Imagine with Me: Church Narrative Project

Terri Hord Owens: Hello Disciples, this is your General Minister and President, Rev. Terri Hord Owens and welcome to another episode of Imagine with Me an opportunity that I have to speak with leaders across our church and across our ecumenical community to talk about who we must be as a new church in this new world, to imagine an alternative world to the one in which injustice prevails today.

I am really excited to have with me to important guests, who are working with the whole church on a new project that we’re calling the Church Narrative Project, and we will learn more about what that means. But I want to invite to the stage with me, the Rev. Dr. David Anderson Hooker, who is the founder of Counter Stories Consulting and the author of the little book of Transformative Community Conferencing: A Hopeful, Practical Approach to Dialogue. Dr. Hooker is an ordained minister of the United Church of Christ. He’s an attorney as well as a PhD and professor. 

The Rev. Yvonne Gilmore also joins us. Many of you know Yvonne, she serves as the Interim Administrative Secretary of the National Convocation and Associate General Minister of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), so I would like to welcome Dr. Hooker, and Rev. Gilmore to the conversation with me today.

Welcome friends. We certainly aren’t strangers. We have been spending a lot of time thinking and talking together about how we move forward with this important work for the whole church. And I want to stress that this is a church wide initiative project that we’re engaged on one that we hope will truly transform the church and one that I hope will actually help us to be who we say we are. Dr. Hooker, would you start maybe by telling us a little bit about your own work with Counter Stories and the Transforming Community Conferencing process? Just share a little bit about who you are and what you’re about. 

Rev. Dr. David Anderson Hooker: Sure. So I am really excited about how this work will attach itself to the church and then the church to the world. I spent 30 plus years doing conflict transformation mediation, restorative justice. And what was happening was I was addressing pressing the issue as it was presenting itself, but it was almost full employment because the issue kept popping back up and popping back up. And so trying to understand what really needed to be addressed. It’s not just the story that’s being told by the issue, but it’s a much larger narrative that has to be shifted so that people can live into and live out a different set of commitments. And so moving from just mediation to doing broader narrative work as the basis for Counter Stories and doing that.

Particularly with people who have created a habit of living and relating in one way based on old narratives, and helping them to identify the unconscious narratives that are driving their lives and figuring out what’s new and what’s preferred as a way of being. And so that’s the nature of Counter Stories. And we do that, we say at the level of self, system and society. And so this is like really exciting because the church exists and has authority and responsibility at the level of self, system, society. So, Counter Stories was made, for this church project.

THO: We can’t be, I can’t tell you how excited we are about this work. And as we have been starting to have these conversations across the church. Other people, the fire is contagious, and I am really excited to share that and to see what will come of it. We have I always we have a lot of good words, a lot of good things that we say about who we are as Disciples. Our real challenge, is to be their church we say we are, but I think what you’re inviting us to do is even better understand just exactly what are we saying about who we are and what’s the real narrative and how do we need to name it? So that, that shared future that we walk into together is something where we won’t keep running up on the same problems, or at least understand where they are.

Rev. Yvonne, could you maybe introduced and I joke because I could be answering a lot of these questions myself, but I am here as the moderator and so excited that you have agreed to be the point person on this project from the Office of General Minister and President. Can you talk a little bit about what we have invited Dr. Hooker to do with the Disciples over say, the next year or so and perhaps, both of you can talk about what that might look like and what form it’s taking?

Rev. Yvonne Gilmore: Absolutely. And I am excited to invoke and emphasize what you have invited us to do in terms of reminding us that we need to be the people we say we are and so this project helps position and gives us the tools to do that. I think we all agree as you talk about that, we’re called to be a new church for a new time. Some of that’s been sort of not by choice, right?

I didn’t wear, it was a mask mandate, but I think as love’s mandated reporters, as I call us, as followers of Jesus we’re mandated reporters of love. But that being a new church for a new time, what does that actually mean? What do we need to do and become? What narratives undergird that this is? This is actually grounded in Luke 17:20-21, where talks about the kingdom, you know, is within us. But it says, you can’t just look here or there for it, but it’s among us.  And so is that as Dr Hooker talks about these unconscious narratives, right? That we know that in order for us to shape a narrative of a shared future that we have got to we got to do the work to get at what those unconscious narratives? Are we say we are one, that’s been our polar star. That’s been our clarion call from the beginning, right? When we were anti-denominational. We said we’re one, but what does it actually mean to be one? How do we invite? How do we live that out?

And so we’re in this time where folks are already having complex conversation, or now, maybe they’re just lifting up platitudes, but we’re excited, I believe, to be equipped right to build capacity, to have complex conversation. There is a story that only Disciples, there’s a story that only the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) can tell. And so we need to get together and spend time. And so we will, I talk about this as musical chairs in reverse that we’re going to be coming to every region, we’re going to be working with every general unit. No one will be left behind, unless you opt just not to participate. 

But that will be hosting story hours all over the US and Canada and will also be hosting Transformative Community Conferences, that Dr. Hooker will facilitate and then will help train a cadre of trainers across the U.S. and Canada.

This won’t be a project that’s just exclusive to a few, but we’re all we want the whole church to be equipped with the whole church to participate in the narrative of a shared future, right? That God is already beginning to reveal but that we need to, we need tools to yet connect the dots as a whole church and covenant with one another. But we want congregations to be resource in this way. We want General units to be resourced, our theological institutions, everybody really, really together. We will be, we will be learning more about best practices and tools that are necessary in order for us to be neutral new time and be all that God is calling us to be in. So I am just thrilled and excited. Dr. Hooker has worked with some clergy in Illinois/Wisconsin has already done some things with a few TCC’s that many Regional ministers have experienced and certainly has worked with our General Minister and President in a variety of capacities. And so we’re just I am excited that everybody else is going to get to learn and grow and I won’t say get dirty together. But yeah the thick of it right to really kind of wrestle together.

THO: One of the things is I have been you know now traveling more across the church and trying to talk about this work and the work that we’re doing in Covenant together, governance I am trying to remind people this is a churchwide conversation. This is not a training. This is not an event that we’re holding. Dr. Hooker, how could you help people, maybe better understand what we mean by a Transforming Community Conference at TCC and the actual work of really writing a new narrative?

DAH: Yes.

THO: What was that experience going to be like for us?

DAH: Well, it’s hard to know exactly what it’s going to be like because the people in the room create the conversation, and they’re being in the room means, it’s the only conversation that can be had. And it’s the exact right conversation to be had, but we’re going to try to do together is to notice the places where we don’t see ourselves fully living into the commitments that we have made. What are, what if anything are impediments to that? And we start with this notion that the people aren’t the problem. Like we often say that somebody is holding us back or something, but we want to notice what actually is, what if any impediments are there, but also play attention to where we actually are seeing sparks and examples of what it is that we are called to be. Who we are called to be aware we’re actually living that out. And then notice what are the relationships, the resources, the structures, who we have to listen too differently. I talk about testimonial authority, like, who has to be given a different level of testimonial authority in order to live into this space. And so, I will say this about Disciples, one of the things about out that I have learned to work with this church over a while being exposed is the deep commitment to congregational and individual life and individual expression, which makes this a great challenge because if you’re going to be one, there’s a way to live out who you are and to live it out with them, a commitment of a narrative in which everybody has the opportunity to flourish. And so is your commitment, only to your flourishing, is your commitment only to the congregational flourishing, or is it to be a unified expression?

Where while we are expressing ourselves individually, we’re all we’re creating a world in which everybody can flourish the notion of the table where everybody can flourish, which is that, you know, beautiful symbol that the Disciples hold on to. And, so I think that deep in the foundational commitments, it’s there. And just have to develop some of the habits and identify some of the practices and possibilities that make it fully visible.

THO: Yeah. I think that’s one of the most exciting things for me and one of the AHA moments I had when I first heard you speak, maybe in 2018, 2019, with the National Council of Churches about those fractal practices. What are the habits and practices that bear common witness to is to a particular identity and commitment, even though we are also very different in our congregational, Regional, and even General expressions, in sort of what is we always say? That’s not discipled, and we can attach that to a lot of things that are actually oppressive and theologically, don’t make any kind of sense, and I think this process of sorting through, who are we trying to be and what’s keeping us from doing that and helping us to own those things that are uniquely us and our particular context that can still be connected to this broader work.

Either of you can answer this question…Yvonne, you have been one of our core trainers for our Reconciliation Ministry. Our church has, had a strong commitment to the work of anti-racism, even before we named it, as a priority and vision 2020. Since the early 60s, late 60s, before we were even a denomination, the church was learned about the issues of racism and poverty. And I am struck by the fact that at a General Assembly before the restructure, when we became a denomination Disciples invited, Dr. King to speak at the assembly, even though the head of the church at that time, was warned that, that might derail the restructure in. Thank God Dale Fires, held his ground and continue to invite Dr. King, but if I maybe you could speak to this isn’t just repackaged anti-racism work, but it will help us I think live into that commitment. So, so how would you contextualize this alongside this commitment that we have to be an anti-racist church.

YG: Absolutely. I think I would say two things. Since you know, yeah, 68, 69, 70, the church made a real formal, clear commitment. We know there have been decades since then and that, even right before Reconciliation was constructed it was called the Urban Emergency Fund, right? Because they say, located it because they were riots, Disciples, didn’t just give to, you know, our own institutions, right? What I mean, give away millions of dollars to support Urban League in ACP, right? That was, that was how we and so, I named that right to say that we know that there are the times of change. We know, approaches change. We know we change. And I believe God’s given us tools to do ministry more effectively and more fully. And as we think about both our own fullness and our own incompleteness, in terms of the work of anti-racism, as people of faith, right? There are lenses isn’t just a social lens lenses as people of faith that we have done, you know, we have had training and will continue to do training.

We’re telling stories and I thank God for the Kirkpatrick Lecture and opportunity because the reality is, I think not only do we not know each other’s lived experience often times today. We don’t, we’re not acquainted with our lived experiences, even if yesterday, but that, but that I think, as people of faith with the theological lens that there is yet an impact for us to make on the world to defeat and dismantle racism. Which it’s sin, it’s sin. And so as we think about what it means, And I say to be fully human and fully Christian, right?

That this will help us as we think about our whole narrative which absolutely includes a commitment to being anti racist, but that isn’t the whole song rain and total right of our full commitments as Christians and followers of Jesus. And so I am grateful for the ways. This is going to equip us to revision and to go further and I think God, I do believe actually, there’s been so much innovation within the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). I mean, I am long-term commitments from everybody and I claim that and boast in the Lord in terms of it. But I also claimed that there’s more work to do and so excited about this is going to help us do that.

THO: Absolutely. Yeah. I just want to be sure that people’s the boundaries of what we’re doing here don’t begin and stop with anti-racism work. As important as that is. This is about the whole of who the church says it is and that’s when an important commitment. One of the things that we have been talking about it as you want and I have been talking to the churches, connecting the dots with work that’s going on, within the Governance Committee of the General Board work that we’re now calling the Covenant Project because we don’t want people just to think we’re tweaking language within the design or within the standing rules.

What we’re trying to get to as a broader amplifying the capacity for congregations and people in pews to engage and have conversations across the life of the church directly with the General Board and not just at General Assembly. Yvonne, I might turn to you again to maybe Amplified that a little bit and I could jump into. But it’s I think it’s important is I am talking about folks that the Church Narrative Project isn’t it just something that you could choose to do or not, because I think that it’s part of a church wide conversation that won’t be successful unless the whole church participates and that this can actually help us build capacity for this other transformative work that we’re trying to do in terms of how we make decisions together. Can you say, would you jump in there and add a little more?

YG: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you for lifting up the fact that this isn’t just rules changes, this isn’t just looking at the bylaws. Which I suppose there are church geeks that like to do that, but that isn’t what this is. This really is I think a deep substance of commitment right to discern  just as they did, you know, 50 years ago, what is God’s design today? How we already shifted the ways that our relational capacity are relational mechanisms ways of being church, right? We already know there’re some things that are different. There’re some things that are outdated, but the even beyond updating and correcting was outdated as we think about how can we be faithful today.

We already, you know, interacting more online. And how can we use, those capacities and our God-given gifts. That, that we claim to be people of the table, and we say that there’s room for everyone, but our rules and design don’t always enable that to be the case. And, so I praise God for the work of the Covenant Project that it is. In fact that there’s a real integral relationship right there we can’t envision a narrative of a shared future, but they’re not also be thinking about but how do we what are the steps we need to take to get there? And so I am so grateful for these processes that are complementary and that thank you that for naming, that it isn’t just a choice but in fact, that God is calling us. We’re all compelled to be a part of it that we want to create the narrative but also the details, we need to draw out to get there.

THO: Dr. Hooker we’ve talk to you a lot about connecting the dots. I think, when we first started talking about working with us, you have done a couple of transforming Community Conferences that haven’t resulted as you pointed out and actually writing a new narrative. But we have taken a group through the process in 2020 and the middle when the pandemic first started, we took another group through last spring, A lot of the folks in that group are going to be on this wider advisory group that we hope will become trained in the process and be able to accompany a groups of folks there at the church, but we have always been talking about connecting these dots, right? And so that people would understand that this wasn’t a standalone piece and that we were trying to affect certain kinds of change. How do you think the  the TCC process, and the work that you’re envisioning to do with us will help us build that capacity for dialogue and conversation in a more rich in sin and grassroots kind of way?

DAH: So we’re doing transformative Community conferencing, which we haven’t done fully either of the previous workshops. We have never done the full transformative Community conferencing. We have played around the edges of it. What’s really important is that in the process? You’re mapping. You’re always seeing how one commitment Next to other commitments or how other one problematic impacts other problematics both in the church, but also in your life and in your lived experience in community and your lived experience in family, and so, as we’re looking at that and trying to connect like what are the structures in this Covenant Project? What are the structural changes that are going to make this broader commitment to being a new church, more effective more possible?

So that the idea is to build it in. So, that the values, you live become habit, the narrative that you’re pursuing becomes habit. And so as long as the structures don’t bump up against that, they actually facilitated. And, so I think that these connecting the dots will sit really well inside of and with respect to a new narrative, A Narrative of a shared future, which is essential for being one while being individually and congregationally expressed.

THO: Amen. Amen. I think it’s, I wish there are ways were working on a communications plan to help folks in regions and congregations. And we also want to lift up the fact, we’re not just talking about conversations with clergy or talking about lay people. This is going to be a diverse multi-generational, all the communities, have our church. We’re inviting participating in and be a part of it, as it moves is, that circle of musical chairs gets wider and wider as Yvonne talked about, it really is about the whole church.

I was talking with a group of regional leaders who are going through a different kind of additional sort of leadership development process and was lifting up to them that we have lots of tools that in the toolkit that we need to use. And so let us not just focus on a particular lens, but see how all together as you say, where the consistencies are and where the mapping is so that everything that we do, and the way that we look at these, things helps us to live into these shared commitments and this shared future together, but we got a name that together in a way that holds us all accountable for how we do and what we do.

One final question for both of you because we’re just about out of time. We have been talking about, you know, imagining who we must be as a new church in a new world. How does this work help us to be the church we say we are and grow stronger in this idea of covenant? How and Dr. Hooker from the standpoint of learning about as how do you think this process is going to help us as disciples given what we say we’re about?

DAH: So thing that I am really excited to see expressed is What it means for people to be at the table and to create a table that is open and welcome with a door, that’s always open. And so that everybody knows that whenever you come, we have been waiting for you and we’re prepared for you to be here and to give your gifts and to take whatever you need. What are the values and the practices that allow that to be possible because if people start seeing that at the micro level at the mezzo level of the macro at the meta level…There’s a level of kind of expression and lived in Tunis that, this Disciples confession is going to shape and push around all of their communities in ways that has a ripple effect. And so, If you don’t want to be who you say, you are, then this may not be the process for you. But if you’re willing to be who you say you are, this is a great way to lean in.

THO: Amen. Amen. Yvonne.

YG: I was going to sey the church is never gathered in this way, before friends, right? We get together at General Assembly. We gather in our and local congregations. But this is a, this is a unique moment in the life of our denomination together and the new work we have never done. In the, in this way before, this isn’t just come get your tool box and take it home, but was an opportunity right for us, really to grow as we gather together and I believe we’re positioned to do it. We have been at home. We have been isolated. Let us come to the table and grow and be new. It’s a new song together.

THO: Amen. We are Disciples of Christ and movement for wholeness in a fragmented world as part of the one body of Christ we welcome all to the Lord’s table as God has welcomed us. We don’t need new language. We just need to BE the church that we say we are so Dr. Hooker, Rev. Yvonne, we are so looking forward as we continue to put all the nuts and bolts together. Church, you’re going to be hearing more about the Church Narrative Project, and we have several regions of already signed on General Ministries will be sign on some of these conversations as well. It’s not an event. It’s a process that hopefully will create in US is as some practices and habits that will hold us, accountable, going forward. And then the Covenant Project is simply the way that we’re going to ensure that our processes by which we make our decisions are consistent with who we say, we are in the values that we named.

So, thank you so much, Dr. Hooker and Rev. Yvonne for being with me today and church, you will be hearing much, much more about the Church Narrative Project. If you have more interest in what more details Rev. Yvonne or I would be happy to have conversation.

You can always contact the office of General Minister and president, and we will be happy to have a conversation about how your region, how your congregation, how you can be involved. Happy to talk to as many folks as we can about this important work as it kicks off at the end of the summer and moving into the Fall. Remember church that we are a movement for wholeness. Let us be the church that we say we are. And as we continue to move together. Remember that God loves you. God loves you so much and so do I. Take care and we will see you on the next episode of Imagine with Me.