{"id":4569,"date":"2019-10-18T10:26:19","date_gmt":"2019-10-18T10:26:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/?p=4569"},"modified":"2021-03-18T06:31:59","modified_gmt":"2021-03-18T06:31:59","slug":"learning-connecting-and-welcoming-part-2-of-a-conversation-with-prof-andrea-summers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/2019\/10\/18\/learning-connecting-and-welcoming-part-2-of-a-conversation-with-prof-andrea-summers\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning, Connecting, and Welcoming: Part 2 of a Conversation with Prof. Andrea Summers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This spring, Professor Andrea Summers traveled to the United States-Mexico border with a team from the Wesleyan Church<\/a> to listen to asylum seekers, support local pastors and other community leaders, talk with U.S. Border Patrol agents, and offer assistance at shelters on both sides of the border.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this second part of our conversation (you can read Part 1 here<\/a>), Summers talks more about that experience and the great things God is doing in the Wesleyan Church regarding immigration. We also discuss how her own ministry has been encouraged and strengthened by her husband’s ministry and what she thinks gets taken for granted about people in ministry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jonathan Sircy: What have been the sort of things you’ve mulled over most from your spring and going to the border and working with working with people who want to immigrate to this country and have been sort of like put in purgatory? I know you got to have conversations that documented and served that immigrant population. What did God show you there? What has God continued to speak to you about?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Andrea Summers: Oh, it’s a lot, and it\u2019s hard to give a simple answer, but I will do my best. It was a really eye-opening and heart wrenching experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I mean, I have been sympathetic to immigrants and even\nundocumented immigrants for a while. Where we lived in Georgia, I had asked the\nquestion, \u201cLord, who are some of the most vulnerable people in my community\nwhere I live right now?\u201d And through a series of events, I ended up in a\ntrailer park where the vast majority of the folks in that trailer park were undocumented\nimmigrants. I tutored these kids after school. So, I was already connected to\nthe plight of immigrants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

But I learned so much and I think everyone is kind of\nsomewhere on this trajectory, even like churches and faith communities are\nsomewhere on a trajectory of learning, connecting, and then welcoming. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of us have our foot in more than one of those locations at\na time. We’re still just learning and like correcting misinformation that we\nknow that we grew up with or that the media has given us and learning really\nwhat the push and pull factors are that cause people to immigrate in the first\nplace. Some of us might have all the information, but what we really need to do\nis just actually connect with and talk to an actual immigrant and hear their\nstory. Welcoming is when you’re at a point where you’re actually serving that\ncommunity. That\u2019s what going to the border did. It was like a firehose of\nlearning and connecting in tandem. So I was able to learn so much about like\nimmigration law, for example. I visited shelters where I was connecting with\nactual immigrants, and those two things over such a kind of intense experience mentally\nand emotionally and even logistically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I came home and I had time to really like to sort\nthrough all the pieces of the puzzle and think through it and pray through it\nand learn some more and maybe connect some more, I was able to kind of really\ntake some steps forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think everyone is kind of somewhere on this trajectory, even like churches and faith communities are somewhere on a trajectory of learning, connecting, and then welcoming. <\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

So what does that mean for me now? It means I’m getting much\nmore involved with Wesleyan churches fostering immigrant connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Wesleyan Church is, except for maybe the Catholic Church, probably leading any other denomination in our work with immigrants. It’s incredible because we’re such a tiny denomination and because even in our denomination, immigration is such a polarizing issue. But it also just goes to show probably how little the church is doing in the area of immigration, and in a lot of ways that a church like the Wesleyan Church could be on the forefront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JS: I love that learning, connecting, and welcoming sequence. How has your relationship with your husband [Jeremy Summers, the Multiplication Pastor at Alive Wesleyan] helped in that process?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AS: He\u2019s my partner and my friend and from day one, you know, we both have had a very clear call into vocational ministry. So that’s been a really wonderful thing that we share this passion. How great is that? But it also has been a really difficult thing sometimes, too, because we’ve been married long enough that we can look back and we can point to seasons where it was like we gotta take turns sometimes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Wesleyan Church is, except for maybe the Catholic Church, probably leading any other denomination in our work with immigrants. It’s incredible because we’re such a tiny denomination and because even in our denomination, immigration is such a polarizing issue. But it also just goes to show probably how little the church is doing in the area of immigration, and in a lot of ways that a church like the Wesleyan Church could be on the forefront.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Jeremy and I have similar kind of voices. We both went to ask a seminary, and it was really something that was incredibly formative for both of us. But we’re really different, too. We have different areas of focus. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

JS: What is something that people take for granted about\npeople in the ministry? If somebody hears you’re a professor of religious\nstudies at Southern Wesleyan or somebody hears you’re on the staff of a local\nchurch, what’s something they take for granted that maybe isn’t totally true?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AS: There is still a tendency to sometimes put pastors or\npastors, families or senators maybe on some sort of a spiritual pedestal. You\nknow, I think that it is becoming more in vogue to be more vulnerable and say, \u201cI’m\nmessy and broken,\u201d but, you know, we only still share so much. You might say, \u201cI\nstruggled in my marriage 10 years ago,\u201d but we might not say, \u201cMy spouse and I\nhad a huge blow out last night.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the things about spiritual formation is that it requires\nvulnerability, honest vulnerability, not with everyone but with a small handful\nof people before God for one another. It\u2019s God showing up in the garden and\nsaying to Adam and Eve who were hiding behind the bushes, \u201cWhere are you?\u201d\nLike, he’s calling me now. I think that’s so much of God’s invitation all the\nway through scripture is come out and come out in hiding. And so that’s something\nthat we all need to do. We have to come out of hiding to ourselves, to the\npeople in our lives, to God. It’s really hard for pastors to do that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so, when it comes to spiritual formation, leaders are often\nnot allowed to do that, or they don’t feel like they’re allowed to say that. So,\nI think that that that’s difficult. That vulnerability has been a real\nintentional and spiritual discipline in my life in the last 10 years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this second part of our conversation, Summers talks more about that experience and the great things God is doing in the Wesleyan Church regarding immigration. We also discuss how her own ministry has been encouraged and strengthened by her husband’s ministry and what she thinks gets taken for granted about people in ministry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":4570,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[344,343],"tags":[82,373],"class_list":["post-4569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-events","category-religious-studies","tag-conversations","tag-swu-stories","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4569"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4569\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4571,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4569\/revisions\/4571"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}