News and Views

"With great power comes great responsibility," Spider Man famously said. For the Rev. Jonathan Brown of Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington, D.C., the power of ministry will soon take place at a local comic book store.

Brown, along with his wife, had been toying with the idea of a comic book-based ministry for nearly 10 years. About seven years ago in Decatur, Georgia, the couple led an initial panel at their local comic book shop focused on faith and comics. 

A young man came to them afterward, describing a stark separation he felt between church life and comic fandom.

“He talked in great detail about how he felt this kind of separation that occurred with him,” Brown said. “He loved this nerd world of comics, games, Dungeons, and Dragons, and he loved his faith. He couldn't talk about his love of comics and games with his church community, and he couldn't talk about his love of his faith with his game and comics community.”

“And that just started us just thinking what does it look like to do church in the comic book shop? And what does it look like to just be present as a church representative in the comic book shop, to be present at that table?” he added.

The current concept for a comic book ministry stemmed from the Fresh Expressions movement that recognizes “that church is occuring outside the walls of the church,” Brown said.

“It’s really a process for listening to your community and developing expressions of church within the community, for people who are not part of your current church and who may never come into your current building,” said the Rev. Bill Brown, director of innovative evangelism at the Baltimore-Washington Conference.

Last year, the Fresh Expressions Academy was launched for clergy and lay members in the Baltimore-Washington Conference and the Peninsula-Delaware Conference.

The year-long process is meant to teach clergy how to “listen and love your community with the hopes that perhaps a faith expression church could be born within it,” Bill Brown said. With asynchronous online courses, monthly coaching calls and an immersion trip to the Florida Annual Conference, there are roughly 25 participants.

Jonathan Brown is currently enrolled in the academy, which will run till November.

After a beta test talking with fellow games and comic-book fans about how their lives and theology are reflected in a specific card game, a ministry incubator in Atlanta provided a small amount of start-up money to run with the idea. Eventually, Brown and his wife moved to Washington, D.C., in 2020.

Between living through a global pandemic, learning the ropes at Foundry, and transferring his ministry credentials up to the Baltimore-Washington Conference, the project for a comic book ministry took a longer-than-expected pause.

 Eventually, Brown got acquainted with one of the owners of a Dupont Circle comic book store called Fantom Comics. Brown said the store is closely aligned with his socially progressive values, making sure a diverse variety of voices are able to be a part of the comic book space.

The owner, who is Jewish, was intrigued by the idea. The one caveat was that the ministry could not proselytize his customers, which was perfectly fine with Jonathan. Now a faith-based comic book meeting will take place next month. 

“The past few months we've been developing and looking for partners to do this program called Comics X Theology, which is a kind of interfaith discussion of fans of various faith traditions and how these comic books relay. things that we experience in our faith life and everyday life.”

Comics X Theology will begin at Fantom Comics on October 6 at 4:00 p.m.

As for Brown’s favorite comic book character, he resonates on a ministry level with Nightwing, perhaps the most famous iteration of Batman’s Robin, who eventually retires from that role and moves onto his own adventures as an independent hero. 

“He studied Batman as Robin,” Brown said. “He grew up, and he became his own character. He knew himself, he was more lighthearted than Batman. He had different skills — and he branched out, went on his own and became his own character, still kind of rooted in what was passed. As a preacher's kid seeking ordination, that's just kind of what has gelled with me.”

 Besides a comic book ministry, how are other fresh expressions reaching into the greater community? Well, these expressions take place in all types of places — a tattoo parlor, a burrito restaurant, and even while going for walks in the neighborhood.

Brown’s expression just so happens to have a lot more onomatopoeias than usual.

“Church is occurring at the comic book shop,” he said. “Whether or not we’re there, God is there.”