Search PNC News for stories of people and churches in our UCC Conference:

 

Sunnyslope church engages ecumenically for justice

Jess Ingman and Oscar Litcan, executive director of NCW Equity Alliance, and Sarah Augustine for her “Decolonization for Transformation” training at the Sunnyslope Church (Brethren/UCC).  Photos courtesy of Sunnyslope Brethren/UCC About 75 gathered for ‘Decolonizing for Transformation.’

The Sunnyslope Church (Brethren/UCC) in Wenatchee is keeping its members enlivened with their participation in community service and social justice ministries.

Dane Breslin, who was ordained as an Evangelical Lutheran Church in America pastor in December 2022, has served the church 16 months. Sharing in ministry with him is Jess Ingman, who works part time for Faith Action Network (FAN) as a regional organizer for North Central Washington.

Both grew up Catholic and their paths led them to work toward ordination in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America through the Northwest Intermountain Synod.

Dane earned a bachelor’s degree in environmental studies and public relations at Gonzaga University in 2013, cooked four months for chimpanzee researchers in Zambia before serving a year with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps in Hillsboro, Ore., doing stream restoration with students.

After earning a certificate in permaculture design at Kansas University in Lawrence, he moved to Bend to start a sustainable farm, but in 2015 became director of the Bend Youth Collective, the ecumenical youth group for LGBTQIA+ youth.

Feeling called to ministry, he moved to Vermont, taking online classes at Iliff Theological School in Denver, joining Thepford Hill UCC Church and continuing his online studies at Luther Seminary.

Dane moved to Wenatchee to finish his seminary requirements as a part-time intern at Lake Chelan Lutheran and Grace Lutheran in Wenatchee.

After the internships, he invited Jess, a candidate for ordination in the ELCA, to partner with him in ministry at Sunnyslope and in the community.

Jess grew up Roman Catholic in Billings, Mont., and earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and international peace studies in 2006 at Notre Dame, in Indiana and a master of divinity at Notre Dame Seminary in 2011. After a year of service in Chicago with MercyWorks and seven years of ministry with Catholic churches in Portland she began doing ecumenical and interfaith ministry.

She and her family moved to Wenatchee two and a half years ago for her husband’s job with the Conservation District.

Jess started working with FAN in the summer of 2022, when she and Dane also facilitated listening sessions through the NWIM to find interests of community and faith leaders in justice, spirituality and anti-racism. That fit well with Jess’ relationship building role with FAN to learn what justice issues faith communities were passionate about.

Many local churches organized food pantries but were not collaborating with one another about shared concerns around economic justice and immigrant rights.

“We heard from both BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) and white leaders who felt white people needed to be educating one another on decolonization and anti-racism to understand the COVID inequities,” she said.

Dane said they also learned people interested in social justice needed a spiritual home, especially queer people.

The listening season led to creation of Cultivating Justice in 2022, a community of contemplation and action focused on the intersection of anti-racism, decolonization and the teachings of Jesus. Community encouragement continued with the emergence of the Interfaith Justice Coalition, in the summer of 2023. Many from Sunnyslope and the NWIM are co-leaders of the coalition and helped organize the decolonizing training.

Cultivating Justice held a “Decolonizing for Transformation” training on March 2 with Sarah Augustine, an indigenous author and trainer from Yakima, and the  executive director of the Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery.

The one-day training drew 75 people to Sunnyslope. It was supported with $4,000 seed money from the PNC-UCC Anti-Racism Fund as well as funds from the NWIM Synod, FAN and the North Central Washington Equity Alliance.

Dane and Jess co-lead the Cultivating Justice with a team of leaders from Sunnyslope.

“We are also holding gatherings in Wenatchee calling for freedom for Palestinians and doing marches for Palestine,” said Dane, adding that they are still in the process of considering next steps out of the decolonizing training.

“With the Interfaith Justice Coalition we also focus on narratives of Christian nationalism in the Wenatchee Valley. We work with the Cascade Unitarian Universalist Fellowship on that,” he said. “We need to create a louder counter narrative to get people of faith and conscience together in the coalition.

Jess and Dane, who are on the steering committee for the Interfaith Justice Coalition, are also urging support for the Indigenous Roots and Reparations Foundation in Wenatchee.

Sunnyslope has had a commitment to food security and immigrant rights for many years and continues to serve as the fiscal sponsor for Wenatchee for Immigrant Justice. Newer ministries like Cultivating Justice and the Interfaith Justice Coalition have brought new life to Sunnyslope Church.

It has grown from 25 to 30 attending Sundays to 40 to 60.

The sanctuary is being reconfigured to move from a hierarchical style to a more intimate, egalitarian style inspired by theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether’s Woman Church.

“We are building trust by reconfiguring the sanctuary. Rather than sitting in facing forward with an aisle to the altar and the preacher on a raised platform at the front 35 feet away, we want to meet more in the round. So we turned the pews on each side of the aisle to face each other,” Dane said.

“Now everyone is on the same level with the speaker, who is just 15 feet away. No one is elevated. We have also improved our ability to hear each other sing,” he said.

“Reorienting the sanctuary creates more of a community feel where congregants can see one another during service,” he said. 

Eventually they want to replace the pews with padded church chairs.

Sunnyslope Church of the Brethren was founded in 1903 and joined with the United Church of Christ in the 1980s, after working together in an ecumenical regional ministry of the UCC, Brethren and Disciples of Christ beginning in the 1970s.

Dane said the church was then known as “hippies on the hill.” Now it is the a progressive church and the only openly queer ministry in the valley, as LGBTQIA+ inclusive. It is a mixed congregation, not just LGBTQIA+.

For information, call 541-977-3591 or email rev.dane.breslin@gmail.com or ingman@fanwa.org.

 

Pacific Northwest United Church of Christ Conference News © April 2024

 

Share this article on your favorite social media