In a time of deep division, many people are asking, “How do we talk across differences?” Bishop Hughes shares how faith groups can help us grow in faith, strengthen relationships, and practice communicating across differences.
Video Transcript
This is Bishop Hughes in the Diocese of Newark. At the church that I visited last week – one of our smaller churches – after the service was over and coffee hours was over, before I talked with the wardens, but people weren’t quite ready to leave after our coffee hour conversation, there was a small group of parishioners and I that sat and talked together. They specifically wanted to talk about how to be Christian in this current environment. And their question really was very specific: How are we to be able to communicate with people across differences? There was a real recognition on their part, and something that I believe also that at the heart, at the center of all that troubles us in our nation, all that troubles us across the globe, is this basic problem. It says, if we have forgotten how to be in communication with anyone that doesn’t ascribe exactly to what we believe in, or what we think or what our political party believes – we’re so entrenched with partisan politics that it’s difficult to separate out all of those pieces, and we’ve put ourselves into camps, into corners, into separate organizations, separate groupings, and we don’t speak across those differences at all – if something comes up and then we feel like there’s not more people who think like us, we just go silent. We just, we stop altogether.
I truly agree with that group of people. We have got to learn how to address this. And I would say that we have to take a step back, and we have got to learn how to be in regular communication that is truthful, that is honest, and that is supportive and encouraging and affirming. We have got to figure out how to do that basic thing, and one of the ways we do that in this diocese is something called faith groups.
If you don’t know what one is, it’s small group ministry. It’s a group of people who covenant to be together for a period of time – maybe that’s six months, maybe it’s during the school year, maybe it’s over the summer – but they covenant to be together for a specific time and to meet on a regular basis, whether that’s once a week or every other week or once a month. And in those groups, they are not trying to accomplish a task specifically for the church. So they’re not there to create a budget. They’re not there to plan a service. They are there specifically to talk about their life as people of faith, and in that talking about their lives and doing that in ways that are honest and guileless and genuine and transparent, they do that, and they also listen to other people do the same. And that group of people helps each other to see the way God is Working in their own lives. You know that feeling that sometimes you’re not quite sure if you can even see what God is doing, and then you tell a story to some other faithful person who says, “Oh my goodness, look how the Holy Spirit has been helping you out!” That someone else can see sometimes what you can’t see.
It is not unusual in that group for there to be differences amongst the group. Even though they think that they are all like people and all like-minded people, that as they talk across time over how they’re living into their faith on a daily basis, or where they’re growing in faith, or where they’re struggling with faith, that differences come up. And because they are there to support each other and encourage each other, they develop an ability to talk through those differences. To hear them, to support them, to acknowledge them, rather than to shut it down, to argue with them or to simply walk away.
This is a powerful way of learning how to be in conversation with other people. It prepares us to have these kind of conversations way beyond the faith group. We build a skill, not only in talking honestly about ourselves, but also listening to other people and being able to do that in a way that is attentive and that is sensitive and that is caring and basically faithful.
I want to encourage you to put yourself in some kind of group like that. My hope is that it would be at your church with people that you either know well or that you would like to know better, that you would find time to be in those conversations so that we as faithful people can get better at having them around us. The other thing that that group of parishioners noticed – and I completely agree with them, I’m seeing it too – that there are all kinds of people right now who are looking to have these kind of conversations, and we as people of faith are more accustomed to saying, “Well, come to church with me.” We’re not necessarily very skilled at having the conversations with people. Being in a faith group is a way to build that skill, to get stronger at doing it.
It also is a way to support your own faithfulness and to grow in the faith. As a young adult, I spent years in a faith group. It was an important part of my life, an important part of my growth as a person of faith. Long before I ever thought about ordination, I was thinking about, how do I as a young adult, as a person expanding in their career, how do I do this as a faithful person? And that group of faithful people who I was in conversation with on a regular basis, we were all asking the same things and supporting each other and praying for each other.
So, are faith groups the answer to everything? Probably not. But can they help us learn how to talk with each other and to speak with others across difference? Absolutely. If you want to know more about them, go on our website, look in the Resources page, and find the section on faith groups.
