Community
Commitments

We come together as a diverse, education-focused, Christ-centered community of learners and leaders seeking to discern how we might be used to advance opportunities for all students, their families and communities, and the educators and leaders who support them, and to advocate for those who have struggled against the powers and principalities of this world. To be in community, we acknowledge the need to honor the divine in ourselves and each other and recognize the different ways we show up, challenge, support, and impact one another. We also labor to create a space where we come together as equals and understand that despite this intent, historical, systematic, and cultural power structures continue to exist, even within our community.

Therefore, in service of building this beloved body of Christ, we commit to the following and to being reminded of our goals when we don’t act in these ways.

  • Loving the Lord our God with all our hearts and with all our souls and with all our minds and to loving our neighbors as ourselves;

  • Centering voices that haven’t often been centered in the American church, including the voices of Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color as well as women and LGBTQ people;

  • Speaking for ourselves and allowing others to speak for themselves, with no pressure to represent or explain a whole group;

  • Listening to understand, not to persuade or rebut, and being open to interrogating our own perspectives; 

  • Challenging ideas with grace, not the people who express the ideas;

  • Staying engaged through inevitable disagreements and conflict;

  • Addressing harm, individually or collectively as appropriate, and working to repair ruptures; 

  • Recognizing the interdependence of the Body of Christ while at the same time acknowledging we have divergent theological beliefs; 

  • Cultivating a culture of prayer to discern wisdom and guidance from and awareness of the Holy Spirit;

  • Cultivating the joy of the Lord; 

  • Engaging with disarming vulnerability and willingness to take risks to trust each other with our full humanity; 

  • Standing in loving solidarity with those who do not share our Christian beliefs and proactively co-building an expansive beloved community in coalition with others;

  • Maintaining confidentiality of all personally identifying information shared in our discussions.