[This sermon was preached on our 2026 Safe Church Sunday – when we also had a training for all volunteers with kids & youth. As Chapel Hill Mennonite Fellowship – we are committed to being a safe and healthy congregation for children, youth, and adults. We are proactive in protecting people of all ages from abuse. We practice a two-adult present rule for all interactions with kids and youth. All volunteers must complete background checks and participate in annual training on abuse prevention and healthy relationships. For more information – you can read our full Child and Youth Safety Policy (revised 2026).]
I spent one summer in college doing trail maintenance on backcountry public lands in Colorado and Wyoming with an organization called Rocky Mountain Youth Corp. I was on a crew with eight other young adults – and we did everything from clearing trails with crosscut saws to building rock bridges to mending fences.
And when we were out on a hitch, we’d be up at 5:30 or 6:00am each morning for breakfast and breaking camp, and at 7:00am sharp, we would huddle up for our safety circle, each of us suited up with our work pants and heavy books and hardhat and eye protection and leather gloves and packs ready to go.
And in these morning safety circles – we would go around person by person – and everyone, everyday had to share some kind of safety reminder and then lead us in a stretch we’d all do together.
“Ok. It’s really hot today – make sure you’re drinking enough water. And let’s all reach up and stretch from side to side.”
“Be careful and deliberate when you’re cutting trees that might be hung up and under tension. Stop and ask for help if you don’t know what to do. Let’s do some downward dog and cat/cow yoga poses.”
We’d offer one another these eclectic safety reminders and do all kinds of goofy stretches – because as a trail crew we made sure that everyone took responsibility for the safety of themselves and everyone else.
I view today, this Safe Church Sunday – as an intentional time for us as a church to circle up, to remind one another why and how we work towards safety, and to stretch ourselves to do this good and hard work of being a beloved community centered around Christ.
This is something we all do. We all take responsibility for the wellbeing of one another.
And so this sermon – my turn in the circle to speak – really just boils down to a safety reminder and a stretching exercise.
Our scripture passage from Romans 12 is a hodgepodge of all kinds of reminders of how to live out authentic love in Christian community.
Paul throws out all kinds of little snippets – drawn from scripture, the sayings of Jesus, and common sense wisdom – stringing them together, bit by bit to encourage the Romans to build up community, to extend care. Paul advocates for authentic love that is more than a feeling, for love that is active and fired up – love that persists, that pursues hospitality, that endures and blesses and shares. Authentic love conquers evil with good.
And as I spent time with this passage from Romans 12, it actually reminded me of parts of our new Safe Church Policy that we recently adopted and that many of us attended the training about this as adult volunteers with kids and youth.
Our Safe Church Policy on the whole isn’t all that original – it’s a smattering of wisdom and policy and practical advice – drawn from lots of folks and places – from our reading of scripture, from our Mennonite denomination, from other churches, from advocates and survivors of sexual violence.
Our policy and the practices we commit to in it — like having mandatory training and background checks and making sure there are two adults present when with kids and youth, and committing to report and not cover up abuse —
These are all ways we give our best effort at living out an authentic love that genuinely seeks to protect the vulnerable and practice accountability for those who have committed harms against others.
Paul encourages us to “weep with those who weep” and to “associate with the marginal” – and we as the church must commit to being a place where anyone who has experienced violence or harm finds safe haven and compassion.
When we follow Christ, we are transformed, led to offer hospitality and solidarity with those who weep, with those outcast by society.
And Paul links this solidarity with those who weep – to a kind of humility the church must embody.
And of all the safety reminders there are to be gleaned from Romans 12 – this is the one that struck me today. Paul’s admonition to not think presumptuously, to not think too highly of ourselves, to not rely on our own thinking.
Paul warns of the danger of presumption that comes with thinking – “Well that could never happen here…” or acting like, “that’s other churches’ problems but we’ve never needed to deal with that.”
In the context of abuse prevention – I wonder if the Mennonite church has at times struggled with this reminder to not go it alone – but to think and glean hard-wrung wisdom from others.
Mennonites can have an exceptional streak, a kind of gifted-kid syndrome about us, imagining ourselves as part of the cool-kid club of the Reformation – with our high emphasis on individual believer’s baptism and congregational autonomy, and our peace-church credentials earned through our longstanding opposition to wars waged by governments.
It’s often been easier for Mennonites to oppose evil, to condemn violence when it’s something out there – a war, a conflict that someone else is having – than to proactively address evil and violence when it occurs within churches, when members of the church community abuse or violate or cause harm.
Yet I’m heartened by a more recent movement within the Mennonite church and here at CHMF to take abuse seriously, to be changed by the stories of survivors, to wrestle with living out a more robust peace theology, to live out and practice a more authentic love.
So that’s my safety reminder for us: Let’s think together, listening especially to the most vulnerable. Let’s not go it alone or think that in our strengths or weaknesses we’re any better or less vulnerable than any one else, or any other church. But let’s learn from others, in a collaborative spirit – so that all can find safety and thriving in our gathering together!
That’s my safety reminder: Humility helps keep us all safe.
And with that safety reminder I also have a stretch.
And it’s a stretch we especially need God’s help with.
It’s a tricky one for me because I’m not a very flexible person, I can’t touch my toes and I’m bad at yoga.
The stretch is that for us to practice authentic love, we need to discern what is good and evil.
It’s a stretch because it requires wisdom to know who and what to love, and what to oppose or resist.
And it’s a hard stretch for me, because there was a time in my life when I didn’t want to call things evil or bad. I wanted to move away from an either/or binary between good and evil. And do I still think that nuance matters.
And yet Paul calls the church to practice an authentic love like Jesus did, encouraging us to “hate evil and hold on to what is good… do not be conquered by evil, but conquer evil with good.”
The danger is not that we should never hate anything. The danger is that we end up mistakenly loving the wrong things and hating the wrong things.
Following Christ, we are indeed called to love both our friends and love our enemies. But we also need the wisdom to oppose that which is evil.
It is evil when adults use their power to abuse children.
It is evil when churches cover up abuse to protect leadership.
It is evil when people use the name of God to justify violence against others.
And following Jesus, we are not called to be the end-all-be-all judge of all that is evil and the sole redeemer of history, this is God’s role alone. God alone can right all wrongs.
But what we are called to do – is to be proclaimers and doers of the good.
And it is good when we proactively and creatively build spaces where children can grow and thrive.
It is good when we are humble enough to seek help and wisdom from our denomination and other churches, from advocates and survivors, and from the diverse lived wisdom and stories present here in our own church.
When we follow Jesus, when we are transformed by the grace of Jesus, we learn how to practice an authentic love, we learn how to hold fast to that which is good.
When I was on trail crew – we never stopped doing those safety circles every morning, every day we still needed that reminder to wear our safety glasses and gloves.
And beloved siblings in Christ, we too will keep circling up, Sunday after Sunday, to seek the will of God – that which is good and pleasing and mature.
We circle up to share with each other, reminder after reminder, so that all of us may thrive here.
We circle up to stretch, so that all of us can experience the kindness of God in this beloved community.
We circle up so that our love may be authentic.
May it be so.