4.1 “The General Assembly shall engage in learning, dialogue, formation, discernment, and prayer on matters of social witness and other matters deemed essential to the witness and ministry of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).”
– Special Rules of the General Assembly
The Topic for Education, Discussion, and Prayer (TEDP) for the 2026 Digital Assembly was “Economic Justice.” Disciples are doing ministry across the US and Canada while facing rising utility costs, insurance rates, healthcare costs, and other economic challenges. The communities we love and serve are also facing economic challenges.
Two opportunities for education were offered during General Assembly 2026 and small groups of up to 20 people online or at local gathering sites discussed how Disciples are responding and how God’s surpassing love is moving among our movement for wholeness. Previous resolutions and actions that invited education, discussion, and prayer regarding economic justice from the General Assembly of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in the United States and Canada were shared in advance in the business section of the website. Cindy Kim-Hengst, Moderator, provided an immediate and brief verbal summary of responses from the groups with assistance from AI during General Assembly 2026. It can be viewed here.
9.2. The General Assembly Committee shall appoint several persons to provide an introduction during worship to each Topic from various theological and ideological viewpoints, striving to represent the diversity of opinions on each Topic in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).
Education on the TEDP, “Economic Justice,” was provided by Sandhya Jha and Adam Taylor. A historical perspective was offered by Rev. Sandhya Jha, author of Room at the Table, the history of people of color in the Disciples of Christ, and Pre-Post-Racial America: Spiritual Stories from the Front Lines. Rev. Jha is currently working on their PhD at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy and Practice, with a focus on comparing contemporary progressive and conservative social movements. Watch here.
A contemporary perspective was offered by Rev. Adam Russell Taylor, president of Sojourners. He previously led the Faith Initiative at the World Bank Group and served as the vice president in charge of Advocacy at World Vision. He is the author of A More Perfect Union: A New Vision for Building the Beloved Community. Watch here.
9.4. The General Assembly Committee shall organize several discussion sessions for the General Assembly to engage Topics.
9.5. Facilitators shall provide a written summary on the discussions in their groups to the Office of the General Minister and President.
Each small group was invited to discuss and share responses to the following questions:
1. What are the top 3 issues of economic justice that your congregation or community is facing?
2. What does surpassing love look like in your congregation or context?
3. Given the data that you’ve encountered, what action can you take and what will you pray for?
229 summaries were submitted from individuals and 52 small groups, some of whom identified themselves by their name, congregation or their General Ministry from cities, suburbs, small towns, and rural areas across the United States and Canada. Responses to each question included a wide range of reflections in the form of brief words, short phrases, and paragraphs.
Responses
1. What are the top 3 issues of economic justice that your congregation or community is facing?
2. What does surpassing love look like in your congregation or context?
Surpassing love is embodied and practiced by every congregation and ministry context. Each respondent conveyed several concrete ways that love is in action in their ministry setting.
- A pantry open twenty-four hours in a parking lot, restocked daily.
- Hosting a “Little Free Pantry” at the church.
- To intimately know our community and neighbors beyond a “wave.”
- A hundred to a hundred twenty-five breakfasts every Sunday morning.
- Warming centers, twenty nights a winter.
- Showers and haircuts.
- Bicycles.
- Gas cards.
- Underwear and socks coordinated with a school nurse.
- Two thousand snack packs a week during the school year.
- A community eye clinic running for thirteen years.
- Congregations that paid off medical debt — one Lenten offering cleared it for more than a hundred people.
- Congregations building affordable housing on their own ballfields.
- One congregation gave up its building for a dollar so it could become housing for families.
- One gives seventy percent of its income to mission and is trying to get to ninety.
- Participating with a city-sanctioned “safe parking” program for adults living in their cars.
- Advocating for affordable housing development.
- Picking up the pieces much as we are able, but a general avoidance of even discussing systemic issues which contribute to an ongoing gap between those who have and those who do not have. Supplying nonperishable items to a local food bank program and feeling that at least we have done something, yet feeling generally powerless.
And a number of groups reflected on the cost. One congregation runs its Sunday breakfast program knowing the building gets damaged and behavior is challenging. They wrote: “we do it because it is what Christ calls us to do. Surpassing love is regarding everyone as ‘us’ — there is not ‘us’ and ‘them.’” Similar reflections on the cost were offered from different respondents: “Surpassing love is costly and inconvenient,” and “Surpassing love is when it costs something – for some people a single shift in a soup kitchen is genuinely costly, and that counts too.”
3. Given the data that you’ve encountered, what action can you take and what will you pray for?
Theological reflections about appropriate responses to systemic issues and episodic examples of economic injustice, and words of challenge, aspiration, lament, and hope were widely offered in response to the final question. Disciples are willing to pray for courage, boldness, discernment, and the nerve to say something. One group prayed to “claim little moments of courage.” One prayed for “healthcare, unemployment, poverty, and debt. Praying for aboriginal peoples and their rights. Praying for ways our church can do outreach.” Another group prayed for additional streams of income to make a difference while others prayed to “keep their eyes on the shoreline.”
A few General Ministries and ministry programs were named by respondents including the New Beginnings program at DCEF, Pension Fund, National Benevolent Association, and the Christian Church Foundation. “We are grateful for the Pension’s Fund one time support this past year with the ACA, and there needs to be additional cushion and support for leaders in the church.” Reflections on how economic systems impact churches and communities included observations regarding “ballooning national debt and the strain it causes on the banking system. It is the issue that drives everything else. In one community, this causes the issue of housing pricing people out.” Another group noted, “Love the work of our Foundation and also why do we have over a billion dollars in the Foundation when folks are dying from not having food.”
Lingering questions and words of challenge were also offered:
“I will pray that we can more explicitly name the “sharks,” rather than speak in metaphor for the action we are called to do. We must be brave and prophetic and be the church we say we want to be.”
“It has been wonderful to discuss and learn and hear each other around economic justice. However, how does this translate to churches that do not even pay their pastor(s) and other employees a livable wage?”
“Get to know those who we encounter who are different from us. Sometimes their hopes are the same as ours. Offer quarterly community gatherings to focus on issues of economic justice. Pray that we can continue to love people who are different from us.”
“We should not rely on the government to do the job of churches. We need to support charities with help, donations and money, following the Bible!”
“Surpassing love is getting into the mess, doing the hard stuff, what Jesus would ask us to do. Because we are missing two generations of it, the older generation doesn’t give up. Surpassing love looks like–helping those outside of the church–helping a high school student get rid of their debt to the public school system so they can walk across the stage; making sure that sandwich ministry extends to people that are serving our neighbors right next door in the high school. We’re unsure if the question is asking us to think aspirationally or to name what we are doing. We’re discussing the importance of being concrete and valuing what we can do. How do we differentiate between charitable and justice works. Yes, we have to do both, and not just one. We have to respond to the needs of those before us AND deal with the systemic.”
This discussion report and all 229 submissions will be shared with the Mission Committee of the General Board.