It's easy to say that the Momentum Center in Grand Haven is woke as evidenced by its involvement in town halls on race and racism, LGBTQ+ support groups, pride month celebrations, criminal expungement events, and get out the vax and vote events. That is what I always thought, but I have recently come to the realization that it is something more, like a church.
An interesting church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA), uses female pronouns for God, ordains practicing homosexuals and transgenders, lobbies against laws restricting abortion, and takes up far left causes. The ELCA has congregations across the country, with many on the West side of Michigan, including the Edgewood Lutheran church in Fruitport, Peace Lutheran church, and Good Shepherd Lutheran church in Holland.
I recently learned that Barbara Lee VanHorssen, the Momentum Center's founder and leader (who calls herself the “Experi-Mentor”), was a mission developer for the ELCA (the Momentum Center appears to be her latest mission), took pastoral care classes at Western Theological Seminary, and is an ordained interfaith minister who believes that there are many different ways to God. Both the ELCA and Barbara Lee seem to fault Christ for not being "radically inclusive" enough.
Exhorting her faith in lock step with the ELCA, she is also the author of the books Sacred Sex: Replacing the Marriage Ethic with a Sexual Ethic, and Tension in the Tank: Embracing Interfaith Mysticism Without Leaving the Church. Her Amazon book review of Sacred Sex states that Barbara Lee is a Sex-Minister in the fashion of the ELCA's embrace of sexuality and her Tension in the Tank book is ELCA style New Age sophistry.
The Momentum Center declares on its website: “In 2015, Barbara Lee VanHorssen launched Extended Grace, a nonprofit organization encouraging people to extend more grace to one another. Her vision was to connect people who wanted to make a difference with opportunities to serve while also paying attention to the gaps in the system. Her hope was to bring collaborative energy to filling those gaps and creating a healthier, more inclusive community for all.”
On its website, the Momentum Center claims to be a “Nonprofit Grassroots movement to create a stigma-free community” for persons with mental illness, addictions, and disabilities. This apparently has something to do with sexual orientation and racism. On its “About us” page the Center has a DEI statement that declares:
The Momentum Center actively practices inclusion and values radical diversity. We champion equal access and equity of opportunity through the intentional celebration of people across all identity groups, including but not limited to age, appearance, gender identity, race, religion, sexual orientation, physical and mental ability, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and perspective.
Similarly, the ELCA website is filled with “diversity” statements and declares: “We respect and honor the diversity of histories, traditions, cultures, languages and experiences among us in the ELCA and in the larger Christian community of faith. We seek full participation of all in the life and work of this church and will strenuously avoid the culture of any one group becoming the norm for all in the ELCA. And we strive to address the ways that racism, sexism, classism and other forms of injustice limit participation and harm people, communities and the whole body of Christ.”
Let's break that down. The Momentum Center is aware of the system, the ELCA is aware of the culture of one group. The Momentum Center brings collaborative energy, the ELCA honors diversity. The Momentum Center is filling in those gaps in the system, the ELCA addresses racism, sexism, classism and other forms of injustice. The Momentum Center is filling in those gaps to create an inclusive community, the ELCA is striving for social justice. The Momentum Center is doing this to make it healthier for all, the ELCA to heal the body of Christ. In other words, these organizations seem energized to dismantle a society that doesn’t fit their world views by building up a fellowship of woke believers to fulfill its mission of, what Barbara Lee calls in her Amazon bio, “radical inclusivity and justice.”
For further comparison and analysis, I highly recommend the website Exposing The ELCA. The home page states: “Exposing the ELCA has a multitude of information which ELCA members and other Christians need to know. Under the "ELCA Exposed News" heading you will find information about what the ELCA teaches on
1) the Bible
2) Universalism & Hell
3) Homosexuality & Sex
4) Goddess Worship/Mother god and gender neutral language
5) Israel
6) Abortion
7) Social Media (what they write about)
8) Radical Hospitality
9) Transgenders & Drag Queens
10) Social Justice
11) Called to Common Mission
12) Gospel Reductionism – Antinomianism
13) Other Critical Issues.
Exposing the ELCA also has a blog that contains lots of important information, Exposed Blog.
Illustrative ELCA blog articles include Prayers for the Fulfillment of Kings Dream (blacks fear whites), Relearning our shared history (oppression by white men), My Freedom Day as a Female, Black and Queer Pastor (the Spirit is female), and A Pastor's Reflection on the Feast Day of the Emanuel 9 (dismantling white supremacy). The ELCA's stand on abortion is to support your choice.
I mentioned Barbara Lee's book career. It seems to fit right in with the ELCA blog articles. In Sacred Sex she advocates for fulfilling the sexual desires of people of all sexual orientations as a good gift. Her Tension in the Tank book advocates that we live our faith to pursue universal justice. This seems to be a reflection of both the ELCA's and Barbara Lee's faith in New Age religion (universalism).
In a crosswalk.com post, What is 'New Age Religion,' and Why Can't Christians Get on Board? the author explains: “New Agers are Universalists, believing that all paths lead to God. They fault Christians for being intolerant and narrow-minded. But God's word anticipates this: 'Enter the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the path that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.' (Matthew 7:13, NIV).”
Notice too, the picture at the top of this article. It is Barbara Lee celebrating drag queens; not a stretch given her ELCA experience. See Ross Murray, the ELCA deacon who wrote the article Living Lutheran Living History, an article that celebrates drag queens at the Stonewall Inn the day of its famed riot.
Every person has free will and in America we are allowed to believe anything we want. However, the Momentum Center is receiving significant support from our Ottawa County tax dollars. I think it is safe to say that the Momentum Center is a church plant for the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America and that Barbara Lee is its minister, going by the New Age title of Experi-Mentor. Is this how you want your tax dollars allocated?