wfn.org | NCCC board hears concerns on inclusiveness

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG>]

Nov. 11, 1999 News media contact: Linda Bloom·(212) 870-3803·New York
10-21-30-71B{605}

NOTE:  For related coverage of the National Council of Churches' meeting,
see UMNS stories #604 and 606.

CLEVELAND (UMNS) - Concerns about a lack of inclusiveness, particularly on
the issue of staff appointments, were raised during the Nov. 9-10 executive
board meeting of the National Council of Churches in Christ (NCCC).

Those concerns are far from new, according to Herbert Henderson, a United
Methodist from Huntington, N.Y., who has sat on the executive board for the
past nine years.

"When I came, the main issue on the table was inclusiveness," he told United
Methodist News Service. But promises by the white majority that serious
racial/ethnic candidates would be considered the next time around were never
fulfilled, he declared, and council procedures designed to ensure equal
consideration were bypassed.

"It's not what you put on paper, it's not what you promise," he said. If
there is "a mind to circumvent the process, you can circumvent it, and
that's what's happened here," he said.

While he considers the United Methodist Church to be inclusive, Henderson
said he hasn't seen much public support from other white NCCC members on
this issue. "It seems to me the only people who care about inclusiveness are
African Americans," he said.

Representatives of the black church liaison committee spoke out as a group
during the executive board meeting. 

Bishop McKinley Young, of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, noted that
while the black churches have been actively involved in the council during
its 50-year history, "we see ourselves missing from that picture in a
significant way."

Identifying what he called the council's "blatant disrespect" for the
history, participation and commitment of black churches to the NCCC, Young
said he wanted no more apologies or "speeches about how you feel personally"
but clear language and clear action to address the lack of inclusiveness.

Bishop Thomas Hoyt, of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, noted that
the discussion was taking place at a time when the Rev. Andrew Young was
being installed as president as a symbol of the NCCC's inclusiveness. "How
can we make symbol and substance go together in an inclusive way?" he asked.

In response to the concerns, the executive board strengthened and then
approved a document by the council's transition management team. The added
language calls upon the executive board and general secretary "to achieve
the council's goals for inclusiveness in filling vacant staff positions and
the positions of deputy general secretary of Church World Service and
Witness and general manager when they become open."

A comment followed that language, noting the "strong conviction" of the
transition management team that the new deputy general secretary be a person
of color and that the officers inform the new general secretary immediately
of that conviction.

In a new recommendation, the board also requires "the executive committee,
the new general secretary and all personnel in management positions to make
inclusiveness a top priority." It calls for evidence of this priority to be
included in yearly reports that can be measured, monitored and evaluated
with regard to "matters of race, gender, ethnicity, disability and diversity
of communion membership, with special attention to churches that have been
underrepresented, such as the historic African-American churches, Orthodox
communions and others."

Later in the document, the transition management team states that it
"believes the inclusiveness goals of the council are so instrumental to the
purposes and vision of the whole council that language that keeps this truth
before the community ought to be developed and incorporated into the
governance documents of the council." Proposed language will be brought to
the next executive board meeting in February.

An action by board members also added an office of inclusiveness and justice
to the organization's new flow chart, to be lodged with communications and
public witness under the general secretary.

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United Methodist News Service
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