| ISAIAH Issues Convention |
| ISAIAH Issues Convention |
Over 80 members from 12 congregations were represented at the convention. Besides St. Joan’s, congregations included Calvary Baptist, Grace University Lutheran, University Lutheran Church of Hope, Mayflower Congregational UCC, Our Savior’s Lutheran, Prospect Park United Methodist, Redeemer Lutheran, St. Bridget’s Catholic, St. John the Baptist Episcopal, and Woodlake Lutheran. The planning for this convention began last fall with most of the congregations conducting inreaches (as did SJA) to gauge some of the issues most deeply felt by member congregations. In addition to the inreaches, meetings were conducted over the past couple of months with thirty potential partners, key individuals and organizations knowledgeable or deeply involved in the issues being considered.
The convention opened with a welcome by the caucus chair Michelle Dibblee of St. John the Baptist Episcopal. After an opening prayer and song, a spiritual reflection focusing on racism was led by Jeannie Sur of Redeemer Lutheran. The attendees paired off and shared with each other a powerful experience with racism in their lives.
The congregations of ISAIAH have declared that our faith demands a path of racial justice and equity, and that our issue work be viewed through a racial lens. After an overview of each of the four issues, individual congregations discussed the issues – which issue called the attendees to action and where they felt the energy lay in their individual congregations. Many in the SJA group felt there was already work being done in all of these issues in various ministries at SJA, and that it was important to collaborate and build deeper relationships with these ministries. The SJA members determined that Health Care and Healthy Communities for All, and Affordable Housing resounded most deeply with what we have learned from our visits with parish members. The overall voting results were in the following order – Health Care and Healthy Communities for All, Racial Equity in Education, Affordable Housing, and North/South Minneapolis Partnership. Phyllis Hill, the ISAIAH Community Organizer for the Minneapolis/Richfield/Bloomington Caucus emphasized to the convention that there were no “losers” in the issue voting. All four of the issues will be worked on in the coming months.
Are you interested in working on any of these issues? Join us at Mayflower on Thursday, March 13th, 7-9PM, when the next steps will be discussed, or contact Julie Madden at the Parish Center or jmadden@stjoan.com for further information.
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