Interfaith Education Fund

As part of a larger leadership development effort in the Northeast San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, the Southern California Education Fund is working with potential leaders at Roscoe Elementary School, educating them about Alliance School methods and practices to help them strengthen their institutional capacity.

One Sunday, over 60 people from current and potential Marin Organizing Committee institutions, that the Bay Area Organizing Committee (BAOC) trains, gathered for a research action around housing - and the effects of the housing crisis on children's education.  There were stories of new mothers evicted for no reason within a week of giving birth, and school districts having difficulty hiring and retaining teachers because of the high cost of living.

Linda Jackson, trustee on the San Rafael School Board, and Mary Jane Burke, Marin Superintendent of Schools, both made commitments to help leaders get connected to other power institutions and key players in Marin.

Looking for a way to create a "tighter fit between the life of faith and public life," the Very Reverend W. Mark Richardson of the Church Divinity School of the Pacific (CDSP) in Berkeley turned to community organizers prepared the Interfaith Education Fund to help train its seminarians.

Says Rev. Susanna Singer, "Bishops were saying increasingly that community organizing is a good thing."  The creation faith, she argues, is about God's vision of flourishing for humanity and the cosmos.  "It means that the body of Christ, which is us now, has got to get out there now and be involved in the communities in which we live because that's where God's dream is going to come true."

"The intention is to train ordinary people both in giving them a conceptual framework for thinking about issues of power and self-interest and leadership as well as some of the  practical skills of engaging people who are different than you out in the broader world," says Anna Eng, lead organizer for the Bay Area IAF.

The Church Divinity School of the Pacific not only offers the 6-day course each year in January, it participates as a member in the Bay Area IAF organization.

[In photo is the Very Rev. W. Mark Richardson sitting in a class.  Photo Credit: Episcopal News Service]

CDSP Prepares Seminarians for Public Life, Episcopal News Service

Public Ministry in Practice, Episcopal News Service

Two weeks after 60 institutional leaders of Working Together Jackson launched a house meeting campaign -- which included training on how to lead a small group conversation -- leaders held the first of six "Geographic House Meeting Nights."  Hosted by Truevine Missionary Baptist Church, the conversations are designed to elicit stories that will form the basis for a local "Agenda for a Renewed City."   

As part of a statewide effort by the Colorado Education Association, and in collaboration with the Colorado IAF, one dozen Commerce City teachers took to a nearby trailer park to directly ask parents how they can do their jobs better.  Many of the answers were blunt.  Teachers are working to rebuild trust in this community in order to reshape the schools to better address the interests and needs of the mostly low-income Latinos who live there.  

Said Barb McDowell, "The only way we can make a difference with the families in our district is if we get involved."

[Photo Credit: Nicholas Garcia, Chalkbeat]

Over 240 Omaha leaders trained by the Institute for Public Leadership, plus allies from the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance and other faith traditions, packed Augustana Lutheran Church for an Interfaith Solidarity Service.  

The evening featured song, reflection and prayer from Christian, Jewish and Muslim faith communities and included statements of solidarity and a commitment to nonviolence. 

As the most ethnically diverse parish in the Diocese of Fort Worth, St. Joseph’s Catholic Parish in Arlington, Texas holds mass in four languages: English, Spanish, French and Twi.  Over the last two years, in partnership with the Dallas Area Sponsoring Committee, the parish has undergone a deeply embedded congregational development process involving 3,000 parishioners – 600 of which participated in small group conversational encounters held by 80 ministry leaders. 

Subsequent congregational development meetings integrated Catholic Social Teaching into training sessions on leadership, stewardship and responsibility to the common good.  These meetings consistently drew 200 at a time.  As a result, new leaders soon emerged for the pastoral council and other parish ministries.  There is now clarity about the need to build a stronger parish community and attend to the challenges families face. 

In November, after leaders heard weekly “horror stories” about the debilitating effect of predatory loans on families, St. Joseph’s Catholic Parish stood with the Texas Conference of Catholic Bishops to publicly launch a campaign calling on the City of Arlington to better regulate payday and title loan lending.    

Father Tobi Guerrero, pastor of St. Peter the Apostle Catholic Church in Laredo, Barrio Los Cuatros in Southwest Laredo, the most neglected neighborhood in Laredo, has initiated a parish development process in his parish.  He began with six two-hour training sessions on evangelization based on the great commissioning: to make disciples, understood as creating relationships of solidarity with the people of the community, especially the most isolated, such as undocumented people; to baptize, understood as inviting all the people of the neighborhood to be one community that stands together to work together to address the issues that everyone faces; and teaching them all things, understood as identifying and training new leaders for the neighborhood.

The training sessions have prepared 36 leaders who are divided up into 18 teams that will go out and engage the community around issues that affect the common welfare. These 18 teams have committed to meeting with the families of 90 city blocks (5 blocks per team). The evangelization teams went out to meet the people of the community on the first of two Saturdays on October 3, to find out who is living in the community, to ask people about the issues they face in their neighborhood, and to invite them to participate in small group meetings at the church to develop a comprehensive community agenda on which they can take collective action.

When parish leaders of Our Lady of Guadalupe Mission from the Diocese of Alexandria, Louisiana learned that nursery workers were traveling to Dallas for basic immigration services, they turned to Northern & Central Louisiana Interfaith (NCLI) for help.  NCLI urged the Catholic workers to carefully invest in relationships with Anglos and African Americans – including Baptists and Methodists.  The workers responded.  At a monthly convening of mostly Black and White leaders, one immigrant shared that he felt caught between providing for his family and breaking immigration laws.  In response, an African American gentleman revealed that he had grown up on a plantation speaking only Creole, and that when he started school in the city he and his siblings were treated as strangers due to their accents and ways.  This encounter created the basis for trust –sufficient to work together not just in the founding of a local immigrant center, but also around reforming police practices to stop racial profiling.  

Bishops Gerald Kicanas (Roman Catholic), Kirk Smith (Episcopal) and Stephen Talmage (Lutheran) gathered before a crowd of 60 clergy in Tucson to inform them of ways congregations can work together for the common good.  Bishop Kicanas shared his own experience of attending an IAF leadership training institute and suggested that clergy would be “well-served by attending similar trainings this fall in Phoenix and in Yuma.”

Lutheran Bishop Talmage concluded the session with with an invitation to the clergy to do listening sessions in their congregations and focus on the development and training of young leaders to both transform their communities and their parishes.  The event was put together by the Pima County Interfaith Council and the Arizona Interfaith Network.

[Photo Credit: New Vision Online]

Interfaith Council Hosts Discussion on Systematic Change, The New Vision Online