Reclaiming Faith, Country, and Call
Grounded in 2 Timothy 1:3–5, 8–12
By Jess Pycior
Why I Keep Showing Up
Friends,
I want to tell you why I keep showing up.
Why I care about peace even when the world is cracking apart.
Why I care about justice even when it costs more than comfort—and often requires personal sacrifice.
Why I still name Christ—not to prop up religion—but because I’ve met a Christ who doesn’t look like power as we know it.
Not a Christ of conquest.
Not a Christ of control.
But a Christ who reconciles, who holds all things together—even me, when I feel like the world is cracking apart.
Even you. Even this aching, beautiful, burning world.
Reclaiming Faith Across Generations
We live in a time when many feel disappointed with organized religion but still long for real connection—to their spiritual roots and to one another. Many are reclaiming faith stories from ancestors who resisted slavery, fought for workers’ rights, or built mutual-aid networks.
Elders in our communities—Black church mothers, immigrant grandmothers, Indigenous elders—carry resilient faith despite all the heartache they’ve endured. Their stories remind us that hope is possible.
Paul speaks to us here, if we choose to listen: remember without idealizing. Let memory fuel justice, creativity, and liberation—not only for us, but for the next generation.
Faith is inheritance as resistance. When Paul reminds Timothy about the faith in his grandmother Lois and mother Eunice, he’s naming a strength passed down through generations. Faith isn’t a possession like money or land; it’s something lived and breathed, shared from liberators to the next generation.
That’s the God I believe in: the Triune God who must be a Liberator. Not hierarchical or domineering, but relational, communal, and self-giving.
A Christianity Worth Reclaiming
I’ve been on a journey of reclaiming Christianity. When I speak of God, I’m not reaching back to an institution that hurt me; I’m reaching toward the liberating heartbeat at the center of God’s triune life—something I’ve encountered in our shared communities.
God calls us to dismantle oppression wherever community is fractured. Paul’s words—“fan into flame the gift of God”—invite us to rekindle the liberating fire of God within us, even when the world tries to douse it.
Faith isn’t assent to doctrine. Faith is participation in divine liberation. It’s joining in the work of freedom and healing that comes from the divine.
Witnessing Christ in the World
As a child, I saw the church fail the vulnerable: male members circling a homeless man, intimidating him, forcing him out into the snow. I saw my questions dismissed. I experienced the pain of judgment when my family struggled to stay housed.
And yet, I am still here.
I found versions of God that were harsh and impersonal, and followers who were judgmental and closed-minded. From that, I’ve learned one truth: what we say about God matters.
To be unashamed of Christ is to proclaim a revolutionary love. A love that disrupts comfort, crosses social lines, confronts injustice, and liberates through companionship rather than coercion.
I’ve seen this Christ in action:
At a peace colloquy, where young men found shelter and purpose through mentorship programs.
In friends courageously sharing their stories of housing insecurity and survival.
In a trans person vulnerably sharing their faith while offering profoundly moving music.
Faith calls us to act—locally, bravely, and inclusively.
Living the Spirit’s Call
If God is Liberator and Christ the Liberating Friend, the Spirit is the Liberating Call: daily invitations to meet suffering with compassion and turn faith into action.
In 2025 America, this might mean:
Showing up for the unhoused.
Defending queer and trans youth.
Choosing truth over power or convenience.
To guard the “good treasure” of faith today is to guard it through justice, inclusion, and love. Leading with curiosity, asking questions, and creating spaces where the broken can return to community is central to mission.
Stories of Transformation
These realizations and nuances I’ve had on my journey of reclaiming my christianity have brought up newfound understandings about who is welcome, who is worthy and what community means. Which, has not only bled into my christianity and personal identity, but in how I show up at work, how I show up for my spouse, and how I show up for kids at youth camps.
I was bullied badly as a kid. All the things that come to mind when you think of a bullied kid in the early 2000s I probably experienced. And so at one point in time I held a strong boundary between myself and boys and men, primarily white boys and men because they are who hurt me.
However, my ideas about God, Christ and the Spirit have allowed me to see human worth beyond my own pain or bias.
I was at a middle school camp in Washington State. I was camp Pastor and one of the directors brought her husband to be a counselor. He brought his entire baseball team to this camp. Most of these boys had never been to church, had never been to an overnight camp, had no idea what they were in for.
A couple days into the camp, I became aware as camp pastor that some bullying was happening in their cabin. Because of the number of kids at certain ages it ended up working out that their cabin was their team and one church member who is non-binary and on the autism spectrum. Nothing nasty or pre-planned, but very obviously bullying was happening.
In our staff meeting, before breakfast, the coach goes, “I’ll whip ‘em into shape”. And I’ve seen that before. I’ve seen those kids not come back. I’ve seen what shame does in community. And I had this overwhelming sense that I was supposed to engage with and talk to these boys and see their worth. So, we decided, as a team, that I as camp pastor would pull them aside for a “come to Jesus”. I sat in the shade, in the grass and was able to take a moment of pause and pray before they came to join me. The boys came and sat with me and I affirmed them. I told them how funny they were, how quick-witted, how they were natural leaders and had an incredible capacity for friendships. And I told them how I noticed them using those gifts as tools and how I noticed them using those gifts as weapons. And that it was ultimately their choice. They cried. Expressed they didn’t realize they were using their gifts as weapons and didn’t want to be those people. When I told them that camper was offered to switch cabins and the camper said, “I don’t want to hurt their feelings”, the boys cried harder. They ended up becoming close friends and protectors of the camper they had bullied.
Since that camp, all those boys have come back every year. One of them has come out to me, one of them has become the strongest leader of our camp program and actively is the one who stands up and advocates for younger kids. They’ve become some of our strongest leaders. And in a moment where I could have chosen my own discomfort, fear or pain I chose to uplift them and amplify transformation, healing and invitation. And out of that interaction came healing and transformation.
Reclaiming Faith, Country, and Christianity
To live unashamed of the gospel is to live like love still matters, even when hate dominates.
To reclaim America is to shape it around freedom and care, not comfort and self-interest.
To reclaim Christianity is to reclaim Christ from those who use Him to exclude—and instead embody a faith of love, welcome, and healing.
Mission is showing up where people are—not where we wish they were. It’s messy, it’s brave, it’s transformative.
Hope is grounded, refusing to let suffering be the last word. God is already at work among the vulnerable, and we are called to join God there.
Closing Blessing
May we, like Timothy, rekindle the flame within us—
The faith that lives in our ancestors, our neighbors, strangers, and our own trembling hearts.
May we live unashamed of liberating love, unafraid to act, unafraid to hope.
Until justice and compassion define our shared life, until community is a space of healing and openness, may we respond to God’s call:
Register as a foster parent.
Give free haircuts to the unhoused.
Attend your first city council meeting.
Hire someone seeking a second chance.
Stand in defense of neighbors under threat.
We are called to sacred action. Amen.