 We're excited to announce that Micky ScottBey Jones is the new Director of Training and Program Development for Transform Network! She's written this piece that we're excited to share with you on this Martin Luther King Jr. Day Holiday:
Change is in the Past and Will be our Future by Micky ScottBey Jones
“Change is a contact sport.”[Romal Tune*]
Change was thrust upon us in America in 2014 — and for many of us, it hurt like a full-contact body check without pads or a helmet. Conversations about race, injustice, government power, and militarization, competing media narratives and eerily familiar history lessons provided the opportunity for change in our homes, our relationships, and in our faith communities.
Change is also on the horizon for 2015. It has to be. If this year is like every other year, since, well ... ever, it will be full of change. For you. For me. For our communities. Ironic, I know, but if you’ve been an adult for more than five minutes, it becomes obvious pretty quickly that change is the only thing that stays the same.
Not only does it keep coming, it continues to be a “contact sport.” As much as I want there to be #Not1More deportation nor one more precious human life whose name becomes a hashtag like #MikeBrown or #TamirRice, the hashtags will change, the names will change, the campaigns will change. Injustice will remain. Our eyes will be opened to another intersection of power and oppression, our hearts will be ripped by more death and destruction and we will wonder, “Why did everything have to change?”
Yet, change also means the Creator continues to create. Change means the Spirit continues to move, to call us, to flow gently through the creation. Change means hope. Change means that long arc of the universe that Dr. King spoke of is still bending towards justice, and we can still stand up, march forward, and help bend it. That is a powerful hit of change that you want to throw your body and your mind and soul into.This is the contact sport of creative, positive change.
What does all this change mean for Transform Network and for you as part of the web of love and action that makes up this network? It means that the change is YOU! Transform Network is maturing, growing ... changing. Transform is much more than a missional church network. It’s much more than an activism network. It’s much more than planting churches, forming ministries, or launching social justice campaigns. Transform Network mobilizes activists and missional practitioners for social transformation. In 2015, that means continuing to provide events and resources to facilitate and create positive change in our lives, communities, and churches. Transform Network is just that — a network ... a web made up of you, and me and all those we know and love. We are a transformative web of positive social change in the tradition of Jesus and those who have dared to follow him towards justice and shalom.
There are days when I need the voice of Sam Cooke to get me through the day. I really pull through when he gets to the last few lines of "A Change Is Gonna Come," which Sam wrote after being turned away from a hotel in Shreveport, Louisiana, in 1963.
There been times when I thought I couldn’t last for long
But now I think I can carry on.
It’s been a long, a long time coming
But I know, a change gon’ come, oh yes it will
Transform is our web of love and action for 2015. Change is coming this year. Some will make us wince from the pain. Some will make us fall forward into a hug of congratulations or thankfulness. Wherever and through whatever 2015 takes us through, we hope it includes the encouragement and mobilizing of the Transform Network community. I think, I truly do, that we can carry on, because even though it has been a long time coming, and change is gon’ come.
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