The Nap Ministry

12 · 13 · 21
how will you be useless to capitalism today

How will you be useless to capitalism today?

The question covers the landing page for the revolutionary performance-art meets ministry meets social justice movement called The Nap Ministry. This simple, and powerfully subversive “REST AS RESISTANCE” model suggests that our cultural resistance to appropriate rest is a crisis that affects our entire humanity, causing depletion in our spiritual, emotional, physical, mental, and social health. Founder Tricia Hersey frames these issues as ones of both personal well-being but also racial and social justice, framing specifically the rest of people of color as radically subversive of their exploitation by capitalist systems. 

For The Nap Ministry, the medium is very much the message, with the organization currently taking a two month sabbath with no social media, no bookings, no email in order to demonstrate that the work of liberation and hope for a community must start with the liberation and hope of a single person.

Where do we allow ourselves to experience the good news we seek to create? In what ways do we actually live out the hope, peace, love, grace, and joy that our organizations seek to create? When we don’t allow ourselves those gifts, what are we communicating to those that seek to utilize our ministries? To our teams? To the God we serve? To ourselves? 

The Nap Ministry encourages us to radically reconsider what we think to be “successful” ministry and ministry innovation. The Nap Ministry has created rich conversation, radically subversive art installations, and personally transformative ministries all by doing… nothing. Their signature installation is simply a space designed for people to come and nap. Their unapologetic, self-assured Good News is challenging models of ministry and models of what it means to lead a ministry in a powerful way.

How can we learn from their example? 

FacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedintumblrmailFacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Ministry Incubators

Related Posts

Pick Your Battles

Pick Your Battles

Working out is hard. The death of a loved one is hard. Feeling betrayed at work is hard. Making new friends is hard. The New York Times crossword puzzle is hard. And none of those things feel even remotely like one another.  This is partly a linguistic failing,...

The Virtue of Dino Nuggets

The Virtue of Dino Nuggets

What is the virtue of a Dino Nugget? I listened to an interview earlier this week with Scott Friedman, whose family invented Dino Buddies, which is the dominant Canadian brand of Dinosaur-shaped chicken nugget.  The interview ventured into territory of the inherent...

The Buzzing in Your Ear

The Buzzing in Your Ear

Do you know that some portion of the static on televisions and radios is actually the echo of The Big Bang? This sounds very made up, but it's real, and it was discovered almost by accident. This is a story of two teams of astrophysicists, working 35 miles down the...

Comments

0 Comments