style="font-size:15px;"> Few communities could achieve the vision of radical welcome in its totality. Radically welcoming communities are the ones committed to transformed life, a life that aims to be:
• Hospitable: They seek to offer a gracious, warm space to all people, especially those who have been defined as “Other,” systemically disempowered and oppressed, pushed to the margins. In the Episcopal Church and most mainline churches, that could include people of color, poor people, children and young adults, gay and lesbian people, seniors, people with disabilities, and many other groups.
• Connected: They link to their neighbors, to their neighborhood, to brothers and sisters beyond their neighborhood with whom they actively practice what it means to embrace and be changed by Jesus.
• Centered: They possess a clear, compelling sense of Christian identity. That self-understanding is based in part in their cultural and denominational heritage, but primarily in the unapologetic and clear call to live out the dream of God as they have discerned it in light of Scripture, tradition, reason, and their context.
• Open to conversion: They attempt to listen carefully to, make room for, share power with, and learn from groups who’ve been silenced, closeted and disempowered, and they are open to genuine conversion and transformation based on this encounter with The Other. On the ground, that means they allow God’s Spirit and the gifts of The Other to enrich and transform their understanding of who is inside and who is outside, what ministries they undertake, how they select leaders, how they do business, how they worship, what they claim as their mission and purpose, and how they partner with other groups.
• Intentional: They engage in training, research, active listening, strategic planning: some conscious, contextually appropriate effort that addresses individual, congregational, institutional, and systemic change. They realize radical welcome does not come merely as a matter of goodwill or a by-product of enthusiastic outreach programs.
• Comprehensive: They recognize that the work cannot be left to a specialized ministry area, like the Outreach Ministry, the Social Justice Team or the Hospitality Committee; it is a way of being, and should eventually be cultivated by the chief leaders through formation, worship, mission, and other areas of congregational life.
• Becoming: They realize this journey is never finished, so they are always becoming, always looking beyond the congregation to see who has been left out or pushed out, always aware that the stranger’s face is the very face of Christ.
• Beyond diversity: They understand that radical welcome is not merely about diversity, evangelism, multiculturalism, inclusion, or getting it “right.” It is simply, profoundly about being faithful disciples of the Christ who welcomed and still welcomes all.
• Faithful: They honor radical transformation not as a necessary evil or as change for the sake of change, a response to misplaced liberal guilt or a church growth strategy, but instead because they are saying “yes” to God’s gracious invitation to welcome as Christ welcomes.
• Compassionate: They prioritize the work of creating “space for grace”9: small groups, forums and other settings where people can develop, express and hold their dreams and their fear of change, even as they deepen their commitment to radical welcome.
• Real: They acknowledge they will not be perfect or consistently, radically embrace every group. A radically welcoming congregation is one where the members are becoming God’s radically welcoming people.
Radical Welcome Is Not . . .
As you seek to understand radical welcome, get crystal clear on what it is not:
• Radical welcome is not an invitation to assimilate. We must move beyond the traditional inviting church paradigm, beyond inviting people to come inside and take on what we’ve already packaged and nailed down (as you will see in part 2). We are offering an embrace, and that means we have opened ourselves, offered ourselves. The risk is great, but embrace requires us to gird ourselves with the love of God and to say, “Come, bring who you are. My arms are open to you. Would you open yours to me?” We will receive one another, not losing our unique identities and histories, but releasing the rigid boundaries so that our stories can connect and a new community might be born.
• Radical welcome is not feel-good ministry. We are not pandering to the self-centered consumerism or corporate, customer-service expectations currently sucking the life and gospel out of many churches. Radical welcome is not simply a matter of making new or marginalized people feel comfortable, fashioning church in our own image, or hopping onboard for the next cultural trend.
• Radical welcome is not reverse discrimination. There is no need to toss out the gifts of tradition, or to ignore the needs and voices of people who have enjoyed certain privileges. An abundant, radically welcoming attitude says there is room for everyone to be heard, and that there is something beautiful, valuable and holy that everyone brings to the holy banquet, including those who’ve sat at the head of the table for a long time. In reality, there’s bound to be some relinquishment and loss on the part of the empowered groups, but only so that each group can speak and help to shape the community they now share.
• Radical welcome is not a conventional church growth strategy. You are quite likely to grow if you take it seriously. But that’s because it is an expression of Christ’s New Covenant, a way that is rooted in the gospel. Should you engage this transformation, others will surely find your community attractive and compelling, because they will see the passionate and compassionate spirit of Christ at the center of it, and because your hearts will be so open, radiant and fearless, they will prove irresistible.
• Radical welcome is not political correctness or a haphazard, reactionary throwing out of the baby with the bathwater. It is deeply faithful, deeply committed to welcoming and participating in the continuous, powerful, surprising in-breaking of the reign of God. It’s about finding yourself utterly accepted and embraced by God, and then running into the world and your community to see how you could extend that hospitality to others.
Eight Radically Welcoming Congregations
I could tell you more about radical welcome, or I could show you. Here are some brief sketches from eight congregations trying to live the dream of radical welcome.
We had to convince people that no one was trying to take over “their” church and run away with it. This isn’t an “us” versus “them” situation. There’s only us.
ENNIS DUFFIS, GRACE CHURCH-LAWRENCE
Grace Episcopal Church in Lawrence, Massachusetts, was faced with that most painful of dilemmas: change or die. The historically white, middle-class city of Lawrence had shifted, and the sons and daughters of the aging white church community had moved on. Members of the dying church opted to live, and that meant embracing their now-Latino neighborhood.
From the beginning, there were concerns that Grace would become a Latino church, that the new members would actually “steal” the church from their white elders. The Latino priest and missioner, Ennis Duffis, took that fear very seriously. “We had to convince people that no one was trying to take over ‘their’ church and run away with it. This isn’t an ‘us’ versus ‘them’ situation. There’s only us.”
Resurrection came when white
