Marissa Mattox Heffernan Joins Joy City

Hello and welcome back to Joy City, I’m your host, Stuart Welch the Lead Pastor of Life Connection Church located in Modesto, CA. 

If you are new you may wonder, “Joy City” really? Yes, after the Apostles were beaten and released, they found “great joy…” and Jesus in John 17 says, “that they may have the full measure of my JOY within them.” That yes, we face many trials and storms but the Apostle encourages us, we rejoice in hope and as sorrowful, yet ALWAYS rejoicing…” So welcome to Joy City my friends. 

I am so excited about my guest, Marissa Mattox Heffernan who serves as the Associate Pastor of Discipleship at New Hope FMC in Rochester, NY. I met Marissa at the FMC Justice Summit where she did a workshop entitled Justice & Jubilee: The Call to Beloved Community. 

Let’s jump right into it, Marissa welcome to Joy City. I can’t tell you how excited I have been to be able to chat with you. How are you, the family – those 3 beautiful little girls? What’s happening on the East Coast? Rochester is cool right now, someone said, “Summer checked out like someone owed them money!” 

Marissa serves on both the National FMC Justice Network as well as her local Genesis Justice Network. She attributes her engagement in these networks with her remaining a part of the FM Church. Our goal is to try and lend a prophetic voice to the Church regarding justice. Our local network is more grassroots and she desired to create a team to resource pastors in the justice arena. Creating a more vocal space for people to share and to fit.

As an assistant pastor of discipleship, people see discipleship as the God stuff, church and Bible, and justice is that stuff that happens out there. I would like to see justice “re-integrated” into biblical teachings. How we are called to restore fullness and shalom in ourselves, in our community, in our churches and outside them as we remind people of the innate work of God in creating us in His very image. As a Christian, justice is the reparative, reconciliatory power of God in community. 

https://fmcusa.org/resources/2019bod (Link to the FMC Book of Discipline).

Dr. Cornell West says, “Never forget, Justice is what love looks like in public.” We have a hard time defining justice, but we know what we mean by love. Majority of people understand love is being respected, accepted and valued. Also Pastor Bruce Wright was in Liz Cornell’s workshop as we worked through her book, “The Love Required of Us.” https://freemethodistbooks.com/product/the-love-required-of-us-ebook-edition

Marissa shares her back story of growing up in a church and then falling away before a life-crisis bought her back to church. Being a woman of color brought friction which allowed her to focus her mission in ministry by ministering to youth who identified as LGBTQ and received push-back from some parents. This is when she begin to be a self-proclaimed “pot-stirrer.” She wanted to create safe spaces for kids who couldn’t find safe spaces to fit in, this should be the church. In helping herself identify, she found great value in Dominque DuBois Gilliard’s book, “Subversive Witness.”  https://www.amazon.com/Subversive-Witness-Scriptures-Leverage-Privilege/dp/0310124034

Beloved, God has called us to justice, because he has called us to Himself and justice is an attribute of God. He lays the plan out in Exodus and through Deuteronomy and relativizes the community so we are now brothers and sisters, not by blood, but by something greater, the Spirit of the living God. 

You can reach Marissa at marissamattoxheffernan on FB, pastormarissa@newhopefree.org, Justicenetworkfmc.org, marissamattoxheffernan.com.