Diversity Efforts Help Congregations Thrive
September 26, 2008
First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles has more diversity than many Unitarian Universalist (UU) congregations. Its members include people from Central and South America, the Philippines, Mexico, and elsewhere. Its minister, the Rev. Dr. Monica Cummings, is African American. Its neighborhood includes Korean and Latin American communities. First Unitarian’s Sunday services, and many meetings, are in both English and Spanish.
None of this happened by accident. The congregation has been intentionally multicultural for decades, says Cummings, who has been there since 2005.
“The rewards for this congregation have been learning about the challenges, opportunities, and struggles of people who don’t look like us,” she says, “and experiencing the richness of different cultures, including music and the experiences that people bring with them.”
In an effort to help other congregations become more diverse, the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) has launched the Diversity of Ministry initiative. The initiative, supported with funds from the Association Sunday fundraising campaign that began last year, is designed to help support congregations with ministers of color and those congregations that are committed to calling ministers of color or who are Latino/Latina, Hispanic, or multiracial. The funds will also be used to help seminarians of color.
The Diversity of Ministry initiative grew out of the fact that historically ministers of color have had difficulty finding settlements with UU congregations and that typically their settlements have been shorter. There are currently only 36 such ministers serving in our congregations, 54 in fellowship with the UUA, and 50 who are actively preparing for ministry.
The Diversity of Ministry initiative has a goal of creating 12 new ministries led by ministers of color in the next five years. One of those ministries will likely be the First Unitarian Church of Pittsburgh, PA. The church is located in an urban neighborhood, and people of color comprise one to two percent of its membership. With 425 members and one minister, the Rev. David Herndon, the congregation is ready for a second minister, Herndon believes. The fact that that person could be a minister of color is a bonus, he says. “If we attract more African-American families, so much the better, but that’s not the goal.”
The goal is simply to help the church and its ministries grow by adding another minister, he says. “This is first and foremost a staffing-for-growth opportunity. At the same time, we do hope this will help our congregation become more acquainted with racial justice and African-American history and perspectives and that it will enable us to speak more knowledgeably about racism and to respond better to it.”
Herndon anticipates that the additional minister will be called to Pittsburgh’s First Unitarian in September 2009.
The Diversity of Ministry initiative complements the UUA’s longstanding commitment to help congregations become antiracist, antioppressive, and multicultural. Taquiena Boston, director of the Identity-Based Ministries staff group of the UUA, notes that we’ve learned a few things from watching healthy multicultural congregations.
Congregations that want to become multicultural should keep in mind the following points, Boston says:
- Diversity of membership requires diversity of ministry.
- Diversity alone should not be the goal. Multiracial/multicultural ministry must be part of the mission of the congregation.
- Be intentional about bringing diversity into every aspect of congregational life.
- Achieving diversity in worship, so that it speaks to many groups of people, requires “mixing it up,” using music, movement, story, imagery, and ritual delivered in the cultural languages of the communities of which our congregations are a part.
- Staff and leadership of the congregation must reflect the diversity the congregation wants to attract.
- Staff and lay leaders must continually educate themselves about multiculturalism.
- There must be intentional outreach to the community.
- Congregations must be able to meaningfully engage the realities of race and racism in the congregation and the larger community. Simply celebrating multicultural diversity is not enough.
The Rev. Keith Kron, director of the UUA’s Office of Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian and Transgender Concerns and a member of the Diversity of Ministry Team, says he still hears concerns from congregations about calling a minister of color.
“We still hear, in 2008, from a surprising number of congregations that ‘a minister of color won’t be smart enough to serve our congregation,’” he says. “We still hear that ‘They won’t feel welcome here because they don’t know what they’re getting into.’ We hear that ‘This person will be too Christian . . . our worship will change.’”
“The real key to this,” Kron adds, “is do you have folks in your congregation who are really open to having conversations around these topics and who are willing to continue to talk about it?”
The Rev. Alicia Forde, Program Coordinator for Multicultural Congregations in the office of Identity-Based Ministries, notes the problem is not just with UU congregations. She observes that more than 90 percent of churchgoers in the United States worship in congregations where 90 percent of the people are like them.
Asked why congregations should consider participating in the Diversity of Ministry initiative or other antioppression programs, Rev. Forde says, “I am often moved by the line in the hymn As Tranquil Streams, ‘Prophetic church, the future waits your liberating ministry.’ We, Unitarian Universalists, are that prophetic church; a covenantal faith moving toward what Rev. Richard Gilbert calls ‘the Beloved Community of Love and Justice.’ “Forde continues, “Our Second Principle invites us to covenant to affirm and promote justice, equity, and compassion in human relations. Fulfilling this covenant, this promise, requires that we attend carefully to systems of injustice in our midst. It requires that we be prophets, daring to work in this life for a future that gets us closer to fulfilling the promise of our Sixth Principle: The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all. Dismantling systems of privilege and oppression within our community of faith allows us to breathe life into that goal. It allows us to co-create the Beloved Community of Love and Justice that we profess.”
Mauricio Tellez is a board member at First Unitarian of Los Angeles. “When there is a high percentage of other cultures and races represented in a congregation, it is great,” he says. He encourages people in other congregations to “Talk about it. Learn to be comfortable around people of other cultures even if they speak a different language. Make an effort to relate to people who are different from you. It’s a very positive thing for all of us to do.”
Resources
Congregations interested in participating in the Diversity of Ministry initiative or who want to engage in antiracist/multicultural work in other ways are invited to contact the Office of Identity-Based Ministries at idbm @ uua.org.
Resources for this work can also be found at the Diversity of Ministry initiative website.
For more information contact interconnections @ uua.org.
This work is made possible by the generosity of individual donors and congregations. Please consider making a donation today.
Last updated on Wednesday, September 14, 2011.
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