Task Force Tackles Cross Racial/Cross Cultural Appointments
6/6/2011
During my Episcopal Address at Annual Conference this year I talked about some of the challenges and opportunities in appointment making. I went on to share with you that for six months there has been task force at work on Cross Racial/Cross Cultural (CR/CC) Appointment Making. The genesis of the task force was an effort to be more proactive about this aspect of appointment making. The current working group includes persons, from the Board of Ordained Ministry, the Cabinet, the Commission on Religion and Race, the Ethnic Local Church Concerns and several persons at-large who bring the expertise of experience in the field. I have served up to the present time as the convener of the task force which has named as its mission:
In order to equip congregations and pastors in the IGRC to have the most effective ministry experience in cross racial/cross cultural appointments we will develop and implement biblically based, kingdom focused, culturally competent training models.
The goal of the task force is to make the aforementioned training available to multiple audiences in early 2012. There will be training modules designed and available for members of congregations, pastors, cabinet, staff and those who work with persons preparing for ordained and licensed ministry to name a few.
To date the work has included making the case for the work, defining the scope of the work and gathering resources for the work. A crucial part of the resource gathering soon to be done is hearing stories about cross racial/cross cultural (CR/CC) appointment experiences in the IGRC. It will not be possible to hear every story of every congregation, congregant, pastor, DS etc. who has had involvement with a CR/CC appointment in this conference. But gathering some salient gleanings will be important in identifying best practices as well as practices that should not be repeated.
Embracing CC/CR appointments as an opportunity and planning for them to be effective and fruitful is important alignment work. The names of task force members follow below. Watch and listen for future updates and please hold this work in prayer.
Cross Racial/Cross Cultural Appointment Task Force
Sharon Brown
Rev. Tom Corum
Pam Hammond-McDavid
Rev. In-Sook Hwang
Rev. Cindy Jones
Rev. Liz Reis
Rev. Gerald Savage
Rev. Roosevelt Smith
Linda Trent
Rev. Bradley Watkins, II
Lavon Wilson
