Mary Pickard on behalf of the Beloved Community Staff Team

We’re on a journey to becoming a multicultural anti-racist community. What’s the path, you ask? How do we actually do this as a congregation? What, exactly, are we being called to do? Those are some of the questions that arise as we commit to this journey.

Unity’s Board of Trustees developed the current Ends Statements (https://www.unityunitarian.org/values-mission-ends.html) over a five-month intensive discernment process involving the entire church community. Two of our 2018-2023 Unity Ends Statements commit us to:

• End 1: Create a multicultural spiritual home built on authentic relationships.
• End 7: Create brave space for racial healing and dismantling dominant culture. 

These are our hopes and dreams — our shared ministry — and they come from a sincere desire to see change. Aspiring to change is a good start, but it is not sufficient. 

The Executive Team was charged with setting and measuring concrete strategies for all the Ends Statements. As one example, the Religious Education Ministry Team is conducting an extensive evaluation of the R.E. curricula with the goal of situating our UU faith in multiculturalism. Another is to strengthen small group ministry opportunities with intentional emphasis on cultural identity. 

But are we individually prepared to do the work? What cultural lens will each of us bring to this? How will we build a common understanding of our approach? That’s why the strategies for achieving our Ends Statements contain a healthy dose of training and coaching — but not the kind of diversity training so many of us have experienced in the past. 
Unity Church is taking a different approach, based on the IDI – the Intercultural Development Inventory. Those who developed the IDI define intercultural competence as “the capability to accurately understand and adapt behavior to cultural difference and commonality.” 

“It’s the most widely used assessment tool of intercultural competence,” according to Rev. KP Hong. “The IDI has been rigorously tested, with validation from extensive social science as a reliable measure of intercultural competence across cultures. It invites us to better understand and grow our own multicultural competence — both as individuals and as a congregation.” 
Taking the online IDI assessment gives us a sense of our intercultural capacity. With coaching, we can create action plans that will help us develop the skills to bridge across differences. KP is quick to note there is no one path or simple formula, “We have to be willing to fail, as failure attests to the credibility of our work. That’s how we learn and move forward. That’s where humility comes in.” 

Unity Church is working with Team Dynamics on our journey. I have worked with them, using the IDI, at a nonprofit where I am a volunteer board member. This nonprofit has seen significant changes in human resources and benefits policies, grant guidelines and processes, candidate search and hiring practices. It is sometimes difficult, messy and discouraging. It is sometimes exciting, adventuresome, and satisfying. It is always filled with curiosity, growth, and care for each other. 

Thanks to the Helener Currier Endowment for Racial Justice at Unity Church, the IDI and follow-up coaching sessions are being offered to religious education teachers, pastoral care team members, worship associates, welcome team members, Obama School volunteers, and other key ministry groups. Those who participate can receive a confidential, individualized coaching session to help design a personal action plan. In addition, each team will be given a group profile and coaching to create action plans to help move the congregation toward achievement of its hopes and dreams for the Beloved Community. 

If you aren’t in any of these groups and are not personally contacted to take the IDI, but wish to participate, you are welcome to do so! To inquire or sign up, please contact Drew Danielson at drew@unityunitarian.org, who is administering the process. 

For more information:

• IDI, LLC: https://idiinventory.com/
• Team Dynamics: https://teamdynamicsmn.com
  Check out the podcast “BEHAVE – Episode 1917” for why they use a “developmental approach” to trainings.

I got the call a few months ago, a request from Unity Church to share my experience working with Team Dynamics. They were being considered as a potential partner in intercultural development for Unity as an organization and as a congregation. I remember tripping over my words in the voicemail left in response, excited about what a great match this would be.
 
Team Dynamics, founded by Trina Olson and Alfonso Wenker, was indeed hired by Unity. They have been working with the Beloved Community Staff Team for the past few months on an ambitious initiative: to grow the effectiveness of Unity Church in achieving our Ends Statements by growing our individual and collective ability to recognize and bridge the “differences that make a difference.”
 
On Saturday, September 7, more than 150 people gathered from strategic ministry areas for a multicultural training event with Team Dynamics. Trina and Alfonso were joined by their colleagues Tyrai Bronson-Pruitt and Levi Weinhagen, and shared core concepts intended to spark new thinking and new ways of living our values and intentions (please see links below to handouts and resources). Together, the group got grounded in its understanding of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and how certain differences – race, gender, class, immigration status, sexual orientation, ability, and more – make a real difference in how we engage with one another and the life outcomes we experience.
 
The group applied its learnings and insights to their experience at Unity, recognizing that good intentions have not necessarily had the desired effect – whether that be, for example, in ensuring that longstanding members of color at Unity Church feel a sense of belonging, welcoming new visitors to the church, or maintaining authentic relationships with the broader community through our outreach efforts.
 
Already, new questions are being asked by those who participated – questions that will shape how the congregation pursues its Ends. The work done by the group to apply learnings to Unity’s education, worship, community outreach, board governance, and welcome team efforts will continue as long as participants rely on their new learnings as guiding touchpoints.
 
And I can tell you, from my own experience over the past few years working with Team Dynamics at the organization I lead (the American Institute of Architects – Minnesota), that success in bridging difference and achieving diversity, equity, and inclusion goals hinges on each of us being open to personal and organizational transformation.
 
It’s about more than new terms and skills; it’s about a new humility and a new curiosity about the effects of our thinking and our actions. The more we individually and collectively pursue a cycle of learn-try-fail, then learn and try anew, the closer we will get to creating the church community, and the world community, we seek to make real. 

Handouts and resources from Team Dynamics are intended for use as part of ongoing work with TD, who encourage sharing materials with conversation partners.

• House of Intersectionality
• Role Goal Soul
• Worksheet: Diversity, Equity, Inclusion
• Worksheet: Elements of Culture
• Worksheet: Target, Agent + Dominant, Non-Dominant

From Erika Sanders, 
Beloved Community Staff Team

In order to fulfill one of Unity’s new Ends Statements, to “Create a multicultural spiritual home built on authentic relationships,” the church has engaged outside help! We’re delighted to be working with Team Dynamics, a firm of consultants guiding us through processes of deep discernment and groundbreaking work. 

First, Team Dynamics is working with church congregants and staff to investigate our current culture, including potential points of bias, resistance to change, and exclusivity. Team Dynamics created an inventory of our policies, communications, and other information about us, in order to assess our day-to-day patterns of awareness and behaviors. 

Next, Unity Church and Team Dynamics will work together to co-design a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Roadmap in support of our End Statements. Why diversity, equity and inclusion, you ask? The three key components shaping the roadmap are distinct and work in concert:

Diversity – a fact of human difference, not an outcome 
Equity – recognition that one-size-fits-all solutions do not work for everybody
Inclusion – different people get to contribute and make decisions in ways that may change systems

Creating the DEI Roadmap involves defining our vision for the future; clarifying our values; determining shared, measurable goals centered on bridging across “differences that make a difference” (such as race, ethnicity, gender identity, and more); and engaging a greater diversity of perspectives. In Team Dynamic’s words, the DEI Roadmap will help us “slow down and really consider the difference between what we know, what we think we know, and where we are just guessing.”

The Roadmap will work in concert with the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI). Unity has used the IDI developmental model in recent years to expand our ability to understand and work across cultural difference. The IDI model offers practical guidance on how organizations and individuals can improve their intercultural competence, and grow along a continuum. 
Finally, Team Dynamics will support Unity in building its capacity to reach its goals, and will give us guided opportunities to try out new practices and reflect on what we are learning. These opportunities will include retreats, learning seminars, and practice sessions. 

Unity’s Beloved Community Staff Team will work to ensure that these opportunities for growth are integrated into all areas of church ministry — for example, in worship, community outreach, welcome teams, religious education, and communications. 
Questions about this exciting work? Contact Rev. KP Hong, Director of Religious Education, at kp@unityunitarian.org. 

From Pauline Eichten, Past ARLT member and current member of the 
Beloved Community Staff Team

In 2002, a few people thought that Unity Church, a worthy institution, could do better around the issue of racism. They presented a proposal to the Board of Trustees that resulted in the church commissioning the Anti-Racism Leadership Team in January 2003. Made up of church members, the team’s stated mission was to help lead the church into becoming an actively anti-racist institution. This meant organizing from the inside, looking at policies and practices that would need to change to realize that mission. With institutional endorsement and mandate, these “leaders without authority” worked in an uncharted area, reporting to both the Board and the Executive Team and relying on them to execute team recommendations. 

The first significant piece of work of the team was to look at church history through an anti-racist lens. We asked, “Was Unity Church part of the resistance to racism in this country or was it complicit in supporting white supremacy and thus racism?” In spring 2005, after much research — going through archives, interviewing people, and reading and discussion — the team produced a 53-page document titled “The History of Race Relations and Unity Church-Unitarian, 1850-2005”. The team’s final assessment of Unity Church and its stance regarding racism was that we “engage[d] in charitable works instead of initiating a deeper exploration of racism and how we might be complicit in its continuing existence. That work would have forced us to feel a great deal of discomfort, and to be willing to be changed.”

Over the following years — and many programs, educational opportunities, sermons and workshops later — changes began. In summer 2005, the Board of Trustees developed a new definition for moral owners as those “who yearn for the Beloved Community and see Unity Church-Unitarian as an instrument for its realization. The Beloved Community … is community at the highest level of reality and possibility, where love and justice prevail.” 

Then in 2009-2013 the Ends Statements, the guiding documents for the work of the church, spoke to a commitment to anti-racism and racial healing. It was noted that the multi-million dollar construction project, proposed in 2011, had no stated commitment to the use of minority businesses for goods and services. A group of concerned church members initiated policy language to spell out how the church could address that issue with this project and into the future. The Board of Trustees used that as the basis for Policy J, added to its governing policies in the fall of 2012.

The new Ends Statements, adopted in 2018, included the following commitments to:

• create a multicultural spiritual home built on authentic relationships, and 
• create a brave space for racial healing and dismantling dominant culture.

Over the years the Anti-Racism Leadership Team has continued to work on influencing the progress of Unity Church toward becoming an actively anti-racist institution. Most recently, it had been serving in a strictly monitoring role. In its 2018 report, the team noted that it was the Board’s job to measure and evaluate the implementation of the church’s Ends. Given the new Ends Statements, and the strategy and implementation work envisioned with Team Dynamics, the team recommended bringing this monitoring task back to the Board. In February 2019, the Board passed such a motion and the Anti-Racism Leadership Team was dissolved.

This past June the Board and the Executive Team hosted a gathering, inviting anyone who ever served on the team. The event was both to thank everyone for their work and to solicit input to help guide the Board going forward. There are plans to have a congregational recognition sometime this fall of the Anti-Racism Leadership Team and the 60-some church members and staff who served on it over the past 17 years. 

From Pauline Eichten, Beloved Community Staff Team

“For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.”  – Cynthia Occelli
 
With the development of Unity's new Ends statement – “create a multicultural spiritual home based on authentic relationships” – the Beloved Community Staff Team created an experimental group called Multicultural Conversation Partners.[1] Among the dozen or so in the group, half the members are persons of color and half are white. These multiracial partnerships are in regular conversation, both as duos and as the larger group.
 
The idea is to foster an ongoing conversation/learning process, which KP Hong describes as risking “an encounter with another that distances ourselves from our familiarities” -- going beyond the usual racialized forms of self-protection and moral shelter.
 
I am struck by the phrase “moral shelter.” I interpret it to mean the ways in which I affirm my identify as a “good” white person, someone who is aware of systemic racism and opposed to it. I don’t easily admit to the racist thoughts that bubble up from my subconscious. I’m active around issues of racial equality, but I’m not sure I’m willing to put my life in danger. When I traveled by myself to a one-time Sundown town in southern Illinois, it never occurred to me that it could be dangerous for my bi-racial daughter to do the same.
 
“I’m doing enough,” my comfortable white self says. And then I read about another white person calling the police on black people going about their lives, playing golf or having a picnic in the park, or another black man being shot by police. And I know that there is an urgency to change and I must do my part.
 
As the Unity Church congregation works to live into our aspiration to create a multicultural spiritual home, there will be change.  And from that change will come growth. The hope is that these conversation partners can help to develop a possible reality beyond racialized barriers that will offer new ways of doing/being that can apply to congregational life.
 
“We cannot obtain what we lack if we tenaciously cling to what we have.” – Charles F. Haanel
 
[1] The Multicultural Conversation Partners include Sheila Bosc, Jessica Burton, Rico Duran, Pauline Eichten, Kevin Harris, Heidi Johnson, Rich Lau, Mary Pickard, Lia Rivamonte, Erika Sanders, Jon Vaughan-Fier, Ray Wiedmeyer

A Reflection
Erika Sanders, Beloved Community Staff Team

Over six weeks in May and June, I was honored to be a volunteer photographer documenting seven marches, rallies and protests ("actions," in short) organized by the Minnesota Poor People's Campaign. Actions took place to take a moral stand on several issues: to protest Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); to urge environmental justice and stop Enbridge's Line 3 oil pipeline proposal; to call for fair treatment of workers and a living wage; and to publicly and collectively imagine a budget built for peace, not militarism and war. 

As an amateur but avid photographer I've photographed many events and political actions. Each has a distinct mood, or combination of moods, including grief, pain, outrage, fury, love, pleading, demanding, longing, buoyancy, diffuse or focused energy, humor, and awkwardness. The Poor People's Campaign events had elements of all these, but they also had unusually potent feelings of joy, hope, and possibility. And that felt miraculous. I came to look forward to each action with greater and greater eagerness, and I don't think I was alone in that sensation.

I suspect there are a lot of reasons the Poor People's Campaign actions felt and looked that way through my camera's lens. But there's one reason that strikes me most: these events were the embodiment of what we have come to call intersectionality: the understanding of how different types of oppression and injustice compound and magnify one another, and how any one thread of collective or individual identity is woven alongside many others. They gave fresh life to Dr. King's admonishment that "we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny." 

We talked about how protecting our environment is bound up in fighting racism. We learned about a living wage as not just a matter of economic justice — but as a matter of racial and gender justice, too. We dreamed of a world where refugees and asylum-seekers are greeted with radical hospitality, no matter their race, national origin, or socioeconomic status. The participants and planners of the Poor People's Campaign modeled and reflected this sense of interwoven destiny. They were an incredibly diverse group, and partners came from many faith traditions and many organizations, including Jewish Community Action, CTUL, 15 Now Minnesota, MIRAC (Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee), Minnesota Council of Churches, the Center for Sustainable Justice, the Restaurant Opportunities Center of Minnesota, Veterans for Peace, the Rye House, the Center for Prophetic Action, Ujamaa Place, and Women Against Military Madness. Unity Church people were there, of course, in the thick of it all. Many put their bodies directly in service to the group purpose, and were arrested.
​
As my shutter clicked thousands of times, capturing people speaking, yelling, singing, marching, and being handcuffed, I was struck by how rare this embodiment of intersectionality really is. It's one thing to understand it intellectually, but another to witness it. To do it, feel it, be it. And we did. It was precious. 

Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of Between the World and Me, has a list of 13 books that he hopes readers of his book will also read. Coates is a national correspondent for The Atlantic, where he writes about cultural, social and political issues, particularly regarding African Americans. He is also the writer of the current Black Panther series for Marvel Comics launched in 2016.
http://www.openculture.com/2016/05/ta-nehisi-coates-list-of-13-recommended-books.html
​

Want to learn more about racism and its effects on all of us? The Unity Library has many resources – books, videos, and online content – that are appropriate for children and adults.

Published in 2016, "Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching: A Young Black Man's Education," by Mychal Denzel Smith explores the question, “How do you learn to be a black man in America?” while coming of age during the presidency of Barack Obama and witnessing the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and too many more.

CLICK HERE to access the Unity Library Catalog. Search “Anti-racism / Racism Collection.” If you only want resources for children, then do a search for “racism, children.” The catalog can also be accessed under "Additional Resources" in the column to the right (below on the mobile version) and from the Library page at http://www.unityunitarian.org/library-and-bookstall.html.