Dr. Sarah Kye Price launched and maintained Faith From the Margins to the Web, a weekly, lectionary-based blog based on Bible studies that brought together people who would be normally divided by social boundaries. Beginning with Advent 2017, the project continued for the entire Lectionary B and through Epiphany of Year C. She constantly adapted the methodology to meet the needs of the participants, ultimately resulting in a community of about 25 trained parish and student interviewers and over 50 participants from the food pantry, hot lunch and homeless communities Price has served as a transitional deacon. Grant funds were used primarily for fair compensation for both authors and interviewers throughout the project.
Price found that the work of maintaining participant records, scheduling and transcribing interviews, discerning necessary adaptations, and posting and promoting the blog via social media was challenging but spiritually sustaining, especially in the unexpected moments of grace where the “digital footprint of the Holy Spirit [carried the posts] to those who most need to read them.”
It was in the community, however, where she experienced the greatest impact and learned the most about evangelism. She reflects that the project showed her a microcosm of what the church is and can be, as people came together across the socially constructed boundaries that would usually be divisive. Through her work, she has experienced the deep sharing of the Good News as something which emanates “from the place where we don’t plan or lead, but we invite mutual participation in the realm of God’s love where it meets us right here and now, on this earth. Evangelism is not something we do, it is something we are.”
The weekly Bible study with the community that formed around her work continues. She worked with a group of participants to engage the Way of Love Lent and Easter resources, and created an interactive display based on photos, quotations and reflections that is open to the public in the chapel where most of the work for the project was done. Price’s work has helped her to “dream about the creative possibilities for what ministry might unfold over the course of my [bi-vocational] life and to be excited about what will come next.”
The following article was published in the Virginia Episcopalian in February ’18:
Faith from the Margins in Virginia Episcopalian (1)
