The Rev. Ingrid McIntyre
COURTESY PHOTO
The Rev. Ingrid McIntyre is a licensed local pastor who takes Sunday as her Sabbath day of rest. “I have church all week long,” says the executive director and co-founder of the homeless advocacy organization Open Table Nashville.
McIntyre grew up in a United Methodist household. Her father is a retired elder in the Tennessee Conference and her mother worked at the General Board of Discipleship. She did not like having to move regularly, but she appreciated the welcome provided by many congregations.
“There was always room for someone else,” McIntyre says. Her family would often either welcome people into their home or be welcomed into the homes of others. This ministry of hospitality led McIntyre to her current work “building community and getting people into housing.”
McIntyre attended Wesley Theological Seminary but determined that her calling was not to ordained ministry. She worked with the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry for a year and a half before resigning. She sensed a call to a ministry reflecting “personal and nitty-gritty love.”
One month after she quit in 2010, massive flooding in Nashville displaced many of the homeless population. Open Table Nashville was born.
Initially, McIntyre lacked the church’s support for her ministry. For years, she says, people had told her to live into her calling, but support was lacking when she expressed this calling. She has now found support in Nashville Area Bishop William T. McAlilly and was licensed this year as a local pastor. The church needs to “keep its eyes and ears open to whatever God is calling people to,” she says.
McIntyre desires to “break the mold of what people call the church.”
Her ministry is not tied to a specific local church, and she works in partnership with many. Two congregations host bimonthly resource centers for the homeless, and McIntyre conducts education about homelessness at many others.
McIntyre calls the church to focus more on the intertwined issues of health care, the death penalty and incarceration, and affordable housing. The church, McIntyre says, “needs to be more prophetic and not just saying, but actively doing something, about” these issues.
“There is no reason The United Methodist Church can’t change any of these things.”
The Rev. Andrew Schleicher is a freelance writer and editor living in Nashville, Tenn.