Why MFSA Matters to Me
An MFSA Membership Story by Rev. Anna Swygert, MPH, MDiv
One of MFSA’s greatest strengths has always been the people who make up this movement. Throughout the summer, we are sharing stories from MFSA members about why this community matters, what keeps them connected, and how MFSA continues to shape their faith, values, and commitment to justice. This is what it means to be justice-seeking people of faith.
I joined MFSA leadership in the summer of 2022 after a particularly hard annual conference for the Florida Conference. Our entire commissioning class was voted down for the inclusion of openly-queer candidates for provisional membership, and the conference was unprepared for the trauma, the trust erosion, and bridge building that would need to ensue over the next months and years. I found myself at a stand-still place, weighing the difficulties of continuing in pursuit of ordination as a queer person in the Southeastern Jurisdiction and the need for intersectional justice and radical inclusion in our United Methodist communities. I stepped into MFSA with hope for a countercultural movement that could lay the foundation for the conversations necessary for our Florida Conference to engage with in pursuit of the beloved community.
Four years later, the Florida Conference is in a much different place. We have ordained two openly queer clergy members and commissioned several others. We have continued the work of our Bishop’s Anti-Racism Task Force, founded the summer of 2020. We have started to rebuild trust following the era of disaffiliation. However, the work is never over, and MFSA remains at the heart of it.
For over five decades, the Florida Chapter of MFSA has pursued justice tirelessly. Retired clergy reminisce on the days of meeting in church basements and the back of bars to organize in secret. Nowadays, older members are shocked to see our dinner embedded into the official Florida Conference schedule and guffaw at our 150+ person attendance at annual gatherings. While our membership and visibility has increased, issues of belonging, inclusion, and activism remain, and we as a leadership team have sought creative ways to challenge our community. Whether that be gathering in the first pride center with drag queens in rural Polk County, FL or collaborating with Direct Action and Research Training (DART) Centers’ to connect with community organizers, our assemblies have changed year to year to creatively address the issues of our present moment.
This year, we centered our gathering around justice action and faithful witness. We hosted a panel discussion with three community leaders from our denomination: Rev. Sherlain Stevens, Senior Pastor of Ebeneezer United Methodist Church in Miami, FL; Representative Michele Rayner, Member of the Florida House of Representatives serving Pinellas County; and Rev. Madeline Luzinski, Chair of Deacons Orders for Florida Conference and previous Director of Pastoral Care at Residing Hope in Enterprise, FL. Each shared how their faith shapes their call to community work and offered words of hope for our future.
In addition, we called our state officials to ask House and Senate leadership to stop Emergency Preparedness and Response Fund dollars from being used for immigrant detention centers or deportation camps. We printed scripts with the phone numbers for the Florida House Speaker and Florida Senate President, and we took 5 minutes of our gathering so that every attendee could call and raise issue with our state officials.
Our hope as a leadership team is for people to feel empowered to engage with justice work when they leave Annual Conference and return to their regular lives. This empowerment includes relationship-building and resourcing, but it also includes places for internal reflection. As MFSA international continues to implement recommendations from the Racial Audit released in 2023, our hope as a chapter is to name the legacy of whiteness manifest in MFSA’s structure and cultural norms. As a predominantly white institution, we must reckon with the way we as justice-seekers have prioritized white comfort and white progressivism, and we hope to do the internal work together in relationship in order to engage in anti-racist, intersectional justice work in our communities.
I am grateful for the legacy of justice work in my local chapter, and there is so much more to do.
Rev. Anna Swygert is an ordained deacon in the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church. Anna serves as Vice Chair of the Florida Chapter of MFSA, Co-Convener of the MFSA Racial Audit Implementation Team, and a member of the board of directors of MFSA.