeah, yeah, and I think this sort of comes back to sort of beginning answering this question by starting with that call to repentance Right of desire among people who are in power to want to wash their hands of responsibility for the role that they play. One of the places that I remember seeing this when I was writing this book was no one really wants to take responsibility for the policy that pushed migrating peoples out into dangerous and hot places and made this trek to the United States a deadly one. Everyone wants to say, oh, that's really this department or this person or I might've signed that, but it really came from this engineers or this think tank. And I think the question is when do you ask someone to say, okay, this is actually? No, you did this right. It may not have been you alone, but you did this.

Melissa Florer-Bixler:

Trying to remove your responsibility doesn't actually move you to the place where you can make this right, where you can reconcile this thing. In order to reconcile it, you have to say something went wrong here, have to say something. Something went wrong here and I have been put in a broke. I have put myself in a broken relationship to another person, to another community, and so this this is where this begins, right For all of us. I mean, this is just the Christian life. We begin by saying I am a sinner in need of grace, right, and then it is. It is an act of God to reconcile us to God's self and to one another.

Melissa Florer-Bixler:

What I actually find really difficult is wanting that for people who are enemies. I find it very hard to want the wholeness of the director of immigration and customs enforcement. I have to work really hard not to want that person to suffer deeply for what has happened. That's so I think it sounds like you're just probably, chris, a better person than me and you have already reached the point where you're like I just really, where you have a lot of like. I just really where you have a lot of like. And so all of us, I think, have different work to do. Your work may be to say, wow, I can name freely this relationship, and my work is to say I want that relationship to be able to change this person, not to suffer. So we all have different, you know, many works, but the same spirit.

Chris Nafis:

I mean, I do think there's something to that. I think we have different roles and I think in some ways, you know my, my personality or whatever it is that drives me to be more, I don't know whatever. I was using the word soft before. Is there is something good in that? But but I think like that's why I need people like you to help me to get past that. I guess what. I hear you talking a little bit around or not, not like you're trying to get around it or something, but you're.

Chris Nafis:

You talk in your book a lot about anger and I think that's kind of at the heart of it for me.

Chris Nafis:

Some, I think just not to psychoanalyze myself or something, but you know I had a, I had a lot of anger in my youth. I was a very angry kid and it was something that for me this was a big part of my early discipleship was like I was praying to God every night take this anger from me. I don't want to be angry anymore. And now I feel like God has taken it from me and I have like people will tell you that I'm like a very peaceful guy, but I feel sort of afraid to like let the anger loose again, because I've it will. It will consume me. You know what I mean. It will get out of control if I allow it to. But you talk a lot about like righteous anger and like the kind of anger that is productive, that drives change and drives justice. What's like the role of anger in this whole world of, like you know, understanding our place and power systems? And, yeah, where do you see anger operating in that and how can we use anger effectively?

Melissa Florer-Bixler:

Yeah well, thanks for sharing that story, kristen. I think that you know what I'm also aware of, and you saying that, is that we live in a society that has very different reactions to anger depending on where they come from, Right, and so I'm really grateful that you prayed that prayer, because masculine anger is very welcome in our world right and celebrated and moves people to the top of power structures all the time, whereas Black anger at injustice receives a very different response in our world. Women's anger receives a very different response in our social order, and so, even when we're talking about anger, you're already sort of helping us get a window into why there's even different work for us to do around anger depending on the social location that we fall into. Right, the Black anger that arose during the sort of height of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 was really significant right. To be able to bear witness to that anger as white people, as people for whom the police are often a source of protection and care. That was really significant, I think, for the United States in this particular moment, right.

Melissa Florer-Bixler:

So one of the I quote Audre Lorde in this book, where she sort of talks about how anger can shine a spotlight on something right.

Melissa Florer-Bixler:

It can make visible something that was not visible before, and I think that anger is actually such a key component to so much of the social change that has happened in our country.

Melissa Florer-Bixler:

I often remind people who maybe feel anxious about protest or who want to spend most of their time trying to convince people to come over to their side that there aren't really any social movements in our country. That happened because a majority of people were talked into it and then we enacted a social change. We think about the civil rights movement or LGBTQ rights or feminist movement. All of those happen because a small minority of people were angry enough about their world to organize themselves and say we are going to be angry in public and that is going, and we are going to utilize that anger to shift the way that our world works. Um, I think that we have seen really what the power is of the, of people being willing to say out loud I am not going to live like this anymore. This is not the way that it should be. Even when that experience is received as anger, how can we put, put ourselves in a position to receive it and to treat it even as a gift?

Chris Nafis:

Yeah, I mean because there's kind of two sides to that, right, like it's dealing with our own anger. There's probably more than two sides, but dealing with our own anger and dealing with the anger of those who we're in deep community with as we join them in frustration. You know, again, we feel this in our community very strongly, as a community that crosses a lot of social structures. You know, like we kind of carry the anger of housing injustice together but also being able to like, receive and hear the anger of other people that we might have a role of privilege in or or someplace of responsibility for the thing that they're angry about, and being able to like, hear that and receive it and not just sort of like you know how dare you be angry like that? You're expressing it the wrong way. Those kinds of things can be really unhelpful. Um, and I think we're all I don't know if we're all many of us are tempted towards, you know, those kinds of responses, just this discomfort with raw emotion being expressed in public places. I think there's like, I guess, like I see some of that I also see.

Chris Nafis:

I guess the internet culture, I feel like, has has a really interesting evolving part of our social structure where I mean you go online and it feels like everyone's angry all the time and it's like what if this is real anger? And what if this is manufactured to get clicks or to get follows or you know, just to get attention? Yeah, I don't even know. You're actually very savvy online, or you have been, at least from my perspective. Like, how do you figure out where to where to like throw in? You know what I mean, because there's so many different things to be angry about and there's so many people who are angry about all sorts of things Like how do you and how to, maybe, how do you and how do you, how does your church like figure out where to where to put your energy? Does that?

Melissa Florer-Bixler:

question make sense? That's a great question. Yeah, yeah, I, I mean, I think that there is something about solitary anger that feels like it can fester very quickly, right, and and I think there is a solitariness to to what is supposed to be a communal sense within social media, because you are not a like or a click is not the same right, just as a shared experience of anger around a particular set of circumstances, and so I don't know that I've seen that to be a particularly nourishing space for collective anger. I think I mentioned in this book, trying to remember that something very striking to me is that the imprecatory psalms, those cursing psalms for folks who may have not heard that language used before, these are read in worship. Right, these are written sometimes from an individual, from an individual perspective, but they aren't necessarily, they were not written for individuals to stew over these words. They're words that were supposed to be said out loud together and to be received by god. I think that's the other sort of difference that we're talking about, but something like social media is.

Melissa Florer-Bixler:

There's a directionality to our anger pretty consistently in the bible, which is god is is the one who social media is. There's a directionality to our anger pretty consistently in the bible, which is god is is the one who catches it. Right, there's um and even to the point where people hold god responsible for some of these things that are happening. Right, if people get into it with god all the time, they are angry at god in um as much as they are angry with physical powers and principalities of this earth being angry together. I think it's really important because it helps us to better discern what to do with that anger and where to put it. And yeah, there's so much going on in our world and I would say that one of the real gifts for me of my church, raleigh Mennonite, is the ability to invite others to share or hold on to the place of the anger that you are carrying.

Melissa Florer-Bixler:

So I mentioned that someone in our congregation had been put in ICE detention. Someone in our congregation had been put in ICE detention. We were collectively angry about that, real angry, and that really propelled us as a community into immigration work around that period of time. This was our person, right, our person was at the center of this. Our people in our community. It sounds like in a similar way to you're saying these are our people. Unhoused people, homeless people are our people.

Melissa Florer-Bixler:

There is, I think, as these relationships form around church communities, a way to invite others in so that you aren't holding that anger by yourself. And the way that we don't have to hold on to that anger by ourselves is to be able to say where can we put this in the world that moves us towards? Where can anger lead us in this journey towards dismantling the system that keeps enmity in place? So, instead of thinking about these as purely relational which is sort of I think this is what I inherited, it's just a problem between you and me. We got to work it out. We would think about what's the scaffolding around our relationship, around this system that keeps enmity in place. And once we start to actually take that apart, a lot of this interpersonal work kind of follows alongside of it.

Chris Nafis:

Yeah, no, that's really helpful.

Chris Nafis:

And I think, like the internet space is so isolating, as you've kind of alluded to, where there's this like false sense of community that we get or this false connection that we get on whatever, whatever you know social platform that you're on, that really leaves people ultimately kind of alone and ultimately feeling like you're kind of screaming into a void, even if you, even if you have others screaming with you and you're in one of those you know echo chamber cycles where everybody likes each other's stuff or whatever, like there's something much more significant about having flesh and blood people who are part of your community.

Chris Nafis:

Um, and I wonder, you know, I think some of the, you know, I think some of the um, the ways that our society is failing is that a lot of those, those communal spaces, are just sort of like disappearing. People aren't aren't gathering as often in not only in churches but in other ways, like people just don't get together in ways where they actually know each other in the same ways, and that leads us to not only anger but all these other emotions that we just kind of have to deal with in isolation. And having those things fester alone is so much different than being able to, like put them to work, as you say, to find some productive way for that anger to manifest itself in, in change and movement. We're gonna, you know, we're gonna, whatever the, whatever the response needs to be to this situation, like we, collectively, are going to work towards this together.

Melissa Florer-Bixler:

Um, I think that's that's a really helpful way of looking at things.

Chris Nafis:

What so you've shared about ice you know it? Or the the situation with the ice detainment in your congregation? Are there other ways that you all are are currently uh, I don't know what the word is. Are you fostering any enemies these days? Or like how does you know? How are you all discerning your way forward and enemy work?

Melissa Florer-Bixler:

Yeah, well, I mean, it's I.

Melissa Florer-Bixler:

This is.

Melissa Florer-Bixler:

All of this conversation is very relevant right now, with the complicated work of this, because our congregation has been very activated around the genocide in Gaza this past year and, as you know, there are things that are complicated about that and things that are not complicated about that.

Melissa Florer-Bixler:

One of the things that's complicated about it is our Jewish community's relationship to Israel and the desire to both continue to show up and be um to stand against antisemitism in our local community and um to recognize that those are not people where that part of our community does not share with us a vision for what we, for holding Israel and the United States accountable for war crimes that are being committed, and so that's been a really.

Melissa Florer-Bixler:

I mean, all of this feels very relevant to these questions that we're asking about what does it mean to see the state of Israel as an enemy? Asking about what does it mean to see the state of Israel as an enemy, but not Jewish people right At the same time and that's really deep work, work that I think I have only been able to answer by continuing to move in the direction of my Jewish neighbors who are Zionists Jewish neighbors who are Zionists and to show up to pray with them at synagogue, to say, no matter where our differences are on this, we will be with you when, when because it's an issue of when anti-Semitic violence comes to our community.

Chris Nafis:

So all of that has been really significant deep work for us in this past year with clear intentions to not give it back, um, but, on the other hand, like, this is a scenario where everyone is is sort of claiming to be the victim, uh, and claiming you know what I mean? And and in some ways, everyone is a victim and everyone is, uh, everyone is a victim. I don't know that everyone is a perpetrator, but like, uh, both kind of sides of the conflict have people who are, uh, perpetrating or you know, sending missiles at each other and doing things that they shouldn't have done or shouldn't do, and you can see the drifts in that community. I feel like for us in a similar way. You know, you go to a city council meeting on any issue around homelessness and you'll find people who are very legitimately upset about the way that people who are experiencing homelessness have made their life pretty miserable.

Chris Nafis:

You know, I just walked past this this morning. I walked past another thing that had been set on fire around our church, almost definitely by someone who was on the street. You know businesses that are, you know, really struggling because they're getting broken into and there's people pooping on their front yards and stuff, but then, at the same time, like we also recognize the complexity of that that, like people don't want to be doing these things. They are also victims and you know it's just like a mess. You know the whole thing is a mess and uh, and so navigating that and finding a way to like crystallize the work towards I don't know progress is a really challenging thing to do.

Melissa Florer-Bixler:

Yeah, yeah, and this is where yeah, I was just going to say I think this is where where I think you know, we, we, we have found some helpful language in saying the enemy here is is a system of leadership in Israel.

Melissa Florer-Bixler:

I think that our, even our most ardent Jewish friends, who are Zionists, would say Netanyahu feels like an enemy, like a common enemy right now, and the policies that have gone on all of this time for sending for no accountability for human rights violations, the architects of that system have become enemies to everyday Israeli people trying to live their lives and everyday Palestinian people trying to live their lives. We don't need to demonize regular people who are living in this region, because we have a common sense of what needs to change, what needs to be dismantled in order to see transformation happen. And I wonder if there's something similar. Right, you don't really need it's. It's. It is not strong enough to say this homeless person is my enemy. Right, like you have, it's the system that put this in place. It is a power and a principality that we need to name that has has brought enmity into this system that we're we're witnessing now.

Chris Nafis:

So absolutely yeah, and I tell people all the time that, you know, before we planted this church downtown, you know, powers and principalities were, uh, you know, almost like a supernatural, like hyper spiritual and that not not imagined in a sense of not real, but like that, that sort of a thing. And as I've gotten deeper into life in the city over the last decade, it's like no, I can name them, I know what they are. It's that system and that person and that role and that way of doing things. Like that is the power and the principality In some ways. Yeah, it doesn't have flesh and blood, but it is a very real thing that has an active role in the world that can be named if we're willing to name it.

Chris Nafis:

I think that's what I hear you talking about is like truth telling, right and naming those things and those people and saying this is where our enmity lies, it's against this. And again, like you know, sometimes it's really clear cut on. You know where that is. But there's also times where the community is divided on who to support and what. Who the enemy is then, young the enemy or not? You know, I think you know maybe that one is clarifying over time here, but how do you all, do you, have a discernment process in your church or how do you suggest we find our way through those like conversations internally as we try to figure out how to like do our work externally?

Melissa Florer-Bixler:

Yeah, I mean, I think this is such, this is such an important question because you know, we often say this about police abolition, work Like if we can't even figure out how to nonviolently live in this life together and hold one another accountable, when we actually all know each other and care about each other, how on earth can we expect to live in a society where people find non-violent ways to hold each other accountable? So I would say that this is the of the highest priority for the christian life is yes, we got to do it in here before you expect anyone else to do it, and I think that what has been helpful for us as a community has been to try our best to set up our systems and our way of communication and to structure a life where we have just made it necessary to have one another to get things done. So one example is that we make decisions by consensus. So you really have to talk to everybody and figure this out. We don't have just one person who's upset and they vote no and everybody else votes yes and then we can just move on. We actually have to have a conversation with that person and then some other sort of things that we just, we've really made a commitment to have no anonymous feedback at our church. Like we just we really like in reviews and even online surveys, like we do a worship survey once a year. We just ask people to put their needs on things so that when you say something that you'd be willing to say it to other people, right, but you, and so I feel like more than wow, we're really going to sit down and decide what we think about abortion today. Right, we have.

Melissa Florer-Bixler:

We have tried our best to just to have the pieces of our life that are these small habits that we create together that lead us in the direction of when we get to that point. We've already developed habits for telling each other the truth. We've already developed habits for saying what we need to say out loud, for having every voice count in our community, for knowing how to hold each other accountable when something goes wrong. We had a training last year.

Melissa Florer-Bixler:

And when I need to tell someone a difficult thing, what do I do? How do I react when someone tells me a difficult thing? Do I freeze? Do I argue? How can we know when we need to hold on another accountable and when we need to let something go? But I think that sort of our work as pastors is really just to keep developing these habits in every part of church life so that when we get to that point we can say, all right, what do we really need to hear from one another. And we've established the kind of community that can do that with grace and patience, but also with clarity, so that we know sort of the direction that we want to go.

Chris Nafis:

Sometimes that happens, you know how it is, there's all things that we want to do. Yeah, believe me, I know how it is. There's all things that we want to do. Yeah, believe me, I know how it is. On that one, well, you know, community formation is such an important part of discipleship really, you know and I think again, I don't know I get frustrated with a lot of churchy spaces.

Chris Nafis:

Yeah, I grew up in a church that was very disconnected from one another, very disconnected from one another, and so our church, I think, has really placed that high emphasis on these deep communal relationships. Like that goes beyond. You know, it's not just conflict resolution, it is a lot of that, but it's also, you know, just like kind of the more positive aspects working alongside one another and having conversations and praying together and sharing our needs with one another. All those things make make it possible, cause if we're not connected in those other ways, then as soon as you have a conflict, well, there's no way to no reason to stick around like, just go somewhere else. You know why have this discomfort. But if you're in a sticky relationship with somebody else, that, um, that is where you're actually committed to one another in a deeper way than you can have, because the community is formed. Then you can work through the conflict with a little bit of safety, because you can actually have the argument, you know, and you can give the feedback and hear the feedback.

Chris Nafis:

It doesn't make easy, uh, it's, it's a it's a hard thing to do a lot of the time, but, um, but yeah, as I said, that's something that I feel like I and probably most of us honestly in the world these days need to learn how to do that better. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, as a pastor, how do you deal with all the? You know I guess I'm asking this because I know it's hard how do you deal with just the carrying all the weight of all those relationships and the conflicts and the? You know there's so many different things to do as a church. Where do I don't know, how do you manage it all? Can I ask that question? Is that too personal of a question?

Melissa Florer-Bixler:

No, that's yeah, Some days better than others, honestly, some seasons better than others, and I think one piece of this for me over the years has been feeling okay with a sense of clarity about what this particular church wants to be and when it's okay for people to not want to be a part of that anymore.

Melissa Florer-Bixler:

I think that that there was a sense in seminary and maybe you felt this in your training too that our job is to keep everybody in the door and keep everybody, to manage all the conflicts and make sure that everybody was able to stay together, and I think over the years, I've just found myself being more open-handed with saying it seems like it's important for this church to be what it is in a way that provides both sort of an openness and stretching, but also a particularity that provides safety. I think is the language that I've gone more and more to over the years, and so one example of that is our church needs to be a safe place for LGBTQ people, and we're pretty open with about that, and so if that's a place I don't generally tell people, yeah, we'd love for you to come to this church, and if you don't feel good about queer folks, that's okay. I have a tendency to say things like hey, this is a place where a lot of queer folks worship and it's really important that they feel safe and loved and cared for. And and it sounds like that might be a challenge for you, let's talk about why that's a challenge and what it might mean for you to fit into this church's life or not, and feeling more content with what we are able to do, who we want to be. You can throw a stone and hit 25 churches in downtown Raleigh, so it's not as if there are, you know, other places to go or worship if this doesn't work for you.

Melissa Florer-Bixler:

And so I think that has felt like alleviating some of that pressure and sort of both, saying we want to be a place where we can move towards one another and once we sense where the Holy Spirit is going, we want to go there and we want you to come with us if you want to be on that journey too. And we figure that out together, like we're on this work of figuring this out together, but that sort of sense that we can't always do all of that right. We can't. We just don't have the capacity to hold that much within ourselves.

Chris Nafis:

So yeah, yeah, I mean another way that the way that we focus on I mean I don't think our church does this too much but like the wider church culture is so focused on stats and numbers and everything it's just another way that that breaks down our ability to do the work we're supposed to do Right, Because we're afraid to, we're afraid to do hard things, because we're afraid of losing people or challenging people or, um, or chasing people out that aren't on board with the mission. Um, yeah, yeah, Well, oh, you know I want to respect your time and not go too long here, but where do you find hope? You know, like there's a lot as we've kind of talked about there. We got Gaza, Israel, We've got several other major world violent conflicts happening.

Chris Nafis:

We have, you know, this horrible presidential election going on and all the things that are going on with that, and anti-immigration. You know sentiments that are being kindled by politicians. You know we've got all these things that are happening around us. In your book you talk about how the hope ultimately is that Christ will somehow bring an end to the enmity that's all around us. How do you cling to that hope in the midst of like the mess? Where do you find hope?

Melissa Florer-Bixler:

Yeah, in the midst of, like the mess, where do you find hope? Yeah, we've been exploring this question in our for all of these reasons, in the sermon series on Isaiah that I've been preaching through, which, of course, is so reflective of this, their world, so reflective of what you're just describing right there that wars and catastrophes and environmental disasters and terrible politics. And one of the places that I've continued to to go back to is the vision from isaiah where the wolf flies down with the lamb and we have this predator and prey who find their way back to one another right in there and a little child is leading them out of this place. And I was sitting with that scripture and and thinking about the way that that has happened just in congregational life, people who were once enemies socioeconomically enemies to one another, or people in my congregation who left jobs because they felt that those jobs were predatory on people who they knew were weaker or couldn't take care of themselves and they wanted to extricate themselves from that part of the system. And I just thought, oh, we actually see this, this happens, this vision from Isaiah is actually true in places, and we're going to need a lot more of that. We're going to need a lot more of people coming into community and saying we're going to figure out how to do life together here because our lives have been transformed, which, of course, is what that story is about.

Melissa Florer-Bixler:

Right, a lion cannot just eat straw or it will die, right? And yet there is something miraculous that happens in being transformed by Jesus Christ. And in spite of it all, that is what we continue to, that is our hope. We continue to cling to our belief. People and places can be transformed, transformed and that, in the midst of whatever catastrophe, god has carved out people who refuse to leave others behind. And that will be the true. That will be true forever, because it has always been true. There have always been people, the people of God, who've said we're going to carve out a space and keep each other safe here, and we're going to continue to do that because that is the work of God among us. So that's where I'm finding my hope these days.

Chris Nafis:

Yeah, thank you. I mean that's the revelation of Christ and the body of Christ right, and the way that we are, that revelation for one another. In these little kind of miraculous acts that people do relationship with one another and in these little kind of miraculous acts that people do, that no one, I don't know we were talking about that this Sunday in our in my sermon that no one really expects very, very much of one another, like we expect, kind of expect, the worst from one another. And so then when someone does something truly generous or truly transformative, when they actually leave a job behind for the sake of the peace of the community, or when they actually, you know, sacrifice something of themselves or give something of themselves, then it's amazing and there's so much hope in that for all of us. Yeah, well, yeah, thank you so much for joining. I want to give you the last word, any final words to send us out?

Melissa Florer-Bixler:

I don't want to give you the last word, any final words to send us out, just a blessing on you and your community as you are navigating these next months ahead, and that you will find the gift that you need within yourselves to be the community that your, that your people in your community needs.

Chris Nafis:

Well, thank you, melissa, and, yeah, thank you for spending the time. I really appreciate you and appreciate your work. Keep writing, we need it and you're a blessing to a much, much broader context than just Raleigh, although I know you're a huge blessing in there and Raleigh too. So, all right, thanks, chris.

Melissa Florer-Bixler:

It was great to chat with you.

People on this episode

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Chris Nafis

Host
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Melissa Florer-Bixler

Guest