Summary

In this episode, we rebroadcast parts of a book launch for the Rev. Dr. Sarah Travis’ book, Unsettling Worship, Reforming Liturgy for Right Relations with Indigenous Communities. The conversation centers on how Christian worship can address the historical and ongoing colonial injustices faced by Indigenous peoples. Dr. Travis highlights how worship can both comfort and challenge congregants, fostering truth-telling and reconciliation.

She shares the inspiration for her book, emphasizing the importance of addressing uncomfortable truths about settler-Indigenous relations within worship settings. The conversation touches on how liturgy can be a space for healing and prophetic action, engaging with the realities of colonialism, and offering a pathway toward hope and justice.

Quotables

• “…what we do with those stories in Scripture that seem to portray God in God's self, as perpetrator, one who is complicit in colonial activity, not to mention complicit in the genocide of peoples living in lands that Scripture tells us God promised to others.”

• “Worship is designed to unsettle us. We should be disturbed by the word of God. Reconciliation is a word that should disturb us because it requires leaving behind comfortable spaces and entering into relationships that are fraught because of historical and contemporary colonialism and racism.”

• “One of my greatest learnings was how important the prayer of confession is in worship and the assurance of pardon. I struggle with the assurance of pardon in the context of indigenous settler relations, because we get up and we confess what we have done as a people in terms of our colonial history, which is just enormous and devastating. And then we are assured of our forgiveness. And what does it mean to be forgiven in an ongoing context of a disabled relationship?”

• “…we need to do more educating. And I will always say that worship is part of the ongoing conversation of the congregation. And so indigenous realities need to be part of the ongoing conversation that a congregation is having, and then it's not a surprise when it appears in worship.”

• “I think it’s a hard time to be a preacher, and we're seeing this more and more in terms of what's happening in the world right now. How do you tell the truth when the truth is so convoluted? And that's part of the challenge of preaching about indigenous realities is that it's a complicated history. I guess what I want to do is avoid a flat telling. So how do we bring these experiences and realities to life in our preaching. For example, how do we tell the stories of indigenous people as whole people?”

• I think privileged people often interpret scriptures of hope in an eschatological way. That someday there will be this new reality. And I think worship calls us into a space that recognizes that new reality is now.

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Additional Resources:

Rev. Dr. Sarah Travis

National Day for Truth and Reconciliation

Kamloops Residential School

Books

Unsettling Worship, Reforming Liturgy for Right Relations with Indigenous Communities

Unspeakable, Preaching and Trauma-Informed Theology

Decolonizing Preaching, The Pulpit and Postcolonial Space

Metamorphosis, Preaching After Christendom

Knox College, Toronto - Centre of Lifelong Learning

Calvin Institute of Christian worship

About Rev. Dr. Sarah Travis

Sarah Travis is the Associate Professor, Ewart Chair in the Practice of Ministry and Faith Formation at Knox College and has been teaching at Knox since 2012.

Sarah is an ordained minister of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, and currently serves as part-time minister at Norval Presbyterian Church. Her primary areas of research and teaching are preaching, worship and the practice of ministry. From decolonizing worship practices to trauma-informed preaching, Sarah has published several books aimed at facilitating a conversation among Christians about topics that matter for the church today. She is a 2023 Calvin Institute of Christian Worship Teacher-Scholar Grant recipient, exploring how playful theologies can enhance the worship and self-identity of very small congregations.

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Transcript

[Introduction]

Welcome. Welcome to the ministry Forum Podcast coming to you from the Center for Lifelong Learning at Knox College, where we connect, encourage and resource ministry leaders all across Canada as they seek to thrive in their passion to share the gospel.

I am your host, the Reverend John Borthwick, Director of the Center and curator of all that is ministryforum.ca. I absolutely love that I get to do what I get to do, and most of all that, I get to share it all with all of you. So, thanks for taking the time out of your day to give us a listen.

Whether you're a seasoned ministry leader or just beginning your journey, this podcast is made with you in mind.

[John Borthwick]

Welcome back to the ministry Forum Podcast. We are excited to share this episode with you. It's one of our re-castings that we're going to be doing over the seasons for the ministry Forum Podcast. And this one in particular is from a conversation that we recorded on November 2, 2023.

The Ministry Forum website, I don't think it was even launched yet. We were just in our infancy as a little community trying to engage and support ministry leaders in a variety of different ways, but now we have the podcast. The last piece of the puzzle is in place, and we're excited to be able to take some of the content that you may have missed. You may not have even been aware we had it! It does actually sit on our “It's Raining Books, Hallelujah” offering or product page, I guess, at churchx.ca. And if you haven't checked out churchx.ca we'd encourage you to do so. You can find it through our website, hitting on our Learning Portal on our website, and that'll take you right there. You're going to register at churchx.ca and check out some offerings that we have, including one for lay worship leadership and another couple related to social media, but that's enough of that unpaid commercial break that was unintended as a part of this intro. Let's get to what we're actually talking about today.

So today we have a conversation that was recorded as I said last November, and it's about a book that the Reverend Dr Sarah Travis. One of our associate professors here at Knox College, the Ewert chair, in the practice of ministry and faith formation. A book that Sarah wrote called Unsettling Worship; reforming liturgy for right relations with indigenous communities. 

We launched that book as a part of a special marking of the day for Truth and Reconciliation last September as well, and it was a lovely in-person book launch, including a number of different elements, including a little bit of worship that Sarah led outside in the Knox College cloister. And so, this was a an opportunity for people from all across Canada—We even had someone join us from Sweden, one of our ministry leaders, and a graduate of Knox College, who is hanging out in Sweden at this time—And it was an engaging conversation. It was interesting to hear people's perspectives and views. I loved how the people really dug into worship. This idea coming from the title, of course, unsettling worship, which is a play on a variety of different things, but it was also interesting just how people talked about. Is worship meant to be comfortable or hopeful? And just the nuance of that. And if you really listen into what some of our guests who were engaging Sarah in conversation are talking about, there's some really interesting thoughts just around how worship is meant to engage us. Are we meant to just keep each other comfortable? Which I think there is a part for that to play in worship, or is there something about worship that also points to hope? And in in pointing to hope actually creates some kind of disruption.

As you may hear on our ministry Forum Podcast every so often, when we're using content that is from the web, you are occasionally going to find little blips, little gaps. It's going to seem like it goes quiet for a second, or there might even be some, just some challenges. Our post-production crew works hard to try and do what it can with that, but we can only do so much, and really what we want is the content. And sometimes the quality does degrade a little bit when we're using the internet, and so thank you for your understanding and patience with that.

So, without further ado, let me send you off into this wonderful conversation around Sarah's book Unsettling Worship. Listen to all the folks gathered from across the country and even across the globe. We're so grateful to have you as a part of the ministry, forum community and listening to our podcast. If you have any comments or thoughts or suggestions for future podcasts, do reach out to us. We so appreciate that engagement. Okay, enjoy the book conversation on Unsettling Worship.

[John Borthwick Ministry Forum Podcast Recording on November 2, 2023]

Well, welcome everybody to the ministry forums hosting of the virtual book launch. We had an in-person book launch at Knox College at the end of September, but this is our kind of virtual book launch of Sarah Travis's book, Unsettling Worship; reforming liturgy for right relationships with indigenous communities. We're delighted to have Sarah with us. For those of you who don't know Sarah, but I'm thinking most of you probably do, she is the Assistant Professor of preaching, worship and Christian ministry at Knox College, and in the new year, she'll have a new title, and we'll look forward to that.

I am John Borthwick, and I am the director of the Center for Lifelong Learning at Knox College, a new initiative by the college and ministry forum is our voice into the church and into the world, and we're delighted to host conversations just like this.

Today's format will be fairly simple. I'll turn it over to Sarah to lead us through sort of the opening part, and then we'll have a conversation for a bit. We're looking to wrap up, probably within an hour. Yeah, it could be sooner, could be later, depending on the breadth and depth of our conversations. If you've registered today and you are not with us, but you'll be watching this later. You're going to get the recording, which you're going to be able to see. We'll also create it as an audio and there will also be a transcript as well. We'll send it as a Dropbox folder, maybe today, tomorrow, or a couple days later, and you'll be able to see it then.

Thank you so much for everyone joining us from across the country and even across the world. Today, we are delighted to have a guest from Sweden and guests from Western Canada as well as Ontario. So, Sarah, I'll turn it over to you.

[The Rev. Dr. Sarah Travis] 

Great! Thank you! Thank you all for being here. This is so exciting. I want to begin by acknowledging the land, and this is an interesting exercise, because we're all in different places. So, I just want to say that I acknowledge that the land that I'm on, that I worship and work on, is the traditional territory of the Huron Wendat, the Petun First Nations and the Mississauga’s of the credit. And with that acknowledgement, I commit to working toward reconciliation with those communities, and I would invite you to just think for a moment about the land that you're on and how it has been cared for and nurtured through the centuries, and we acknowledge all of those lands in this time.

So, I thought I would just begin by sharing a little bit about how this book came about. I wanted to write about indigenous settler relationships for a long time. And that urgency grew and grew, and eventually, in about 2019 I decided to apply for a grant from the Calvin Institute of Christian worship. I received this grant to write about settler indigenous relationships in terms of worship. And I honestly didn't know exactly where that was going to take me. And as I began my research and my reading, the discovery of the children's bodies happened in Kamloops and other places, and it really caused me to wonder, how on earth do we talk about these things in the pulpit and in worship? We have to say something.  So how do we address those broken relationships in worship? And that started to evolve that question, and I'll read a little bit from the book in a few minutes that will really target the kind of questions that I was asking.  

But the urgency has not diminished with time. It's gotten more and more urgent. And so, this book is meant to be a contribution to a conversation. And I'm really hoping for some vigorous critique of what I've written, because I think it's that kind of book where it needs to be part of a much broader conversation.

So, I worked with a team of people, and Jermaine Lovelace is here, and he was one of those people. Brian Fraser and Lori Ransom and Margaret Mullen were the other members of that group, and they really supported me and challenged me, and they all read the manuscript and commented on it, and we were even able, post pandemic, to get together and share our thoughts and have wonderful conversations. And so, I'm so grateful to that group, and they deserve credit in terms of the publication of this book, and I it's been a wonderful experience. So, Lori Ransom read some words at the in-person book launch, and John is going to read those for us now, since Lori was not able to be with us.

[John Borthwick] 

So, these are Lori's words and not mine, but I'll try to read them and maybe translate them if, in case, there's references to Lori that obviously don't fit with me, but I'll do my best.

Some Opening remarks for Sarah's book launch by Lori Ransom.

“I'm not only honored to have been asked to speak today, but also to have been asked by Sarah to journey with her and with other indigenous and settler Presbyterians as her idea for this book, Unsettling Worship germinated and grew. Congratulations, Sarah. It's a beautiful and rich book. I read a draft about a year ago and returned to the draft in preparation for today, and found myself thinking, Did I read this material before? It's so fresh. I'm seeing new things and getting new insights. Wow, this is such a great book. My reaction tells me that other readers are likely to have a similar reaction and find that they will want to return to Sarah's work again and again as a resource for and meditation on worship.

This is a deeply reflective book. Sarah examines each and every element of worship like a forensic scientist, carefully reflecting on why we do the things we do, how we do them, and perhaps most importantly, what attention must be paid to how members of the worshiping community, in their diversity, may respond to different aspects of worship because of their diversity, and why attention to decolonization is so important. For me, this is not only a book about decolonizing worship and decolonizing the theologies that are expressed through worship, but I also noted that in writing about the need to decolonize worship and theology, Sarah is in fact engaging in an act of repentance as a Christian leader.

I say this reflecting on how for many decades in this country, indigenous ways of worshiping creator were banned in Canadian law. Not least because Christian leaders wanted it so. Indigenous people's ways of relating to creator were under attack, and sadly, in some places, their ways of worship are still under attack. As Christians, I don't think we reflect deeply enough on the violent attacks suffered by indigenous peoples for so very long, on how they go about relating to their Creator God. This attack on how they relate to creator is a deep facet of the historical trauma felt intergenerationally by the indigenous community. And Sarah takes time in Unsettling Worship to unpack the meaning of that trauma, and of course, the trauma of residential institutions, which we reflect on this day.”

(since Lori was speaking on the day, the National Day for truth and reconciliation)

“and the ongoing trauma for indigenous communities, as new information with respect to deaths and unmarked graves of Indigenous children continues to be uncovered. Even this week at car cross in the Yukon and lastly, week by the solo First Nation in British Columbia.  

Sarah also recognizes the very different but also significant intergenerational trauma experienced by settlers, which needs attending to. As settlers strive to reconcile what was done to indigenous peoples with their own family, community and nation stories and understanding of themselves. Sarah does so beautifully and lovingly, and as she has the courage to ask tough questions, such as, what we do with those stories in Scripture that seem to portray God in God's self, as perpetrator, one who is complicit in colonial activity, not to mention complicit in the genocide of peoples living in lands that Scripture tells us God promised to others.

You have to read the book to find out how Sarah answers this very question.

Sarah also reminds us of how Jesus was a colonial subject, how his family, the disciples, and the communities with whom they interacted, were living under Imperial Rome, and how we can use this knowledge in the process of decolonizing our approaches to worship. Her words reminded me of how the late indigenous theologian Richard Twist loved to speak of Jesus as a dark haired, dark eyed indigenous boy. Readers will be eager to reflect on Sarah's advice concerning how to share the traumatic story of residential schools with the boys and girls, the young children of today, of all backgrounds in a worship setting. 

Finally, Sarah tackles the challenge that worship leaders face of how they offer hope for the journey forward in the face of so many challenges which remain in our relationship. So, I look forward to returning again and again to this beautifully written and deeply thoughtful book from someone who is so evidently equally passionate about the experience of worship within the Christian community and passionate and committed to the hard work of decolonizing our worship spaces and theologies to ensure the reflection of God's welcome and love for all peoples. Thank you, Sarah, so very much for sharing this gift with us.” Lori Ransom.

[The Rev. Dr. Sarah Travis]

Thank you, John and thank you, Lori.

I thought I would just read a little bit. I'm going to read from the introduction that sort of situates the book so that those of you who haven't read it have some idea where it's coming from.

Worship leaders and preachers have the ongoing challenge of addressing the realities of human life, war, natural disasters, disease, violence. We must speak into the void and into the chaos, into this grim fabric of life, we are invited to interpret the world through the lens of the Gospel. 

The Gospel consistently calls us toward truth telling and reconciliation. Worship is a space in which to consider both the very worst that human beings are capable of, and the very best. It is a space in which we are formed by the forgiveness of God in order to be made free to imagine better, stronger relationships. In Canada and other nations the relationship of settler churches to indigenous peoples is a significant area of concern. Seeking right relations is an urgent task because the damage has been immense. The lives of indigenous folk literally depend on the manner in which settlers respond and repair the damage that has been done by generations of colonialism. Canada has undergone a process of truth and reconciliation, similar to what occurred in South Africa after the end of apartheid. As a result, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada issued 94 calls to action, which offer a means for Canadians, including the parties of the settlement agreement, to respond to the TRC findings.

The settlement agreement represents the consensus reached between legal counsel of former residential school students, churches, the Assembly of First Nations, other indigenous organizations and the Government of Canada. Call to action number 59 reads quote, “we call upon the church parties to the settlement agreement to develop ongoing education strategies to ensure that their respective congregations learn about their church's role in colonization, the history and legacy of residential schools, and why apologies to former residential school students, their families and communities are necessary.” End quote.  

Canadian churches have accepted a responsibility to teach about colonization and its implications, not only because they are parties to the settlement agreement, but also because reconciliation is an imperative for Christians. In worship, our identities as children of God are formed and expressed. Worship takes us on a journey as we gather, confess, hear the word and preach it, consider it, celebrate the sacraments and are sent out into the world to live out what we have experienced within the context of worship. It is a space to consider our histories and varied identities, as well as our relationships with God and others. According to the final report of the TRC quote, “for churches, demonstrating long term commitment requires atoning for actions within the residential schools respecting indigenous spirituality and supporting Indigenous People's struggle for justice and equity.” End quote.

This book explores the question, how does worship prepare us to engage in the work of conciliation reconciliation with indigenous peoples. Using a framework of fourfold worship, I consider the ways that our worship gives space to examine and improve our relationships, not only with indigenous peoples, but with all those we consider “other.” I begin with the assumption that worship is a formative practice for Christians. It shapes us in particular ways, to be sent into the world as ambassadors of reconciliation. Christians often come to worship to feel better or more comfortable. The great challenge of decolonizing worship is that it will make us uncomfortable. Worship is designed to unsettle us. We should be disturbed by the word of God. Reconciliation is a word that should disturb us because it requires leaving behind comfortable spaces and entering into relationships that are fraught because of historical and contemporary colonialism and racism. None of this is easy. God's word and activity in worship are disruptive. They interrupt our systems and our plans.

[music]

[The Rev. Dr. Sarah Travis]

So that's where I'm coming from, and at this point, I want to open up the conversation. So, some of you have read this book, and I'd love to receive your questions or your comments, and also a couple of questions for us to consider together. How can you imagine using this book in your worship context? And then the bigger question of what now? You know, having started on this journey, what happens next? What are what are the options for worshiping communities?

So, I'll open it up.

[Jermaine]

I just want to say thanks again to Sarah for pioneering this work. And I deliberately use that word pioneer because, not only because of the context that I was born in, raised in, and also church in, but also because of the fact that I have also come to a context where I have had, you know, what I would call, severe unease about the disconnect between worship and God's people, and how worship, in a way, had become the disconnector. You know that we worship because it makes us comfortable, and not that it not that it draws us into that which worship is supposed to do. And as you read again your introduction, it sort of raised some goose pimples in my, you know, and my own skin, because I believe that should be the reason why we worship. That worship should not be the place where we come to, you know, feel good. You know, we feel good and go home that that is the perfect recipe for the death of the church, the death of worship life, and also the death of Christianity, any Christian life. You know, comfort, comfortability. And I believe that what the book does, Reverend Sarah, it is, is that it, it really draws us into doing some difficult things, you know, stepping over some very difficult barriers that have been there for too many, for too long. 

And I mentioned the pioneering work that this book does. I've already introduced it to some members of the Moravian Church in the West Indies, who are, you know, explorers, and I've been trying to explore for a long time just how to break the Europeanization of worship in our churches. I grew up in a Moravian Church that all we sang were European songs. We prayed some prayers with language that we didn't even understand, you know, and that's what we grew up in and grew up with. 

As a young pastor, I struggled with these liturgies and litanies, you know, that had some very deep European language that people read but had no connection with, you know, and I would have sat on several rewriting of hymnal committees and to see the finished product that they came up with, it was the same thing. It was the regurgitation of the same kind of language. And I said to myself, at one point, this does not this just does not make sense. You know, at some point or other, people are going to come to a place where they feel disconnected from God, because we have nothing in our own language. We had a powerful language, or several powerful languages across the Caribbean, not one piece of worship was written in our own language. And pastors, like myself, who would dare to speak the language, we were called rebels. You know, we were called all sorts of names because of the fact that we thought that it was high time we worshiped in our own language. You know, that we break away from the high, you know, English that people who grew up in my church couldn't even read. And when I when I went to Northern Ontario, I met people, I met people in the under reserves, and also at the fellowship center there, they reminded me so much of people in my home church, because they could not read the English language, they could not understand the English language. And how now do we get these brothers and sisters to worship so much so, that worship is meaningful to them?

So, I thank you again for this work, and I will do my own bit. I have done some work already to introduce it to, you know, people in a context in the Caribbean that I think that although it's not contextual to the Caribbean, and this is one of the great parts of the book, Sarah, that it's addressing worship in a way that, I think, wherever you go, whether in the West, indies or Europe or Africa, that it deals with worship in a way, in a very contextual way, that we'll be able to apply it wherever, wherever, wherever we are. So, thank you again. And I, you know, I feel very honored. I feel so honored to have been able to sit with you and also just to share my own humble thoughts, you know, and that you have come up with this great piece of work from the sharing that we would have done in the way back in the summer last year. Thank you so much.

[The Rev. Dr. Sarah Travis] 

Thank you, Jermaine, it was such an honor to journey with you, and I'm so excited to know that this has other applications, that it's relevant in other contexts. That's so good to know.

[Matt]

I haven't read the book yet, Sarah, so sorry about that, [Dr. Travis “that's okay.”] It's sitting there in my order list. I started reading the ebook, and then I thought, Okay, I've got to get the actual physical book here, because I want it there in front of.

I'm just thinking about, and the answer might be, just go finish the book, Matt, go and finish reading it, but I'm wondering about this idea of like people being comfortable in worship. And I know like I've kind of thought about that a bunch over the last 20 years of ministry, and used to be pretty cynical. I think about, well, are we just, Are we just trying to make people feel okay? But especially in the last few years, part of me has said, Yeah, I actually do want to help people feel okay once a week, because the other six days a week, they feel awful. So, I feel like there's a bit of a tricky balance there of figuring that out. At the same time, I think this is really critical for us in Winnipeg. This is incredibly critical. And we've had conversations we were doing land acknowledgements in our service in our church pretty early on when that was first being talked about. And, you know, that's, it's just part of what is going on all the time in Winnipeg is figuring out this is a top of mind there. It's a top of mind people. I think it's something like one in five people living in Winnipeg are indigenous in some form, in their ancestry, so that's a huge amount of the population. And so, we've tried to figure out, like, how can we be in relationship? A lot of that has been done through like, either Winnipeg inner city missions, or place of hope, indigenous Presbyterian Church, where Reverend Margaret is minister there, or through the Kenora fellowship center, it's in our presbytery. So, a lot of that has just been done like, can we help, can we offer? Can we and then how do we go beyond helping to, how can we be in relationship? 

But I'm intrigued about how that actually shapes worship, because I haven't really as the person who's responsible for that. I haven't really done much beyond like we'll be praying for those communities, or we'll pray for, there's been a call to search landfills for the bodies of Indigenous women, and so praying for the pain of those families and in some ways, trying to also personalize this for people and realize like this is, you know, this is this family that we know, not sort of a disconnected issue that's out there, but these are actual these are people that we're in relationship with. So, I think we've been trying to do that, but I'm wondering about, like, how this shapes even liturgy, whether ought to impact my preaching more. I don't know, so I don't really know what I'm asking, but there you go.

[The Rev. Dr. Sarah Travis]

Well, yeah, you've said a lot of things that I can comment on. In Toronto, for example, I think this is an issue that kind of floats around and people don't have relationships with indigenous people. So it's a distant issue, and yet, I mean, my argument in the book is that, you know, our church has committed to doing this work, and that it's part of what we need to do. So, you're already better positioned, because you're more likely to be in relationship already with indigenous people, or within with the institutions that serve them. So, you know, that's a difference, I think, that I perceive, and others may disagree with me, but between Western Canada and this part of Canada.

When it comes to how it works in liturgy, there's that question of pastoral versus prophetic. And we all wrestle with that balance and how to address that in a way that we are speaking a word that challenges while also speaking a word that comforts. The prophets did that really, really well. They said some horrible things to people, but they still managed to pull it around to hope all the time. But the word that has been coming up more and more in my conversations about worship is safety. And that is, I think, a really urgent question for our time is, how do we how do we challenge and disrupt and make uncomfortable, while still creating spaces that are safe? Or sufficiently safe, as Brian Fraser would say.

And I've had some interesting conversations with people, people who perceive that worship is entirely safe, people who perceive that worship is entirely unsafe. And I fall somewhere in the middle. I think that we need to provide a certain level of safety to have these conversations. People will not be vulnerable if they are feeling unsafe. But that question of how to make the worship space sufficiently safe is a question that I don't actually answer in the book, because it's such a difficult question.

In terms of the liturgy itself, one of the things that I'm highlighting that worship does is create a space for truth telling. In our preaching, we do have this opportunity to tell the truth about what has happened in terms of settler colonial or settler indigenous relationships. We have the opportunity to tell the truth in prayers. One of my greatest learnings was how important the prayer of confession is in worship and the assurance of pardon. I struggle with the assurance of pardon in the context of indigenous settler relations, because we get up and we confess what we have done as a people in terms of our colonial history, which is just enormous and devastating. And then we are assured of our forgiveness. And what does it mean to be forgiven in an ongoing context of a disabled relationship?

So, it means something really good. It means that we are made free to begin again. So, I think, if nothing else, worship gives us that encouragement that we are, we are made free. We are made ready to start these conversations.

[John Carr]

The last five decades since I was ordained, except occasionally. So, it's been kind of interesting as a preacher to be in that position. But one of the things I just wanted to interject at this point, and I think going to what you've been saying Sarah and what Matt was raising as a struggle. I think it's a matter of relationship. If we really work at building relationships, we can speak honestly and truthfully to those who are in our orbit, which for the congregational minister would be there to the congregation that they serve.

I remember, after about two years of building trust with a client, I finally told him my diagnosis was, which was narcissistic personality. It threw him for a loop, and I wondered whether he'd come back the next week, but he did. And he had done a lot of processing, and it was actually an initiated radical transformation in his way of being in the world. And it was not just my relationship with him. This was a person who was raised in the church, who had been a leader in and so there was a whole context in which I could speak the truth that I was experiencing in his way of relating to me, to his spouse, to his kids.

So that's the one thing I just wanted to interject. The other thing is that one of the things that has had an influence on me when I am preparing a liturgy, because I always rewrite everything in the traditional liturgies, is my embracing both a feminist theology and queer theology? These are ways, these are lenses through which I see my own history and the church's history in very different ways than the traditional colonizing theology of our denomination.

[The Rev. Dr. Sarah Travis]

Yes, those are incredibly helpful resources, and decolonizing is just another lens to look at liturgy and look at the church and look at these relationships.

[John Borthwick]

I just wanted to offer a quote when you were talking about the tension Sarah at the beginning, around being comfortable in worship or being unsettled or uncomfortable. It reminded me of the quote by Annie Dillard, which I'm sure many people have heard. And I'm going to read it, because I think it's hysterical. Annie Dillard says, “On the whole, I do not find Christians outside of the catacombs sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea of what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches, the churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning, it's madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church. We should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares. They should lash us to our pews, for the sleeping God may wake someday and take offense, or the waking God may draw us out to where we can never return.” I think that speaks to both the comfort and discomfort and as well as the safety or a safe space that worship might be.

[The Rev. Dr. Sarah Travis]

It certainly does! I love that quote, and I think one of the realities that I want to highlight about this book is that it assumes that worship is powerful. That we are shaped by the language that we use, by the images that we hear. As John Carr was speaking, it occurred to me that, I mean, ideally, we are in relationship with indigenous people. Directly in relationship. But when that doesn't happen or can't happen, I think that worship provides a space where we can be in at least a spiritual relationship with indigenous people. And what that means is, I think, you know, it's really great that we celebrate the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, or indigenous people's day, and we sometimes address those in in worship. And that's really great and really important. But I think there needs to be an ongoing, regular presence in worship that addresses these issues and this broken relationship. So that it's not something we pray for once in a while, it's not something we celebrate occasionally, in terms of we get excited when we do have a relationship with indigenous people, and we want to celebrate that but we need to do it on a much more regular basis. In worship, we have this opportunity to encounter God in a way that we don't encounter God anywhere else, and we have an opportunity to encounter other people in this strange sort of logic of worship that that brings us into proximity with others.

[Audience Member]

I intend to purchase the book. So, this may be a very simple question. Do you get into leading a congregation through how to change its worship, or altar of the worship practices to be more sensitive to the issues that you're raising. That's, my first question. Then there's a follow up.

[The Rev. Dr Sarah Travis]

Okay, so how, how do we get congregations to change the way they worship?

It's not something that I address directly, but it's an excellent question. I think we need to do more education about worship in general, and I also believe that for various practical reasons, worship has become the minister's job. And I really believe that Sessions need to take more responsibility for understanding what worship is and how it functions, and then being part of that process of educating the congregation.

I went to a synagogue once for a Hanukkah service, and the thing that the Rabbi did that was so amazing, was for every element of worship, he explained why we do this and what we are remembering. Because, of course, memory was such a big aspect of that service. I think we need to do more of that. I think we need to explain to people, what is this assurance of pardon? What does this mean, and how important is it? So, yeah, I think in general, we need to do more educating. And I will always say that worship is part of the ongoing conversation of the congregation. And so indigenous realities need to be part of the ongoing conversation that a congregation is having, and then it's not a surprise when it appears in worship.

[Audience Member]

Yeah, I think you answered the second question, because as a retired Minister doing pulpit supply, I do it from anywhere for a couple of weeks to four weeks. I think you just answered the question. Before I begin, I think I would talk to the interim moderator about this, and then say, let's meet the Session and talk about, about what we're doing in worship, and, as you say, educate what we've done, and then move from there. Because I'm often inheriting an order of service that even I'm a little confused about. So, yeah, so it wouldn't hurt them to say as a newcomer, go in and say, so, why exactly are you doing this? And right? That would be a fun hour. Just there and then, okay, so thanks.

[Audience Member]

A couple of questions, my context, most recently, has been quite different. I have been mostly preaching outside of Canada. I do talk about residential schools and the story of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. Now also do academic research on these things, but in terms of preaching and leading worship, the question that I have, I mean, something I've been thinking about, is the gap between what we say worship is, and the history that we have.

Because I think of growing up in Cambridge, Ontario, the history that I was told about that area, that I was taught at schools is entirely different than the real history. I mean, one would hope it's different now, but there's very there was very little about indigenous people from the area, and the sense of indigenous, indigenous peoples being the past. A prehistory, not really there. Even when Six Nations is just down the river. So, we have a liturgy that has grown up with a certain view of history. How do we acknowledge the untruth of our history. Do you talk about that as a first question? And I'm not sure which one's easier. The second question is, is there something that could be said in all of this about the difference between comfort on one hand and hope on the other?

[The Rev. Dr. Sarah Travis]

Wow yeah. I had the same experience as you did. We were probably in school at a similar time in Ontario, and we learned about the benign pioneers who came and settled the land. And then we did learn about the “Indians” and how they used every part of the bison. I remember learning about that, but we did not learn the real history. And I think that's true for many people who are sitting in our pews, is that they have not learned the real history. Therefore, I think worship leaders need to tell it, which will not make us popular, to name indigenous people as whole people who have suffered and triumphed, who have lived in opposition to settlers in some ways but have also found ways to cooperate and live peacefully together. So, I think worship leaders need to tell the truth.

I mean, I've had people come up to me after those truth telling’s and say things that are really difficult to hear. One minister told me that the residential schools were no different than what English students going to boarding school had experienced. So, people always interpret it in terms of their own experience. But I think hope is the antidote. There's some sense in which we tell the truth because we believe that telling the truth will repair and heal, which is not unlike what we do in all aspects of worship. We tell the truth about human sinfulness, and we root that in the hope that we are forgiven and that there is a future that does not reflect the present.

[Audience Member]

It's all good reflections. I mean, there is I mean there's no answer. Is there or is there?

[The Rev. Dr. Sarah Travis]

I don't think there's an answer. I think it’s a hard time to be a preacher, and we're seeing this more and more in terms of what's happening in the world right now. How do you tell the truth when the truth is so convoluted? And that's part of the challenge of preaching about indigenous realities is that it's a complicated history. I guess what I want to do is avoid a flat telling. So how do we bring these experiences and realities to life in our preaching. For example, how do we tell the stories of indigenous people as whole people?

[Matt]

I was just going to say, I feel like we're probably all preaching to the choir here. This is really important. Is what I wanted to say. Our presbytery sent an overture to General Assembly last year, and I don't want to make it sound like Winnipeg is all sunshine and roses. It's not like building relationships is always difficult, no matter who you're talking about. it's been a really, really long road within our presbytery in the midst of massive decline in congregations, trying to figure out how do we continue in in good relationship with our indigenous communities and then just feel like we're stumbling on that and not really doing well with those building relationships anyway.

What I wanted to say is there's very little money in Winnipeg, in the Presbyterian Church. And there's massive need in indigenous communities and if you look at, say, the nationally recognized indigenous ministries in Canada for the PCC, they're all Kenora is the farthest east, and it's all west of there. Other than maybe hummingbird ministries in Vancouver, most of those are in places where there's not a huge dollar base of support in those localities. And so, it makes a big difference. If there are churches, particularly in Ontario, there's a way bigger Presbyterian population. But if these issues are actually talked about in those places, it can actually make a real difference to the ministry that's being done amongst indigenous communities and how those are supported, even financially.

So, all of our indigenous ministries are hopelessly underfunded, which is tragic. We've said this as a top priority of our denomination, and there's still debates at General Assembly when there's, you know, when a little bit of extra money is asked for, you know, often that's gone through, but it's been in little bits. And it might look like a lot, like a million here, or whatever, but it's really not like these ministries need way more support than they have.

So anyway, I'll get off my soapbox. I know I'm preaching to the choir, but I just think, probably I would think that within the context of worship like this discussion and how that can make long term impact in the lives of actual people, we might not see it like you might not see it in a congregation, a little congregation in rural Ontario, where they're thinking, this doesn't really connect for us. But as part of the wider denomination like that, that can actually have real effect, on the ground for people who are in great need that our denomination has said like “We've done wrong, and we need to be walking alongside these, these folks.”

So anyway, that's, I think this a great conversation, because it's so important that this needs to be into the worship life of our congregations for it to ever have lasting change.

[The Rev. Dr. Sarah Travis]

And I would say that it's so important that our worship relates to material well-being. Worship is supposed to result in—well as the art orthodox friends would say the liturgy after the liturgy, where we actually go out into the world and live out what we have experienced. And you know, I talk in this book about how we have made this commitment. Our denomination has made this commitment and you're absolutely right that that churches in Ontario and other places do have the freedom to contribute to these ministries in really significant ways. And in order to do that, they need to hear the stories.

[John Borthwick]

This has been a rich conversation, for sure.

I want to just offer two little pieces into the mix. I think around worship, we often say words and it's, I think it's ever more, it's come to my mind much more, also just by doing pulp supply and stuff like that. Recently, in my new role. When one's when one introduces the offering. And then when, when one prays for the offering, we typically say words of l”ike this is going to have an impact beyond this space.” And more and more, I'm coming to realization that, I'm not not being mean to churches and congregations. but more and more I'm aware of that's not necessarily true in the sense that these offerings are really for us to sustain us.

And I think the fourfold nature of worship was meant to encourage us to give of ourselves fully, not just for here, but beyond, as a part of worship. And I loved what you said about that spiritual connection, that sort of transcendent connection, through worship, to other people. Either whether it's our ancestors, or whether it's people yet to come, or whether it's the tangible reality of people around the globe.

The other thing I'm I just would want to put out there around hope. I sometimes wonder around hope that for some, some that look like me, that tick boxes of privilege, hope isn't something that one has had to live with maybe as much as others, and I think the more we hear voices of people who are living in situations that are far different from the colonizers. The more we hear the ways in which people find hope in the midst of such challenging situations that one might look upon. We see that so often in the biblical text, and I think the more we listen to the voices of hope that exist out in the world, in other voices and other realities, in other peoples, I think maybe that's how we'll begin to learn what hope actually looks like. I'm not sure 100% that the privileged white people often know what real hope looks like. It's, you know, a play on Paul's understanding of what real hope looks like. Yeah, fascinating.

Sarah, any final comments as we wrap up?

[The Rev. Dr. Sarah Travis]

I'm just reflecting on what you have said. I think privileged people often interpret scriptures of hope in an eschatological way. That someday there will be this new reality. And I think worship calls us into a space that recognizes that new reality is now. And that we need to pay attention to the material well-being of all people, that we need to pay attention to real bodies and the impacts that our words and our hope or lack of hope have on other people.

[John Borthwick]

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