First Congregational Church’s historic new pastor
Rev. Mia Garnette White, the new senior minister of First Congregational Church of St. Louis, United Church of Christ (UCC) was processing her sermon days before Pentecost Sunday, the day Christians commemorate the early church’s reception of the Holy Spirit.
It was also the church’s first in-person worship service since the spread of the coronavirus last year. The sermon was to be Rev. White’s first since becoming leader of UCC in January.
She wasn’t exactly sure what she was going to say that day. but one of her desires was to analyze the meaning and lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic:
“One of the experiences for me, along with many others, was dealing with being literally snatched out of our busy lives; to be in a position where we all were basically isolated and had to sit with ourselves,” White explained.
“I’m not really sure. I want to really articulate that this is a new time to be reinvigorated, to be creative in dreaming what our future can be. It’s a time for us to be restored in the mystery of the movement of the spirit.”
– Rev. Mia Garnette White
“What did it mean to have so many distractions taken away from us that forced us to see the painfulness, the brokenness in everyday occurrences that we used distractions to avoid?”
White described the COVID experience as a “painful time” but also a time to ask: “‘What is happening in our community, in our wider community and our world?’ It’s a time to examine our priorities and what the spirit is calling us to do as the body of Christ.”
COVID, White said, “cracked open an opportunity for us to really begin to have the difficult conversations that during a regular time, we don’t get into it because it is too painful, too much controversy.”
George Floyd’s murder at the hands of Minneapolis police was also part of the pandemic experience and a controversial topic in need of reflection, White noted.
“When we speak about COVID, we don’t speak of George Floyd. It’s as if they’re two separate things. But in my mind, they are both part of the same story. In this moment of spiritual wisdom, it was a time for the church to ask, ‘are we similar in our response today in terms of the way that Jesus was killed?’”
Floyd’s plea to his mother before his death was an “incarnate moment,” White said, similar to Christ’s imploration to his Father on the cross.
Michele Bryan, co-chair of the UCC’s pastoral search committee, said White was chosen after “a two-year exploration of ourselves, our aspirations and our priorities. We found in her the most complete set of identified attributes and, frankly, synergy.”
First Congregational Church of St. Louis UCC is in Clayton, a predominantly white municipality located in one of the region’s most affluent zip codes.
Rev. White said she was pleased to receive a call from a church that’s dedicated to “progressive tradition of belief and inclusiveness.” Her role as the first African American female pastor, she said, is to help the church go beyond its mission.
“This church said it wanted to make a difference in times of racial injustice in St. Louis, which is very exciting to me. I think that part of my calling is to help it discern what that looks like and how we effectively and authentically do that.” she said.
White had a nontraditional path to the pulpit. Before heeding the call to preach, she spent a career in various jobs in Pennsylvania’s department of corrections. Unknowingly, that experience, she said, prepared her for a life of religious service.
“Dealing with that population helped me recognize what it means to be marginalized, to save people in their broken places when you hear their horrific stories,” she said.
“The spirit,” White explained, has always spoken to her in images, dreams and sometimes literal words. While walking to her first seminary class, she said she heard a voice in the wind say: “Welcome home.”
After her introduction to theology, White recalled: “I had such an unquenchable thirst for the Word…it became my all to the point where I literally walked away from my job, I quit. Something had taken over me. I had no choice.”
Before accepting her current position in St. Louis, White spent eight years as pastor of Hope UCC in Allentown, PA. She believes her new church here, founded by an abolitionist pastor in 1852, will provide fertile ground for her passions and ideas.
During her Sunday sermon White didn’t use the word “COVID” once. Instead, she hit her desired points through a homily based on the first Pentecost gathering. There, she said, God called for “a new thing, he called for change, he called on the crowd to step out as a people of faith and do something different under the guidance of the holy spirit.”
Her ultimate desire as UCC’s new leader, White said, is to expand its ministry:
“I would like to see the church build bridges that connect people to the church. I want the community at large to feel it’s a church for them, too.”
During her sermon, White stressed her desires for the church and the country through her own variation of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.
“I imagine a country committed to all colors and characters and conditions of man,” White said from the pulpit.
“We must put our differences aside, lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another; seek harm to none and harmony for all…so even as we grieve/we breathe, even as we hurt/we hope…so that we will forever be tied together victorious.
“Amen!”
Sylvester Brown Jr. is The St. Louis American’s inaugural Deaconess Fellow.
