Interfaith: Together Building Community

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.