Pastor Alisa: Made by Hand

by Kevin Anderson

If the Rev. Alisa L. Lasater were a painting, the artists’ signatures would take up half the canvas. If she were a quilt, she’d have been sewn by one very crowded quilting bee.

And if the accomplished young clergywoman – who on July 1 became Capitol Hill United Methodist Church’s eighth pastor since the 1961 merger that formed it – were a book, the acknowledgements would go on for pages.

Call these metaphors for a walk with God that from its earliest days has been guided at every turn by the loving hands of a number of mentors, teachers and pastors. And Gammy Ada.

Ada Green, Alisa’s maternal grandmother, was a self-educated theologian with a passion for Christ and a zest for life. Alisa remembers her, at 94 and sick with heart and lung problems, braving a cross-country trip last May to be with the extended family at a cousin’s graduation. “There she was, pulling her oxygen tube down so she could sip wine, and wanting to discuss Dostoevsky’s and Tolstoy’s take on Christology instead of making small talk,” Alisa says. “She was determined to die living,” which sadly she did in December.

It was Gammy Ada who taught Alisa the stories of the Bible as a small girl, and passed the fire to her own little heart. When Alisa was seven, she recalls, “I went to my mother and said ‘Mom, if you don’t start taking me to church, I’ll hitchhike.’ ” And so they went, to Central United Methodist Church in Albuquerque, N.M.

There she found a special mentor in the pastor, Rev. Dr. William Hutchison, now Bishop of the Louisiana Annual Conference. “I got so many blessings from him,” she recalls, including recently “when he dropped everything for an hour to talk with me about this appointment.”

As Alisa grew, and grew in her faith, so did her awareness of those in need. “New Mexico is a poor state,” she notes, and as a teen, she and her peers started ministering to needful neighbors, growing in her a passion to be in some type of urban work. But after graduating in communications from the University of Kansas, where her parents and many other relatives had gone, life had banked the embers of that fire somewhat.

“I was a little lost after college,” she says. A close friend had nearly died and her mom was battling cancer. So she waited tables for a while in Lawrence, and then returned to Albuquerque to help her mom, picking up another waitressing job when she returned.

But her return also brought her back to Central UMC and a new mentor, Dr. Hutchison’s successor as senior pastor, the Rev. Dr. Charles Crutchfield, now bishop of the Arkansas Annual Conferences. His was a firm guiding hand.

“Dr. Crutchfield came into the restaurant where I was working, sat me down and said ‘So, Alisa, should I tell your manager you’re quitting today, or will you?’ ” she says, recalling her shock. It so happened the church’s director of youth ministries had just left and Rev. Crutchfield was set on Alisa taking the job.

She balked, certain she hadn’t the wherewithal to lead a large (50 plus teens) ministry of which she had so recently been a member. But her mentor wasn’t taking no for an answer. Alisa not only successfully led the ministry, which includes a theatrical troupe, Bible study and mission work, but launched a new component, a Student Action Leadership Team.

The pattern continued. Still resisting a call to ordained ministry she now realizes went back to childhood, at her mentors’ hands she reluctantly applied to seminary at Southern Methodist University. “I’d made a deal with myself that I’d only go if I got a full ride (scholarship),” Alisa says. “I got in but without the full scholarship, so I said that’s that.” A few days later, SMU called back with the offer of a full ride. But a deal was a deal.

Other far-away hands got to work. The daughter of Gammy Ada’s best friend working in the Virginia Annual Conference knew of a need for help at Rising Hope UMC in Alexandria, a congregation comprised largely of the homeless and formerly homeless. Alisa got a call, and the fire for urban work flamed afresh. “No pay, but free room and board. And I loved the people and the work, and was amazed at all the ways God found to help me buy essentials.”

She also stopped fighting the call to ordained ministry, applying to seminary again, this time at Duke University, where Revs. Crutchfield and Hutchison both studied. There new sets of hands took over among fellow students and teachers, most especially New Testament Professor Dr. Richard Hays, and Dr. Peter Story. One special tillerman was Rev. Bruce Stanley, the director of field education, who set up student pastoral internships. “He told me, ‘Alisa, we send students to places where they can grow in their weakest area and yours is rich people.’ So he sent me to Greenwich, Connecticut,” one of the wealthiest communities in the nation, to intern at Stanwich Congregational Church in the summer of 2003.

There awaiting her was perhaps the most influential mentor of her life, the Rev. Neely Towe. “Neely lived her life according to the heart beat of God and she cultivated the ears of all around her to hear the beat and dance accordingly,” Alisa says.

The following year, Alisa graduated from Duke and became Associate Minister of Local Missions and Young Adults – both her passions – at Myers Park UMC in Charlotte, N.C., a church of more than 5,000 with a staff of 41. There, she served under Dr. James Howell, a preacher with “an unequaled gift and passion for making people feel uncomfortable in the pew and recognize that they must serve others outside the walls of the church.” James’ preaching kept Alisa busy. Alisa led 200-plus young adults, a local missions ministry with over 1000 members in service, and partnerships with more than 30 community groups and churches.

Now she was blossoming as a mentor, preacher and leader. She implemented a small-group ministry and spiritual retreats for the young adults, and grew a partnership with South Tryon Community Church in a low-income African-American neighborhood, mustering more than 200 Myers Park volunteers and raising $350,000 to help South Tryon’s ministries. “But,” she insists, “the numbers don’t tell the story. We studied scripture together, taught one another, and lived out the call to justice by working together for affordable housing in the South Tryon neighborhood. God changed us from strangers to friends to partners in the work of God’s Kingdom.”

Coming to CHUMC from Myers Park may seem like transferring from an aircraft carrier to a PT boat, but Alisa says it couldn’t be more perfect. In fact, as time approached for her to take the next step in her journey, she specifically applied for appointment to UM conferences with troubled big cities, including our Baltimore-Washington Conference. “I was thrilled to be called to CHUMC,” she says. “I’m back in the DC area, which I love, near my sister in Annapolis, and at a dynamic urban church in a diverse neighborhood that is focused on mission and serving like Christ, and is open to God’s leading.

“Ironically, I asked the Bishop to send me to a disenfranchised neighborhood and a fragile church to serve with the poorest of the poor. He sent me four blocks from the nation’s capitol to serve a thriving congregation.” Why? Because once again someone saw something she failed to see: “God preparing me for a church that has at its heart the ministry of reconciliation, reconciling across class and race and so much more!”