Meet My Friend Malcolm!
On Sunday, June 29th, we at Atonement Church of Boulder are privileged to have the Rev. Dr. Malcolm Himschoot as our guest preacher at 9:30am and the presenter at the Adult Education time at 11:00am following worship. At the Adult Education time, Malcolm will share some of his journey with us and leave time for an open dialogue about any questions you wish to ask.
I first met Malcolm in Denver in 2000 when I was asked to be his mentor as he journeyed toward ordination. Thus began a decades long friendship. It was my first experience of having a personal relationship with a person who identified as transgender, and Malcolm touched my heart with his personhood, faith and witness. If it could be said I was a mentor to him, he certainly was one to me!
Malcolm’s ministry has taken him from streets and prisons in Denver, to immigrant vigils, to affordable housing in Minneapolis, to policing reform in Cleveland, to coalition-building for indigenous rights in Maine. Along the way he has served congregations, leading worship, preaching and teaching, offering pastoral care, and singing with children. He served on UCC denominational staff and is now in Maine, co-pastoring an ecumenical church while also directing a program in regional theological education for lay learning and rural leadership development. He and his wife, Mariah, are the parents of teenage twins.
His new book, Reading Secrets: A Queer Inheritance of Life and Scripture, will be released on June 24th, and in it Malcolm shares his spiritual journey of being the child of a fundamentalist, closeted gay father who used scripture as a weapon against himself and his children. In Reading Secrets, Malcolm offers an alternative view and invites the reader to reimagine faith as a space for healing, truth, and liberation.
On Monday, June 30th from 7:00pm – 8:30pm, Atonement will host an event open to the wider community. Malcolm will share some of his personal story and speak about trans related topics, as well as mental health issues in the queer community and the importance of becoming an explicitly welcoming faith community and wider community. His book will be available for sale.
– Martie McMane, retired United of Christ minister, former Senior Minister of First Congregational, UCC, Boulder, now a member of Atonement Lutheran, Boulder
