The Kitchen and the Office

A reflection on Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II's "Revive Us Again," Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharris, and the leadership structures we inherit

Executive Directors and Social Entrepreneurs meet for the NBA gathering in Houston, TX: Sophia Barnett (MACC Foundation & JBM Publishing), Rev. Whitney-Marie Murphy (CAYA), and LaSheena Jenkins (SheeCreates & LTJ, LLC)

Before I ever sat in a boardroom, I sat in my grandfather's office.

That's where the real planning happened — my grandfather, my father, my uncles, deciding which minister would preach on a given Sunday, who would teach Sunday School, who would lead Thursday Bible Study, who would run Vacation Bible School in the summer. I felt like an insider in those conversations. I was proud to be there. I still am.

But the church didn't run on what happened in that office. It ran on what happened in the kitchen.

My aunts, my grandmothers, my cousins — they directed the nursery, ran the children's choir, led Youth Ministry, and cooked dinner for the church and for anyone in the neighborhood who knew they were welcome to come get a plate. They taught us our pitch for Sunday's song with a baby on one hip, while we rolled our eyes and snickered at every distraction they patiently ignored. They set aside their own fights at home to serve people who weren't even asking to be served that hard.

Two structures.

One building.

And only one of them had a name on the door.

I've been sitting with this for a while, and recently it came back to me while reading the first three chapters of Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II's Revive Us Again. Barber traces the connections — and disconnections — between the political, social, and spiritual dimensions of community, quality of life, and power. He weaves scripture through the argument that God's prophetic move in the earth is aimed at the sustaining of all creation, together. He draws a hard line from the elite powers of the Roman empire to the climate we're still living in, in the U.S., today. And in Chapter 3, he names something I didn't have language for until I read it: "American Malpractice." The quiet minimizing of the prophetic, liberating ministry of Jesus. A submission to capitalism dressed up as piety — a piety that narrows the whole call of faith down to personal salvation and personal prosperity.

That's the office. That's the version of the faith that gets a title.

Reading Barber, I felt the weight of something else too — a cisgender, heteronormative male gaze running underneath the whole argument, the same fraternity of men who shaped my own spiritual formation. So when Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharris's voice entered the conversation in Blessed Are the Rejected, it landed like relief. Theoharris writes about a Jesus who prefers justice over charity — a movement that insists on the dignity of labor and the right to benefit from what that labor produces. She names a Christianity that is hospitable, redistributive, and anti-poverty by design, not by accident. And on page 16, she writes something that still sits with me:

"It is a Christian's duty to end poverty... God's followers are asked to model a community of mutuality and solidarity; the poor and oppressed are held up and cared for and there is no room for oppression and oppressors."

That's the kitchen. That's the version of the faith that never got a title, and did the work anyway.

I don't always know how a thing is going to get done. But I learned it from the women in my childhood church: sometimes the only way to make sure everyone gets fed is to ask them what they need. And sometimes, it's to feed them yourself.

Here's why I'm telling you this.

I spend most of my consulting work now inside organizations — churches, nonprofits, mission-driven teams — helping leaders see the gap between the office and the kitchen in their own structures. It rarely announces itself that plainly. It shows up as: the people whose names are on the org chart, and the people who actually hold the culture together. The strategy that gets written down, and the labor that makes the strategy true. The theology — or the mission statement — that gets preached, and the one that actually gets practiced, usually by whoever is closest to the need.

Most organizational problems have a language problem at the center. Barber gave a name to what happens when a faith's language shrinks to protect power instead of extend it. I've watched the same shrinkage happen in nonprofit boardrooms and ministry staff meetings that have nothing to do with theology at all — the language narrows, and the people doing the sustaining work quietly disappear from the story the organization tells about itself.

I find it. I name it. And then we build something more honest in its place — one that puts a name on what's actually holding the room together, not just what's printed on the letterhead.

LaSheena T. Jenkins is the founder of LTJ LLC, offering Strategic Organizational & Prophetic Counsel to churches, nonprofits, and mission-driven organizations.