Today in the Mission Yearbook - Diversity, Equity and Inclusion: why they are marks of the church, and how we can practice these values in our congregations and mid councils

Economics can be an important component of a church’s faithful witness

January 9, 2023

Photo by Torfiqu Barbhuiya via Unsplash

When we read about the first band of Christ followers selling their possessions and “distributing the proceeds to all, as they had need,” (Acts 2:45), we clap our hands, lauding such noble sacrifice, but snicker under our breath, whispering, “Now that’s a bit too much!” We eye their sudden dispossession as fanatical, what uncouth cults do: they sell everything and go up to the mountains because they are cocksure of Jesus’ return date and time. We have (and have had) many Christian-freaks/fringes who abandoned human society to welcome the end of the world, only to return poorer. Here we are, 2,000 years later, and the human society is still humming, and money still matters, so let’s live out our faith in “decency and order.”

The early church’s dispossession only makes sense, we reason, if they believed in the imminent end of the world because in the apocalypse, money is as valuable as toilet paper. The early church got a lot of things right, but dispossession is not an imitable plan of action. We are good with breaking bread and making sure no one is left out of the dinner invitation. But opting out of the economic system on a belief that Jesus is returning and going to blow up the whole global economic system doesn’t sound reasonable or Christian.

It is one way of dismissing their actions. But they weren’t motivated by the end of the world. They had a contemporary Jewish movement who prepared for the end by not just dispossession but by leaving it all. The Essenes left land and money and went to the mountains to wait for the great washing of the world. The early church, however, didn’t follow their lead and leave the “unrighteous” society. They embedded themselves even more. They sold their possessions, but they also assimilated and prayed at the temple.

The Rev. Samuel Son, the Presbyterian Mission Agency’s Director of Diversity and Reconciliation, preached during Synod School worship last summer. (Screenshot)

The disciples weren’t waiting for the end of the world because they were already living in the end of the world, the end of the worldly reign. I have argued that the end of the days started with Jesus’ resurrection. Jesus’ return is the official coronation. Jesus was firmly ruling, and it was this reality that led this Jesus-community to create a different economic system aligning with Jesus’ new policy of equity. In those ancient Middle Eastern days, when a new ruler sat upon the throne, one of the kicks of being an emperor was you get to have your profile stamped on coins (having time count from your reign was also another benefit). As Emperor, not only did you change the tax code, but you also got to change the currency with which your subjects paid your tax. So, like other emperors, with Jesus’ rule, economics changed. The disciples were not dispossessing their lands out of fanaticism. They were taking the most reasonable actions to live by the new ruler of the Earth.

With Jesus as Lord, the old economic system based on hierarchy and oppression wasn’t tenable. The early church saw that possession isolated, ruined mutuality and distorted one’s view of self, others and moral responsibility. It created power dynamics that made attempts at mutuality a farce. With the proceeds of possession in one shared account that belonged to no single individual, they were wrestling with the root of hierarchy.

And when the proceeds were shared according to needs, the situation of need (or abundance) was no longer tagged to the value of a person. Receiving was no longer a matter of deserving. And to be in need wasn’t judged as a curse from God or individual deficiency, but temporary impact of the many shifting fates of life. Removing “deserving” out of the equation was another way to protect the value of a human person out of the whims of an economic system. The early church’s economic practice, much like the preaching, baptizing and breaking bread, are the regular practices of the people of resurrection.

I don’t think that today’s church works on economic equity the same way the early church did. But that commitment to economic equity must be equally strong because we still live in the same end of the days, the rule of the resurrected Jesus.

Rev. Samuel Son, Manager of Diversity and Reconciliation, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff

David Myers, Director, Finance, Board of Pensions
Lisa Myers, Communications Specialist, Presbyterian Association of Musicians

Let us pray

O God, in your eyes, all lives are of equal value and all human beings bear your image and receive your love. Drawing from the wellspring of your compassion, may we be servants of justice and agents of your reconciling peace. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Practicing inclusion

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion as marks of the Church

October 9, 2022

The Rev. Samuel Son, the Presbyterian Mission Agency’s manager of diversity and reconciliation, preaches during Synod School worship. (Screenshot)

What is inclusion? How does it differ from diversity?

Let me point to inclusion by showing you how exclusion looks and feels.

Jesus’ entourage had a diversity of gender from the start. “Many women were also there, looking on from a distance; they had followed Jesus from Galilee and had provided for him” (Matthew 27:55). Matthew tells us this fact only near the end of his bio of Jesus. But his disciples were men only. This is diversity without inclusion. Jesus’ entourage looked like the most diverse gathering of any messiah movement, but when it came to the core, it was your typical “boys only” club.

We’d like to excuse Jesus and the 12. For one thing, he’s Jesus. And we shouldn’t be “anachronistic” with our morality, judging ancestors by our standards. Jesus lived in a culture that was patriarchal through and through. There was no crack in the collective consciousness for consideration of women’s leadership. I lift Jesus and the 12 as an example to say that what they took for granted — of course the 12 must be men just as the sun must rise from the east — is exactly how we fail at inclusion. We don’t explicitly exclude people. We just don’t see them belonging in certain places out of our “sensibility” of naturalness. We exclude by default.

But wasn’t Jesus’ 12 diverse in its own way, revolutionary in his times? Didn’t his 12 include those rejected by other circles? True. You had poor fishermen, like Peter and his buddies, whom no self-respecting rabbi would pick up as their disciples. You had zealots, like Judas, who had the privilege of education (and some luxury of time and money) to hold political commitments, but also carried too much heat for any rabbi. Judas’ inclusion would only court suspicion. Jesus not only took him in but let him handle the finances. Oh, and don’t forget that a tax collector was thrown into that lot. You’d think a fight broke out every night at their campouts. That type of diversity was never seen. But that is how we excuse our exclusion, by pointing out to the diversity already at our tables. We think we are already “inclusive,” so we rationalize that those “others” who are not in are not in for good reason. Our iterations of exclusion are many and subtle.

Photo by Tim Mossholder via Unsplash

Here’s a list to move toward greater inclusion:

• Look at the qualifications of your leadership positions, from voluntary all the way up to senior pastorship. Do any requirements favor certain groups of people? Requirements exclude identities, as people groups might not have certain experiences for the position because of the social discrimination against those identities.
• Diversity is having people of different culture sit in your pews. Inclusion means they can bring in their way of worship. They are contributing from their differences. In that way, their differences are not lifted as different but another way of doing things. Inclusive worship has diverse instruments, songs, words, worship order and preaching style.
• Inclusion also recognizes what people have in common. Both truths — that people are different and that people are the same — are held together for diversity and inclusion to flourish. Differences does not negate the commonality. And commonality doesn’t reduce differences to mere stylistic difference. Inclusion is the belief that every person is both uniquely different and essentially the same.
• When you have diversity alone, then there is one group of people who are not seen as different. They are the “unspoken” center. They are seen as the norm and such they have power. When I attend a Presbyterian congregation, I am seen as different. I bring diversity to the Presbyterian congregation. But I’m not the only one different. The white congregation differs from me in the same way I differ from them. And to me, the white congregation is the diversity. Difference is an attribute of all people. Inclusion recognizes that there is no center, and that it is about living into the acceptance of others and of myself by others.

Rev. Samuel Son, Manager of Diversity and Reconciliation, Presbyterian Mission Agency. 

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Suzi Gwinn, Manager, Investor Services,Presbyterian Investment & Loan Program
Gina Hagan, New Business Specialist, Engagement & Community Relations, Board of Pensions

Let us pray

Merciful God, you have made us that we may cherish one another. Fill our hearts with love so

Gospel and inclusivity

Real diversity begins with leadership and theology

by the Rev. Samuel Son for Presbyterians Today | Special to Presbyterian News Service

Editor’s note: This article is the fourth of a continuing series on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the Church. In the first and second articles, we recalled how the values practiced intuitively in the early church  were a response to their understanding that Jesus proved himself God’s anointed through the resurrection. The third article delved into historical reasons on why we praise diversity but fail to practice it. This article looks at the diversity that goes deeper than mere cosmetics.

Diversity, as cosmetics, impedes inclusion and equity. Unfortunately, diversity in church often remains at the cosmetic level, more worried about how we present ourselves in public gatherings. We point to “ethnic” instruments in our music, the smattering of people of color sitting in our pews, or the bulletins and Sunday school materials that include images of people of color as evidence of diversity. Or we point to our World Communion Sunday, where we have ethnic food in our communion table and our fellowship table, and we “invite” a pastor of color to read Scripture or even preach for that Sunday.

These cosmetic and occasional diversity expressions sooth our conscience so we get on with maintaining structures and mode of doing church which, as I have argued in previous blogs, are not neutral but intentionally exclusive. The work of diversity is an act of repentance. This theological framing defines the work of diversity as a fundamental change in our mind (metanoia), that is, the way we do and structure church life. We are called to be a diverse church, and not just a church with diverse expressions.

Diversity of leadership

A repentance-framed diversity means diversity starts with leadership. Check out most white church websites, and the staff and the elder board are all white. Most white churches are led by white male pastors. The face of leadership is how people experience the sincerity of welcome. A disabled friend who uses a wheelchair told me it was only when she attended a Presbyterian church, where a pastor with a disability wheeled up on the stage to preach, that she believed that her being and her gifts would be celebrated.

Making the church building accessible is important, but only the first step to accessibility. Leadership that embodies diversity makes all places accessible. I studied to be a pastor with a plan to serve Korean churches because I saw Asian leaders serving in Asian churches only. I never saw myself pastoring a white congregation. What I had seen determined where I saw myself. There are people of color who look up a church and decide whether to visit by looking at the staff. They won’t be looking for diversity in your banner images, but in the people making decisions.

Diversity of theology

Diversity of leadership could remain a cosmetic work if that diversity of leadership isn’t allowed to be a diversity of theology. A diverse leadership required to mold into a single theology is assimilation. A diversity of skin color is not a diversity of thought. Theology touts itself as acultural, which makes it the perfect place for a culture to hide as essence, a way of doing things as the only way of doing things. For the sake of the gospel, diverse leaders are asked to share one story about God and the world (because any story about God is always a story about how the world should be). Which is ironic, because in Scripture, we don’t have one story of God, but multiple and diverse stories about God.

Consider the Christmas story. We don’t have just one story; we have four stories. All four of them are distinctively different. They are not marginally different, with few factual variances that can be easily harmonized. Mark actually skips the Christmas story altogether, which itself is actually a story, that Jesus’ lineage isn’t where you find out who Jesus is but in Jesus’ actions — even though those actions remain a mystery, it’s a mystery that moves us forward to the great reveal. John, well, his Christmas story begins before the heating of the first atom. Luke and Matthew go into most details about the birth of Jesus. But they diverge. Luke has neighboring shepherds crash nativity while Matthew has Magi bring gifts after a long journey (without the aid of GPS!). I’ve heard many creative weavings of Matthew and Luke to make it into a single story. But when you mesh them together, you don’t get a fuller story that reflects the beauty and narrative power of the two stories, but a boring story where the details don’t have any relevance.

Why don’t we let the storytellers tell their story? Why do we feel the need to harmonize them?  Why do we feel like the veracity of both depends on proving that they are telling the same story?

This need to harmonize is a powerful instinct. But it’s a learned instinct, an instinct built by fear of differences. The gospel writers and the church forebears didn’t think it was dangerous to let each story stand on its own. I am more afraid when there is only one official story. When stories match up too perfectly, I suspect propaganda. All four gospel writers tell beautifully different stories of Jesus because of their diverse theology of Jesus. This doesn’t mean there are four different Jesuses, but that Jesus, like any real individual, is a complex person with diverse ways to relate to people.

Annually, I get together with my brothers’ families. After we put the kids to bed, my brothers and I reminisce about our childhood over beer. In every event we recall, we have three different dads interacting with us. And each of my brothers’ dad helps me see things I didn’t see or forgot about my dad. But it is more than just piecing together a fuller picture of our dad. It is the recognition that our dad interacted with each of us differently because we all had different needs.

The difference of theologies engenders trust in the stories. Variations makes them veritable. Divergence tells us there is a real person walking behind those remembrances. The theology that comes out through the sermon in the pulpit, the Bible studies, and the style of leadership don’t have to be polished, singular, and erased of the tension of differences.

Most churches try to be a single-gospel book church. We have John-gospel churches only preaching eternal salvation; Matthew-gospel churches gung-ho for mission; Mark-gospel churches marshalling social action; Luke-gospel churches strategizing social influence. Churches should preach and live out all four gospels of Jesus. We’ve got to wean congregations off the milk and open them to the diverse food group of theologies.

We are taught to fear differences, so it’s a fear we can unlearn. Our palate can learn to savor differences. It’s dangerous for congregations to hear from one pastor, or only pastors, from the dominant group. And it’s important that when churches hire for diverse leaders that it commits to diversity of theologies. Don’t muzzle diverse theologies, or the hiring devolves into mere cosmetics.

In Presbyterian churches, leadership isn’t limited to the staff. The practice of diversity of people, experience and theology of the staff applies to the session. For smaller churches, the session probably serves like the staff of the church. With solo-pastored churches, we should expand the pool of candidates. Imagine bringing in a non-white pastor. Rural church pastors automatically become civic leaders. You get diversity of leadership in multiple circles with a single hiring.

Diversity of leadership and theologies is harder and longer work precisely because it requires changing the current way of doing church. It is an act of repentance.

The Rev. Samuel Son is manager for Diversity and Inclusion in the Presbyterian Mission Agency.