Making Our Meetings More Welcoming

This is an excerpt from a recent sermon Tanya Cothran gave at United Methodist Church in Point Richmond, CA, titled "Building Trust Across Differences." If you would like her to speak at your congregation in North America, email tanya@spiritinaction.org.

During the pandemic, like so many other organizations, we switched from in-person board meetings to meeting online. When we met in person, our board was focused geographically in central California, limiting our pool of potential members. With Zoom meetings, we added board members who brought new skills around equity and diversity that we wanted, but who lived in different areas of the U.S. Zoom meetings also allowed us to invite the African Advisory Board to join, dramatically increasing the variety of perspectives and expertise in the room.

SIA Board Members live in and are from several countries in North America and Africa.

Of course, the invitation is one thing, and making the meetings accessible is another! We realized we’d need to schedule our meetings to be in a reasonable time zone for everyone. (Though Kathleen King, the Spirit in Action Board President, might disagree that our 8am meetings are reasonable! But that’s 6pm in Nairobi, so it works.) I also make sure that members who don’t have home internet access can buy data for that day so they can fully participate in the meetings.

We make time during each board meeting to get to know each other better and deepen our relationships through check-ins and reflection on topics related to justice, our work, and our approach. Kathleen and I always make sure the check-in questions are appropriate across the different contexts – so rather than ask about a favorite Thanksgiving dish, we modified it to ask about a favorite holiday food, which brought out many dishes highlighting the beautiful diversity we had in the group. Our latest check-in was to tell the group a piece of wisdom you received from your family growing up, which turned out to be a profound time of sharing and learning about one another.

These check-in and reflection times take up a good chunk of our agenda, but that investment is well worth it, helping us know each other on a human level and celebrate each person’s unique perspective and gifts, which makes the rest of the work of the organization go more smoothly.

Moving beyond biases and changing practices – in a way that isn’t just tokenism – doesn’t happen instantaneously. We needed to be intentional about building relationships across that which has traditionally divided us.

When we find ourselves in spaces that aren’t welcoming – whether because of accessibility needs or biases – it’s easy to check out and feel cynical about participating. But in a space of true belonging, we can show up as our full selves, let our guard down, and have our opinions and perspectives welcomed and valued. And we all benefit as a result.