Planting Trees, Building Cathedrals

by Lily White

Last week, the Alliance staff gathered for a retreat at Sistergrove Farm in Van Alstyne, Texas. For the better part of three days, we stepped away from the rhythms and distractions of daily work and made space to be together in person, something rare for a staff spread across different places and responsibilities.

We spent those days doing the work organizations in transition must do. We revisited staff responsibilities and asked what still made sense and what needed to change. We talked about how to better support endorsed ministers, congregations, clergy, and ministry partners. We dreamed about new relationships and partnerships with churches and organizations that share the Alliance’s liberative theology and commitments.

We also asked harder questions.

Who is the Alliance in this moment?
Who are we as a staff?
What is our responsibility to this movement and its values?
What would be lost if the Alliance no longer existed?

Those are not abstract questions. They are tender ones.

Our board president, Sandy Washington, joined us for part of the retreat, and together we wrestled honestly with grief while also imagining what could still be possible. Throughout the conversations, certain phrases kept resurfacing like prayers spoken aloud before anyone realized they were praying.

“I need to wrestle, and I’ll wait for the blessing.”

“These are my people.”

Those words lingered with me.

Of course, the retreat was not only work. We made pizzas together. We laughed and cried. We told stories. We strengthened old bonds and formed new ones. The kind of trust that sustains ministry does not emerge only from strategic planning sessions. It grows around tables, in vulnerable conversations, and in moments of shared honesty.

In the coming months, I hope Alliance churches and partners will begin to see the fruit of that time together. Programs are being refined. Projects are being clarified and broken into manageable pieces. Ideas are taking shape. But more importantly, trust within the staff continues to deepen, and that matters because trust is what allows people to imagine a future together.

Before we left on Friday, we walked together to see a 150-year-old American Elm on the property. It was astonishing.

The tree towered above us, its roots buried deep in the Texas soil while its branches stretched outward in every direction. One enormous branch curved low enough to the ground that I could lie beneath it while its leaves brushed against my toes.

Later, someone wondered aloud who might have planted that tree. Was it planted intentionally by a farmer? Or did a bird simply drop a seed that happened to take root?

I have kept thinking about that question.

A few years ago, I visited Barcelona with my wife and niece. One of the places I most wanted to see was the Basilica de la Sagrada Família. Antoni Gaudí devoted the last decades of his life to its construction, drawing inspiration from trees, oceans, and the natural world. Even now, more than a century later, the cathedral remains unfinished.

When Gaudí died in 1926, only about a quarter of the basilica had been completed. Since then, five generations have continued the work he began. Five generations.

Someone planted a seed knowing they might never live to see the finished work.

That feels important to remember right now.

This year, the Alliance of Baptists marks forty years of ministry and witness. For four decades, people have invested their lives into building a movement rooted in justice, freedom, inclusion, and beloved community. Some of the people who planted those seeds are no longer here to witness the growth that followed. Others carried the work through seasons of conflict, uncertainty, and change so that future generations could inherit something worth tending.

And now it is our turn.

This season of transition within the Alliance brings both grief and possibility. Change always does. Some branches bend low because of storms they have weathered. Some structures endure only because generations of people chose to continue the work when it would have been easier to walk away.

But the retreat reminded me of something I desperately needed to remember: “These are my people.”

Not because we agree on everything. Not because the future feels certain. But because we are still choosing one another and the work we have been called to do together.

The Alliance has never been sustained by certainty alone. It has been sustained by people willing to wrestle and wait for the blessing. People willing to plant seeds they may never see fully grown. People willing to trust that liberation, justice, and beloved community are still worth building toward, even when the work feels unfinished. Especially then.

I do this work knowing the Alliance will outlive me. I hope it does. Faithful work has always required people willing to build cathedrals they may never enter and plant trees whose shade they may never sit beneath.

This is our work now.

And how we choose to do it matters.