Beloved Conversations Among

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Children’s Story

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Sermon Text

Welcome to East Shore Unitarian Church.  We welcome you whether you’re visiting for the first time, or joining us for your tenth time or your thousandth time.  Everyone is welcome here.

As some of you may know, our congregation has chosen to participate in the Beloved Conversations: Among program this year. Beloved Conversations is a program for Unitarian Universalists seeking to embody racial justice as a spiritual practice. In Beloved Conversations, we learn how to heal the impact of racism on our lives, in order to get free together. In the past 2 years, 75 members of our congregation have participated in the Within phase of the program, which is focused on the individual, personal work we each need to do related to race and racism.

This year, some of us will be leading our congregation in the second phase of the program, called Among, which is focused on the institutional, systemic change needed in our congregations, in order to stop the harm caused to people of color and other marginalized groups by our structures and systems, and move our congregation closer to radical inclusion, racial justice, and ultimately, a beloved community.

The goal of today’s service is to introduce you to members of the team, to help you prepare for change, and to commission the team to figure out what change is needed and how best to implement it. There are 16 members on the Among team, plus our Membership Development Director, Nicole, and a coach from another congregation, Janine Gelsinger.

Janine – As your congregation participates in Among, members of the Among Team will be taking time to look closely and honestly at the systems of your congregation – the way you do things, the policies and procedures that you have, the outcomes of your various ministries – and considering ways that those systems need to shift and change in order to be closer in line with your shared faith values of justice, equity, and inclusion. Your Among Team will work to translate your religious commitments into tangible actions.

Unitarian Universalist communities, living into our shared values, have the potential to be spaces of liberation and spiritual transformation for so many people. The work of transformation-personal, communal, systemic- is spiritual work and our work for racial justice is also the work of faith formation. When we engage in systemic change work, we are engaging creativity at its most visionary- literally working to imagine ways of living and being together that have never existed! The work of liberation- the work of anti-racism and the eradication of white supremacy in ourselves and our systems- is the day-to-day creation of the Beloved Community, a project well-suited for faith communities ready to practice new ways of being in relationship and of being human together.

Commissioning of the Among Team

Although social and racial justice are often seen in our Unitarian Universalist communities as work to be done “out there,” in the community beyond the walls of our congregations, we know that it is our responsibility to first put our own house in order. To endeavor to align our systems, in all parts of our congregations, with our deepest held values and highest aspirations. This is the work that our Among Team will be engaged in this year and it will be all of our responsibilities to support them as they do it.

Today, then, we take this reality seriously and formally bestow upon the members of this Team the authority they need to carry out the works we have assigned them; this is an opportunity to give our blessings to the ministry these people will provide in the coming year and to affirm their sense of calling to this role, as leaders.

Nancy Barnes, Carrie Bowman, Katie Edwards, Maury Edwards, Caroline Haessly, Ryam Hill, Merrillann Hutchinson, Marcy Langrock, Susan McDonald, Li Lu-Porter, Mike Radow, Lori Saccardi, Amanda Strombom, LeAnne Struble, Louise Wilkinson, and Sue Yates, along with Nicole Duff.

Today we commission you as members of our congregation’s Among Team. As the Developmental Minister of East Shore Unitarian Church, I am grateful for your willingness to serve in this important role.

Today we call you forth from among us.

We place our trust in you, asking you to help us all to better understand the ways that our congregational systems do not align with our deepest held values, and charging you lead us in the necessary work of transformation, moving us ever closer to justice.

We ask you to be agents of change in our congregation, helping us all to work towards the goal of eradicating racism and fostering radical inclusion.

We will support your work and are committed together to the larger goal of racial justice and collective liberation.

I charge you, as members of our congregation’s Among Team:

to take a discerning, loving, and honest look at the ways our congregation does things- how we have structured our systems, the outcomes of how those systems operate and who they benefit, and whether they are in line with our religious commitments to justice, equity, and inclusion of all, to take time to learn from the wisdom of others about different ways of doing things, new ideas to try, and examples of systems that decenter whiteness and center the needs of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color,

to be bold in your vision, of how our congregation could be a radically inclusive, anti-racist, transformative spiritual home for so many people,

to remind yourselves and us of the beauty, joy, love, wholeness, and truth that can be found when we engage honestly in a process of reflection, experimentation, and transformation,

to care for yourselves and one another in the process, and to ask for help when you need it.

May you know that the work you do is powerful, valued, and needed.

May you know that our entire congregation is here to support you.

And may you know that you are enough.

Among Team Members:

We gratefully accept this charge to serve.

We commit ourselves to the faithful work of transformation, both personal and systemic.

We will be bold, creative, open-minded, and steadfast in our work together as a Team.

We are proud to be part of a congregation committed to racial justice and will honor that commitment in our learning, actions, and ways of being together.

We are grateful to work together to help bring our congregation ever closer to alignment with our values and our vision of the Beloved Community.

Congregation:

As your congregation, we now commission you as our Among Team for this coming year.

Thank you for all you will give and for the transformation you will lead.

Amen/Ashé/Blessed Be/and May it be so

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