Movement 1 • Before We Begin: Why Faithful Action Begins with Listening

A Theology of Community Engagement, Part 1 — A sacred posture of presence, attention, and remembering —

(This post is part of a larger guide—From the Sanctuary to the Street—exploring what it means to reimagine church as sacred community rooted in place, covenant, and action.)

This is the first excerpt from my book From the Sanctuary to the Street: Building Strong, Resilient, Beloved Communities. Over the coming months, I’ll be sharing sections of the book here on Substack—one reflection, tool, or story at a time. And I can’t think of a better place to begin than with the sacred act of listening. In a world that so often rushes toward action, strategy, and control, the quiet posture of attention may feel countercultural. But in faith, it’s where everything starts.

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Before we organize, before we preach, before we build programs—
We listen.

Because before the church can become beloved community,
We must become a community that knows how to love.

And the first act of love is not to speak.
The first act of love is to listen.

We Begin With Reverence

We’ve inherited a church that knows how to speak—how to preach, program, and build. But what if the beginning of faithful action is not a sermon, or a strategy, or even a meeting—but a silence?

Before we move outward, we must go inward.

Before we take the sanctuary to the street, we must first ask ourselves:
—Have we been listening?

Because listening is not the opposite of action. Listening is how we begin.
—Listening is the beginning of faithfulness.

Listening is a sacred act of stewardship.

Some will say that what you’re about to read is new. That this turn toward community organizing, public witness, and place-based discipleship is innovation.

But the truth is,
—I’m just doing my homework
—mostly mere memory work.

This way of showing up in community has long been practiced by the people most often left out of the center of the church—those whose wisdom came not from authority, but from survival.

Listening is not new. It is both ancient and sacred.

Every community is shaped by the stories it chooses to carry—and by the ones it tries to forget.

The Hebrew people, whose story has been carried by multiple iterations of traditions that now cover the globe, became not just a people of the land, but a people of the story—especially in exile. When they were displaced from their homeland, they became stewards of sacred memory. They carried the Torah not as mere doctrine, but as a place of return.

To be a community of sacred story is not simply to read scripture—it is to let scripture read us. We don’t just interpret the text. We let the text interpret our lives.

We are not merely keepers of the story.
The story keeps us.

But how can we talk about listening—
when the very rituals we perform each week often ignore the cry of the world outside?

How can we preach from traditions rooted in the Shema—the sacred call to hear
while tuning out the groans of the earth,
—the sirens in our streets,
—the mothers weeping at vigils,
—the rivers choking on runoff,
—the children silenced in detention?

What good is a call to worship,
if we cannot first answer the call of our neighbor?

We recite prayers like spells,
mumble litanies like mantras,
and perform communion like theater—
hoping the magic still works.

But without listening, it’s all just noise
—ritualized tomfoolery wrapped in a stole.

Masquerading as holiness
—just humbug in liturgical drag.

If the sacraments are to be worth the sanctity of water,
—the weight of bread,
—the blood of the flesh they were born from,

Then we must begin with silence.
We begin by showing up.
We begin by listening.

We must start with the Shema—listening long enough to stop hearing our own voice long engough to hear what the Spirit is groaning through those who’ve been left behind.

Because without listening, there is no gospel.

Only performance.
And the ministry of Jesus wasn’t performative,
—it was healing.

Listening is the first among the sacraments.

When I read the gospels,
I imagine Jesus on the road,
—barefoot and blistered,
—sitting at wells and lingering on porches,
—hearing the whole truth,

and then say: Your faith has made you well.

Listening is not just an act of welcome.

It is a posture of conversion.
A turning. A laying down of power

Listening is the heart of faithful action.

Before the church can become beloved community,
it must first become a community that knows how to listen.
Because listening is the beginning of love.
And love is the beginning of unfolding of God’s Dream.

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This reflection is drawn from the opening chapter of my forthcoming book, From the Sanctuary to the Street. What you’ll find here is a distilled version—fiercer in voice, but born from the same soil of sacred memory and place-based discipleship.