The Courage to Lead Beyond the Congregation: An Interview with MyRon Edmonds

Best Practices for Adventist Worship (BP): Tell us about the broader community surrounding Grace Community Seventh-day Adventist Church, where you are the lead pastor.

MyRyon Edmonds (ME): The broader community is an urban suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, which means it is very much an urban area with all of the "at risks" accompanying that reality and all of the trauma you could imagine. Cleveland is a predominantly African American city. It is 60% African American. All the inner suburbs reflect a group of people who have moved out of the city proper to look for more opportunities, but many of the ills of society have followed them. And so, for example, in the area that we're located, it's a 70%, single parent population. We were able to do a study on what some of the needs were there. And we found that most of these families—single-parent-led and younger families, millennials, and now Gen Zers—are essentially looking for a better life, but they just don't know how to do it. So the number one thing they requested from a church was recreational services. And our interpretation of that was that they were really looking for something for their children. They are trying to achieve success through working, but they don't really know what to do with their children. Recognizing that reality helped to frame our vision for what we needed to do to scratch the itch of the community.

BP: So you identified the need for recreation and activities for kids. What was the church's response to that need?

ME: I'd say the church was initially open to the need but resistant to the process. It's very likely to have boomers and builders who are engaged in you reaching their children. The question of how is the issue. And we were proposing a how that just didn't enter into their framework of how ministry should be done.

BP: What were some of the things you did that encountered resistance?

ME: Generally speaking, Adventist churches, no matter what their demographic is, feel very committed to Sabbath School, 11 o'clock worship, traditional evangelism, Pathfinders, and things of that nature. That's how they believe the world is going to be changed. But the world that we were dealing with, including our community and their children, was totally out of touch and disconnected from those modalities. So we had to create a process of reaching these folks that the church was unfamiliar with, which was a community-based social justice-oriented, empowerment, educational, secular approach to ministry.

BP: What's one example of an initiative that wasn't on people's radar screens who were thinking more traditionally?

ME: Instead of traditional Sabbath worship, we decided to do block parties. And we did small block parties once a month, and quarterly, huge block parties. And this was on Sabbath morning.

If you're not an Adventist, everything happens on Saturday. So we felt that that would be the day to do it. That's the day people typically see as an off day. The first time I ran into opposition was when we decided to make the church an empowering agency instead of a religious indoctrination agency on Sabbath morning.

BP: What were some of the initial impacts that you saw?

ME: The first time we did this 10-12 years ago, we had 1500 people at our Sabbath block party. And we never saw numbers less than 800 people coming out to these events. Why? Because we were feeding people. We were giving away school supplies and other felt-need items to help our neighbors. We had a fun factor with DJs and music. And I preached every time! It was an empowering talk about stuff that was relevant to where people were at, but it was definitely a sermon. And Sabbath school was not a traditional Sabbath School. Instead, we had courses preparing parents for how to deal with the vices of a violent city. We gave information to them, partnering with local agencies in the community to provide resources for these parents.

BP: How would you synthesize the lessons you’ve learned through this process for people who haven't done this type of outreach?

ME: The majority of our members were for what we did. The lesson I learned is that I got consumed with those who weren't. So often, the insecurities of the leader can cloud their thinking about what's actually happening in the church. And what this does is discourage pastors from even trying. I think the difference between me and maybe others is that I was just courageous. At the end of the day, there was opposition. It may have been overblown, but there were obvious hurdles. We even had some pushback from administrators in terms of ideology regarding what we should be doing. There were financial hurdles. At the end of the day, anytime there's a vision that God gives you to reach people who are not connected to God, there's going to be opposition. The most important thing I learned from this process is you must be courageous, and courage looks like obedience in the face of this opposition.

Too many of us are scared to do what we know is morally right to save communities. I was such a people pleaser that I left a lot on the table of what we could have done. I was too worried about what I now see really wasn't opposition. True opposition is a system where you have a prison industrial complex that is doing everything in its power to incarcerate a whole population of people. And it's going to take a Herculean effort from the community to go against this social injustice system. That is true opposition. A few opinions from some folks at church who you see once a week is not opposition. I should have led more like a revolutionary than like a pastor who was afraid of a few members of his church who were holding back 1000s from getting the help that they needed.

What are you willing to lay on a line so that people can be saved? Jesus gave his life for that. And there are not a lot of us leaders who are willing to sacrifice much of anything to see the cause of Christ come to pass because we are often afraid of the fallout of doing what is right. Now, I will say this as a caveat. There is a way to lead a church to change. But even this, I have thoughts about. We are not just leading our congregation. If you are only leading your congregation to change, then you are going to be myopically focused on the obstacles that are presented by the church. But if you see yourself as a change agent for your community—if you recognize that you are called to lead that community—then you begin to perceive both the real opposition and incredible opportunities for transformation.