What Does Belonging Look Like?

Each month, we post a series of blogs around a common topic. This month, Jessica Tate and Jen James are curating a series featuring videos from National Gatherings and suggestions for how they might serve as resources for ministry. We’re revisiting speakers from this most recent National Gathering in Seattle as well as speakers from previous years. Our hope is that inviting you to engage (or reengage) their work might invite deeper reflection and possibly yield more fruit. What is taking root and bearing fruit in your own life and ministry? We invite you to join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter!

Tali Hairston gave a keynote at the 2019 NEXT Church National Gathering in which he used the story of Naomi and Ruth to talk about belonging, equity, story, interrogating whiteness, and the power of transformational relationships.

This keynote will be particularly interesting to:

  • a congregation that is committed to “diversity”
  • white congregation consciously thinking about its own whiteness
  • anyone going on a mission trip, and
  • a mission committee thinking about charity, equity, and justice.
  • It could also provide the basis for some great senior high youth group conversation.

After you watch the keynote, consider these questions:

  • Belonging, Tali argues, is a key indicator of the possibility of transformation. He asks the: What does belonging look like for you? Describe the word belonging for you.
  • Tali helps to contrast charity and transformation. In the system in which Boaz lived, he was supposed to act charitably toward Ruth and Naomi. Charity invites us to do FOR people, rather than WITH them. To offer charity suggests that we don’t believe in people’s capacity or ability. They are not our equals. We fail to see that they are fully made in the image of God. Advocacy based in mutuality, in contrast, leads to transformation. Boaz chooses to work with Ruth and Naomi to advocate for their redemption. Think about the mission projects of your congregations. Which ones promote a mutually engaged path of transformation? Which ones promote charity? Are there ways to do more transformation and less charity?
  • Transactional relationships sustain marginalization, while transformational relationships can lead to justice. To engage in transformation, those with power have to become uncomfortable. Boaz, for example, became uncomfortable when Ruth shows up at his feet. Reflect on a time when a relationship led you to discomfort that ultimately led toward transformation.
  • Tali notes that we speak fluently about things we think about all that time. People who are part of the dominant culture don’t have to think about their own cultural markers because the culture is assumed. This has the effect of folks in the dominant culture not being practiced in talking about their own identities in complex ways. Tali presented five lenses and invites everyone to tell their own story using these five lenses: education, belief system, ethnicity/race, class, gender. Try it!