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Playing in the Same Sandbox
by Wayne Whitson Floyd

Why Partnerships are the Future of American Congregations

Running adult educational events for congregations and their leaders is not that different from the work I did forty years ago as a volunteer with a Head Start program in Mississippi.

Give people a respectful place to spend the day, provide them something to eat when they get hungry, and send them home able to do something they couldn’t do when they arrived, and adults, like children, generally tend to be pretty adept at playing in the same sandbox while they’re at school. They don’t tend to get all that exercised about the ways they are different from one another or the rest of the world around them.

If this happens so easily when we’re young or not really thinking hard about it, why are church gatherings so likely to be homogenous—meetings of the like-minded, celebrations of sameness? Why are churches so often the poster children of the post-modern epidemic of sandbox-intolerance and bad manners? I got a look last week at how it might be different, when I helped to host a one-day workshop in Philadelphia facilitated by independent consultant and Alban author Joy Skjegstad on “New Ways to Fund Your Church’s Ministries.”

In attendance were about one hundred fifty ministers and laity from faith-based nonprofits and a breathtaking variety of churches—Abyssinian Baptist, A.M.E. Zion, and Hispanic congregations, as well as a plethora of Mainline Protestants, including United Methodist, Metropolitan Community Church, Presbyterian Church U.S.A., Episcopal, United Church of Christ, Reformed, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and Unitarian Universalist Association congregations.

People came not just from Philadelphia neighbourhoods, but they also drove for six or eight hours from Virginia, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and West Virginia. Or they flew in from Massachusetts, Illinois, Colorado, Connecticut, South Carolina and California just for the day.

On one hand, the event is a testimony to the financial pressures that churches and their leaders are feeling just to “stay in business.” On the other hand, the day’s program had not even begun when I realized that I was looking at a snapshot of the future of American congregations, all gathered together because of a seemingly unlikely partnership among:

•  The Alban Institute, an ecumenical and interfaith non-profit  organisation whose roots were planted originally in Mainline Protestantism
•  Word and Deed Network, part of Evangelicals for Social Action
•  Esperanza, “one of the largest Hispanic Faith-Based Evangelical networks in the United States”
•  Palmer Theological Seminary of Eastern University, “a Christian university of the arts and sciences”
•  A network of African American and Hispanic churches of urban Philadelphia who had worked previously on community ministry projects with our workshop leader, Joy Skjegstad.
I came away having learned some important lessons from this experience—mainly that these kinds of partnerships are the future of American congregations. Why? Because…

1.    Diversity wasn’t the point of the day; it was the outcome of intentional partnerships forged to address a common, pressing need—in this case for alternative funding strategies for congregations and their ministries.

2.    This shared commitment brought us together to play in the same sandbox for a day without having first attended to any of the differences that could have been obstacles to such a gathering—e.g., beliefs, language, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, theology, or geography.  We were so different from one another that we could not pretend politely to be the same; we had to be who we were and trust that we each had brought something to the table that all the others might find useful.  It was truly a kind of Pentecost moment!

3.    We were able to partner with one another in good faith because we realized that each of the four sponsoring organizations brought something that the others didn’t have—a hospitable location for a large group to park, meet, and be fed; a national network for marketing the availability of the event to a wide audience; connections with urban African American and Hispanic, as well as Caucasian Protestant, constituencies; experience organizing and facilitating large educational events; a reputation among evangelical Christians involved in social action and community ministry; expertise in grant writing and starting faith-based nonprofits.

4.    At this gathering, not only was the whole greater than the sum of its parts, but the particularities of our diverse backgrounds and perspectives—cultural and religious—were what gave authenticity to what was said, heard, and learned that day. No one spoke in broad generalities. The authentic voices that were heard spoke out of the concreteness of lived experience, struggling to find resources for their very specific communities of faith and practice.

5.    Each of the partners who had arranged and led the event felt that we had been the ones to gain the most benefit from our common efforts. Talk about a win-win situation!