Jesus is so beautiful, MAGA is not.

Jesus Is So Beautiful. MAGA Is Not.

A Rochester Love Letter, With Some Receipts

By Jomo K. Johnson

Let's start with the obvious: Jesus had range. Turned water into wine at a wedding, flipped tables in a temple, and somehow still found time to have dinner with the one guy the whole town hated. If Jesus had a Netflix bio-pic, it'd be a genre-bending masterpiece — part rom-com, part heist film, part prophetic mic-drop. Fifteen seasons, no filler episodes, and somehow still slept through a storm on a boat like it was a Sunday nap. That's the man I fell in love with almost thirty years ago.

MAGA hats, on the other hand, don't have that kind of range. They have one setting.

I say this not as a talking point, but as a guy who's spent fifteen years in ministry — mostly in predominantly white churches — genuinely loving the people in those pews. I've officiated weddings, sat at hospital bedsides, laughed at cookouts, and built real friendships. Some of the best men I know, I met in those churches. I'm not writing this to burn a village down. I'm writing this because I watched a village go quiet, and I think Rochester deserves to know why I'm doing something new.

The Job That Wasn't

A few years back, I was in talks for a ministry position out in Pittsford. Good conversations. Good vibes. The kind of interview where you start mentally rearranging your bookshelf for the new office.

Then someone asked about my support for Black Lives Matter.

I answered honestly — the way I answer everything — and watched the temperature in the room drop like Rochester in November. The offer disappeared not long after. No villain monologue, no dramatic confrontation. Just a quiet, administrative kind of "we've decided to go in a different direction." Very on-brand for the Midwest-nice, upstate-polite way discomfort gets handled around here.

I wasn't shocked. I was just tired. Tired in the specific way that comes from realizing the goalposts had moved and nobody sent a memo.

2015: The Year the Vibe Shifted

Before 2015, ministry in white spaces had its complications — church always does — but there was room to disagree and still break bread. Then something shifted. Somewhere between one election cycle and the next, I watched good men — men I'd call genuine friends — go silent. Not hostile. Just silent. The kind of silence that's louder than a shout, because you know they saw what was happening and decided the group chat wasn't the place to say so.

MAGA didn't invent division in the American church. But it gave a lot of quiet folks permission to stop pretending division was a problem worth fixing.

Here's my theological hot take, free of charge: nationalism dressed up in a cross is still nationalism. Patriotism performed at the altar is still just patriotism. And you cannot staple an American flag to the Sermon on the Mount and call it exegesis. Jesus fed five thousand people without checking their voter registration. I feel like that's relevant.

So Now What? Rochester, Take the Wheel

Here's where the story turns, because I promise this isn't just a rant with a Bible verse chaser.

Right now, I'm part of a team launching five new church communities across Rochester — not five campuses of the same thing, but five distinct gatherings for five distinct groups of people who've felt like church wasn't built with them in mind:

• A church for artists and activists, because creativity and conviction aren't opposites.

• A church for seniors, because wisdom deserves its own table.

• A house church, for the people who want depth over production value.

• The Lord's Supper, a communion-style gathering built around a literal shared meal.

• Church of Laughter, because if your theology can't survive a good joke, it might not survive much else.

The goal across all five is stupidly simple: proclaim the beauty of Jesus. That's it. No hidden agenda, no culture-war scoreboard. Just an honest attempt to let Christ be as beautiful in real life as He is on the page — even against the backdrop of a religious landscape that's spent the last decade getting a little too comfortable with red hats and red-faced arguments.

The Invitation

I'm not asking anyone to hate their MAGA uncle. I'm asking Rochester to imagine a church where the Gospel doesn't come with a side of nationalism, where "come as you are" isn't a slogan on a sign but an actual policy, and where the beauty of Jesus gets to be the main character again instead of a supporting actor in someone's political drama.

If that sounds like something you've been quietly hoping existed — good news. We're launching this fall, right here in Rochester. Come see for yourself. Bring your questions, your skepticism, your favorite pop-culture references. I've got jokes and I've got receipts, and I promise the coffee will be better than the last church you left.

Let's talk. Let's eat. Let's laugh. Let's see if Jesus is still as beautiful as I remember.

— Jomo (Lead church planter)