Our Call to Leadership

The Episcopal Church's Vestry Papers for June is out! 

The online version titled "Vital Practices" has a link to an article that I contributed, entitled "Our Call to Leadership" (@  http://bit.ly/LldXTz), written from my perspective as a Person of Color. Este artículo también está disponible en Español - "Nuestra Llamada al Liderazgo" (@ http://bit.ly/KOMkBA).

I begin the article with "I believe that People of Color have a special call to leadership in the church today in the United States. Although People of Color, particularly Latinos/Hispanics, are the fastest growing segment of the overall U.S. population, we are vastly under-represented in the pews of the Episcopal churches located within the U.S. and even more so in the ascending leadership ranks, especially at the diocesan, provincial, and church wide levels."

And I go on to say, "Ultimately, the responsibility to know one's own biases or lenses, including acknowledgement that such biases and lenses exist, is of paramount importance and falls upon the shoulders of the dominant culture. The almost constant burden to "translate" our (People of Color's) cultural differences into forms that are readily understood by the dominant culture is what causes the eye rolling you might sometimes catch us doing. It is a tremendous burden always to be the teachers, especially when we often perceive a willfulness not even to try to learn.

"My observation for my brothers and sisters of color is that our unique call as Persons of Color is to keep on showing up and doing the translating in the same way that the unique call of Christians is to keep on showing up and doing the translating of the values of following the Christ versus following money and power."

Read the article in full 

in English at http://www.ecfvp.org/vestrypapers/governance/our-call-to-leadership/ 

or en Español at http://www.ecfvp.org/vestrypapers/governance/nuestra-llamada-al-liderazgo/.