Faith & LeadershipRECONCILIATION, RACIAL & ETHNIC, CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP
Greg Jarrell: What does it mean for clergy to 'stay in their lane'?
What does it mean for clergy to "stay in their lane"?
WHY CLERGY SUPPORTING JUSTICE MOVEMENTS SHOULD LET OTHERS LEAD
People in Charlotte, North Carolina, protest the death of Keith Scott, who was killed by police. Photo courtesy of Charlotte Agenda
Pastors seeking to support justice movements should let people on the front lines lead. This means clergy are going to have to get used to being uncomfortable, writes a pastor from Charlotte, North Carolina.
Long into the night, the chant bounced up hundreds of feet of glass and steel. Tears of rage, despair and grief mingled with the sweat of marching, block after block, mile after mile along the streets of Charlotte, North Carolina.
The cry roared on: “No justice? No peace!”
The crowds kept coming for more than a week in late September. They gathered to protest the killing of Keith Scott by a Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer. They demanded justice for this particular situation, but also for the long history of race-based oppression in our culture.
Clergy -- such as myself -- showed up as well. We represented many institutions and congregations, from storefront gatherings to some of the most prominent steeples in town.
Yet most of us clergy at some point found ourselves feeling a bit lost and useless, and more than a bit confused. In the midst of such an outpouring -- an act of resistance -- what was our role?
What should people responsible for, and to, our institutions do when people marginalized by institutions say “Enough!” and take to the streets?
During that period in September, we were trying to learn and reflect on this as we were doing it. Action and reflection were taking place in the same step, even in the same breath.
The first week of protest was dominated by meetings and organizing during the day and marches and rallies at night. At the meetings, leaders from the communities on the front lines offered strong critique and imaginative ideas about how to address the wrongs.
In those gatherings, we were able to ask them directly, “How do you see the role of clergy in this movement? What should we do to help?”
We got multiple answers, but they echoed one central idea: “Stay in your lane.”
Danielle Hilton, one of the frontline community organizers, explained to us that faith leaders could support the movement by offering authentic action within our existing spheres of influence. Don’t displace or duplicate the efforts of existing and emergent frontline leaders, she said.
This can be uncomfortable for faith leaders who are accustomed to being in charge, or to being gatekeepers of institutional power.
“Get used to being uncomfortable,” Hilton counseled.
The request that we stay in our lane was not a nice way of telling us to get lost. Rather, it was an affirmation that faith leaders need to show up and do the things that faith leaders know how to do.
Networks of frontline leaders and activists are already organizing acts of resistance to state violence and leading their communities to build alternatives. This is their lane.
Clergy -- I'm speaking here primarily about white pastors -- need to show up as clergy, and to bring with them the resources and gifts of their training and their networks.
What does that mean? Staying in our lane means first listening to those voices who are close to the ground. Our lane includes marching and chanting in the streets as a beginning point, but it only starts there.
Those who are suffering the most direct harm are asking us to live into our prophetic vocation by preaching with Isaiah from our pulpits that “every valley will be lifted up and every high place brought low.”
The influence of religious leaders is needed to hold powerful people and institutions accountable for violence against marginalized communities.
The lane of clergy is to grow the imaginations of our congregations, and then to mobilize our people to create imaginative solutions and perform acts of solidarity and liberation, both in the sanctuary and in the public commons.
We caught a glimpse of how this might work during the uprising in Charlotte. On the last night, most clergy had gone home to prepare for the important work of addressing their congregations the next day.
The only clergy remaining were a pair of us -- one black, one white -- who did not have Sunday morning responsibilities.
At midnight, the police announced they were going to enforce the curfew that had been in place, though not enforced, for several days.
The protest was now illegal. All present were subject to arrest. Police in riot gear arrived. Our energetic, peaceful protest became frenzied and anxious.
Preachers aren’t much account in these sorts of situations. So the Rev. Rodney Sadler and I did the thing that preachers know how to do: we prayed.
Each down on one knee, in the middle of the street, we lifted our voices and prayed that there would be no violence. A couple of dozen demonstrators joined us.
Then we began to do the other thing that preachers know how to do: we preached.
Our congregation was a unit of 70 riot police, lined up two deep across Davidson Street outside police headquarters. As we rose to speak, protesters gathered behind us, until only a few feet separated them from the police.
The two of us preachers occupied the space between the groups as an altar in the world, pacing back and forth while improvising our sermons.
We reminded those armed with batons, shields, rubber bullets and tear gas that the peaceful protest behind us was composed of their neighbors. We asked them to consider whether obeying orders to harm those neighbors was the moral thing to do. We encouraged them to disobey such orders. We spoke to their humanity, told them they were made by Love to be love in the world.
We named it and claimed it. “It” was peace -- if not yet deep, abiding peace, then at least the absence of direct harm.
We can’t tell you why the police packed up their tear gas canisters, put away their batons and got back on the bus. Did prayer change their hearts? We don’t know.
But we do know that if prayer changes anything, it changes us. It makes us bold, ready to speak truth in desperate situations. Prayer moves us to throw our bodies behind our words, because Love would have us do no other.
Staying in our lane as clergy does not mean turning every protest into a prayer meeting. Sometimes it means bringing the language of protest to our prayer meetings.
But it always means being present to do what we are able to do, and doing it without fear.
Showing up happens in the streets -- but also in the sanctuary, in the study, in the community meetings we attend, in every sphere where we exercise influence.
Peddlers of the gospel often speak about hope. We believe in a hope that we can’t fully account for. Yet hope-filled moments keep rising up, especially from our young leaders.
As we move into yet more troubling times, their counsel to us is wise:
Read more from Greg Jarrell »
IDEAS THAT IMPACT: JUSTICE MINISTRIES
WHY CLERGY SUPPORTING JUSTICE MOVEMENTS SHOULD LET OTHERS LEAD
Pastors seeking to support justice movements should let people on the front lines lead. This means clergy are going to have to get used to being uncomfortable, writes a pastor from Charlotte, North Carolina.
Long into the night, the chant bounced up hundreds of feet of glass and steel. Tears of rage, despair and grief mingled with the sweat of marching, block after block, mile after mile along the streets of Charlotte, North Carolina.
The cry roared on: “No justice? No peace!”
The crowds kept coming for more than a week in late September. They gathered to protest the killing of Keith Scott by a Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer. They demanded justice for this particular situation, but also for the long history of race-based oppression in our culture.
Clergy -- such as myself -- showed up as well. We represented many institutions and congregations, from storefront gatherings to some of the most prominent steeples in town.
Yet most of us clergy at some point found ourselves feeling a bit lost and useless, and more than a bit confused. In the midst of such an outpouring -- an act of resistance -- what was our role?
What should people responsible for, and to, our institutions do when people marginalized by institutions say “Enough!” and take to the streets?
During that period in September, we were trying to learn and reflect on this as we were doing it. Action and reflection were taking place in the same step, even in the same breath.
The first week of protest was dominated by meetings and organizing during the day and marches and rallies at night. At the meetings, leaders from the communities on the front lines offered strong critique and imaginative ideas about how to address the wrongs.
In those gatherings, we were able to ask them directly, “How do you see the role of clergy in this movement? What should we do to help?”
We got multiple answers, but they echoed one central idea: “Stay in your lane.”
Danielle Hilton, one of the frontline community organizers, explained to us that faith leaders could support the movement by offering authentic action within our existing spheres of influence. Don’t displace or duplicate the efforts of existing and emergent frontline leaders, she said.
This can be uncomfortable for faith leaders who are accustomed to being in charge, or to being gatekeepers of institutional power.
“Get used to being uncomfortable,” Hilton counseled.
The request that we stay in our lane was not a nice way of telling us to get lost. Rather, it was an affirmation that faith leaders need to show up and do the things that faith leaders know how to do.
Networks of frontline leaders and activists are already organizing acts of resistance to state violence and leading their communities to build alternatives. This is their lane.
Clergy -- I'm speaking here primarily about white pastors -- need to show up as clergy, and to bring with them the resources and gifts of their training and their networks.
What does that mean? Staying in our lane means first listening to those voices who are close to the ground. Our lane includes marching and chanting in the streets as a beginning point, but it only starts there.
Those who are suffering the most direct harm are asking us to live into our prophetic vocation by preaching with Isaiah from our pulpits that “every valley will be lifted up and every high place brought low.”
The influence of religious leaders is needed to hold powerful people and institutions accountable for violence against marginalized communities.
The lane of clergy is to grow the imaginations of our congregations, and then to mobilize our people to create imaginative solutions and perform acts of solidarity and liberation, both in the sanctuary and in the public commons.
We caught a glimpse of how this might work during the uprising in Charlotte. On the last night, most clergy had gone home to prepare for the important work of addressing their congregations the next day.
The only clergy remaining were a pair of us -- one black, one white -- who did not have Sunday morning responsibilities.
At midnight, the police announced they were going to enforce the curfew that had been in place, though not enforced, for several days.
The protest was now illegal. All present were subject to arrest. Police in riot gear arrived. Our energetic, peaceful protest became frenzied and anxious.
Preachers aren’t much account in these sorts of situations. So the Rev. Rodney Sadler and I did the thing that preachers know how to do: we prayed.
Each down on one knee, in the middle of the street, we lifted our voices and prayed that there would be no violence. A couple of dozen demonstrators joined us.
Then we began to do the other thing that preachers know how to do: we preached.
Our congregation was a unit of 70 riot police, lined up two deep across Davidson Street outside police headquarters. As we rose to speak, protesters gathered behind us, until only a few feet separated them from the police.
The two of us preachers occupied the space between the groups as an altar in the world, pacing back and forth while improvising our sermons.
We reminded those armed with batons, shields, rubber bullets and tear gas that the peaceful protest behind us was composed of their neighbors. We asked them to consider whether obeying orders to harm those neighbors was the moral thing to do. We encouraged them to disobey such orders. We spoke to their humanity, told them they were made by Love to be love in the world.
We named it and claimed it. “It” was peace -- if not yet deep, abiding peace, then at least the absence of direct harm.
We can’t tell you why the police packed up their tear gas canisters, put away their batons and got back on the bus. Did prayer change their hearts? We don’t know.
But we do know that if prayer changes anything, it changes us. It makes us bold, ready to speak truth in desperate situations. Prayer moves us to throw our bodies behind our words, because Love would have us do no other.
Staying in our lane as clergy does not mean turning every protest into a prayer meeting. Sometimes it means bringing the language of protest to our prayer meetings.
But it always means being present to do what we are able to do, and doing it without fear.
Showing up happens in the streets -- but also in the sanctuary, in the study, in the community meetings we attend, in every sphere where we exercise influence.
Peddlers of the gospel often speak about hope. We believe in a hope that we can’t fully account for. Yet hope-filled moments keep rising up, especially from our young leaders.
As we move into yet more troubling times, their counsel to us is wise:
- Listen carefully to the marginalized, honoring their experiences and work.
- Create spaces in our spheres for the disinherited to speak for themselves.
- Deploy our gifts and privileges in ways that destabilize oppressive systems.
- Show up as ourselves, acting authentically within our roles.
- Keep showing up, especially when it is uncomfortable.
Read more from Greg Jarrell »
IDEAS THAT IMPACT: JUSTICE MINISTRIES
Gospel-Driven Communities: Being a Church with the Biblical Vision of Justice by Jack JezreelIf our churches are not forming, not even trying to form, compassionate human beings, real life saints, prophets, heroines/heroes and martyrs in Christ's name, why not? And what needs to change?
Is it possible to truly worship God and not care about our vulnerable sisters and brothers and the gift of the earth we all share?
Is it possible to follow Jesus and not find ourselves linked and in the company of sisters and brothers who are hungry, homeless, hopeless, slaves, lepers, and prostitutes?
Is it possible to read the Bible carefully and not be convinced of God’s vision of human dignity, well-being, and wholeness?
All too often, the answer is yes. To the extent that God’s people are not reaching out to those who struggle, not advocating for justice, not seeking peace nor caring for creation is the extent to which congregations and parishes have yet to become Gospel-driven communities. The biblical vision of justice, Jesus’ proclamation of the Reign of God, his life journey of compassion and integrity outlined in the Gospels are absolutely central, critical ingredients of our mission, our purpose, our vision, indeed our humanity. If our churches are not forming, not even trying to form, compassionate human beings, real life saints, prophets, heroines/heroes and martyrs in Christ’s name, why not? And what needs to change?
Where Are We? A Church Disengaged from Mission
The role of social ministry within the life of a church can be evaluated in a number of ways, but usually it depends on our assumptions and expectations. If, on one hand, we think of outreach and justice work as an optional side dish to the real meal of church life, then we might admire church social ministry where it happens and shrug our shoulders where it doesn’t. If, on the other hand, we believe that caring for those who suffer the effects of economic injustice, inequality, and violence a “constitutive”—that is, necessary—part of Biblical/Christian faith, then it should be assumed that church life in every place ought to reflect this. Further, the way this commitment to social ministry would be reflected would include measurable evidence like: staffing priorities, particular kinds of church projects, the language of prayers, the content of sermons and homilies, bulletin space, the pastor’s calendar, and budgeting, just to name a few.
Over the years, I have met many extraordinary people committed to the work of justice who pray, worship, and work in church environments that are, more often than not, disinterested in their work. On the whole, pastors do not often preach on social issues. Religious educators and worship leaders exhibit little interest in social mission. Similarly, there is little evidence of social concern in church budgets, mission statements, bulletins or staffing patterns.
Christians who come to a passion for justice and social ministry often do so not because of their local churches but in spite of them. Throughout Christendom, persons are transformed through involvement with various Relief Services, Peace Fellowships, and Volunteer Corps, only to discover later that they have been birthed to a conviction that their parish does not support. Christians who are inspired to work and sacrifice on behalf of and in relationship with the poor often find themselves in a home church unsupported and eyed suspiciously. How many more times do we have to hear young adults who have returned from a year or two of voluntary service working in partnership with people who are poor, talk about how their local church is not interested in their experience and insights; and how alone and abandoned they feel?! What would it take for the Christian community to become an asset to God’s dream of healing and reconciliation, not a spectator or adversary?
What would it take to see the number of Christians committed to compassion and justice swell significantly? Dare we dream of a real surge of church commitment to a just world, characterized by human compassion, interconnectedness and justice? As we pray for justice to roll like a river, how do we encourage each other to jump in and be part of the current?
Gathering and Sending— Recovering Our Christian Identity
The root solution to the disconnect between church life and the work of compassion and justice does not lie in more documents, more statements, more campaigns, or more programs, even JustFaith Ministries programs (as shocking as that might be to my staff!). Rather, we need to examine the engrained patterns of the place where most Christians gather to celebrate and express their faith—that is, their local church. Are we organized in ways that are inimical to a robust engagement in social mission?
I would argue that the current set of assumptions about what constitutes membership at the local church will forever work against any sincere effort to engage a majority of Christians in the work of justice and compassion.
In the gospels there is an alternating pattern in Jesus’ ministry that provides a template for our lives, our work, and our churches. The narrative of the gospels follows a pattern that gets repeated over and over. We take it for granted perhaps because the gospels actually take it for granted—it’s the drama of gathering and sending. Gathering and sending. Jesus, a teacher, sometimes called “rabbi,” does what teachers and rabbis do: he gathers disciples, he forms them, he trains them, he challenges them, and he enlightens them.
And, then, he sends them.
Jesus gathers listeners and then he sends them. Jesus’ disciples, then, after Jesus has been crucified and raised from the dead, like their master, also gather listeners and believers and then the disciples send them. At its very best, the Church throughout history has embodied this alternation of gathering and sending. The Church gathers. The Church sends.
Gathering in the 21st century Church is the work of religious education, bible studies, seminary, and spiritual formation. Gathering is the work of liturgy or worship— that is, gathering the people of faith to prayer. It is the stuff of retreats and convenings. Gathering is the nurture, the preparation, the celebration, the education, the discernment. Most of the time gathering happens geographically, as you would expect, at the home base, the mother ship, at the church. At its best, “gathering” speaks to the sense of “getting ready,” perhaps getting ready for some particular event like baptism but, more generally, getting ready for the larger event called the work and commitments of our faith, the work and commitments of our lives. Gathering is what happens on Sunday morning or celebrations like marriages, ordinations, or confirmations. Gathering is the many social occasions to be together—potlucks and church festivals—we gather to have fun and be refreshed by the pleasure of each other’s company. Gathering is the Lenten retreat or the Advent mission or the revival. It’s about nourishing faith, nourishing the community, about remembering our story, sharing prayer, and being prepared for the second part of the drama called sending.
Sending is about mission.
Sending includes helping resettle refugees in our hometowns, serving meals at a soup kitchen. It is advocating for immigrants, the poor, and the vulnerable. It is providing a safe place for battered women, educating boys and men on nonviolence, and advocating for laws that protect women. It is providing care for battered soldiers, and advocating for the end of war. It is caring for those battered by natural and human-made disasters. Sending is Lutheran Volunteer Corps and Jesuit Volunteer Corps. It is the work of community organizing and peacemaking. It’s about making a place for refugees, or single moms trying to get an education, or the newly released prisoner trying to start anew. It is the work outlined and given a vocabulary by language like solidarity, advocacy, compassion, and forgiveness in its many forms.
The most repeated phrase in the four gospels is “The Reign of God,” and that phrase provides a mission statement for our lives. And the touchstones of the Reign of God, of seeking justice and making peace include the common good, the dignity of every human life and the dignity of creation; it speaks to good and safe jobs, attention especially to the poor and vulnerable and a bias against violence of all kinds, including the violence of poverty, the violence of war, the violence of exclusion and violence against women. The proclamation of the Reign of God is to embrace the gift of life and the gift of creation that God has given and to relish it, to share it, protect it. The critical Christian insight, drawn from Matthew 25, is that this sending is a necessary part, a constitutive part of what it means to be in relationship to God. Whenever we tend to the poor, hungry and naked, we tend to Jesus. To know compassion for God’s poor is to know God. If we do not have compassion for those in need, we do not know God.
And here is the problem: churches, as they are currently and routinely configured are primarily, sometimes exclusively, places of gathering. If you look at the church bulletin, the church budget, the church staff, the pastor’s time, it’s all about gathering. It’s about gathering for worship, gathering for prayer, gathering for education, gathering for fun, gathering for worship planning. One telltale indicator of this is the fact that the most repeated church question is, “what time is worship, what time are we gathering?” So often, the church calendar is just one big list of gatherings.
This is not a criticism of gathering. As a teacher, I have dedicated my life to it. Gathering, as we all know, is absolutely critical. Gathering as the nurture of faith is essential. The human hunger for God, for meaning, for faith and understanding, the appetite for vision and spirituality, the desire for encounter with the sacred and holy are all real and all absolutely precious. We need a faith community, so we gather. We need to learn and be formed in the likeness of Christ, so we gather. We need to be mentored to holiness, so we gather. We need to pray and learn how to pray, so we gather. We need to celebrate, so we gather.
However, gathering disconnected from sending ultimately mutates into something less than the Gospel and something less than what is so very compelling about Jesus and the church he inspired. That churches are structured for gathering and not structured for sending has at least two serious consequences.
First, churches that emphasize gathering and not sending become static because they have lost their mission. Gathering is for the Church, but the Church is for the world. Local churches that do not structure themselves for mission, outreach, justice, compassion, charity, advocacy, solidarity, and peacemaking are churches that have been reduced to puny expressions of the Gospel. The critical question for churches to answer is not, “What time is Sunday worship?” The question for churches to answer is “What heroic, healing things does this church do for the world and how can I be involved?”
Second, churches that emphasize gathering and not sending, no longer even do gathering well, for we lose a sense of what we are gathering for, what we’re preparing for, what we’re praying for, what we’re learning for, what we’re being formed for. Spiritual formation, for example, in the absence of sending, mutates into some pious version of self-preoccupation. Worship gets turned in on itself. While at the end of worship we may say something like, “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord,” what we mean is, “Go in peace and make sure you come back next week.” It’s time that we religious educators and worship planners understand that we can’t do our job without a focus on compassion and justice, without an eye toward mission.
Churches lose members, not because they are wrong, but because they are not compelling, not heroic, not relevant, not courageous. Our children need and want a church that is heroic—like Jesus, like Francis of Assisi, like Desmond Tutu, like Dorothy Day, like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Our children want to be challenged to their bones. Our children want to be invited to something that will ask a lot of them. And so do we.
Wonderfully, the Christian tradition has a robust history of sending, expressed in literally thousands of organizations, with all kinds of denominational expressions. The Church has spiritually birthed people, inspired by their faith, to work side by side with the poor, the abandoned, the dispossessed, the discarded, in nearly every country in the world. Just look at the clouds of witnesses, of agencies, of advocacy, the cloud of care and love and compassion which has been inspired, empowered, and set loose by the Holy Spirit in this world by this reality called Christian.
BUT—and here’s the point—what is so interesting is that historically almost all of these remarkable expressions of sending have been lodged outside of the local church. In most churches in most places, they are typically considered optional, peripheral, extracurricular, extra credit. Indeed, the challenge that many of these organizations have tried to address for years is how to get into the local church. A prior question is how did it happen that social mission ever got outside of what it meant to be a community inspired by Jesus Christ. In other words, why, when one of us wants to serve on behalf and in partnership with the poorest of the poor, do we have to look outside of our local faith community for a way to do this? Ask yourself: could a conference on poverty happen at your church? And, if it did, would your church members attend?
Where Do We Go From Here? A Compelling and Fruitful Future
I suggest that we Christians look at the broad horizon of our own tradition and see what structures, over time, most readily enabled the Church’s commitment to Jesus’ ministry to the poor and vulnerable. Notice the emphasis on structures, not personalities—this is very important. In other words, where has the soil been made fertile for growing compassion? Where have most of our saints, prophets, and martyrs come from?
For example, some of the most remarkable witnesses to the work of peacemaking and justice in the Catholic tradition (with which I am most familiar) have been women and men of religious communities. A lot of Catholic saints, prophets, and martyrs have been women and men with letters after their last name, like OSF, SJ, MM, and so on. This is no surprise. You see, the logic of most religious communities is that they had work to do, that they were called to serve the poor and vulnerable. There were schools to build for poor immigrant children; there were hospitals to build to serve the poor; there were people on the streets of Calcutta who needed love. Nobody joins Maryknoll, for example, because the mass times are convenient. People join Maryknoll to serve those who most need to be served. People join the Franciscans to serve. People join the Catholic Worker to serve. In other words, the terms of membership are service to those who suffer. Religious communities have been places where people were gathered well and formed well, because they were gathered for a purpose. The purpose is service in the name of Christ, especially to those who most need to be served.
The extrapolation I want to make is suggested by the examples of a couple of churches. A well-known example is the Church of the Savior in Washington, D.C., an ecumenical Christian church founded in the 1940s by Gordon and Mary Cosby. For decades, Church of the Savior’s “inward-outward journey” model of being church has inspired Christian communities across the country and beyond. The outward journey, the mission, is fundamental. You might be attracted by creative worship and a friendly congregation, but Church of the Savior membership entails an explicit commitment to mission involvement as well as to the community. As described in current Church of the Savior literature:
In small mission groups, members gather around a shared vision for embodying healing and hope—the outward journey—and the group then becomes accountable to one another for the inward journey, including ordered practices in the areas of prayer, study, money, health, work life and so on. In this way the mission group members, and all with whom they are in relationship on the outward journey, help each other find fullness of life.” [http://www.inwardoutward.org/page/who-church-saviour]
Gathering AND sending. Neither is optional.There is an evangelical church in a Denver suburb with a pastor who is on fire about caring for the poor and vulnerable. This 3000-member church gathers for worship on the first and third Sundays of the month. On the second and fourth Sundays of the month, however, they go—all 3000— to a poor neighborhood park and rebuild the playground; two weeks later they rehab a block of houses owned by retired and low income elderly; two weeks later they serve a dinner for an entire neighborhood in distress and become friends. Gathering and sending on the calendar.
In Portland, Oregon, there is a Catholic church led by two Holy Cross priests. It is located in an area with a large homeless population, many of whom sleep every night by the doors of the Church. The church is located there on purpose. It is meant to be a place where all are welcome: where homeless men and women are welcome—welcome to take baths and welcome to pray; where addicts are welcome to get something to eat and get access to rehab options and are welcome to liturgy; where the mentally ill can get counsel, practical and spiritual. It is a church defined by a critical social mission lodged verbatim in the Gospel. Gathering and sending—obvious, clear, critical and inspiring. Every year dozens of young people commit themselves to working full-time as volunteers at this church precisely because it gathers and sends. It feeds their faith by gathering and it feeds their faith by sending. It forms their lives by gathering and sending. It gives them a glimpse of Jesus’ life and mission by being gathered and sent.
The intention is not to propose these as viable or even fully satisfactory options for our home churches. They do, however, suggest that it is possible to define membership in a church by equal parts called “gathered” and“sent.”
Why not re-create our churches so that we ask everyone—EVERY ONE—to commit to serving the poor and seeking justice? Why not divide all members of our churches into teams of 12 and ask each team to commit itself to at least one refugee family? Or one neglected patient at a nursing home? Or one at-risk child who needs tutoring and a little cloud of friends? Then ask each of these teams of twelve to complement their face-to-face care with a face-to-face visit with their congressional representatives about the life-and-death issues related to those they care for. Why not teams of twelve who do advocacy work together, researching, learning and acting, and empowering rest of the community? Why not teams of 12—small faith communities— that pray together, study together, and reach out together? Why not organize 12 doctors (in larger churches) into a local version of Doctors without Borders who serve those in needy places and who also write letters on issues related to health care policy? Why not a team of 12 sent by the church to Haiti and then visit their senators on issues related to foreign aid and the recovery of that country? Why not a team of 12 to start a community garden in a local “food desert” and also become experts on the farm bill? Why not a team of 12 groomed for community organizing? Why not a team of 12 plumbers to rehab the houses of low-income and at-risk families, who are also trained in the most effective strategies for addressing poverty?
Consider this possibility: why not half the church budget for gathering and half the church budget for sending? Why not half the church staff dedicated to gathering and half the church staff dedicated to sending? Why not half the church’s buildings dedicated to gathering, like worship centers and classrooms, and half of the church’s buildings dedicated for sending, like hospitality houses and literacy centers. Why not every bit of half of the church energy for gathering and every bit of half the church energy for sending?
Does this sound in any way heretical or unfaithful? Conversely, it represents both a dramatic and lively version of Church that our children and the world would be inspired by. What does the world look like when more and more Christians are connected to another human being who needs a hand, a home, an advocate, or hope? What does the world look like when more and more Christians craft their lives around the logic of justice and the common good? What does the world look like when more and more Christians integrate their political activity around the logic of the religious bias that everyone is precious in God’s eyes? And, I believe, nothing would draw people to church, or faith, like a church that was always being sent to do heroic, visionary, and sacrificing work, and was engaged in an imaginative and promising political and religious vision. For those of us whose churches are losing members, is the problem the message of Jesus or that we have crafted our churches around a less compelling message?
A few years ago, I received a book that chronicled the difficult lives of those around the world living in violence. On the cover of the book was a picture of a young African girl, probably ten years old, who was wearing a sad smile. Where her arms used to be were healed over stumps—her arms had been macheted off by some war lord. The God I know, the loving God I know, is a God who would gather us, gather us in prayer, gather us in study, gather us in community, and after we had been formed and made ready, that God would send us, and we would want to be sent. And that God would send us to that little girl. And that God would form us in a way that we would not be satisfied until the world was a place where little girls, little boys and all people could laugh, grow, be safe, and know love.
The God I believe in wants a Church gathered and sent, to cherish and heal this wonderful and wounded world.
—
Jack Jezreel is founder and executive director of JustFaith Ministries. He holds an MDiv degree from Notre Dame and spent six years in an intentional community, providing basic and emergency services to homeless men and women in Colorado. He then directed his attention to transformative education, mostly focused on how to encourage churches to be engaged in outreach and social change. He is a popular national speaker and teacher.
Congregations Magazine, 2012-06-15
2012 Issue 2, Number 2
Read more from Jack Jezreel »
Faith & Leadership
CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP, RECONCILIATION, RACIAL & ETHNIC
Leah Gunning Francis: Leadership lessons at the intersection of faith and justice in Ferguson
Leadership lessons at the intersection of faith and justice in Ferguson
There was no single leader in Ferguson, Missouri, writes a seminary professor, activist and author of the book "Ferguson and Faith." Instead, there were many leaders, who inspire hope for the future.
I stood, shell-shocked, in front of the television, watching as Michael Brown’s mother spoke. Her son had been shot and killed by a police officer.
I am a mother of black sons. I live with my family in St. Louis; our home is only 11 miles from the Canfield Green Apartments, where Brown was killed.
This was too close to heart and home for comfort. The discomfort in my heart and spirit catapulted me into the streets and called out the leader within. I joined thousands of others at this intersection of faith and justice in Ferguson.
My multiple roles as a scholar-activist-mother of black sons-fellow-protestor afforded me the opportunity to collect some of the stories that helped shape the movement for racial justice in Ferguson.
Those stories are gathered in my book “Ferguson and Faith(link is external),” which came about after colleagues at the Forum for Theological Exploration (FTE) and Chalice Press invited me to write about clergy involvement in Ferguson.
Read an excerpt from "Ferguson and Faith."
“Where are the leaders?” was a common question I heard coming from pundits, politicians and everyday people. After Brown’s death, thousands of people creatively protested around the St. Louis region. There were marches in Clayton, rallies in Ferguson, vigils in Chesterfield, die-ins in Brentwood and highway shutdowns in St. Louis.
For months, there were often several protests happening at once, each seeming to sprout up with little public warning. These actions often made people wonder who was in charge of this movement, and when was he or she going to speak up and get everyone under control?
The truth is that leaders were everywhere. People were inclined to look for one person, in the mode of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King -- but that model did not fit this movement. Leaders emerged organically from the ground up, not from the top down. They were not appointed, nor did they fit any stereotypical model of what a “leader” looks like or how a leader talks.
They were women and men; black, brown, beige and white; gay and straight; able-bodied and differently abled; well-heeled and bare-heeled; young and not-so-young. These people found themselves responding to a call that came from around them and within them, and they refused to remain on the sidelines at such a time as this.
As I talked to people on the ground, the organic emergence of leaders became more apparent to me. Every clergyperson I began speaking with would inevitably say, “But you have to interview so-and-so.”
In particular, it is important to acknowledge the role of young leaders within the movement. Indeed, the argument could be made that young people ignited leadership among clergy; they created the space and the impetus for the clergy to live into their roles as leaders.
Even though I interviewed 24 St. Louis-area faith leaders and 13 young activists, I captured just a snapshot of leadership in the movement for racial justice in Ferguson, not the entire picture.
I firmly believe that these stories of courage contain seeds of possibilities -- seeds that, if nurtured, could serve us well into a future filled with hope. I’d like to share two of the stories from people that shaped the contours of leadership.
Alisha Sonnier is a student at St. Louis University, where protestors occupied a courtyard surrounding the clock tower in the middle of campus. Sonnier is a founder of Tribe X, an organization created in the wake of the protests to raise awareness about the racial disparities and inequities on campus. The protesters began meeting with school administrators, and the resulting agreement was called the Clock Tower Accords.
“After the first night in Ferguson, we went out there so many more times. You ran into a lot of people you often saw there, a lot of familiar faces. You had a lot of similar conversations. … We were just talking about ways that we could be effective, and we were just tired of just talking about it and complaining about it, but we wanted to figure out, ‘What could we do?’ And so it was actually suggested to us by one of our advisors, ‘Well, why don’t you guys start an organization?’”
Another seed of hope emerged during my conversation with Krista Taves, a Unitarian Universalist minister in an affluent suburban congregation. She wanted to awaken her congregation to their own community’s issues of racial injustice. One step she took was to have persons of color in the congregation give testimony of personal experience of racial injustice.
“They talked about police brutality and racial profiling, about the killing of unarmed black men by white police officers, about the school-to-prison pipeline. And to the surprise of many, including me, people walked out. They walked out of the service, because they felt that it was bashing the police and that their church was taking sides. That’s how it started for us in this [largely] white, predominantly middle class congregation in far West County.”
Despite the pushback, Taves continued to preach about what was happening in Ferguson. The church’s social justice team met weekly, trying to figure out a response. The turning point came when a Cambodian teenager, adopted by a white single mother, spoke to the congregation about her experience as a person of color.
“The tears in that service were unbelievable. That’s what brought it home. The relationship they had with that family brought it home. I asked the congregation, ‘What is our response to this? Because this is here. What’s happening in Ferguson is here. … How are we going to stand together as a community?’”
These are just two stories among many. The beauty of this garden of hope is that each seed represents an expression of someone’s leadership emerging in its own vital and beautiful way -- even when the heart of protest is pain.
Leadership is not just about getting people to do what you want them to do. Instead, it involves asking how your core values and beliefs are compelling you to respond to the situation at hand, as Sonnier and Taves have done.
Whenever we respond to the call to lead from our own moral center, not self-centeredness, we create space and opportunity to join God’s work in the world.
When we dare to stand at the crossroads of faith and justice and ask where the good way is, and muster the courage to walk in the way of love, mercy and humility, we forge pathways to the kingdom of God on earth.
I had the privilege of sharing time and space with many people who responded to this call to lead us into a future filled with hope. The call is still open. What say you?
There was no single leader in Ferguson, Missouri, writes a seminary professor, activist and author of the book "Ferguson and Faith." Instead, there were many leaders, who inspire hope for the future.
People pray Aug. 15, 2014, at the site of a convenience store destroyed after Ferguson police released the name of the officer who shot Michael Brown.
Bigstock/Gino Santa Maria
On the evening of Aug. 9, 2014, I had put my boys to bed and walked into the family room when I caught a glimpse of a chaotic scene on the news. Suddenly, I heard, “You took my son away from me! Do you know how hard it was for me to get him to stay in school and graduate?”I stood, shell-shocked, in front of the television, watching as Michael Brown’s mother spoke. Her son had been shot and killed by a police officer.
I am a mother of black sons. I live with my family in St. Louis; our home is only 11 miles from the Canfield Green Apartments, where Brown was killed.
This was too close to heart and home for comfort. The discomfort in my heart and spirit catapulted me into the streets and called out the leader within. I joined thousands of others at this intersection of faith and justice in Ferguson.
My multiple roles as a scholar-activist-mother of black sons-fellow-protestor afforded me the opportunity to collect some of the stories that helped shape the movement for racial justice in Ferguson.
Those stories are gathered in my book “Ferguson and Faith(link is external),” which came about after colleagues at the Forum for Theological Exploration (FTE) and Chalice Press invited me to write about clergy involvement in Ferguson.
Read an excerpt from "Ferguson and Faith."
“Where are the leaders?” was a common question I heard coming from pundits, politicians and everyday people. After Brown’s death, thousands of people creatively protested around the St. Louis region. There were marches in Clayton, rallies in Ferguson, vigils in Chesterfield, die-ins in Brentwood and highway shutdowns in St. Louis.
For months, there were often several protests happening at once, each seeming to sprout up with little public warning. These actions often made people wonder who was in charge of this movement, and when was he or she going to speak up and get everyone under control?
The truth is that leaders were everywhere. People were inclined to look for one person, in the mode of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King -- but that model did not fit this movement. Leaders emerged organically from the ground up, not from the top down. They were not appointed, nor did they fit any stereotypical model of what a “leader” looks like or how a leader talks.
They were women and men; black, brown, beige and white; gay and straight; able-bodied and differently abled; well-heeled and bare-heeled; young and not-so-young. These people found themselves responding to a call that came from around them and within them, and they refused to remain on the sidelines at such a time as this.
As I talked to people on the ground, the organic emergence of leaders became more apparent to me. Every clergyperson I began speaking with would inevitably say, “But you have to interview so-and-so.”
In particular, it is important to acknowledge the role of young leaders within the movement. Indeed, the argument could be made that young people ignited leadership among clergy; they created the space and the impetus for the clergy to live into their roles as leaders.
Even though I interviewed 24 St. Louis-area faith leaders and 13 young activists, I captured just a snapshot of leadership in the movement for racial justice in Ferguson, not the entire picture.
I firmly believe that these stories of courage contain seeds of possibilities -- seeds that, if nurtured, could serve us well into a future filled with hope. I’d like to share two of the stories from people that shaped the contours of leadership.
Alisha Sonnier is a student at St. Louis University, where protestors occupied a courtyard surrounding the clock tower in the middle of campus. Sonnier is a founder of Tribe X, an organization created in the wake of the protests to raise awareness about the racial disparities and inequities on campus. The protesters began meeting with school administrators, and the resulting agreement was called the Clock Tower Accords.
“After the first night in Ferguson, we went out there so many more times. You ran into a lot of people you often saw there, a lot of familiar faces. You had a lot of similar conversations. … We were just talking about ways that we could be effective, and we were just tired of just talking about it and complaining about it, but we wanted to figure out, ‘What could we do?’ And so it was actually suggested to us by one of our advisors, ‘Well, why don’t you guys start an organization?’”
Another seed of hope emerged during my conversation with Krista Taves, a Unitarian Universalist minister in an affluent suburban congregation. She wanted to awaken her congregation to their own community’s issues of racial injustice. One step she took was to have persons of color in the congregation give testimony of personal experience of racial injustice.
“They talked about police brutality and racial profiling, about the killing of unarmed black men by white police officers, about the school-to-prison pipeline. And to the surprise of many, including me, people walked out. They walked out of the service, because they felt that it was bashing the police and that their church was taking sides. That’s how it started for us in this [largely] white, predominantly middle class congregation in far West County.”
Despite the pushback, Taves continued to preach about what was happening in Ferguson. The church’s social justice team met weekly, trying to figure out a response. The turning point came when a Cambodian teenager, adopted by a white single mother, spoke to the congregation about her experience as a person of color.
“The tears in that service were unbelievable. That’s what brought it home. The relationship they had with that family brought it home. I asked the congregation, ‘What is our response to this? Because this is here. What’s happening in Ferguson is here. … How are we going to stand together as a community?’”
These are just two stories among many. The beauty of this garden of hope is that each seed represents an expression of someone’s leadership emerging in its own vital and beautiful way -- even when the heart of protest is pain.
Leadership is not just about getting people to do what you want them to do. Instead, it involves asking how your core values and beliefs are compelling you to respond to the situation at hand, as Sonnier and Taves have done.
Whenever we respond to the call to lead from our own moral center, not self-centeredness, we create space and opportunity to join God’s work in the world.
When we dare to stand at the crossroads of faith and justice and ask where the good way is, and muster the courage to walk in the way of love, mercy and humility, we forge pathways to the kingdom of God on earth.
I had the privilege of sharing time and space with many people who responded to this call to lead us into a future filled with hope. The call is still open. What say you?
Read more from Leah Gunning Frances »
Faith & Leadership
MONEY
Christopher L. Heuertz: Spending, ethics and justice in a globalized world
Faith & Leadership
MONEY
Christopher L. Heuertz: Spending, ethics and justice in a globalized world
Spending, ethics and justice in a globalized world
A Christian activist who has worked on behalf of the world's poor confesses that he, too, struggles with how to be a responsible American consumer.
One of today’s most complicated moral issues is how to spend money responsibly in a globalized world.A Christian activist who has worked on behalf of the world's poor confesses that he, too, struggles with how to be a responsible American consumer.
I’m as conflicted as the next person about it. I love coffee, for example, but I’m not a fan of fair-trade coffee, because frankly, I rarely find an excellent cup of it.
I’m deeply troubled by child labor and sweatshops, but I still don’t make my own clothes. I don’t know how, and even if I did, I honestly wouldn’t have time to do it.
Some of our most lucrative oil companies are among the world’s greatest human-rights abusers, but I don’t drive a hybrid car, because they are still too expensive.
Finally, I would love to buy all my produce locally, but I live in Omaha, Neb. Enough said.
For years, I’ve wrestled with these issues. I’ve read books that offer hopeful promises and gimmicky solutions -- most of them filled with unrealistic and unattainable ideals that essentially become a full-time job themselves.
I don’t have time to live the life that many of those books suggest; few of us do.
I know these are excuses. What makes it worse is that I have many friends who make the necessary sacrifices to live past these excuses into difficult commitments for justice.
I applaud them. I admire them. I want to be more like them.
I confess that the ethics that drive my spending patterns and consumption are a tangle of contradictions, and I’m stumbling forward, trying to untangle them.
However, there are a few values that have guided my social consciousness as it relates to the ethics of consumption.
Living below your means
There are few obvious cultural marks of being an American, but one of them is living above one’s means. This is an observation, not a judgment. It’s not a judgment because the system in the United States allows for even moderately poor persons to borrow money to buy a house or a car or to pay for education.
I remember, during my freshman year of college, going to the university bookstore to buy the stack of required readings for my first-semester classes.
I was shocked by the total cost, and the bookstore clerk, obviously aware of the impact this had on incoming students, handed me a credit card application.
And that’s how it begins for many people. Credit cards are the gateway drug of living above our means. This cultural dynamic becomes a kind of prison that convolutes and malforms our view of reality.
People sometimes refer to themselves as “poor college students” while accumulating tens of thousands of dollars of student loans -- a considerable fortune for a large portion of the world’s population.
What’s ironic is that these average Americans who lament their disadvantaged state are actually among the world’s richest 5 percent.
And this easy recourse to borrowing is also important, when you consider that lack of sustainable access to opportunity and resources is central to understanding poverty. The mere fact that we have access to credit, loans and debt cannot make us poor in the eyes of the world.
In most places on the face of the earth, people who can’t afford to go to school don’t get to go -- they don’t have the luxury of going into debt to pay for their school uniforms, books and tuition, or housing.
Living above one’s means is not sustainable, let alone responsible; and it certainly doesn’t reflect respect for friends who are poor.
Giving generously
Shortly after my wife and I married, we visited friends in Hong Kong. We knew they lived very simply and survived on missionary support, so we tried to pick up the tab everywhere we went. But they insisted on paying for everything.
Once after lunch, when the bill came, I asked whether they’d let us pay just that one time. They wouldn’t. Our friends replied, “We’re happy to get this for you. We’ve learned you can’t out-give God.”
That statement immediately became a truth we committed to live into. My wife and I began practicing that principle, not as a challenge or a test to see whether God would “repay” us for what we gave away, but as a statement of faith in God’s goodness and God’s desire that none should go without.
We still try to live into this posture of generous faithfulness. We know that we ourselves are in every way dependent on God’s generous kindness.
Spending to celebrate
If you know people who are very, very poor, then you know that many of them are extremely generous. Some of the poorest friends I have are the most resourceful. Some of the most desperate people I know have the deepest faith.
What surprises me the most, though, is that those who live in some of the worst conditions always throw the best parties. In parts of South America, I’ve stayed up all night, eating and drinking more than I should have, celebrating a wedding or a birthday.
My friends who are desperately poor have taught me how to celebrate. They’ve taught me that one of the best things I can do with the access to resources given me is to spend them on someone else -- spend them on celebrating the gift of friends, family and life.
When we reflect on the life of Christ, we often find him at the table, eating and drinking with friends. We frequently find Christ at parties, celebrating people.
In the world’s great religions, the promises and metaphors of paradise are often imaged as a great banquet, suggesting that sharing meals at the table is an existential human experience that in some way is a practice for the afterlife.
Recovering responsibility
Finally, social responsibility has to inform how we spend.
What holds me accountable is relationships; friendships with people who are poor have become the prophetic presence of Christ in my life, reminding me to live a life that reflects respect for their condition.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that our friends, our community and our faith have to help guide us in untangling the messy ethics of being a consumer.
We won’t get it right. If we’re American, we will leave a carbon footprint much larger than our neighbors from the Majority World. We honestly can’t offset it.
But in authentic relationships with people who are poor, we can challenge the donor/receptor roles and follow them to God’s heart. We can learn to be generous in new ways. We can make celebration a central part of our spirituality by finding the gifts and graces in life to honor. We can become imaginative, thoughtful and creative people who live simply for life’s redemptive possibilities.
And we can recover responsibility by finding the courage to confess our shortcomings, stumbling forward, continuing to grapple with the issues.
Projects that Matter: Successful Planning & Evaluation in Religious Organizationsby Kathleen A. Cahalan
Projects That Matter introduces project leaders and teams to the five basic elements of project design and describes in detail a six-step process for designing and implementing a project evaluation and disseminating evaluation findings.
Written for the nonexpert, leaders in religious settings will find Cahalan's guidance clear and invaluable. Presenting evaluation as a form of collaborative inquiry, Cahalan show how leaders can use evaluation design to develop effective project plans and prepare case statements for donors or grant proposals for foundations. She introduces project planning and evaluation as mission-related practices and invites leaders to consider how their tradition's particular mission and beliefs influence the way they plan and evaluate. Cahalan concludes the book by making explicit her own theological presuppositions -- that the virtues of discernment, stewardship, and prudence -- are essential for good project planning and evaluation.
Learn more and order the book »
Written for the nonexpert, leaders in religious settings will find Cahalan's guidance clear and invaluable. Presenting evaluation as a form of collaborative inquiry, Cahalan show how leaders can use evaluation design to develop effective project plans and prepare case statements for donors or grant proposals for foundations. She introduces project planning and evaluation as mission-related practices and invites leaders to consider how their tradition's particular mission and beliefs influence the way they plan and evaluate. Cahalan concludes the book by making explicit her own theological presuppositions -- that the virtues of discernment, stewardship, and prudence -- are essential for good project planning and evaluation.
Learn more and order the book »
Follow us on social media:
Copyright © 2016. All Rights Reserved.
Alban at Duke Divinity School
Durham, North Carolina 27701, United States
No comments:
Post a Comment