Rev. Michael Woolf, ThD
Ordained Minister
Theologian
Transformational Leader
About Michael
My work is at the intersection of ministry and academia
The Rev. Dr. Michael Woolf (he/him) holds a Doctor of Theology (ThD) degree from Harvard Divinity School. He graduated summa cum laude from the University of Tennessee - Knoxville with a BA in Religious Studies in 2011 and completed his Master of Divinity degree at Harvard Divinity School in 2014. Michael is also an ordained American Baptist Churches USA and Alliance of Baptists pastor currently serving as the Senior Minister at Lake Street Church of Evanston in Evanston, IL, a progressive congregation with a commitment to social justice and interfaith dialogue. He also serves as Co-Associate Regional Minister for White and Multicultural Churches with the American Baptist Churches of Metro Chicago region. Before that, he served rural and suburban churches in Massachusetts.
He currently teaches theology as an Adjunct Theology Professor at Lewis University. He also teaches American Baptist theology, polity, and history for the American Baptist Churches of Metro Chicago and has served on subcommittees addressing racial justice and white supremacy in both the Alliance of Baptists and the American Baptist Churches USA.
Michael's ministry has won numerous awards, including the Edwin T. Dahlberg Peace and Justice Award, the highest honor bestowed by the American Baptist Churches USA and American Baptist Home Mission Societies. First awarded to Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1964, the award honors outstanding work for peace and justice.
Michael's first book, Sanctuary and Subjectivity: Thinking Theologically About Whiteness in Sanctuary Movements, is part of T&T Clark's Studies in Social Ethics, Ethnography and Theologies series. The book focuses on white supremacy within a progressive, interfaith social movement and includes an autoethnographic chapter from Michael's experience as a white pastor in the New Sanctuary Movement. In paying attention to the narratives of recipients of sanctuary, Michael proposes a reorientation of the discipline of practical theology using Judith Butler's theory of subjectivation.
He has served as the Editor-in-Chief of Cult/ure: The Graduate Journal of Harvard Divinity School and the Director of Publishing at the Journal of Inter-Religious Studies. His work has been published at the Intermountain West Journal of Religious Studies, Glossolalia, and Cult/ure. He has also written for several popular publications, including, The Christian Century, Sojourners and The Christian Citizen, and is a contributor to Journeys, a lectionary commentary and adult Bible study published by Judson Press.
The Foundations of my ministry
Things I've picked up over the years
Preaching
My preaching is rooted in a text, but always strives to attend to the issues of today. I delight in placing Christian scripture in conversation with texts from other religions, seeing how the questions, answers, and images from both either align or depart from one another. I am rarely authoritative; rather, I invite questions and help my congregations pursue their own quest for meaning-making. My faith is sustained by questions, not answers.
Fundraising
I started ministry with little understanding of how church finances can help or hinder the vision of churches. Seeing a growing edge in my ministry, I attained a certificate in religious fundraising from the Lake Institute on Faith and Giving, and used those skills at Lake Street Church of Evanston to put the community on the right track by increasing giving by 20%. Giving is fundamentally a faith question, and I invite people to financially partner with my communities as a spiritual act.
Organizing for Justice
In seminary I served as a seminarian organizer for Interfaith Worker Justice in Boston, MA, where I learned valuable skills in connecting faith congregations to issues of labor justice. I am passionate about immigration justice, gun violence, racial justice, and LGBTQ+ equality. Importantly, I do not leave my congregation behind when I lead on these issues, inviting them to consider what our faith demands of us in these difficult times.
Spiritual Care and Counseling
One of the great privileges I have in ministry is accompanying people in moments of great transition in their lives, whether that is birth, death, marriage, divorce, or any other moment of discernment that we embark on as human beings. Whatever happens in the life of my congregants, I am there to lend a listening ear, connect congregants to spiritual resources, and help community members obtain the support they need through social programs.
Mediation
In church, conflict is a natural part of life together - it it what we do with it that counts. When I began my ministry, I felt ill equipped to bring together the parties of disputes that had turned acrimonious and personal. After earning a certificate in Mediation from the Lombard Mennonite Peace Center, I have successfully resolved several disputes that would have impeded the ministry of my congregation. The thing I'm most proud of is the relationships that have been restored from this important work.
Formation and Discernment
One of the great joys of my ministry is connecting people of faith with the resources they need to find purpose. I applied for and received a Palmer Grant from the American Baptist Churches USA to develop The Passion Project, which hosted conversations with philosophers, artists, musicians, and social justice advocates about their passion. Helping people discover the power of vocation in their own life continually renews my own sense of calling.
My ethical and spiritual commitments
What I believe
Church ought to be fun
Life in community together ought to be characterized by joy. When we do church right, we bring our diverse talents, fears, questions, and passions together and a spirit of playful inquisitiveness ought to imbue our shared life. Suffice it to say, I bring a lot of humor and joy to my ministry, believing that laughter is holy.
Draw the circle wider
Church is either for everybody, or it is not church. My ministry has focused on empowering LGBTQ+ individuals in church life, supporting their leadership in communities, their ordination processes, and consistently preaching a message that their sexuality is not merely tolerated - it is beloved.
Justice is what love looks like in public
Our faith ought to move us to act decisively on issues of justice. The Movement for Black Lives, the New Sanctuary Movement, the labor movement, and the movement for ecological justice takes center stage in my ministry. I often preach about issues of justice, because I believe that how people of faith respond to these matters of pressing concern reveals our true values and commitments.
Vulnerability is where the magic happens
Helping others to practice vulnerability is one of my great passions. My ministry is grounded in the belief that we are better listeners, leaders, and people of faith when we practice vulnerability. Vulnerability is a rejection of fear-based decision making and a radical "yes!" to the world, God, and each other. Vulnerability is scary, especially for a leaders, but I have found that placing it at the center of what I do makes me more effective and transparent.
Church is the thing we do together
A Baptist at heart, I believe in models of church that emphasize relationships and collaboration. I do not see myself as a CEO or any other sort of center of authority. Instead, I am the collaborator-in-chief of the congregations that I lead, helping congregants to find their own voice. The result is nothing short of miraculous. In trusting in each others inherent capacity as leaders, we achieve something greater than the sum of its parts.
Sermons I'm Proud of
Once in awhile, you preach a really good one
"A New Luminous Body"
It's Easter, so that means that we turn our attention to one thing in particular: resurrection. It might surprise you that, historically, Jesus is not the only person that people claimed rose from the dead. The phenomenon litters the pages of ancient texts, but Jesus' story is different, because his story invites us to share in that resurrection power. Our mistake is that we often talk about resurrection as a thing that happened 2000 years ago, but the truth is not that resurrection happened, but that it happens in our world today. People stumble out of the tombs of trauma, addiction, and loneliness. Life is called from dead places.
"God Hates Executions"
I'm from Alabama, so this is peronsal for me. In 2024, the state of Alabama, had a "first in the nation" moment, pioneering a new method of execution by nitrogen hypoxia. By all accounts it was awful. In this sermon, I call it what it is - torture. We have innovations in the field of execution, but what about an innovation in the path of mercy? People of faith must speak out against the cruelty and injustice of the death penalty.
"The Point of Religion"
I'll confess that I don't normally tell people I'm a pastor on an airplane; the conversations often get very weird very quickly, but if I were to explain why I'm religious, this would be what I would say. We are a people of stories, and we can sometimes have this sense that we are looking back on these stories and that we made them, but the opposite is true: it is the stories that make us.
Writing
Things I've written on a variety of topics
The Christian Century
"A look at the archives reveals that many White houses of worship are built on stolen beams. The only question is what we are to do with this information. Churches can become resources for thinking about repair, but that will require more than a cursory acknowledgment of problematic history—it will look like lament and action."
The Revealer
"What seems clear to me as someone who has studied sanctuary movements for several years is that if one wants to trace the contours of fear at the heart of our polity, sanctuary is a good place to look. A common refrain among sanctuary activists is “sanctuary everywhere!” From the looks of it, that may be exactly what we will be experiencing. However, what that portends for our nation is an open question."
Religion & Politics
"Sanctuary movements are both a symptom of and a cause of our fractured polity, as we struggle to reach consensus on basic concepts like law, freedom, and justice. It is hard not to feel a sense of foreboding about such fissures, from which there will be no easy refuge."
Sojourners
"Jesus confounded expectations with his understanding of the role of messiah, but our present moment is filled with those who are seeking exactly the type of raw power and revenge that Paul exudes. Dune: Part Two’s criticism of the messiah ought to lead us to a clear understanding that a white savior is no savior at all."
Michael in the media
Interviews with me and news articles about what I do
Photo credit: Silma Suba
"On October 14, 2023, a six-year-old Palestinian-American boy, Wadea Al-Fayoume, was stabbed 26 times to his death by his family’s landlord, Joseph M. Czuba, in Plainfield, Illinois, in an apparent anti-Muslim hate crime. Seven months after Al-Fayoume’s murder, on May 19, a sunny Sunday afternoon in Chicago, over 50 community members gathered inside the stained-glass chapel of the First United
Methodist Church of Chicago to host an interfaith memorial service in Al-Fayoume’s honor. The tall skyscraper church, also called The Chicago Temple, stands at the corner of Washington and Clark in downtown Chicago.""Leaders of the Christian,Jewish, and Muslim faiths in the Chicago area came together Monday night to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Sheikh Hassan Aly, imam anddirector of religious affairs at the Mecca Center in Willowbrook; Rabbi Brant Rozen, founding rabbi of the synagogue Tzedek Chicago and the Rev. Dr. Michael Woolf, senior minister at the Lake Street Church of Evanston, all pushed for peace in the war before Israel and Hamas."
"The war in Israel andPalestine is not only a humanitarian crisis – it is a moral, and it is a
spiritual one," said Woolf.“In our increasingly separated and polarized society, we celebrate the prophetic and courageous witness and leadership of pastors Nabors and Woolf in leading their congregations toward racial justice and reconciliation,” said Dr. Jeffrey Haggray, executive director of ABHMS and CEO of Judson Press.
“In their pursuit of reparations and the restoration of the relationship of their two congregations, pastors Nabors and Woolf exemplify the pursuit of peace and justice that was the hallmark of the life and ministry of Edwin T. Dahlberg,” said the Rev. Dr. Jamie Washam, president of ABHMS’ board of directors.
“I know it’s tough to acknowledge some of this history,” explains Dr. Woolf, in Evanston, “but we can get past the initial sort of anger at being challenged by it; then we have an immense opportunity for white members to have a redemption arc, to be able to talk frankly about race in a way that can be useful.”
Further reporting can be found here and here.
Commitment to multi-faith conversations is an important part of Lake Street Church, said Rev. Woolf, “because if a lot of the frameworks that we use in our parlance and how we talk about things in America are Christian – I mean, they have a Christian genealogy of the terms. And that only gets us so far. So other traditions have different ways of thinking about things and talking about things … [and] putting together those conversations and hearing those different frameworks, those different metaphors, is really important to help build the resources for thinking about repair and reparations for Black residents of Evanston. A lot of times we make advances through metaphor and through symbol and through thinking about things that way.”
One of the ways that churches create reparations is to highlight how to have conversations about reparations from a faith-based perspective, both pastors said.
“Part of that is just taking a risk,” said Rev. Woolf. “And we want to help people feel more comfortable in their risk-taking by situating this as a conversation that’s being had, and also by saying, ‘Your faith tradition has something to say about that. And to be big, to be bold, to dig deep into the well of your faith, and to see what it has to say about this really important issue – that’s really a challenge. But it’s also something that I really feel is quite important. … And that might lead you to some difficult conversations: What ways have churches been collaborators with white supremacy, been racist, been white supremacists? Have they benefited from racism and white supremacist society?”
The ongoing question, said Rev. Woolf, is, “How can churches be a part of that repair?”
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