DEIB as Christ's Principles for the YMCA
What does healthy spiritual leadership in the YMCA mean for a community wracked by violence, rivalries, mistrust, loneliness and grief? Can the history and mission of the Y fuel our strategy for all?
In what ways is serving as a spiritual leader for the YMCA and our community the same as leading DEIB strategy for our organization and partners through training, outreach, and practical resources?
Or: Can our “Christian Principles” expand our capacity to be “for all” beyond what we could even ask or imagine? Can being “for all” expand our capacity for putting “Christian principles into practice through our programs” beyond what we could even ask or imagine? Or are they incompatible?
And how do we do this when our YMCAs are caught up in global conflagrations? A Y gets bombed, another one has to close due to war, and others face declining membership, or embezzled funds or discrimination lawsuits, or unstoppable leaks in their roofs.
What do spiritual leadership and DEIB strategy have to do with those raw realities?
What is healthy spiritual leadership for the YMCA and the community, based on our history and brand mission statement?
Since we are to “build healthy spirit, mind and body” one could say that this is the goal of successful spiritual leadership. But what is “spirit” and how does it relate to our mind and body, and what does “healthy” look like?
The YMCA purposefully introduced the language of “spirit” into its programs in the late 1890s as a response to the materialistic, positivistic, scientific expectations dominating the imaginations of what flourishing humans and communities could look like. Are people just a body with a brain, or a mind encapsulated in human flesh, machines to be mastered through reason, logic and increased efficient controls?
The Y introduced the triangle as a metaphor to support their commitment to helping young Christian men become stronger by paying attention to their spirit as a way to get healthier in their mind and body. The spirit mediates the life of the mind with our physical body in the natural world.
So what is the spirit that the Y was trusting would shape the men in their midst?
This may be an oversimplification, but I’d propose the following:
the marks of a healthy spirit are having a clear and meaningful purpose for your life,
having a few close friendships and a loving association/community in which to participate in your life,
and to serve the broken (often violent/rivalrous) world with a vital, enduring energy that fosters healing/renewal.
So what’s the connection then to healthy spiritual leadership and a DEIB strategy in the YMCA?
Well, the whole premise of DEIB is that too many people are struggling to survive/thrive in a broken (often violent/rivalrous) segregated world and are cut off from resources to healing/renewal for their souls, for widening their loving association/community and deepening their close friendships, for recognition of their meaningful goals in life for those they are doing life with.
When DEIB turns into a power-game, about placing people in hierarchical positions to leverage influence towards ideological goals, it often overlooks the role of healthy spiritual leadership for all. Power-over quickly becomes toxic and undermines the healing role of power-with and power-under as a way to build mutuality and empower practical grass-roots action.
But when DEIB is a strategy for healing spiritual leadership, a new perspective opens up, and new relevant dimensions of diversity can be explored for healing equity, beautiful inclusion, and transformative belonging.
As a Protestant Christian pastor serving as the Christian Emphasis Director for the YMCA of Greater Fort Wayne striving to put this kind of vision into practice, it seemed prudent to explore how DEIB might also be a strategy of God for our broken, violent, rivalrous, segregated world.
The story of the YMCA (started in 1844) includes grounding our identity in the Paris Basis (1851), which centers on participating in the kingdom of God in this world as it really is, so how might that be an envigorating yet also convicting identity to explore for how we might fulfill our mission in healing ways these days?
Here’s a brief Christian overview from my POV (so much more could be said - so feel free to leave comments if you’ve got suggestions):
DIVERSITY: Jesus has a very diverse identity, very complicated, very controversial, very difficult to grasp. Jesus claims to be the Son of God and also the obvious son of Mary but not-so-obvious maybe the Son of Joseph (scandalous for sure.)
Jesus at his crucifixion is identified as “King of the Jews” because of his genealogical connection to the kings of Israel, including the famous King David, yet he is formally executed by the Roman Imperial occupying government as a criminal under charges of political sedition and religious blasphemy leveraged by the community of priests and Temple leaders in Jerusalem.
Also, the apostle Paul writes that in Jesus (called the Christ, or Messiah, or “anointed one” as a deliverer of Israel from slavery) God created the heavens and the earth, and that Christ Jesus holds the whole cosmos together. In the writings of Genesis God declares that everything created is good, a teeming diversity of biological life surging with symbiotic realities.
And sociologically Christianity is the most diverse religion in history. God obviously loves diversity. The Christ of Christianity and followers who are to be “little Christs” include a diverse identity, a diverse history, diverse points of view (four gospels, multiple authors of the New Testament, diverse audiences), amidst a Creation full of diverse geographies and animals and humanity.
EQUITY: other words for this in the Hebrew Scriptures and New Testament are “righteous” and “justice” - key attributes of God’s character and identity.
The whole story of God and humanity pivots on the themes of equity, justice and righteousness - the relationship of Adam & Eve with God, and of Abraham, and of Israel, of King David, and the writings of the Psalmists and Prophets. It is the key to understanding the life of Jesus, his words and actions, his promises and preaching, his life and death and resurrection.
Whatever imagination we have as humans for equity in our world, at least here in our Western Civilization as lived in the USA, it is grounded in these Biblical narratives, for better or worse. Whether it’s the influence of the Ten Commandments or the inspiration of the Beatitudes, the power of the Lord’s Prayer or the fascination with the miracles of Christ Jesus, they are all grounded in the equity, righteousness and justice of God towards humanity (whom God loves, as experienced through Jesus of Nazareth).
There is no utopia in the Promised Land then or now, but there is a promise of God being on the side of those oppressed by people with power who afflict inequities and injustice on the poor, who are unrighteous in their heart and heartless in their economic and sociological practices.
INCLUSION: there is no more radical story of inclusion than the covenant relationship that God initiates with Abraham, which includes making him a blessing such that the whole world would be blessed through him. The vast differences between the identity and reality of God and that of Abraham is beyond fathoming, which reveals the radicalness of God’s choice to make himself known to Abraham and forge a covenant with him that would transcend the ages.
The only inclusion even more radical is that of God making a new covenant with the whole world through the life of Jesus, a descendant of Abraham, fulfilling the promise to bless the whole world but in ways beyond what anyone could have asked for or imagined.
Jesus demonstrates this radical inclusion throughout the Gospel stories: the selection of diverse disciples who became apostles, the many different women who befriended and cared for him along the way, the diversity of disenfranchised and broken people he healed, fed, embraced, instructed, listened to, blessed. He was so inclusive that it caused scandal, he was regarded as a drunkard and a glutton, a “friend of sinners” because of how much time he spent with the outsiders.
One of his famous descriptions for the kingdom of God is a giant banquet table to which the high and mighty refuse to sit at unless they can all have the seats of honor, and those who are most welcomed are those that society would never invite.
BELONGING: throughout the stories of the Bible are descriptions of what it means to belong to God and one another: “people of God” or “children of God” or “brothers and sisters in Christ” or “one in the Spirit” or “fellowship of saints” or “co-sufferers for the gospel” “adopted heirs” or “friend of God” or “ambassadors of reconciliation” - identities all grounded in practices of hospitality, scandalous welcoming, culture-defying acceptance, generous grace in making space for all outcasts who want to join.
Pentecost Sunday is a shocking story of people from around the world hearing about the DEIB strategy of God in the life experiences of Jesus, which caused wonder and disbelief!
The Apostle Paul’s most memorable letters and inspiring writings center on compelling different kinds of people to participate in life together - people who would never otherwise want to do so, but now because of what they know of God through Jesus a whole new way of being together is possible (think letter to Phillipans, or the love-poem to the Corinthians).
This brief overview of a DEIB strategy of God as revealed in the Bible for the world as it really inspires me towards a healthier spiritual leadership.
It moves me to action in forging meaningful connections amidst a world broken apart by violence and rivals; to participating in institutions as they really are while practicing radical hospitality for all who might want it.
It is marked by grace and courage, love and forgiveness, truth and joy, suffering and peace, connections that heal, and making a difference where others had given up.
This is the global experiment I’m trying to articulate and then collaboratively put into practice, for all.
We shall see how it goes…
What else would you add? How would you do it differently?