MOSES Reaches In to Visit Black Churches
By Saundra Brown, President of MOSES
MOSES’s mission statement calls us to build collective power. This guiding principle, which comes directly from our national and statewide organizations, Gamaliel and WISDOM, is based on an understanding that we cannot achieve success without a broad, collaborative base.
To achieve our goals, we must build collective power. This requires us to develop organized people and organized money. We cannot close the gaps of economic, educational, and political inequalities, religious intolerances, and racial disparities alone.
We have celebrated our successes and learned from our mistakes, but, more importantly, we never give up; we stay in the fight. Month after month, we come together to be informed and engaged and to seek various opportunities to improve and to grow.
However, I can’t help but ask myself, “Where are the Black folks?” I have been a member of MOSES since 2018, and I have always wondered why this great organization is fighting against the issues that impact my people the most. Why aren’t my people more visible? What must we (MOSES) do to engage them in our work? I have come to the conclusion that it’s time to get radical. We must take a different approach to recruiting African American members.
We continue to reach out to seek new members to join MOSES. That approach is good, but now it’s not good enough. The time has come for us to not only reach out but also to make an effort to reach in, by visiting our African American churches.
When I presented this idea to MOSES leadership, they fully endorsed my recommendation to call on the members of each MOSES task force, committee, focus group, and team to select representatives who will commit to choosing a Sunday to visit an African American church as a group. With the assistance of James Morgan, our community organizer, we are reaching out to the African American church pastors to schedule monthly dates to visit each church. As these dates are confirmed, we are providing a schedule for each MOSES group to sign up for one visit. It would be most impressive if we go as a group of five to ten MOSES members each month. James and I will accompany each group on their visits.
During our visits we will share with the congregations:
- ● who we are and what we do
- ● extend an invitation to join the organization
- ● gift them with informational folders and yearbooks
- ● inspire them to start a Justice Group
The Executive Committee took the lead on this new approach by meeting at St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church in April. We had nine MOSES members in attendance, and our presence was extremely well received.
We look forward to further connection with St. Paul’s members and with other churches, to be scheduled soon. Watch for future reports in upcoming newsletters.