The Rev. Rhonda Thomas already had plenty on her plate as executive director of Faith in Florida.
Her organization, which falls under the national umbrella of Faith in Action, worked on issues of discrimination and disenfranchisement across a broad swath of the state. There was plenty going on before legislation was passed limiting what can be taught, said or read in the state’s K-12 public schools, as well as in its colleges and universities. The consequences have extended nationally to the College Board and beyond.
In Florida, Thomas and others have led a countermovement that has mobilized faith communities to teach what the public schools cannot. Faith in Florida has launched a multipart toolkit focused on topics like race, racism and whiteness, and Black women in leadership, centering faith communities as critical to providing accurate information and anti-racist formation.
Thomas spoke with Faith & Leadership’s Aleta Payne about the effort, which has broadened to other states. The following is an edited transcript.
Faith & Leadership: Could you talk a bit about Faith in Florida?
Rhonda Thomas: We fall under the umbrella of our national [network], which is Faith in Action, and we organize in 41 counties in the state of Florida — multiracial, multifaith leaders working around racial, social and economic justice. We have [statewide] campaigns that we organize, which are immigration, reducing gun violence and mass incarceration, and protecting democracy.
In those counties, we also have our local issues we organize around, whether it be public education, housing, living wages, that sort of thing. That’s who Faith in Florida is. It’s a faith-based organization that just cares about people that are impacted by all sorts of [issues], whether it be legislation, those who have been disenfranchised, those who have been discriminated against — really, really caring about marginalized communities and people in general.
Many people don’t really see Florida as being the South, unfortunately. I don’t know if they get caught up in the tourism or the beaches, the entertainment, the food, but we’re very much the South and as impacted as many other Southern states when it comes to this fight that we’re in.
F&L: How and why did you come to develop the pledge and toolkit around teaching Black history?
RT: We realized that there was an attack on public education as well as our universities on how African American history was being taught in the curriculum and that it was recommended and legislated that it be taught in a watered-down version, implying things that were not true, such as Black people benefited from being slaves.
Faith in Florida decided to do what we do, and that’s organize — organize our faith leaders and see if they will commit to teaching African American history in its realness. You cannot water down history. It is history. I felt personally that our educators were professional enough, whether it be from a public school system or from a university, that they would teach African American history in a way that it was not targeted to offend any race. It would be taught in a professional way through a curriculum that was created.
We felt like, “We’ll take it back to where it originated.” And that’s the Black church, because that history still sits in our pews. That history is still real, and it’s alive. We have always taught our history, maybe not through a curriculum, but we’ve taught it in living color.
I asked my research coordinator to create a team within our staff where we would be able to have resources, whether books or documentaries, that would give our churches the liberty to choose from the toolkit, understanding that we were creating a toolkit that will offer a variety of resources that they can choose from that can fit their own congregations.
It also is a toolkit that will be able to accommodate all ages of people, whether it is children, adults, whether they’re in the church or visiting or never attend but care about the teachings of Black history.
That’s where it all came from. Horrible legislation that came through the state of Florida. We saw where it was not right in the lenses of Black people. The toolkit also gave our faith leaders the liberation to teach it, because the Black church has always been and still is very creative in the way we teach.
It could be taught through biblical lenses, and it could be taught through art, through dance, through music, because that’s just who we’re made up of. Because we organized multiracial, multifaith leaders and congregations, then some of our white churches and mosques, they were like, “We see this is morally wrong. We understand that we may not be able to teach Black history like the Black church can, but we can teach it in a way of accountability.” And that came from our white congregations and white faith leaders. Our Muslim [leaders] understood that we have more in common than what separates us in the way we connect together as a whole. They were willing to teach Black history as well, but still understanding that no one can do it like the Black church can.
F&L: You see this as a moral issue that extends beyond Black Christians.
RT: Yes. We had an open discussion through one of our statewide clergy calls. To try to erase or water down [anyone’s history], to be watered down in a version where it does not represent the truth — it’s morally wrong.
And then Black history itself, recognizing that if we’re not deliberately teaching it in the right form, it also opens [the possibility of] history being repeated, which I do see happening in this country, and definitely in the state of Florida. It’s being repeated. We look at it in the way of how voter suppression still exists. Black people no longer have to go to the supervisor of elections office to guess how many jelly beans are in a jar; now our voting rights are being oppressed and suppressed in the way of [formerly incarcerated] citizens not having the opportunity to register to vote once they’ve served their time in the state of Florida.
F&L: While you started this curriculum for Florida, you have had enough interest from outside the state that there is an effort to broaden it.
RT: My goal was strictly the state of Florida and how do I get 500 congregations to take the pledge to teach African American history. Twenty-eight other states have now joined Faith in Florida under our leadership and are using our toolkit in teaching Black history — 28 states. That was not my goal or vision, but unfortunately, states all across this country were [thinking that] what happens in Florida can possibly happen in their states.
F&L: What do you hope other faith leaders in those states might take from this effort? What do you hope they might take forward?
RT: What has happened here has united faith leaders of many denominations. It has united us under one umbrella to see the importance of Black history being taught. I say it’s being taught raw and being taught real. It is not being taught in a way to offend anyone. If we want to talk about being offended — Black people, we have been offended since the beginning of time. As a Black woman, I would never want to teach anything that would offend others, because I know what that feels like. Seeing the importance of Black history being taught in its own authentic way, we’re uniting communities as well in a faith space, and then also recognizing that we’re operating in the power and the authority that God has given us.
F&L: Is there anything else you want people to know about this work?
RT: This work is great. This work is good, and it’s worth it. You have not asked me whether there has been any resistance. One of our churches has received a bomb threat that came through the police department. Some of our churches are getting called: “Why are you doing this?”
In my church, we have a safety plan in place, even to the point of having active shooter trainings. It’s just unfortunate that this is the way we are looking at how we protect not just the Black church.
Like I said, we organize multiracial, multifaith. There are threats not just on the Black church. Our Jewish community, they’ve gotten threats as well in the synagogues. Our mosques are getting threats. So it also takes us to a place that we have more in common than what separates us when it comes to the faith community.
I don’t think that’s ordained by God, based on my faith tradition, that we should be worshipping in a way that we need to protect ourselves and not be able to worship. Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But this is the time we’re living in.
The Rev. Laura Edgar said she’s long had the intention of holding conversations with her church’s neighbors at nearby Auburn University. But only recently has she learned the language and skills to do that, said Edgar, the associate pastor for youth, college and young adults at Auburn First Baptist Church.
The key, she said, is “to learn what the needs truly are, and not what we think the needs are.”
Edgar’s congregation is one of 16 to take part in The Vinery: Awakening Faith and Flourishing at the Intersection of Church and University. The program invites congregations close to college campuses that are ready and willing to build or expand relationships with their campus communities into a two-year process of congregational reflection, listening and discernment.
There are about 20 million college students across the United States, and about 5,000 churches located within 2 miles of a campus. We believe that in bringing these two communities together, the torn fabric of American life can begin to be rewoven by forming healthy human beings serving the common good in the likeness of Christ.
In 2021, the college ministry Mere Christianity Forum launched The Vinery to build connections between churches and universities with a grant from Lilly Endowment Inc.’s Thriving Congregations Initiative.
The Vinery does not focus primarily on college ministry programming or increasing attendance numbers of young people in Sunday worship. We do hope that these are manifestations of the inner work of the congregations. But before that work can begin, we invite congregations to practice deep listening.
Why deep listening? Deep listening, in simple terms, is intentionally hearing the needs and interests of others and taking them seriously. It involves listening to what is said and what is not said.
At our 2023 annual Vinery gathering, the Rev. Judy Peterson offered some guidelines. Deep listening is more than being present, having good body language and hearing what others are saying, she said. It entails exhibiting a generosity that invites speakers to talk to us from their hearts — and does not send them signals that we only have time for a summary.
We begin by asking participants to explore how they are listening to God, themselves, their congregations and their campuses. Then we ask how listening more intentionally might help them become better neighbors to the young adults, staff, administrators, faculty and alumni near them. Through their listening process, congregations can learn of needs they hadn’t anticipated or sense a call to people they hadn’t noticed.
As our first group of congregations finishes its first year, this emphasis on deep listening has made a remarkable difference.
The Rev. Bromleigh McCleneghan of United Church of Gainesville in Gainesville, Florida, said that people have started showing up in her office to talk over concerns about issues on campus and their sense of inadequacy in the face of overwhelming student need.
“Slowly, through deep listening, a nascent vision of what ministry alongside our university neighbors could be is beginning to emerge,” McCleneghan said.
Deep listening entails building relationships and allowing our learnings to guide strategic and ministry plans, rather than showing up with agendas preset by boards and councils.
Granted, it’s easier to plan a pizza party at the church than to commit to regularly eating in the student dining hall. It takes less effort to build a ministry program from a list of suggestions than to take time to learn what people really want.
But when congregations really listen to their collegiate neighbors, they can serve them better. One Vinery congregation heard from students that buying textbooks was a financial burden; the church created a fund to help them. In another congregation, young adults are finding companionship with a small group of octogenarians who drink tea and knit on Friday afternoons.
Deep listening doesn’t stop at listening, though; it merely starts there. The next step after hearing people’s needs is making an effort to meet those needs.
McCleneghan in Gainesville said the conversations she’s had have inspired her to take that next step.
“It’s not what I anticipated, but it certainly feels important. Deep listening is allowing me and the other lead team members to hear God calling us to some new thing,” she said.
McCleneghan said she has scheduled a meeting to talk with the folks showing up in her office and sending her texts — an event that will be “just the next stage of this unfolding conversation.”
Peterson, in her address to the annual Vinery gathering, said that a deep listening practice isn’t just for specific occasions or meetings; how we listen — or fail to listen — in the everyday, mundane moments of our lives creates our listening habits.
The Rev. Elexis Wilson, the pastor at Wayman African Methodist Episcopal Church in Bloomington, Illinois, said at the gathering that we have to discipline ourselves not to mentally multitask by thinking about what’s next or how we might fix the problem at hand: “Many times, the task is to just listen.”
For Wilson, whose father was a pastor, this practice has particular meaning.
“I do not think I am ever listened to without [listeners] looking for the end game,” she said. “As a preacher’s kid, I felt like there was no genuine want to know my thoughts unless they wanted something from my father or were being paid. Nobody naturally would sit and hear me.”
Deep listening is vital to The Vinery’s process. It requires that we be intentional about prioritizing listening, even when it’s inconvenient.
Can we teach ourselves not to answer the phone when we’re distracted? Can we avoid thinking about laundry or clicking on Facebook during Zoom meetings? Can we learn to say, “I’d like to hear what you’re saying, but now is not a good time — could we schedule a conversation later, when we both can focus?”
How do we listen, not only to our congregations, campuses and constituencies, but also to our co-laborers? How might our deep listening make us better disciples, colleagues, leaders and friends?
Yes, it feels terribly inefficient. Yet I know that for my life as a disciple — as well as for congregations — it’s crucial. May we help people know that they are cared for and listened to — by us and by God.
Deep listening doesn’t stop at listening, though; it merely starts there. The next step after hearing people’s needs is making an effort to meet those needs.
When Daniel J. Bernardo took over as interim president of Washington State University in 2015, he had to handle multiple crises — fast.
He and the university community were already grieving the death of their beloved president. FBI agents showed up in his office to tell him that the campus computer network had been infiltrated. A forest fire shut down the airport and threatened to delay the start of the semester. And a Fox News segment about online syllabi prompted a deluge of complaints.
“It’s amazing, as you probably know, what a firestorm that type of coverage can cause,” he said. “So we just had a whole convergence of things going on in that first month, and it was a trial by fire for sure.”
After surviving that initial trial, Bernardo went on to serve the university for the next year, until Kirk Schulz assumed the permanent role in 2016. Bernardo’s experience — and other interim roles he’s filled — inspired him to write a handbook for others stepping into such a position.
The book, “The Interim: A Guide to Transition Leadership in Higher Education,” offers a five-stage plan, structured chronologically from positioning yourself for success to the handoff. Drawn from his own experience and research as well as more than 30 interviews with other interim leaders, it also includes specific advice about things from budget management to time management to developing a 30-day plan.
Bernardo, who now serves as a senior adviser to his successor, spoke with Faith & Leadership’s Sally Hicks about his experience as an interim leader and why he thinks that job can make a difference in the life of an institution. The following is an edited transcript.
Faith & Leadership: Explain a little bit about how you became interim president of WSU.
Daniel J. Bernardo: I had been in a couple of interim roles prior to that, but the interim presidency was truly unique. It was an interesting time, a difficult time. We’d had a really charismatic leader — a native of North Carolina.
Elson S. Floyd was president of the University of Missouri System prior to us. [Before that], he was president of Western Michigan. He was a Tar Heel — went up the ranks [at UNC] and also got all his degrees there. Anyway, he was a dynamic guy. Really, really fun to work for. He really elevated us in terms of reputation.
Unfortunately, he contracted colon cancer while he was in office and died rather suddenly. The kind of leader he was, he didn’t really take time away from his position to treat his illness. There was only a two-week period between when he stepped down temporarily and when he passed, so there was little preparation. It caught a lot of people by surprise. So it was a very, very fast transition.
F&L: I know you had a rough start. In the end, what did you enjoy about serving in the role of interim president?
DJB: This is my alma mater, so to be interim president of a place that’s really special to me, that’s truly what I enjoyed most. And I particularly enjoyed the external relations role. And being an alumnus was a huge advantage.
I did ask that question of most people I interviewed for the book. Their answers weren’t about things like, “Oh, we restructured this” or, “We introduced this new program.” It was really about service to the organization and advancing the culture and moving the organization forward. I think that the challenge of interim positions is fun.
It’s exciting. It’s exciting and gratifying, because you can really get a lot done.
I look back on each of those organizations that I led in an interim way and I think we set the table nicely. And that’s a really important thing — the interim has to set the table for the next person. Even to the extent of, what kind of written documents do you want to hand over?
I feel like I handed over an organization that was much better organized, at least, than the one I inherited. Even though I revered Dr. Floyd, one thing he wasn’t particularly good at was annual reviews. He was a relationship guy, right?
Dr. Floyd had 35 direct reports, which he could manage, but no mere mortal could do that. So we got it down to 17, and we did some restructuring in that way.
I think it’s gratifying to hand it over to somebody. And in every case, they really appreciated what had been done.
F&L: The central message of your book is that one should not view an interim leadership position as being a caretaker. Talk a little bit about leading with a “bias toward action.”
DJB: What I’ve noticed over the years is that you’re asked either officially or informally to be a placeholder. If you adopt that philosophy, it’s going to be a significant time of treading water and missed opportunity for an institution. It’s not uncommon for institutions to have as much as a quarter of their leadership team led by interims.
And if you just carry that out and think about it just mathematically, if you will, that’s a lot of administrative years of opportunity risks, if it’s just the status quo.
It really does require that the person appointing the interim make it clear that that person has authority to move forward. That will be challenged by faculty, because they’re indoctrinated to the role of the status quo interim. You can quickly render that person ineffective by not being supportive.
Another thing about these interim roles that I found interesting was we think of them as six months to a year. But they can sometimes be indefinite. A good half of the people I interviewed had no time frame provided to them for their appointment. Even those that had a year time frame identified, for the majority of them, their appointments lasted longer than a year.
F&L: You also talk about how it’s a unique opportunity and that interim leaders can do things that are needed because they’re time-limited. What can an interim do that a permanent replacement couldn’t do as easily or as effectively?
DJB: An interim that is not pursuing the job permanently certainly has the ability to make some changes that perhaps somebody coming into the role might be averse to.
Unfortunately, more and more circumstances prevail where interims are in the role of what I call the clean-up-the-mess interim. Those are scenarios in which there are very large problems to address within the college or the vice presidential unit.
And in those circumstances, the interim has the advantage of being able to address those issues aggressively, where a new person might be reluctant to do that. The interim typically comes from that same institution, so they tend to have a much better perspective on the institutional norms.
F&L: What are some examples?
DJB: The most common from the people I talked to and that I’ve encountered were personnel or culture issues. So certainly, those personnel issues and changing the culture of an organization are areas that an interim can plug into and make some significant progress.
It can be organizational. Some of the people that I talked with were involved in reshaping organizational structure. Interims are often used in establishing new organizations. For example, in a new college or new vice presidential area, there might be an interim there to try to set this organization up.
That can be a really productive use of an interim, because some of those things require people with the institutional knowledge, and also making some tough decisions that allow them to hand off the organization to a more permanent person.
F&L: You lay out five stages of an interim leadership position. There are two things that run through all of them. One is relationships, and the other is communication. Why are those two things important in particular for an interim?
DJB: Those are probably the two critical elements of any leadership position. I think, first of all, with respect to communications, one of the real challenges with an interim position is the time frame and the fact that everything is compressed.
I suggest creating a 30-day plan instead of what’s typically thought of as a 100-day plan. So everything is compressed, and that makes it even more important that you invest in relationships and that you invest in communication.
It’s very important to prioritize, and it’s very important to stop and build relationships along the way, and invest in those relationships on the front end. It’s important so that you have your team with you along the way. Some of the challenges an interim has are because of the impermanence with that team.
It’s important to be strategic with your communication — not only what you say but what you don’t say, because everything you do will be interpreted. In most of these interim situations, there is an information void inherent in the situation. And if people don’t know what’s going on or don’t have the necessary information, they’ll make it up, as you know, right?
F&L: One of the things you talk about is diversity, equity and inclusion as being a vital part of an interim leader’s work. And you point out that even if there is a DEI plan, it might not really make a difference in the culture. How do you figure that out?
DJB: Again, it’s communicating that that’s important and talking to people about it, people who might have a perspective on that. The only way to do that is to talk to people who may be affected by that culture.
When I first became a dean, I inherited a place that had real culture problems, especially around women in the workplace. And once I opened that up as an issue and began to talk to people about it, I was pleasantly surprised how many people, once they figured out that we were going to take it seriously, came quickly forward to help identify the issue and help develop some real action steps.
We identified three tenured faculty in the college. We developed a case against each of them where either they were going to resign or we were going to be in court with them, and they opted out. But yeah, it probably will involve some tough personnel actions, because these things don’t happen by themselves.
F&L: Another step you advise is making a learning plan. Why?
DJB: This [role] is not only something that’s good for the organization; it needs to be good for you, right? So you need to be very conscious upfront about, “What is it that I want to learn from this experience, and how am I going to go about doing that?”
Sometimes you think you don’t have time to learn, but if you want to maximize the benefits to yourself in terms of professional development, you need to invest in yourself through this process as well.
For example, one thing that I wish I had done was to keep a daily journal. First of all, to make this book a lot easier! But also, it would remind you of all of those learning opportunities that you went through along the way.
For example, the budget can be a challenge for some interim leaders. Well, this is a chance to learn, “How do I go about taking a budget and implementing it and holding people to that budget?” Those are great skills that a lot of deans and vice presidents have to develop on the fly.
F&L: You have really detailed suggestions, templates for all kinds of actions. And when I read it, I thought, “My gosh, for a person who probably is already overwhelmed by the job, that seems like a lot.” But you have also a specific strategy for freeing up time. What do you recommend?
DJB: Time management is one of the real keys to being a successful interim, and I make some very specific suggestions. The first one is don’t accept the predecessor’s schedule as your own. You have different priorities, and there’s a tendency for some interims to go in and keep all the same meetings and try to run the same schedule.
Spend some time analyzing, where does your time go? One of the key suggestions is don’t try to have 100% of your 8-to-5 time committed to doing meetings and donor visits and all of the specific activities of the job, and not budget out time for things like email, phone conversations, etc.
That is a ticket to burnout. Many of the people I interviewed suffered that way. They just tried to outwork the job. We all do that.
It’s my bias, but I use my administrative staff quite differently than many of my peers. I require a really outstanding administrative assistant — or what I would call chief of staff — and a really outstanding CFO.
And I’d always find it interesting that when people would come to interview, they would talk about the faculty and everybody else but they wouldn’t talk about the most important person to me. And that is my chief of staff, my go-to person. You can delegate a lot to that person. And I just think that delegation is absolutely the requirement.
But that burnout is significant. There were four or five people I interviewed that had significant adverse health reactions to their interim positions. They weren’t ready for the time demands that they imposed on themselves or the stress of that job. Fortunately, they were able to get out of it in time and get back to some normalcy.
F&L: And when you say use administrative staff differently, you mean invest them with real responsibilities so that your workload is reduced?
DJB: Part of that is that the CFO, for example, and that executive assistant are in every leadership meeting you’ve got, because they have to know what you’re trying to accomplish so that you can trust them to make decisions based upon your goals.
Not everybody treats their CFO that way. They just go in and talk to him or her as needed. I think that an HR person’s the same way. A real time sink for administrators is personnel, as you mentioned. And if you have an HR person who is in sync with you, he or she can buy you a lot of time.
F&L: Is there anything I didn’t ask you that you would want to add to our conversation?
DJB: A key recommendation that many people should adhere to is do not keep your previous job. Do not try to do two jobs, because you will do two jobs poorly.
I regularly saw that as a significant issue. Either the interim stayed in the former role or they mentally couldn’t disconnect from the former role. So you’ve got to have confidence in the [replacement] and let them do their thing.
And that goes back to the theme that these people have to be empowered. If they’re all doing nothing proactive, that’s a pretty significant tread-water time for the university.