Category: YMCA + Christian Praxis

YMCA & Faith as a Dimension of Diversity

YMCA & Faith as a Dimension of Diversity ::: what are some ways we can elevate the role of religion and build a healthier, stronger “C” in the Y as a way to be even more inclusive and equitable?

The extraordinary effort the Young Men’s Christian Association is putting into being inclusive and equitable in light of its diverse and global reality is impressive and inspiring.

Yet, not without critique or flaws, and still in an agile learning mode, humbly trying to do better.

There are many aspects I value about the Dimensions of Diversity Wheel, including how it reveals then builds awareness of many key dimensions of diversity; having been through a training with it, I developed a more complex awareness of myself, as well as a richer perspective on those around me.

Nobody comes to this wheel or training or Association neutral, so I confess that this blogpost comes from a close analysis and personal reflection on my professional work with the Y as a Christian Emphasis Director and ordained Protestant minister.

The dimension of Faith is of particular interest to me regarding my vocation, my identity, my purpose, my lens personally and professionally, though it’s not the only important dimension, nor is it isolated from many others like culture, race, birthplace, etc.

I do want to humbly reflect publicly on the role of faith as a dimension diversity in the YMCA, as it seems to occupy an awkward space in the wheel and our associations.

For example, religion and faith traditions are like culture and ethnicity, you are born into it, they are often all intertwined, and it deeply shapes your whole sense of self, purpose, identity and community.

Yet it can also be experienced as interchangeable like economic status or geographic location; we all know people or have heard of those who “left” their religion or faith tradition.

While these are simplistic examples, they get at the wider discomfort of the role of faith and religion in the Y; as a matter of principle we ought to include it in an equitable and honest way – BUT: it is unlike all the other dimensions in a way that makes it socially and spiritually awkward.

What do I mean? A basic understanding of religion – scholarly or experientially – reveals the comprehensive nature of faith traditions; the role of it is to give overarching meaning and existential purpose to the totality of life in spirit, mind and body as an individual and a community (or tribe or nation).

Yet, in the Y it is generally uncomfortable to talk publicly about ones personal faith tradition or religious commitments (I’d love to hear exceptions to this assumption).

What factors might be keeping the faith/beliefs dimension of diversity in a awkward, suspicious, suppressed, role in the Y?

While there are no simplistic answers, here are a few of my observations framed by my experiences and research:

1. The complexity of secularization in a religiously and ethnically pluralistic society (keep your faith private) [for more read Charles Taylor and Lesslie Newbigin]

2. The critiques of religious violence, sexual abuse, and financial scandals (credibility of faith is corroded) [for more read Rene Girard and William Cavanaugh]

3. The centrality of technology as a means for organizing and and making sense of reality (control comes from us) [for more read Jacques Ellul and Miroslav Volf]

Or, some might perceive it like this: overly religious people do a lot of good, but then they get disagreeable and divisive and at the Y we really want to emphasize what builds harmony and healing; so, since too many religious people either want to be right/exclusive more than loving/inclusive, we will downplay our religious heritage and faith as a dimension of diversity and emphasize that which seems to more effectively forge unity and equity.

Trust me, I get it.

But…

Religion is still a powerful existential reality amongst our diverse membership; if we ignore it, downplay it, dismiss it, degrade it, we will be blind to the way it shapes (for good or bad) our culture, thus preventing us from fulfilling our purpose, cause and mission successfully.

The more people who become ignorant of religion and faith traditions, the more religious bigotry that will be fomented.

If we want less religious violence and abuse, we need to shine more light on religion, not keep it in the dark; more wisdom not less.

With the National influence the YMCA has in 2,000+ communities, imagine the positive effect we could have if we more wisely, bravely, authentically, publicly discussed and educated on religion/faith as a powerful dimension of diversity.

Christians in the Y often don’t want to offend anyone, especially those who are religiously diverse; it’s a warm sentiment, but it often leads to squelching religious expression instead of building up hospitable inclusion.

Christians in the Y too often fail to recognize the vast diversity that exists within there own faith tradition; it’s naive to think that the differences between Protestants and Catholics are irrelevant, or that the tension between conservative and liberal Christians is insignificant.

Factor in the generational and geographic, ethnic and racial dimensions of diversity as it is expressed through religion, and Christians will discover an incredible variety.

But rather than enter into the complexity of a diverse and global Christianity in their YMCA, Christian leaders too often over-emphasize a private expression of faith, or a bland version that doesn’t want to offend anyone, or a suppression of any public religious expression.

What if the YMCA of the USA embraced a intentionally public, responsible, honesty about its extremely religious origins in George Williams and Thomas Sullivan, in Anthony Bowen and John Mott, etc.?

What if the Young Men’s Christian Association cultivated a care-full spirit of mutual respect for the vast diversity of Christians who founded the Y, and for the complicated and rich Christian traditions which nourished the YMCA which we enjoy and steward today?

It could then more robustly and wisely critique that within the diverse Christian traditions which undermines or corrupts equitable inclusion in our generation.

So why does it seem that the Y is sometimes awkwardly embarrassed about the “C” in our name?

I won’t pretend to know all the reasons, and I would welcome many honest responses from readers.

From what I have heard and seen though, my understanding of the conflicted identity is rooted in the three reasons I listed earlier: secularity & pluralism, violence & hypocrisy, science & positivism; it’s a cultural/religious revolution deeply affecting Western civilization and the global community.

This means, at some level, we aren’t even sure what it means to identify as Christian now, belief in God is contested and seemingly unnecessary for the pursuit of happiness; especially when it comes to managerial and economic decisions, prayer seems less effective than benchmarks and best practices.

Yet: religion just won’t go away.

The Y can draw on powerful historical and contextual realities as resources for animating an inclusive Christianity which honestly respects our diversity while strengthening how we responsibly care for all we embrace.

Or the Y can continue to awkwardly stumble into a complex religious-shaped future conflicted about its identity and how to bring healing and hope to our society’s most dangerous and vicious evils.

If I was going to make some proposals for how a more robust Faith as a Dimension of Diversity could empower the Y to flourish as an anti-racist, multi-cultural institution – I would offer up these as a conversation starter:

  • Elevate faith/belief/religion as a dimension of diversity
  • Responsibly respect the existential and overarching reality religion and faith traditions have cross-culturally, trans-nationally, and inter-generationally
  • Cultivate care-full honesty about Y members/staff/volunteers experiences with the best of and worst of religion – for the sake of healing, wisdom, and mutual empathy
  • Resuscitate our gratitude and indebtedness to Christian Y workers in the past for their religious motivations – ie. invention of basketball or camping, George Williams organizing and John Mott’s fundraising, etc.
  • Become curious to the ways many different Y workers have religious motivations for their service, and how it is mixed with other motivations.
  • Celebrate our identity as a Christian Association which strives to be welcoming and hospitable to people from all types of religious and faith traditions, as well as every kind of dimension of diversity.
  • Have YUSA publicly engage in the Paris Basis and Challenge 21
  • Be willing to openly critique behavior of Christians in the Y who are behaving badly, without it resulting in the suppression of Christianity as a result.
  • Be willing to embrace the complexity of public expressions and embodiment of faith in the Y as a way to model for our 2,000 communities how we can do grace-full and faith-full inclusion.

Here are some concluding observations of this post: if I was going to frame in a historically positive way the different kinds of Diverse and Global Christians in the Y since 1844, I would describe them as Evangelical, Ecumenical, Equitable.

George Williams was Evangelical, with an ecumenical and equitable heart.

John Mott became Ecumenical from his evangelical spirit, and raised enormous sums of money for equitable causes.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is our inspiration for Equitable, who embodied an ecumenical yearning with evangelical zeal.

If you had a primary pulse as a Christian in the Y these days, who do most resonate with for how they embodied their faith – George, John, Martin?

If you’re like me, all of them are central to how Christianity can be embodied today in the Y!

But if we revise their Y story and minimize the role of religion, we undercut their powerful example of ways Christianity can inspire, unite, and heal.

It is always easier to critique and see the log in the eye of Christianity; its failures are legendary, some chilling and evil; but: if people are not defined by their worst moments, let’s not do that with any religion or faith tradition.

May many more humble and dedicated conversations continue to multiply around ways we can strengthen faith as a dimension of diversity towards flourishing for all.

What would you propose for a healthier and stronger Faith as a Dimension of Diversity in the YMCA?

What are some examples you have for ways Faith as a Dimension of Diversity has positively contributed to flourishing for all in your Y?

For more on this theme read Is The YMCA Still Religious? Still Christian?

YMCA & Wounded Healers: a meditation on the weekend of Father’s Day, Juneteenth and World Refugee Day

As Christ Jesus is a wounded healer to you, may you in your leadership and ministry be a wounded healer to those the Lord has brought into your life. May this weekend of Father’s Day, Juneteenth, and World Refugee Day be one of grace, truth and peace.

A wonderful legacy of the YMCA is it’s participation in supporting the creation of Father’s Day, a way to build up the family and the young men they serve.

Through the work of the brilliant Rev. Anthony Bowen, a freed slave, he founded a YMCA in Washington D.C. in 1853, a work which became crucial to creating a safe space for young black men to become fathers of liberation, justice and peace.

Since the founding of the YMCA in London England, 1844 refugees have been a core of our mission, as it still is today across the world, as you can see from this 2021 conference.

As a minister who is a father, and whose father was a minister, Father’s Day is a time when I reflect on ministers and fathers in my life and the difficulties they endure, their hopes and aspirations, their flaws and failures.

The YMCA has been built up by ministers and fathers – Rev. Anthony Bowen, Marine Missionary Thomas Sullivan, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Ecumenical Leader John Mott, and many, many more.

Being a minister and father now with the YMCA, amidst the chaos and turmoil of our generation, I found the writings of the priest Henri Nouwen to be particularly poignant, especially as it relates to being a Christian minister and leader in our culture still struggling towards racial equity and welcoming refugees.

This morning I was re-reading parts of the classic meditation by Nouwen called The Wounded Healer. The last chapter is called “Ministry By A Lonely Minister”; brilliant, compassionate, prophetic, honest reflections that resonate with me in my work in the world, my community and the Y.

For you, as you strive to do your part to lead, love, care and serve (minister) in the Y and our hurting world, may Nouwen be an encouraging guide, especially this weekend as we remember our fathers, our emancipated neighbors, and refugees searching for a welcoming home.

We live in a society in which loneliness has become one of the most painful human wounds.

The growing competition and rivalry which pervade our lives from birth have created in us an acute awareness of our isolation.

This awareness has in turn left many with a heightened anxiety and an intense search for the experience of unity and community.

It has also led people to ask anew how love, friendship, brotherhood and sisterhood can free them from isolation and offer them a sense of intimacy and belonging.

…the more I think about loneliness, the more I think the wound of loneliness is like the Grand Canyon – a deep incision in the surface of our existence which has become an inexhaustible source of beauty and self-understanding.

Therefore, I would like to voice loudly and clearly what might seem unpopular and maybe even disturbing: The Christian way of life does not take away our loneliness; it protects it and cherishes it as a precious gift.

Sometimes it seems as if we do everything possible to avoid the painful confrontation with our basic human loneliness, and allow ourselves to be trapped by false gods promising immediate satisfaction and quick relief.

But perhaps the painful awareness of loneliness is an invitation to transcend our limitations and look beyond the boundaries of our existence.

The awareness of loneliness might be a gift we must protect and guard, because our loneliness reveals to us an inner emptiness that can be destructive when misunderstood, but filled with promise for him who can tolerate its sweet pain.

When we are impatient, when we want to give up our loneliness and try to overcome the separation and incompleteness we feel, too soon, we easily relate to our human world with devastating expectations.

We ignore what we already know with a deep-seated, intuitive knowledge – that no love, no friendship, not intimate embrace or tender kiss, not community, commune or collective, no man or woman, will ever be able to satisfy our desire to be released from our lonely conditions.

When the minister lives with these false expectations and illusions he prevents himself from claiming his own loneliness as a source of human understanding and is unable to offer any real service to the many who do not understand their own suffering.

Nouwen, The Wounded Healer, pgs 83-85

The wound of our loneliness is indeed deep. Maybe we had forgotten it, since there are many distractions.

But our failure to change the world with our good intentions and sincere actions and our undesired displacement to the edges of life have made us aware that the wound is still there.

…a deep understanding of his own pain makes it possible for him to convert his weakness into strength and to offer his own experience as a source of healing to those who are often lost in the darkness of their own misunderstood sufferings.

This is a very hard call, because for a minister who is committed to forming a community of faith, loneliness is a very painful wound which is easily subject to denial and neglect.

But once the pain is accepted and understood, a denial is no longer necessary, and ministry can become a healing service.

Making one’s own wounds a source of healing…does not call for a sharing of superficial personal pains but for a constant willingness to see one’s own pain and suffering as rising from the depth of the human condition which all men share.

A Christian community is therefore a healing community, not because wounds are cured and pains alleviated, but because wounds and pains become openings or occasions for a new vision.

Mutual confession then becomes a mutual deepening of hope, and sharing weaknesses becomes a reminder to one and all of the coming strength.

When loneliness is among the chief wounds of the minister, hospitality can convert that wound into a source of healing.

Concentration prevents the minister from burdening others with his pain and allows him to accept his wounds as helpful teachers of his own and his neighbors condition.

Community arises where the sharing of pain takes place, not as a stifling form of self-complaint, but as a recognition of God’s saving promises.

Thus, ministry can indeed be a witness to the living truth that the wound, which causes us to suffer now, will be revealed to us later as the place where God intimated his new creation.

Nouwen, The Wounded Healer, pgs 87-96
Selfie with Father Joseph and the infant Jesus with his mother, remembering the message of new creation of liberation and emancipation God the Father would bring through the Son; the Holy Family would soon be refugees in Egypt escaping state-sanctioned infanticide.

As Christ Jesus is a wounded healer to you, may you in your leadership and ministry be a wounded healer to those the Lord has brought into your life.

May this weekend of Father’s Day, Juneteenth, and World Refugee Day be one of grace, truth and peace.

Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?

This post is personal for me, not abstract; it’s a way for me to work out in my heart how to find meaning in the suffering of life. May Christ Jesus be a guide for you in bringing good out of the pain, for all.

A man reveals to me that his father died too soon, while the son was yet a young elementary student.

That absence, that pain, it is still felt after forty plus years.

If God is so good, why would he take his father away? His father was a good man; he was loved, he was needed.

Why would God take him and not someone doing wicked evil things in the world?

The common question is: why does God let bad things happen to good people.

If God is so good, why would he let something bad happen to someone, something bad that he could prevent.

Since God is all-powerful and only good, you would think that God would intervene more often, keeping really bad things from happening to undeserving people.

Do children ever deserve to be assaulted or forced into horrid slave labor? You get the point.

So why does God let bad things happen to good people?

When I try to articulate an answer to that question, there is not an easy, simple response.

Should God intervene every-time somebody does something bad to an undeserving person?

If not every time, how often?

Which conditions should be automatic-interventions?

God can’t intervene every time, and even if he could, he wouldn’t; a miracle by definition makes it a rarity.

That God does intervene at times is something to be thankful for, though often it prompts resentment by those who wish it for themselves in their own plight and not for another.

So God can’t win.

If he lets people abide by the free-will he grants them, then he gets blamed for not over-riding free-will more often when it is abused.

If God has not granted man free-will, then we can fairly blame God for letting bad things happen to good people, because God is directing all of our thoughts and actions, since we have no free-will.

So: does God “let” bad things happen to good people?

Is it as if God is standing by a river watching a child fall in, doing nothing when he could do something to save the drowning, screaming boy?

Is that the implication?

That God watches atrocities happen, letting them happen when he could flick his finger and kill the perpetrators and save the innocent victims?

Is God able but not willing?

This is all very philosophical and at this point not very Christian.

A Christian reflection on this topic must include the story of Jesus Christ.

It doesn’t do us much good to ask hypothetical questions about what God can and cannot do if we do not focus on what Jesus Christ does and says.

Scripture teaches us that Jesus Christ is God in the flesh; when we see Jesus we see the Father.

Jesus Christ is the one who creates, sustains, redeems and restores Creation and all within it.

Thus, the real question: Does Jesus Christ let bad things happen to good people?

Well, what do the Gospels tell us about Jesus responding to the bad things that happen to good people?

Take for example, Jesus Christ himself.

Could we agree that he is the ideal “good person”?

If anyone was undeserving of an unjust “bad thing”, Jesus is the guy.

And how did Jesus respond to the bad things that happened to him?

Did he shake his fist at God? Did he wonder why God was letting this happen?

No and No.

Jesus seems to assume that this world we abide in is bent, broken, corrupted, infected with evil.

Bad things happen to people in this world.

That’s just the way the world has become.

Jesus doesn’t ask God why he lets bad things happen to innocent people.

Jesus seeks to use the bad things that have happened to him as a platform to save the very ones who do the bad things to him.

In Jesus Christ, we don’t see him questioning God, but rather our assumptions about God.

Jesus tells us little about why bad things happen to specific people.

He implies that if something bad happened to you, and you didn’t deserve it, don’t shake your fist at God, but rather seek to forgive the perpetrator, bring about justice if possible, establish peace, and overcome evil with good.

But still I wonder: Why do bad things happen to good people?

There are many theories; but the lived experience of humanity reveals that we live in a world where evil has reached a vast complexity.

Bad people do bad things on purpose; good people do bad things on purpose; bad and good people do bad things by accident.

You get billions of people doing bad things even just once in a while, and you have a recipe for evil on a grandiose, horrific, painful level.

Does God afflict people with diseases and cancers randomly or out of his divine plan?

Jesus says little about the source of the diseases, he points out through his words and actions that God is primarily focused on healing people from their afflictions.

Jesus demonstrated again and again that God has come as a man to bring good things upon us.

God is good, all that he creates is inherently good, he can only do what is good.

He doesn’t afflict us, he comes to restore us; we are already afflicted, he has come to heal us.

Diseases, cancer, health related problems are not doled out by Jesus to people, they are a result of being human in our world.

Everybody has to die of something.

It’s how we live and die that Jesus is most concerned about.

Jesus grieves when people die horrible deaths, he knows what it is like.

He grieves when people live and then die horrible deaths all alone, abandoned, tortured, mocked, and desecrated.

He is opposed to it: the problem is that many of us are not.

Jesus is the head, Christians are supposed to be his body.

Jesus is supposed to be able to get more done in this world by having millions and millions of adherents continuing his work of good news: forgiveness of sins, restoration of the whole person, alignment with the goodwill of God, etc.

Jesus could probably stop more bad things happening to innocent people if more people were committed to the same cause.

The real question is not: why does God/Jesus let bad things happen to good people.

The real question is: why do we let bad things happen to good people?

People suffer and die on this earth. That’s the way of this world.

But it doesn’t have to be the only part of the story we fixate on.

My mother, while a young teenager, lost her mother to cancer. Then in college she lost her father to a heart attack. Then when I was in college she was diagnosed with cancer. And then diabetes. And then one of her sons died of a brain tumor. And then another one of her sons was killed by a drunk driver. Then her husband of 39 years died unexpectedly of brain cancer.

Why do some people have bad things happen to them, things they don’t deserve, and yet they emerge from those experiences still trusting God, even if just by a thread?

The world is so complex, we can’t full know why things happen.

It’s not that God made those things happen.

But God is willing to help bring good out of those bad things.

If God could do something good, he would do it.

So all the bad things that happen, if God could stop each one of them, he would.

But he doesn’t. Because he can’t.

He can’t override our free-will; if he did, we wouldn’t have free-will.

This doesn’t “limit” God, it just states the obvious: you can’t have a square triangle, you can’t have two plus two equalling five: it is not within the realm of reality.

What Jesus has proven God to be is the One committed to the Reconciliation of all things, the Restoration of Creation, the Ground of our Being, the Source of Reality, the Renewal of Humanity, the Rescue of Sinners, the Renovation of our Hearts.

This is what God can do, and in doing so, he is overcoming evil with good.

More could be said on what is the most existential, most complex, most personal experiences of all humanity.

But this post is personal for me, not abstract; it’s a way for me to work out in my heart how to find meaning with Christ in the suffering.

This encouragement from Saint Paul to the Christians going through painful trials in Corinth was read at the funeral for my brother Matt; he was my second brother to die. This text always stuck with me and is a guide for me in striving to have good come out of my suffering:

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who consoles us in all our grief and suffering; with the comfort we ourselves receive from God, we can compassionately care for those in any kind of hardship and tragedy. 

For just as we are in solidarity with Christ Jesus who suffered, so also Christ’s consolation abides and abounds through us.

[St. Paul to the Christians in Corinth, 2/1.2-5, adapted from the NIV]

May you find comfort and consolation, redemption and healing amidst the suffering of your life and those you love, through Christ who suffers with us.

(this post adapted from one originally authored by me in March, 2008)