VTS magazine

When the Rev. Jo Belser began her transformative tenure of ministry at Church of the Resurrection, in Alexandria, VA, she started as a volunteer. The church was in serious money trouble, and she was, by her own admission, a “dangerous” candidate. As the first openly gay ordained person in the Diocese of Virginia, she knew she would have an easier time volunteering for a job than getting hired for one. But with her characteristic unflappability, she persisted because where others saw impediments she saw possibilities.

One of her first efforts was to restore the outreach budget that had been cut as a cost-saving measure. She quickly discerned that the church’s charism was ministry in their wider community. While they had decided to cut the budget knowing that people would support it anyway, the Rev. Belser knew that budgets are more than mere monetary allocations, they indicate your values. As a result, she guided Church of the Resurrection to articulate more clearly its mission of community engagement and to fully fund it. Giving increased by 13% in the first year.

Over the course of her 14-year ministry at Church of the Resurrection, the church founded a food pantry that has fed more than 85,000 people, it helped the City of Alexandria to end exclusionary zoning and Jim Crow era laws that reinforced racial segregation, and it provided hygiene and school supplies for students and families at nearby schools. In addition, it advocated for statewide “Faith in Housing” bills to allow churches and non-profit organizations to build affordable housing without burdensome rezoning requirements. The church also utilized its own campus to build 113 units of affordable housing called the Spire, while right-sizing its sanctuary and offices.

This work led to the Rev. Jo Belser being nominated and selected as the first annual Carol Myers Saint Nicholas Alumni Award recipient. The award, established by a generous gift from the David and Carol Myers Foundation, honors each year an alum of Virginia Theological Seminary (VTS), lay or ordained, who has shown exemplary and sustained witness for justice in the way of Jesus. The Rev. Belser exemplifies the spirit of Saint Nicholas, carrying out her good and holy work quietly and without fanfare.

I first met the Rev. Belser shortly after my arrival at VTS in the summer of 2024. Her reputation preceded her. I had heard stories about the church that demolished their aging sanctuary and built affordable housing. But she wanted to meet with me to recruit me, and VTS, to rejoin Virginians Organized for Interfaith and Community Engagement (VOICE). I was an easy target and in our two years of shared ministry, I’ve come to respect the Rev. Belser’s leadership as a community advocate in ways large and small.

What struck me immediately about the Rev. Belser was her balance between hope and realism. Having grown up as a closeted young person in the Wesleyan Methodist tradition and later as an early advocate for LGBTQ-plus inclusion in the Diocese of Virginia, helping to found Integrity Virginia in the late 1990s, she was clear eyed about the Church’s capacity to marginalize. But she also had hope in the power of the resurrection to transform lives. In her unassuming way, she was willing to ask hard questions, tell the truth about oppression, and to do so in a way that modeled the joy of solidarity and mutual care.

Sometimes acts of charity are undertaken from positions of largesse, the powerful giving to the powerless. But the Rev. Belser’s ministry has modeled a different way: both the giver and the receiver are the recipients of grace. In a telling story, Belser recounted to me an experience leading a canned food drive. She had several members of the congregation who were housing insecure, one was the junior warden. He took turns living every three months in a different parishioners’ home. She was unsure if asking people already in a financially precarious position to give would be appropriate. So Belser approached him directly: “You know, is it too much to ask a homeless person for a can of tuna? He said, ‘Heck, no, I’ll give you two!’”

In like manner, the Church’s discernment and decision to demolish their sanctuary and build the Spire, a 113-unit affordable housing complex, could be seen as an act of outreach. But this gets the flow of grace mixed up. Rather, discerning the clarity of mission, Church of the Resurrection received the gift of renewed life.

In reflecting on her ministry the Rev. Belser shared: “If I had any advice for anybody, it’s all about not planning your strategy for any new church on your way there, you know? But to read them and find out who they are and help them play to their strengths and come together to do what it is the community needs.”

It was that listening, discerning, and then acting with the hope of the resurrection that characterized the Rev. Belser’s remarkable season of ministry as rector of Church of the Resurrection. And for all these reasons, I’m so pleased that she was awarded the first inaugural Carol Myers Saint Nicholas Alumni Award.