Church & Civic Engagement Gathering

Thank you for joining us for the “Church and Civic Engagement” gathering on Tuesday October 8 from 5:00 to 9:00pm at the Bruce Bolling Municipal Building in Roxbury. Dinner will be served from 5:00 to 6:00pm, followed by the guided conversation in small groups. This is an invite-only gathering, hosted by UniteBoston, alongside a diverse group of Christian institutions. Here is a PDF of the invitation letter.

Please plan to arrive between 5:00 and 5:30pm to allow yourself time to eat dinner and get settled in before the formal program and small group conversation begins. You will be actively participating in small groups so please ensure your schedule allows you to arrive on time and stay for the duration of the event.
The address for the Bruce Bolling Municipal Building is 2300 Washington St, Roxbury, MA 02119. A list of nearby parking lots is available here, including the Blair parking lot and Dudley Square municipal parking lot around the corner of the building. We also received permission for this community to park in the large Urban League parking lot at 17 Warren Place, a five minute walk from the Bolling Building. The building is also adjacent to Dudley Station, with plenty of bus and public transportation options, and a 15 minute walk from Roxbury Crossing on the Orange Line.

This gathering aims to:

Create a space for deep listening and connection as Christian pastors and leaders about our different experiences leading during this election year, allowing God to spiritually form us through actively practicing the Fruit of the Spirit.
Be a public witness to our churches and our city that the way of Jesus is to love our neighbors through intentional, curious, respectful conversation.

The majority of our time together will be spent in intentionally diverse small groups where we will listen and share our values, concerns, and hopes surrounding this election year. The goal of the evening will not be to agree or change others’ minds or experiences. Rather, it will be to better understand each other’s perspectives and perhaps, in the process, we will come to better understand our own. This time of structured conversation will allow God to shape us through practicing the Fruit of the Spirit in conversation with one another.

Here is the flow of the evening:

5:00 – 6:00pm → Dinner
- Dinner, informal time of fellowship and connection
6:00 to 6:30pm → Orientation to the dialogue
- Warm, inviting, personal welcome to the space
- Opening liturgy
- Orientation to the dialogue, community commitments, and prayer
6:30 to 8:30pm → Small Group Guided Conversation
- Dialogue in small groups
8:30pm → Closing reflection on the experience
8:50pm → Thank you’s and closing benediction

We understand that the practice of guided conversations may be new to some, and the idea of conversing about this election and the mounting polarization may bring up some anxiety. To prepare, please read below to hear more on the background, process, and power of Reflective Structured Dialogue, a model of conversation designed to create a brave and safe space for all to engage well even in a time of internal and external tension.

We will work together to make sure that all participants feel comfortable talking about their experiences, values, and beliefs. Your unique voice and perspective truly matters to the conversation we will have together. All are welcome here.

Also, be sure to check out Church & Civic Engagement: Reaching Across Partisan Divides campaign and larger resource document that we launched on the UniteBoston website and newsletter around this same theme. It features curated articles and resources about how pastoral leaders can engage in this peacemaking work at this time with courage and hope. Please check it out and share with your networks as you feel appropriate; we will be sharing some of these resources at the dinner gathering as well.

Our team has also crafted a Daily Charge to Keep in Step with the Holy Spirit. We will be commissioning one another to walk in this way and you will be invited to sign a poster as a commitment to embody the fruits of the Holy Spirit in this challenging time in our country and city. We wanted to send this along to you before the gathering so you can prayerfully consider the opportunity to sign this with other Christian leaders in our city.

A Daily Charge to Keep In Step With the Holy Spirit

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. […] If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.” Galatians 5:22-23, 25

As we go forth, we desire to live inspired by the example of Jesus Christ, who calls us to love unconditionally (Matt 22:37), and values every person as created in God’s image (Gen 1:27), even in the face of disagreement or division.

We seek to embody the Fruit of the Spirit in our lives, giving honor to all parts of the Body of Christ (Gal 5, 1 Cor 12):

With love, we seek to bridge divides, stay curious, and pursue understanding.

With joy, we seek to uplift one another and celebrate our shared faith.

With peace, we seek to become peacemakers in a world often filled with conflict.

With patience, we seek to listen deeply and respond with grace.

With kindness, we seek to embody actions that reflect the compassion of Christ.

With goodness, we seek to stand firm in our convictions while respecting others.

With faithfulness, we seek to remain committed to God and to one another.

With gentleness, we seek to speak words that heal and build up rather than harm.

With self-control, we seek to temper our responses with wisdom and love.

As God’s people, we remember the call to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God (Micah 6:8). We go from here, as ambassadors of Christ’s love, empowered to be peacemakers in our communities (Matt 5:9). May the Holy Spirit guide you, strengthen you, give you endless grace, and fill you with hope as it is only together that we bear witness to Christ’s reconciling work and shalom in the world (Rev 7).

Prayerfully Crafted by Shelton Oakley Hersey and the UniteBoston Team

The Practice Of Dialogue – An Overview

A word of gratitude and hope …

We are grateful for your willingness to say “yes” to this opportunity to engage in healthy conversations across deep divides and practice the spiritual disciplines of active listening, asking transformative questions, and speaking with gentleness, humility, and self-control.

Our hope is that you are able to experience a different way of having conversations around sensitive issues. That you feel you had a chance to both better understand and be better understood.

What is dialogue and how is it different from everyday conversation …

Broadly speaking, dialogue is a way of engaging in conversation, often in groups but also between individuals. A dialogue is not a normal, everyday conversation. Dialogues are conversations that have been thoughtfully designed. They help people communicate in ways that feel fresh, constructive, and honest.

The goal of a dialogue is to listen as if for the first time. It’s to share your lived experience. It’s to find a new curiosity about your friends and neighbors. It’s to connect as complicated, whole human beings. In places where peoples’ lives and relationships are deeply intertwined— like church families—the ability to hold a dialogue can help folks live and serve better together by building mutual trust and understanding across their differences.

Dialogue creates new understandings, new relationships, a new level of trust, and new opportunities. The goal is not to change anybody’s beliefs or arrive at a solution (though that happens sometimes). Dialogue helps people wrestle with their differences openly, honestly, and with mutual dignity. It encourages a stronger sense of community, which is what makes real and lasting growth and relationships possible.

Reflective Structured Dialogue (RSD) – the model that will be our guide – leverages the power of personal reflection and structured conversations to create mutual understanding and new relationships, as well as a solid foundation for problem solving and collaboration.

Developed more than thirty years ago and used by communities around the globe, EP’s founders were behavioral health researchers and practitioners. As a result, RSD is rooted in proven therapeutic strategies while drawing insights and innovations from an array of related fields, including professional mediation, systems theory, conflict resolution, interpersonal communication theory, appreciative inquiry, narrative approaches, organizational development, psychology, and neurobiology. RSD lets people share their stories and beliefs while encouraging them to really hear perspectives and experiences that may be different from their own. RSD is designed to avoid the usual dynamics of polarized conversations.

For more information on the dialogue model and training that will guide the structure of our dialogue, check out Essential Partners (based out of Cambridge, MA).

What to expect from our dialogue …

We will conduct the dialogue in small groups of 4-5 people. Groups will have intentional diversity and leaders of color will be placed in pairs. Dialogue facilitators will be members of this community that indicate interest through the RSVP form. These individuals will attend a 1.5 hour-long virtual training on RSD facilitation and will be provided scripts to read the dialogue structure aloud to their small group to provide a similar experience.

We begin with clarifying and agreeing to the shared purpose for why we’re gathering. The statement of purpose for a dialogue serves as its guiding star. A clear purpose lets participants set appropriate expectations and helps the facilitator know how to best hold and maintain the “container” of the dialogue experience.

The stated purpose of your dialogue series is to:

Create a space for deep listening and connection as Christian pastors and leaders about our different experiences leading during this election year, allowing God to spiritually form us through actively practicing the fruit of the Spirit.
Be a public witness to our churches and our city that the way of Jesus is to love our neighbors through intentional, curious, respectful conversation.

We then shift to clarifying and agreeing to a shared way of being in our gatherings. These conversation commitments are a set of shared guidelines for the way people will engage and interact during the dialogue. They are a way we can experience unity and a shared way of being even amidst our differences, and they can also serve as guardrails to keep a tough conversation on track with its purpose.

Conversation Commitments for our dialogue::

Honor and respect the gift of time limits and “pass” or “pass for now” if you’re not ready or don’t wish to respond.
Speak for yourself and from your own experience (using “I” statements), with no pressure to represent or explain a whole group.
Hold each other’s stories in confidence.
Give the gift of presence by slowing our pace, practicing genuine curiosity, and tuning into the Image of God (Imago Dei) in each person as they share.

We will then open with a connecting question, followed by 3 structured questions. Each of these questions will follow a “think, write, speak” flow where everyone will have 2 minutes to write out their thoughts before turning their attention to listening. The facilitator will provide each person with 2 minutes to share (sharing is not obligated and passing is absolutely okay). Timed sharing, while often initially new to many dialogue participants, assures equity amongst conversation participants.

Following the structured questions, where everyone responds to the same question prompts, there will be a longer time of less structured conversation—an intentional space for questions of genuine curiosity from the participants to one another that can lead to deeper understanding. This is the time for participants to learn more about what others have said and to make connections between what is on their minds and what they’ve heard. The facilitator will step in if needed to maintain the purpose and conversation commitments.

We close with a final structured question where everyone will have another timed opportunity to share. The final reflection and closing invites participants to reflect on and appreciate what has been shared.