Pastor Tom Ryberg February 2015 Congregationalist

During my junior year in college, I became enamored with the fiery presidential candidate Howard Dean and even had the opportunity to spend the month of January in New Hampshire volunteering for his campaign. During his speeches, he often used a humorous illustration in support of affirmative action. One day while walking around his campaign headquarters in Vermont, Dean realized that he was surrounded by mostly women and that the executive campaign leadership was almost exclusively women. He mentioned it to his chief of staff (a woman), and she said, “Well, if I knew any men who were as well qualified, I’d be happy to hire them!”

Dean’s point was that when it comes to hiring practices, we tend to stick with those who are most like us. This is why we need measures like affirmative action, which can help provoke us to think - and act - beyond only that which is most familiar - so that those who have been historically excluded on purpose don’t remain excluded by default.

One of our church’s strategic priorities is to embody difference faithfully across lines of race, dis/ability, sexual and gender identity, income level, political affiliation, worship preferences, and so on. But even here, we tend to “stick to our own kind”—sometimes purposely, sometimes by default.

As I look back at the content and authors that comprised our worship themes in 2014, I notice something. Nearly all of our worship content came from white people. This wasn’t on purpose; surely we weren’t trying to exclude any other voices or perspectives. The content was excellent but there is a myriad of resources created by theologians of color that would serve our purposes extraordinarily well. But without intentionally seeking them out, it would seem that we, too, have had a tendency to “stick to our own kind.”

I’m not bringing this up in order to heap shame or blame on any of us. Indeed, as one of our worship leaders, I assure you that we do our very best to cultivate powerful, transformative worship and adult faith formation opportunities and I am proud of what we were able to offer last year. But even with the best of intentions, we also acknowledge that without that nudge from beyond ourselves, we have a tendency to primarily focus on only ourselves and those most like us.

May the cultural opportunity of Black History month (each February) provoke us to explore new truths and relationships and deepen our commitment to embody difference ever more faithfully in 2015.