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DiggThe God of Transformation: An Interview with Stephanie Spellers
The Rev. Stephanie Spellers tells managing editor Nicole Seiferth more about where and how she sees transformation happening around the church. A web-only Trinity News feature.
Nicole Seiferth: How do you define transformation?
Stephanie Spellers: Transformation feels like change-plus. In my mind, transforming says something is shifting form, shifting to what it was meant to be. And so, of course, when we talk about transformation in church, it’s finding out where it is that God has been leading us all along. What is the form that expresses the fullness of who we are and what we can be? I feel the same is true even when you talk about transformation internally. We all go through changes, but to go through transformation says, “I'm living into the fullness of Christ. I'm living into the image of God in me.”
NS: Do you think there's a difference between personal transformation and corporate transformation?
SS: Oh, yeah. I think we can learn a lot from our experiences of personal transformation, and that those insights can inform how we do corporate transformation, especially when you or I speak of the fear of change, the fear of transformation. That's such a personal thing, and each of us, even if we're big on change and we describe ourselves as radicals in the church, we can remember a time when we were scared of a change in our own lives.
It's incredibly important that change-leaders be able to tap into that experience, because I think it builds compassion in us. If we can bring that kind of wisdom and that compassion into our corporate transformation, our corporate change processes move in a way that is filled with God. I think we have to be able to be present with that compassion to the fear and the resistance in order to offer up something that is so compelling that people can buy into it in spite of the fear of the change.
NS: Where do you think that fear of change, of transformation, comes from?
SS: Transformation is hard. We say we want that, but what's difficult, but for something to change, to transform into what it was meant to be, some part of that entity is going to have to die, to be reborn, and you may not recognize precisely the form that it's growing into.
Most of us don't want to admit it, but I think we come to church hoping for two things. I think we actually do hope that God will touch us, and something will shift in us, and that we will be transformed, and that we will be able to transform the community and even our world. But the other side of it is that we come to church saying, "Please don't change anything. My life is changing enough. The world is changing enough. Can you be the one place that's not going to be bumping and shifting all around me?” How do you reconcile those impulses? We have this God who so longs to transform us and to take us from glory to glory, and we also have this need to say “stop the merry-go-round. I’m getting dizzy.”
I’m fascinated with figuring out how we enter this transformation that God is inviting us into in ways that don't make us so dizzy that we pass out on the merry-go-round. I think the key is staying centered in God. If you have ever taken a dance class, you know that when dancers do amazing spins, they spot. They have the one thing they get their eyes centered on and then they do another revolution. That's how they can do 20 turns so quickly, come out of it and continue to dance. They return to the center. And for us, that's God. That's the voice of God. That's the word of God. That's the spirit of God keeping us centered, helping us not to spin out.
NS: Where do you see transformation happening around the Church?
SS: I'm a part of the emerging church movement. I work at the Cathedral of St. Paul in Boston, and one of my ministry areas has been creating an emerging church worship community called The Crossing. And I love that. I live for that. It's because I get to work with this incredible group of people who are dreaming together. Because it's emergent, the whole idea is sleuthing, listening, discovering where God might be leading the church to go. We're kind of the wave riders who are out there saying, "Hey, did you know that it could be like this?"
NS: Where do you see those opportunities for experimenting with transformation in smaller churches that perhaps don't have the resources of large parishes or cathedrals?
SS: I have to tell you, I'm as excited by what I see in some of these churches that do some of that wave riding within their in a smaller context. I think of some of the churches even in our Diocese in Massachusetts. One church in particular in Arlington, just outside of Boston has a lot of artists in their community. And so they'll plan ahead and do these extraordinary kind of artistic installations. It's not that you have to have lots of professional artists in your church to do that, but what they model for me is asking where are the moments are in the church where they're ready to be broken open? You don't have to be a big church or a church with a separate service to make room for that. You can do that on a Sunday morning.
NS: What are some of the common factors you've seen in these different people and places that are doing transformation?
SS: I’ve seen a lot of prayer going on. I think that prayer is where we get to that centered place, where we know that this transformation is of God and where we know that this transformation will not destroy us. Where we know that we have the courage and the strength and the energy to walk this journey toward transformation. Communities that are prayerful about the transformation seem to live into it really beautifully – and I think there are communities that are listening to each other. So there's the listening to God and then there are moments when they are able to listen to each other.
I think the ill-fated transformation experiments that I've heard about are often the ones where one person or a couple of people said, "We're going to go and do this." And the rest of the community only hears about it after the fact. It might have been a great idea, but because it didn't come from conversation with the people, there's not the energy behind it. The way that we show we trust each other is by listening to each other and trust that the people aren’t going to derail the whole process. Sometimes the people have been thinking it all along, and if you would ask, you'd hear that. So listening to God, listening to each other – and listening to our history.
Certainly in our Anglican tradition, Cranmer and all of those early folks who shaped our church were not afraid of transformation. They walked right into it, and they gave us theological and liturgical parameters to work with that allow us to be people on the move with God. I think especially of Cranmer speaking of, you know, the Anglican tradition as one that speaks in the vernacular. It speaks the language of the people. Our history is listening for the vernacular and then doing worship and theology that reflect the context we're in. And what a gift they've given us. If we can lean into that, I think we'll find we have more tools for transformation rather than more shackles that stop us from entering God's new life, God's vision for us.
