The church has a DEI problem
We love diversity. That doesn’t mean we’re willing to make room for difference.
Century illustration (Source images: Public domain and Met Museum, NY)
I am that bicycle. You know, the one you haven’t gotten on in a while, and when you last tried it almost threw you off and you couldn’t get the gears to work? Stupid bicycle, you thought, what’s wrong with this thing?
I am that bicycle—me and many of my peers in ministry. We’re having a hard time working within church systems because we don’t work like those systems think we’re supposed to work, so they think we don’t work at all. Like a “broken” bike in the garage we sit there, our gifts unused, underused, or improperly used. We are the treadmills that become hanging racks for clothes, the “diamond finds” at thrift stores, the items that you got tired of and gave away.
The church has a DEI problem. The idea behind diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts is simple enough. We should do all we can to give our employees a comparable, fair experience at our company; no one should feel different. And we should work to make sure everyone outside our company has equal access to being hired; no one should feel left out. It’s really not hard to articulate, but it is hard to do—hard enough that many companies have entire departments and officers whose sole job is to hold the company accountable to being fair.
