• your neighborhood has changed—maybe there are more people of color or young people or poor people or lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people—and while you want to do the “right” thing, you have no idea where to start.
• you are one of The Others within a congregation, and you hope to spark or nurture your community’s commitment to transformation and find nourishment so that you can persevere.
• your church and area are homogeneous (or seem to be), but you still feel called to radical welcome as a spiritual practice—one that trains and stretches your heart to receive more of God, to surrender to the surprising, transforming movement of the Holy Spirit—and you want to find those opportunities to say “yes” to God and to The Other.
• you want to learn the basic language of radical welcome and wrap your mind and tongue around a term that’s getting more airplay everyday.
• you hope to move deeper, to get grounded in the biblical and theological issues surrounding and supporting radical welcome and perhaps to share those foundational insights with others in your congregation and community.
• you know you want to see your church become radically welcoming, but you could use some concrete examples and inspiring images of other congregations that have walked this road for a while, to see for yourself how it works.
• you’re ready to cast your own radically welcoming vision, to imagine in Technicolor what would happen at your church if you embraced fresh words, voices, songs, and faces, all standing alongside the wise, revered traditions and voices that have grounded your church’s identity so far;
• or you’ve already begun the journey toward radical change, but now you need to reckon with your history, fear (your own and others’), complacency, or a host of other challenges along the way.
This book is far more than a how-to guide for quickly achieving those goals. Rather, in the chapters that follow, I invite you to be part of a journey. Along the way, we will consider the biblical and theological foundations for radical welcome, explore vivid pictures of the dream come to life in several communities, and the resources people engaged in the work told me they found most essential—and hardest to find. You can take it to the next level using the book’s online companion—“Bread for the Journey”—which includes exercises, Bible studies, charts, strategic planning tips, and a workshop for congregations.
As you read, examine and move forward, I hope you will be patient with yourself and your community. Please stay rooted in hope, rather than paralyzing guilt or finger-pointing (at yourself or others). Try to be honest about your story, your privilege and your fears. Don’t be afraid to keep asking, “What new thing is God calling me to be and to do?” and “What support, education, training and practices would help me to follow through on what I now imagine for myself and my congregation?” The road into new life is a long one, and this leg of the journey is designed to stretch your imagination, fuel your passion and guide you closer to God’s radically welcoming dream for us all.
1. The term radical welcome has cropped up independently in various communities over the past decade or so. I coined the phrase for my own use after colleagues demanded a concise descriptor for the broadly inclusive churches I was beginning to study. My initial project—spending four months conducting intensive, on-site research with eight congregations nationwide—was called the Radical Welcome Project.
Later, I discovered leaders at St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church in New York City use the same term to characterize their ministry to all God’s people, especially seekers and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) people. Other groups in the “welcoming congregations” movement—which seeks total inclusion for LGBT people—have expanded the idea of welcoming so that it encompasses an even broader community of outcasts. They landed at radical welcome by a natural evolutionary process.
It’s time to bring a different set of questions.
Not just how do we get more people, but how do we
share power, how do you create a culture that is flexible
and fluid enough to be open, constantly evaluating and
reorganizing based on the reality around you?
THE REVEREND ALTAGRACIA PEREZ, HOLY FAITH EPISCOPAL CHURCH, INGLEWOOD, CALIFORNIA
Just what is radical welcome? Most people hear the term and think it’s about having a warm, dependable welcome at the door of the church and a really good cup of coffee and snacks in the church hall. They assume it’s the province of the Hospitality and Greeters Committee or maybe, just maybe, the Outreach and Justice group.
Those are wonderful goals. But that’s not where radical welcome is aiming. Radical welcome is a fundamental spiritual practice, one that combines the universal Christian ministry of welcome and hospitality with a clear awareness of power1 and patterns of inclusion and exclusion.
Just look at the words. Radical. Welcome. Both terms are rich with meaning. Welcome says come in, sit down, stay a while; we are honored to have you. It also says the door is open, a bit like, “You’re welcome to whatever is in the fridge.” And it indicates an openness of spirit, that what we do is a pleasure. When someone thanks you for a gift or kind gesture, your “You’re welcome” communicates graciousness and ease and allows the other person to receive with equal ease and grace.
Croatian theologian Miroslav Volf explores yet another avenue for understanding welcome: the concept of embrace. In his book Exclusion and Embrace, Volf traces the four movements that compose mutual embrace2:
• Act One: Opening the arms. This move telegraphs the desire to reach beyond yourself in order to connect with the other,3 to be part of the other and to have the other be part of you. The act of opening your arms also creates space for the other to come in—boundaries are down, the self is open. Finally, he says, open arms are an invitation. “Like a door left opened for an expected friend, they are a call to come in.”4
• Act Two: Waiting. You cannot force the other to come inside. You cannot reach out and grasp and coerce. You must wait at the boundary of the other, wait for him to open to you, hope that the power of your vulnerability and desire for the other will prove compelling, even transforming.
• Act Three: Closing. After the other steps into the embrace, there is closing. This is mutual indwelling, holding the other within the bounds of yourself and finding yourself received in kind. Such indwelling shouldn’t be confused with disappearing, melting into each other or merging into undifferentiated beings. “In an embrace, the identity of the self is both preserved and transformed, and the alterity (difference) of the other is both affirmed as alterity and partly received into the ever changing identity of the self.”5 Nor do you have perfect understanding of each other; the goal is not to master the other, but to receive the other on her own terms and continue to seek relationship.
• Act Four: Opening the arms. Because the two have not melted into one, you may once again open your arms. Now you have the chance to look at yourself and rediscover your own identity, “enriched by the traces that the presence of the other has left.”6 And you look again at the other, the one whose identity will continue to change, the one who will continue to be both friend and mystery. The one you may embrace again with your now open arms.
This is the drama of reconciling, mutual welcome. Think of the times you have been embraced, welcomed, received. We all know how good it is to come home like that, even if the territory is new. When someone carefully, lovingly sets a table for