At birth, Pastor Rashion Santiago received the nickname “Woody” from her aunt who traditionally blessed all of the family children with a nickname. The name stuck with her throughout her life and through her career as a Lutheran minister where many have come to know her as Pastor Woody. Her story began in Reading and has come full circle as she has returned to Reading and brought a new concept of church as we know it, opening doors to a new mindset of building community while feeding the flock.
“I grew up as a military kid my first five years before my parents moved back to Reading where we lived in a predominantly white area of the city. My parents split up and we moved with my mother to the Glenside Homes. I got to see and experience different economic groups, and my understanding of community came from living in Glenside. If you had no sugar, or no bread, there were always neighbors around that were there to help and uplift people. This is where I learned what community meant, living amidst people who the world may have deemed as not important.”
As a single parent, her mother had to work two jobs, and Rashion was left in the care of relatives while her mother worked, often on weekends. “My first church experience was going to Union Baptist Church with my Aunt Betty and my cousins Tasha and Thomas. I always got in trouble in Sunday School and was often sent to the adult class with my aunt, and so I often had the chance to talk with her about the lesson. It encouraged me to listen more to what the pastor was saying in church, and on the walk home we would always talk about the sermon.”
Rashion had a slightly difficult transition changing schools from Riverside Elementary, which was a predominantly white community, to Glenside Elementary which was a more diverse school. “There were some things that I didn’t understand as a seven-year-old. It was different interacting with different groups of kids my age. School came very easy to me, so when the teacher asked me to help other students, I didn’t realize that sometimes my “help” would be perceived as a fight, and that my good standing as a student could create fights. I wasn’t a bad kid, but rather like the class clown. Eventually, my principal, Laura Nelson-Turner discovered that she had once been my grandmother’s babysitter; she babysat my mom. Through that connection she sort of took me under her wing, which helped me thrive during my years at Glenside. I was on the school safety patrol, and vice president of the student council. I went on to Northwest Jr. High and graduated from Reading High School in 1999.”
While living in the Glenside community, Rashion became involved with Christ Lutheran Church through some of the neighborhood outreach programs they were hosting for kids in the community, both after school and during the summer. She began attending church on Sundays and her mother encouraged her to go to confirmation class.
“I was fifteen and I dropped out of confirmation class. It was too early in the morning on a Sunday, and it wasn’t teaching me what it meant to be a Christian. I was bored with it, and I just didn’t like it. I felt like I was not learning anything. All I wanted to do was come to church for the Casa de Cristo midweek program; I didn’t want to do the classroom stuff, I wanted to learn about being a Christian through hands on experience.”
It was during this time that Pastor Bruce Osterhout of Christ Lutheran decided to show her what it meant to be a Christian by mentoring her and giving her some insight into what he and his fellow colleagues in ministry were doing to bring people to the faith. “There were 13 churches in the city and 13 pastors who met for Bible study each week. I would go to Bible study with him and talk with the other pastors. I would go along on home visits, and I was the first kid to preach a sermon on Youth Sunday. I had always wanted to be a lawyer, a voice for those who had none, but I felt that God was calling me to be a voice for His purpose. I got to see God in so many different places. God is one and he is all. He is different in everyone’s lives. It was not boring, it was always a challenge and required courage, and it gave me something to think about.”
The fire in this young teenager was lit and began to be fed by other people along her journey. For many years, Christ Lutheran partnered with the YMCA to provide eight weeks of summer day camp for nearly 100 kids in the community, who were able to enter as young elementary aged children, and work toward leadership roles as counselors in training, junior counselors, seniors counselors, and possibly return as a camp director one day.
Through Pastor Osterhout, Rashion was introduced to Neil Anderson, Youth Director of the YMCA. “I was heavily involved with the YMCA. I was hired by Neil to help organize things and help with outreach to the community. I got to plan things for the community, and I even had an office. There was always a focus on the community, the betterment of the community, and how to help people to see God in their situation right where they were. We planned things that connected people to God and to one another while bringing joy and fun into it. Pastor Bruce played a large role in helping to put these outreach programs together and in engaging the youth in the Glenside community. He made the church very approachable, and provided a place that we knew we could always go. It gave me an understanding that the church was our community. He really cared about all of us.”
Rashion’s high school activities aligned with her activities with the church and the YMCA; building on academics, community service, student council, and service through RHS Key Club. When she graduated from Reading High School in 1999, her career path leading her to become a Lutheran minister became a reality. In the fall following graduation, she traveled to Trinity Lutheran College in Everett, Washington, where she spent the next four years preparing for entry into seminary. After college she went to The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, serving her internship in Newark, NJ in the last Lutheran church on the south side of town. Following a lengthy education focused on ministry, she was ordained as a Lutheran pastor by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America in 2012.
Statistics have shown a steep decline in church attendance as church leaders grapple with how to redefine the church in today’s society. “Through my travels, I have seen that the church has become exclusive, and that may mean that they do not know how to adapt to the changes in race, economics, and demographics. The church has become more multi-cultural, but worship has continued to be done in a more traditional way which appeals to an older generation. Worship can be done in numerous ways, and we have to be mindful not to live in nostalgia, missing out on the newness of God. Once we come to the understanding that it can become a more inclusive church, and not a place where people feel that God is pushed upon them, people will be able to experience God and will be touched by his love in a different way. If the church itself does not have a moat around it, we will be able to venture out and allow the message of Jesus to rise, seeing and experiencing new things. We get stuck being Lutheran, so we need to venture out and incorporate other denominations and experience new things. We need to work more outside of the church than inside the walls of the church. Show people that you care. When you have the community sense, the church is connected to it, and you are able to bring the scriptures to the people where they live.”
Pastor Woody has returned to her hometown of Reading to bring the concept of Inside Out Church, defined as community focused ministry that extends beyond the church walls. She will be working to create an Inside Out Church pilot model for Pennsylvania in a select church in Reading, while serving as a transitional pastor for Advent Lutheran in West Lawn. The concept of the Inside Out Church has been adopted by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America and focuses on meeting people in the community, and building family-like connections with those they serve. The initiative focuses on increasing the impact of congregations on the community around them.
Welcome back to fertile ground, Pastor Woody!
“Show people that you care. When you have the community sense and the church is connected to it, you are able to bring the scripture to people where they live.” Pastor Rashion “Woody” Santiago
