NIMA WARD: A Reflection on a Faithful Lutheran Advocate in New Mexico by Judy Messal
“And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly, to love mercy, and to work humbly with your God.” Micah 6:8 (NIV)
Nima Ward had a gracious presence among us as she directed the Lutheran Advocacy Ministry in New Mexico for the first fifteen of its forty-two years. She did her work humbly. She listened to people experiencing social and economic injustice and invited them to educate her team of advocates and to be with her at the State Legislature. She didn’t want to speak for them so much as to be an instrument to amplify their voices.
Nima took the first steps in building trust between the Lutheran advocacy ministry and elected officials. One who admired her greatly was the venerable State Representative J. Paul Taylor from Dona Ana County. He called her “the Mother Teresa of New Mexico” and remembered that, no matter how late the hour during the legislative session, she always seemed to be at the Roundhouse. When deliberations went on past midnight, the legislators could look up from their work and see Nima--still there in the room with them. It raised their spirits, he said.
Her work was not just in Santa Fe. I also like to think of Nima as an apostle who traveled New Mexico to encourage ELCA congregations to step into the world of public policy. She invited us to take up our call there as people of faith—to learn why poverty exists and to work for systemic solutions. She went to Farmington, Los Alamos, Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Los Lunas, Las Cruces, Carlsbad, and Hobbs, and in those places she found advocates to serve on her advisory committee. She brought in the Presbytery of Santa Fe as a partner.
I met Nima in 1993, at Peace Lutheran in Las Cruces. She invited us to be an advocating congregation by setting up a telephone tree--the pre-Internet way of transmitting legislative action alerts. When I encountered this kind person with a passion for justice, something shifted in my faith journey, and I sought her mentorship. Nima supported our advocacy efforts at Peace, coming to Las Cruces each year as we hosted thank-you receptions for our legislators. In her warm, respectful interactions with elected officials, she was the model of how to move with grace between church and the public square.
Nima also introduced us to our neighbors who prize social justice. Thus, Peace met Sister Kathleen Erikson of an immigrant center in Anthony and Sister Donna Kustusch of Centro Santa Catalina in Cd. Juarez. From those links, people from Peace became guests of Santa Catalina families who live on Juarez’s old landfill. Staying in their homes for three days, we learned the realities of people living on the margins of a globalized economy. Nima helped change us and make us believe in the work of advocacy so that all can share in God’s abundance with dignity.
Thank you, Nima Ward, good and faithful servant, for starting the advocacy ministry that Ruth Hoffman and, later, Kurt Rager have so ably taken on. Up and down and across New Mexico, you helped us nurture our faith and empathy and apply them to social systems. In all the ways that count, the work that has been done for more than forty years is adding up to a better society.