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| Bethel Church of God in Christ provided music at a recent assembly. |
At the end of my last post, I
promised a bit more about Interfaith and I want to share three
things. First, I mentioned in that post that Interfaith needs “organized people.”
By that we mean people who understand that the self-interest of each of us is
interconnected with everyone else’s and that the community thrives when we all
have voice and participate in public life.
That requires developing
relationships with people we do not usually rub elbows with in everyday life.
It means going out of our own neighborhood to meet in a church on the other
side of town. It requires patience and can be frustrating, but the rewards are
huge—both personally and communally.
Second,
I also mentioned in the last post that Interfaith needs “organized money.” By that we
mean “our own”! In other words, Interfaith strives to support itself by
dues-paying institutional members. In addition, we receive some grant support from
the business community and various foundations, and gifts from individual
people who are not part of a member institution.
As
a matter of policy, we do not accept any
funds from any governmental entity at any level. That is because we
sometimes go to governmental entities to get things done, or we need to call
upon them to be accountable. For example, Interfaith convinced Monroe City
Council to invest city economic development funds in NOVA, the independent
workforce intermediary we helped get started that is currently contributing over $2
million annually to the economy of Ouachita Parish.
Interfaith
uses its funds primarily for the training and education we need to
organize people and money to get the job done. We have one organizer-trainer who is the sole staff person for the Ouachita Parish cluster
of Interfaith and the “glue” that helps keep us volunteers on track!
The
third and last thing I want to share in this post is that we have begun to plan
an event for this fall called “Conversations about Monroe.” Our goal is to
bring together six people—the pastor plus five others—from 20 institutions, or
approximately 100 people. These people will be divided into “house meeting”
size groups of 8 – 12 people each. With the help of a facilitator, each group
will have a conversation in which each person will be encouraged to share
his/her vision and energy for making Monroe, West Monroe and Ouachita Parish a
community in which everyone thrives. The purpose of this event is to set
Interfaith’s agenda for the next few years and identify people with vision and
energy to carry it out.
You
will hear more about this in upcoming weeks. For now, I can say that I will be one of the facilitators. Several local pastors have agreed to attend and to bring members of their congregations. All who care about this community are welcome. Please comment below or contact me if you'd like to participate.
