The Connections We Make

Rachel Gilmore

"The connections we make in the course of a life, maybe that's what heaven is."

Fred Rogers

Growing up as the child of a Navy chaplain meant that I moved, a lot. Over 17 moves in my lifetime to 10 different states and two countries (Japan and Bulgaria). When I wasn’t moving, I was waving goodbye to my dad on a pier, waiting months for the first letter to arrive so I could feel connected to a dad that was physically absent for a lot of my childhood. And with each move, I tried to find ways to stay in touch with the people who had meant so much to me during that season of my life.

When I entered ministry, it was as a church planter who felt called to curate a space of belonging and connection for spiritual nomads who didn’t quite fit in the churches in the area. The church I started was in Virginia Beach, which has one of the highest concentrations of military personnel anywhere in the world, so most of my parishioners reflected the Navy upbringing that I had experienced myself. Because our church members were moving all around the US and world every few years, it was important (even back in 2009) to find ways to connect to our church members who physically moved away but found their spiritual home at our church.

What began with a Facebook live sermon during hurricane season became a weekly Sunday evening ritual where I would log on and share my sermon “live” with anyone who wanted to tune in. Pretty soon, we had as many people sharing in our online presence as we did on a Sunday morning, and we were creating community digitally and in person. I spent the most fulfilling ten years of my life serving as the pastor of this new church start, but then I was reappointed to serve a ministry in Nashville, Tennessee in 2019. Within the year, Covid had shut down in-person ministry in our churches.

A lot of churches didn’t know how to do digital discipleship or online ministry, and my new role in Tennessee was to train and equip pastors and church planters to do ministry in new ways. So in the summer of 2020, I offered a “Digital Church Planting” training for the United Methodist Church with over 400 Zoom attendees from four continents. We learned together over 8 weeks about how God could use them in online spaces, and it was a humbling experience to be a small part of helping churches make the digital shift during a global pandemic. My undergraduate degree was in Secondary Education, so this training felt like a way to utilize my love for teaching in a church context. At the end of that training, I wondered;

What about those whose voices aren’t heard or those who can’t access resources like this?

How can we be an inclusive and diverse body of Christ when not everyone has a seat at the table?

So, in my new ministry setting in Phoenix, Arizona, my goal is to find an accessible online learning platform for synchronous and asynchronous learning for clergy, laity, or anyone wanting to grow in their faith or help others to grow in their faith journey. The learning platform is called Absorb, and over a dozen annual conferences in the UMC utilize it for continuing education. The platform I’m creating with others is part of Absorb and is called DSC Grow for the Desert Southwest Conference. Not only will we have great resources created by United Methodists across the US, we’ll highlight voices and experiences of those who are not regularly invited to participate.

You’ll hear from some clergy like Rev. Tweedy Sombrero Navarrette, who is the only Dine (Navajo) elder in our annual conference and has come on as a Resource Coordinator for Native American ministry on this team. She will help us design trainings to learn from the harm of the past and embrace decolonized Christianity. Or Rev. Ki Yong Lee, our Resource Coordinator for Korean American Ministry, who will design trainings in Korean to help Korean American new church starts learn more about our polity and the spiritual practices that must serve as our foundation in all things.

We hope to launch this learning platform in 2025 or 2026 with the help of the Phygital Fellowship program and to continue to create spaces where all voices are heard and everyone can access resources for Kindom work. This inclusive work matters to me because the sense of belonging that I’ve encountered throughout my life has meant everything to me.

Fred Rogers was right about the connections we make being a taste of heaven on earth. When you are the new kid every single year, trying to make friends and find a place to fit in, connections are a lifeline. When you are planting a church as a woman and young mom in ministry where the majority of folks don’t think your voice matters, belonging is powerful. The connections the friendships I made at the church in Virginia Beach continued to inspire me and motivate me to live out my calling and to create spaces for others to do the same.

As I’ve met people in my recent travels over the past five years with coaching and consulting, I’ve been amazed by how many others have felt so isolated and alone in their work of innovation. I connected with a group of like-minded spiritual entrepreneurs a few years ago and we started a community called Intersect: a Co-Planting Network to help people starting new things across the US find a place to belong and someone to journey with on the road to gospel liberation.

My call to church planting, my time of training and resourcing during Covid, my experience co-launching the Intersect Network, and my passion to serve in the Desert Southwest have all led me to this point. This online learning platform is about creating a space for connection for anyone and everyone who has ever felt like they don’t belong, like they have nothing to learn or nothing to offer to the broader faith community. My hope is that this online platform is one of many ways to build bridges and foster belonging for those who need it the most!