Creating Space for Lament in Christian Worship
This reflective paper examines the absence of structured lament within Christian worship and argues that congregations need an "infrastructure of lament" to help members process grief and trauma in spiritually grounded ways. Drawing on personal experiences — including the death of the author's son and mother — as well as pastoral ministry in diverse United Methodist congregations in Florida, the paper explores how the church's tendency to suppress pain contradicts biblical witness. Through readings of Psalm 137 and the Book of Ruth from the perspective of the Caribbean Diaspora, Facebook Live public discourses, and engagement with scholars such as Wil Gafney and Miguel De la Torre, the author calls for worship practices that welcome the whole self — pain included.
- Ministerial Context and Community Setting: Author's pastoral history across diverse UMC congregations
- The Case for Lament in Worship: Why all congregations need space for grief
- Personal Motivation: Grief as the Starting Point: Son's death and church's failure to hold pain
- Research Process and Scriptural Exploration: Psalms, Ruth, and Facebook Live public discourses
- Key Findings and Scholarly Framework: Scholars, diaspora hermeneutics, and hidden gems
- Areas for Further Study and Ministry Development: Sermon series, small groups, and trauma binaries
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What makes this paper effective
- The author weaves personal testimony — including the death of a son and mother — into theological argument, giving the paper both emotional authenticity and pastoral credibility.
- The paper grounds its claims in scriptural evidence (Psalm 42, Psalm 137, the Book of Ruth, and the Garden of Gethsemane), demonstrating that lament is not a deviation from Christian practice but a core part of its biblical heritage.
- The ministerial context section situates abstract arguments in concrete congregational realities — membership decline, racial demographics, and community hostility — making the need for practical change tangible.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper employs a hermeneutics of suspicion as an explicit theological method, reading scripture from the margins — specifically through the lens of the Caribbean Diaspora — to reveal how dominant worship practices have suppressed acknowledgment of pain. This technique, drawn from liberation and womanist theology, models how positionality can sharpen scriptural interpretation and generate new practical applications for ministry.
Structure breakdown
The paper moves from personal and contextual grounding (ministerial setting, demographic realities) through theological argument (why lament belongs in worship) to autobiographical motivation (personal grief), before turning outward to the research process, scholarly engagement, and a forward-looking call for further ministry development. This arc — from wound to witness to call to action — mirrors the very structure of a biblical lament psalm.
Ministerial Context and Community Setting
As an immigrant woman of color, I can say in no uncertain terms that I understand what is meant by the term historical trauma. But historical trauma is not something unique only to people of color, immigrants, or minorities. In fact, it is a condition of the entire human experience. Even we Christians understand — or should understand — what is meant by this term. It is a term that defines our sorrow, our suffering, our collective grief. Yet sometimes the church seems not to see this suffering; it seeks only to affirm joyous jubilation. It does not like to admit of pain. Yet we know from the Psalms that the Divine Heart sees our suffering and acknowledges it. The Word of God has recorded it in Scripture, as if to remind us that we are not to ignore this suffering — for it is in suffering that we can turn more fully to God. It is through lament that we renew our call to the Divine Heart with fervor.
I currently serve at Community United Methodist Church, a congregation whose membership is predominantly White, set in a community of more than 40% mixed people of color. Prior to coming to this congregation less than one year ago, I served for one year in a similar setting at Epworth United Methodist Church. Before going to Epworth, I served for seven years at Village United Methodist Church in a congregation made up entirely of people of color from the Caribbean Diaspora. Both Village UMC and Epworth UMC were located in the South East District of the Florida Annual Conference, a considerably diverse district. Village UMC was discontinued as a congregation the year after I was appointed to Epworth.
I now live in a predominantly White community where the neighbors have expressed little warmth and only curiosity about whether my family plans to stay in the area. All of these congregations have experienced a significant decrease in membership and resources over a number of years prior to my appointment. All of them fear not being able to continue as congregations. None of them is willing to embrace a shift in thinking or in how they exist. All of them have people who carry deep wells of pain, and many instances of transmitting that pain, because there is no infrastructure to transform it.
What is needed in these congregations is an infrastructure of lament. They have no way of processing their trauma in a holy and religious way. They seem to be cut off from the very Word of God that permits them to express their pain.
The Case for Lament in Worship
The issue of creating space for lament as a part of worship is significant because everyone grieves, everyone carries anxiety, and everyone cries out like the Psalmist in Psalm 42: "Judge me, O God, and distinguish my cause from the nation that is not holy: deliver me from the unjust and deceitful man. For thou, O God, art my strength: why hast thou cast me off? And why do I go sorrowful whilst the enemy afflicteth me? Send forth thy light and Thy truth: they have led me, and brought me unto Thy holy hill, and into Thy tabernacles." Traditional worship has always made use of the Psalms and of this kind of lamentation in particular.
I have been in and around the church my entire life and have seen the effects that ignoring this dimension of human expression has on the human life and psyche. Rather than allowing persons who experience trauma to process and express their pain, the church community has used guilt, clichés, and a dogmatic approach to worship to construct a wall between people and their pain. I have found this to be especially true for people of color. But it is, in truth, true for all humankind. All of us have pain. All of us have sorrow.
Personal Motivation: Grief as the Starting Point
Of all the challenges I could have chosen to address, this was the most personal to me. I chose this topic because addressing and providing practical solutions to how we process pain is something I myself have been in urgent need of. After the death of my son, I felt pain as unbearable as any a human being can be asked to endure. And yet what did I receive from my church? The congregation I served seemed only to resent me and my pain, as though it were an affront to their joy.
Yet God teaches us that pain is real — and that it needs to be expressed. The Psalms are full of expressions of pain. The Book of Job is entirely about pain. Even Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane endured the most harrowing suffering at the start of His great Passion. We do not overlook it in Scripture, but for some reason we overlook it and regard it with scorn in our everyday lives, where everyone performs superficial happiness — until the pain comes. And it comes for everyone.
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