Disciples Home Missions
Mission • Advocacy • Programs
Discover the latest stories, updates, and inspirations from Disciples Home Missions! Here you’ll find news that celebrates how ministry is happening across our church — stories of disciples learning, serving, and leading in their communities. Explore how DHM continues to live out its mission through faith in action, meaningful partnerships, and ministries that make a difference every day.
Statement by Chris Dorsey, President & CEO of Disciples Home Missions:
On April 29, 2026, the Supreme Court issued a ruling in Louisiana v. Callais that guts the Voting Rights Act. It is now significantly harder to challenge redistricting maps for racial discrimination. For decades, courts could assess the impact of those maps—regardless of intent. That standard has been overturned.
Disciples Home Missions receives this decision with grief and resolve.
The Voting Rights Act was the result of over a century of struggle. Many regarded it as a pivotal moment in the Civil Rights Movement. It was actually signed into law less than five months after peaceful marchers were violently attacked on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. This history is not distant—it lives in the memories of our elders and in the ongoing work of our communities. The Court has been chipping away at this law for years. This ruling is the most damaging blow yet.
The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) has spoken out on this before. In 2013, when the Supreme Court struck down a central provision of the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder, the General Assembly meeting in Orlando, Florida, adopted GA-1337 calling on Congress to restore the protections that had been removed and declaring solidarity with all those working to ensure equal access to the vote. GA-1337 affirmed that voter suppression is still real—through gerrymandering, restrictive ID laws, intimidation, and unfair redistricting. Louisiana v. Callais continues that dismantling. Our response remains the same: we will not back down.
Voting is how people who have been historically excluded from power make their voices heard. When the votes of minoritized communities are diluted or suppressed, their rights and wellbeing suffer. Their dignity is threatened and undermined.
In contrast, when those communities build coalitions with one another, they gain the collective strength to shape a democracy that works for everyone. The decision in Louisiana v. Callais makes coalition-building more urgent than ever. We all need to understand that we have a role to play in combatting this egregious decision.
The faith community has always played a vital role in the struggle for voting rights. Churches and people of faith were at the center of the Civil Rights Movement—and they are needed now. We call on Disciples congregations and leaders to:
Help people vote.
Share information on how to register and where to vote. Encourage members to staff voter registration booths and serve as election protection volunteers.
Contact your state representatives.
Redistricting maps are drawn at the state level. Let your representatives know that, as people of faith, you stand against discrimination in all its forms.
Keep going.
Setbacks are real—but they must not paralyze us. Change is coming. We must keep pressing forward.
Voter Registration and Empowerment is one of the core priorities for Disciples Home Missions. We are assembling a panel of voting rights experts for an upcoming webinar, and we will release additional guidance and resources. We are also partnering with Disciples ministries, as well as ecumenical and interfaith organizations to make a difference.
This summer, in partnership with Faith Out Loud, Disciples Home Missions will host a workshop on protecting the right to vote at the Biennial Session of National Convocation in Dallas, Texas.
Disciples Advocate Digest video conversation between DHM President Chris Dorsey and Director for Justice and Advocacy Ministries Brian Frederick-Gray on the Louisiana v. Callais Supreme Court Decision.
GA-1337 (Emergency Resolution) Concerning the Decision of the United States Supreme Court to Dismantle the Voting Rights Act.
The ACLU Voting Rights Hub offers a plain-language explainer of the decision, current analysis, and ways to get involved.
Faiths United to Save Democracy Poll Chaplain/Peacekeeper Training empowers people of faith to ensure voter protection in a free, fair, and safe election.
Promoting Greater Justice and Mercy in the World.
Statement by Chris Dorsey, President & CEO of Disciples Home Missions:
“When I was a stranger, you welcomed me”
Those words are hard to reconcile with what we are seeing unfold in cities all across the United States of America. They are particularly hard to reconcile with what we have seen most recently in Minneapolis. The brutal killing of Renee Nicole Good by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, and the ongoing violence being committed against other unarmed persons in and around the city of Minneapolis is abhorrent. It stands in stark contrast with the values and beliefs that we Christians hold sacred.
Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. It is a day we commemorate the birthday of one of the World’s most strident advocates for human rights. For King, it was the church’s responsibility to affirm, protect and, when necessary, restore the human dignity of all persons, while promoting human flourishing. This is what the Montgomery Bus Boycott was it about; it’s what Selma was about; it’s what the march on Washington was about.
“The Struggle Continues”
While the progress made in this country as a result of King’s work and others during the Civil Rights Movement is to be commemorated and celebrated, we cannot look at what’s happening today and think that all is well. The progress that has been made in some areas is being drastically reversed. Once again, the dignity of vulnerable persons is being threatened and undermined by government agencies and reckless leaders.
One of Kings most famous quotes is just as relevant now, as it was when he first declared it: “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly”
What is happening to immigrants affects us all!
What happened to Renee Nicole Good affects us all!
What is happening to protesters and those standing up for the rights of the vulnerable, affects us all!
It is clear to most of us where King’s attention would be focused, if he were alive today. As we commemorate the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr and the accomplishments of the Civil Rights Movement, let us keep our attention, our prayers, and our actions, focused on today.
“What is happening in Minneapolis affects us all!”
Disciples Interims announces an upcoming leadership transition as Rev. Scott Woolridge, Director of Disciples Interims, prepares for retirement. Please read the attached.
In times of moral complexity and political turbulence, pastors serve as essential guardians of conscience and truth. Their importance extends far beyond Sunday sermons—they are shepherds who speak courageously when speaking costs something.
Today, as executive orders reshape the landscape of justice, compassion, and human dignity, pastors stand in a long prophetic tradition. Like the Hebrew prophets who confronted kings, and like Martin Luther King Jr. who challenged unjust laws, faithful pastors today name what they see: policies that harm the vulnerable, rhetoric that dehumanizes the stranger, actions that prioritize power over the image of God in every person.
Appreciating and honoring pastors this month means recognizing their willingness to bear this burden. It means supporting them when their prophetic witness brings criticism, when speaking biblical truth about welcoming the immigrant or protecting the poor makes them unpopular. It means remembering that their calling is not to political partisanship but to the kin-dom of God whose values often stand in stark contrast to earthly ones.
We honor pastors by listening when they call us back to our deepest values: mercy, justice, humility. We honor them by standing with them when they stand for those pushed to the margins. And we honor them by remembering that the church at its best has always been a community of resistance against powers that would diminish human flourishing.
During the month of October and throughout the year, pastors deserve and need our prayers, our protection, and our partnership in the work of justice.
Disciples Home Missions is pleased to announce Rev. Dr. Jonathan R. Fisher as the new Director of Chaplaincy and Specialized Ministries. After a nationwide search, Jonathan stands out as someone whose vision and experience will expand and grow the work of supporting our chaplains beyond the task of endorsing. Upon retirement this Fall, Jonathan will officially start as the Director for Chaplaincy and Other Specialized Ministries on December 1, 2025. However, he will start offering support in the areas of pastoral care and communications on July 1, 2025.
Jonathan is soon retiring from his 21 years’ service as a US Army chaplain and currently serves as the Director of Clinical Pastoral Education at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Bethesda, MD. He is also a Certified Educator and National Faculty with the Association of Clinical Pastoral Education. With over 20 years of professional chaplaincy experience as a NAVAC Board Certified Chaplain, Jonathan has served in a wide range of operational and training army units, including three combat tours with the 3rd Infantry Division and 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault). He completed his CPE residency at Madigan Army Medical Center in Tacoma, WA, and later his CEC fellowship at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, TX, where he also served as Director.
Jonathan’s heart is firmly planted in the art of spiritual care and education. He is the ACPE Accreditation Commissioner for all the VA and DoD CPE programs. He has personally set up 3 CPE Programs from the ground up, including the US Army Center for Extended CPE, which serves as a model of providing CPE through remote learning. Jonathan hopes to bring this experience in adult chaplain education to his role as endorser by bringing continuing education to Disciples chaplains worldwide.
Beyond his military roles, Jonathan has served as an associate pastor and a high school educator. He is endorsed by the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), which formally recognized his ordination in 2010 after a period of deep personal growth, discernment, and spiritual direction. His journey through traumatic experiences in both fundamentalist education and combat has shaped a faith and set of values he now finds most fully expressed within the Disciples tradition.
Jonathan holds a Doctor of Ministry from Erskine Theological Seminary, where his work focused on ministry within a military prison context. While serving as staff chaplain at the
Military Correctional Complex in Fort Leavenworth, KS, he co-developed a program that led to a significant reduction in violence and recidivism at the facility, which includes the Joint Regional Correctional Facility and the United States Disciplinary Barracks—the Department of Defense’s only maximum-security prison.
Jonathan is married to Rev. Sara Nave-Fisher, who is the Senior Minister at University Christian Church, Hyattsville, MD. Together, they are raising three teenagers and a spirited Schnauzer named Schuyler in Rockville, MD. In his free time, Jonathan enjoys woodworking and spending time on the water.
Disciples Chaplains attending General Assembly will meet Jonathan at their pre-event on Friday, July 11, and throughout the assembly at the DHM exhibit area. The Office of Christian Vocations’ team welcomes Jonathan with excitement and invites you to join Disciples Home Missions in celebrating this much anticipated news!
As we move fully into the second quarter of the year, we would like to take this opportunity to share these reflections from Disciples Home Missions (DHM) in this Mission Report 2024-2025. This bold and creative report is our way of sharing the wonderful news of all that is happening at DHM.
View the report below or download the report here.
