You won’t find it on the liturgical calendar, but when our congregation of Resurrection, Halifax decided to recognize Take Back the Night in our worship, I was amazed by the positive response from the wider community.

Part of my amazement was the quality of the worship, or lack thereof. While the liturgy was extremely well written, it simply didn’t flow as well spoken as it did on paper. The guest preacher sucked, she didn’t prepare and totally missed the point of our gathering. To make matters worse, my 11-month-old daughter Sophia wiggled out of my wife’s arms and crawled up to the front of the sanctuary and cried loudly into my microphone while I was welcoming our guests to our special worship service. This was amateur hour stuff. Not an auspicious way to introduce ourselves to the community.

Take Back the Night was being sponsored by the women’s center at the local university, and was an event that the churches either ignored, or met with hostility. Often, the more conservative churches only see feminism in these gatherings without recognizing the legitimate anger and pain that lies beneath. We decided to take part, with our young women marching with the crowd and fellowshipping afterwards with them over coffee.

The weekend began with a women’s march through the downtown core of Halifax, ending at the legislature where the crowd listened to speeches then made their way to the Community Hall for a coffee house type chat. Think of Birkenstocks, headbands, shouting, and very few men.

Sunday night came the worship service.

When Sara, a new addition to our church, suggested that we do a service recognizing violence against women, she wanted a more hopeful focus then simply describing the situations that many women find themselves in, either personally or socially. “Where is God in the midst of their suffering? What is the good news for women in violent situations?” she asked. And I have to admit, since the birth of my daughter Sophia the previous October, the issues of violence against women were pressing on my mind. Would Sophia be honoured for her gifts or would be fall into a prescribed gender role? Would she be free to choose any vocation to which she is called or would she be limited because she is female? If she found herself in an abusive relationship, would she have the strength and courage to escape?

Instead of offering simply a liturgy of lament for the violence that occurs against women, we decided to invite members of the various women’s and social service groups and agencies to thank them for their hard work and offer their efforts up to God in prayer and thanksgiving. Most of the groups we contacted were represented, and even others with whom we couldn’t connect arrived and we included them in the prayers.

The service came and went, and we went home discouraged.

After, what I thought was an abysmal service, came the phone calls. Despite the dreadful quality of the worship, the poor preaching, and my daughter’s antics, the women’s groups and social service agencies thanked us for our support and prayers.  The Holy Spirit can move where human effort fails. It seems that many people grind away at social problems under the radar screen of the rest of society, with little thanks, in constant fear of funding cuts, and regular bouts with discouragement. “Sometimes it feels like we’re banging our heads against the wall,” one social worker told me, “Thank you for recognizing the value of what we do.”

Thank you for doing the Kingdom’s work.