Can you imagine being an elected official in March 2020? You’ve run your race, made your promises, and finally won. Then you’re hit with a global 100-year pandemic, and those promises are the least of your worries. Now you’re just trying to navigate a profoundly complex, contentious crisis full of tough choices.
Would you want that job?
Today we hear from Morgan Schmidt, a pastor, peacemaker, and aspiring politician who does want that job—and how community power during COVID became her motivation.
“I had been a pastor for many years,” Morgan says. “I actually talked Jon Huckins into letting us do the first youth immersion trip down in Tijuana years ago, and I’ve been connected to Global Immersion ever since. Then when the pandemic hit, we began asking ourselves how we might be good news in the community while needing to distance.”
On a whim, Morgan created a Facebook page called Pandemic Partners that gained three thousand followers overnight. The group’s focus was simple: support one another during the crisis.
Morgan beamed as she recalled the early days: “It was the honor of my life to see people come out of the woodwork to care for one another. A single mom receiving much-needed wet wipes, a family living off the grid needing propane to stay warm, people looking for work, and on and on—it was incredible to see how people shared their needs and took care of each other.”
Pandemic Partners groups quickly popped up across the USA as more and more people stepped up to serve, and the original group ultimately reached 11,000 people in Bend, Oregon, alone, with at least 30 other groups spread all over the country.
“As great as it was to see all these needs being met,” Morgan said, “it was clear that this kind of grassroots support for one another wasn’t necessarily addressing the core, systemic issues many of our most vulnerable neighbors face.”
So Morgan resigned as a pastor and ran for office; though, as she puts it: “In a sense, I’m still a pastor. Instead of pastoring a particular faith community, I’m working to care for my entire community.”
Peacemaking happens in the pivotal moments, like when Morgan and a few other clergy (including our own Jer Swigert) joined a nonviolent protest in Bend organized by BIPOC activists and surrounded an ICE bus that had detained two of their undocumented neighbors. But she warns that our peacemaking can’t only be the ‘big’ moments:
“You have to take the heart of those life-changing moments and let it bleed into the boring stuff. How we handle the small, day-to-day stuff in between those big moments says a lot about us, and it starts by asking ourselves, ‘Who are my neighbors? How do we care for each other in the minutia? How can we keep focus on all these little fibers that weave the fabric of our life together? Because it has to work toward flourishing for everyone, where all can thrive.”
In true Everyday Peacemaker fashion, Morgan saw the chaos and heartbreak of the pandemic and, rather than look away, she took action. Stories like this—your stories–give us such hope. Thank you, and good luck to Morgan as she runs for office!
Morgan Schmidt has spent the past fifteen years in public service, reaching out to neighbors and vulnerable populations, building effective working relationships, coordinating coalitions of stakeholders. She regularly speaks on caring for our neighbors and engaging our community with curiosity and openness.
She has dedicated her career to community building and collaboration as the Leader of Pandemic Partners, former Director of the Bend Youth Collective, Chair of the Homeless Leadership Coalition’s Community Engagement Committee, Chair of the Presbytery of the Cascades Wildfire Response Committee, and Co-Founder of Clergy for Justice of Central Oregon.