As Immigration Judge Catherine Halliday-Roberts worked through a list of about 50 people whom she was about to order deported in June, a man wearing a clerical collar quietly entered the San Diego courtroom.
He sat down on the last bench, clasped his hands together, bowed his head and began to pray silently.
A couple of volunteers observing the proceedings sat on a bench closer to the judge. One wore a button that said, “FAITH.”
Led by the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego, FAITH — Faithful Accompaniment in Trust and Hope — is a ministry program through which faith leaders and community members in the region have organized volunteers to provide daily witness of proceedings at immigration court and Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices. Federal immigration officials have conducted widespread arrests in both spaces since May 2025.
The volunteers do not interfere in the outcomes or try to stop arrests from happening. Rather, they offer accompaniment and prayer to the immigrants affected and their loved ones.
“At least the migrants showing up feel that makes a difference for them. That’s the most important thing. It makes a difference for them,” said the Rev. Scott Santarosa, a Jesuit priest who serves as pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in San Diego. “They don’t feel as alone as they might have been. I also think it does have this effect, which is that the people doing the arresting are aware that someone’s watching.”
Is there ICE activity in your area? Who is it affecting most?
FAITH began in 2025 as an acknowledgment of World Refugee Day with priests and other religious leaders showing up for a morning at immigration court. It has grown into a daily presence of volunteers. As policies have shifted to include arrests of people who come to ICE offices for scheduled appointments in addition to those showing up for court hearings, the volunteers have responded by monitoring both areas of the federal building.
“It’s faith in action,” Auxillary Bishop Felipe Pulido said. “We go to Mass. We listen to the gospel. The gospel always challenges us to live it out in our daily lives. When we see injustice, when we see pastoral needs … it’s for us to be public witness, basically, not just within the church, but also outside the church.”
World Refugee Day
The FAITH effort grew organically after conversations among members of the diocese’s immigration task force, according to member Dinora Reyna-Gutierrez, executive director of the San Diego Organizing Project, a faith-based civic engagement and advocacy organization.
She said she went with a priest to observe what was happening at immigration court in June 2025, shortly after ICE began stationing officers in the court’s hallways to make arrests of people leaving their hearings.
“I was really agitated, and I think deeply moved and in shock, by witnessing dozens of ICE agents in the hallway — and just heartbroken at seeing how families that were willingly showing up to court in an attempt to stay here had no idea what the outcome was,” Reyna-Gutierrez said.
The diocese had recently closed a ministry providing shelter to asylum-seeking migrants that was needed in the border region during the Biden administration, but border crossings had slowed significantly under the second Trump administration. Santarosa said the priests were looking for other opportunities to support immigrants in the region.
“We said to each other, ‘We have to be attentive to however Jesus comes and knocks on the door the next time because he came knocking, and we responded, and it was this beautiful thing,’” Santarosa recalled.
At a task force meeting, the group discussed bringing priests and other visible religious leaders to immigration court. Reyna-Gutierrez said she felt that the priests’ presence the day they’d gone to court together had made a difference in how people behaved.
What events break your heart or move you in your context?
The group planned an action for June 20, World Refugee Day, led by Bishop Michael Pham, who had recently been appointed to the position by Pope Leo XIV. Pham’s letter calling for volunteer priests went viral.
At St. Joseph Cathedral in downtown San Diego, Pham delivered a homily telling his own story as a former refugee from Vietnam.
“In 1980, my parents took a risk to let my sister, my younger brother and me to go on a small boat to seek freedom along with 116 other people,” Pham said. “We were on a little, tiny boat, out of the ocean for three days and four nights without food or water. Thank God, an oil tanker rescued us, brought us to Malaysia and put us in a refugee camp.”
He said he was grateful to the United States for eventually taking in his family and giving him opportunities.
“Today, I stand as a leader of a Catholic Church, thanks to these opportunities that allowed me to contribute to society,” Pham said. “I believe most of refugees, immigrants, and migrants over the years, whether documented or undocumented, come to the United States seeking opportunities for a better life and success.”
He said the current situation of the United States, with the government separating families to deport people, concerned him.
“When I was 10 years old living in Vietnam, I witnessed this situation, seeing people being taken away for no obvious reason,” Pham said. “It is sad and disheartening for me to see this kind of thing playing out in this country today.”
He urged those in attendance to stand in solidarity with refugees, migrants and immigrants.
“We are God’s children,” Pham said. “Let us store up our treasure in heaven by sharing, welcoming and promoting harmony. If we achieve this, the United States will become a beacon of hope, peace and love to the world.”
After the Mass, local faith leaders including Pham, Santarosa and representatives from other faith traditions went to the Edward J. Schwartz Federal Building in downtown San Diego, which houses both the immigration court and ICE offices.
Guards at the building initially blocked their entry but then let them inside. Santarosa observed ICE officers in the hallway outside the courtrooms, but those officers left without arresting anyone after the religious leaders arrived.
After the morning court hearings finished and the religious leaders returned to speak with journalists, a reporter asked Pham whether he planned to have an ongoing presence of priests at the court.
He responded that the priests would be back, and he tapped Santarosa to lead the program, which became FAITH.
Helping and getting help
Santarosa formed a team, and they organized and trained nearly 700 volunteers, including more than 150 clergy, roughly 50 of them priests, to show up to the federal building.
The program launched in August 2025 with volunteers working in three shifts — 7:30-10 a.m., 10 a.m.-12:30 p.m. and 12:30-3 p.m.
Is there anything in your personal history or ministry’s history that can help you understand what to do in the present?
Gloria Morales-Palos schedules volunteers in addition to volunteering at the building herself. She was once undocumented, and now that she has permission to be in the United States, she empathizes with those still in that status.
“The FAITH program is a dream come true to me,” Morales-Palos said. “I just feel very strong that people don’t have to be by themselves, and there’s so many ways that we as a community can get together and help.”
Sometimes people send requests for accompaniment in advance, but most of the time volunteers outside the building meet immigrants on their way into court who ask for someone to come with them, she said.
Pulido said he went with Morales-Palos to accompany a family that had requested support in advance when the father had a check-in appointment with ICE. The bishop stood with the two adult daughters while they waited for their father to come out from the appointment, but the attorney came out alone and said that ICE had arrested him.
“I didn’t know what to do,” Pulido recalled. “The two of them were crying and very desperate. I just got close to them, but I didn’t know what to do.”
Then, he said, Morales-Palos came over to the daughters and comforted them.
“I really saw God through this lady, how she was giving comfort to them,” Pulido said.
Morales-Palos lived that need for comfort herself when ICE arrested her cousin after his court hearing in October. The family’s attorney was eventually able to get the cousin released, and Pham and several priests have shown up for his hearings since then, Morales-Palos said.
“That meant a lot,” Morales-Palos said. “Finally the church is walking along with us. It’s a good time to be Catholic. I’m very proud of being Catholic and being in the diocese in San Diego because the church is doing their mission.”
She said she hopes the program will spread to other regions of the country.
Standing up for FAITH
Patrick Corrigan got involved in the FAITH ministry because he was looking for something to do after retirement.
The military veteran is now the ministry lead and spends four days a week at the federal building.
“It’s just really transformed my faith,” Corrigan said. “I do feel closer to God at the courthouse. I’ve said that before, and it’s cliche, and it sounds trite to me when I say it, but it is that — it’s just a beauty and a reminder of just who we are.”
In February, officials with the Federal Protective Service suddenly decided to tell volunteers that they could no longer stand in the hallways of the federal building because they were loitering. Corrigan and several people volunteering with another grassroots collective stayed in the hallway and received citations.
They decided to fight the tickets.
How can being present or being a witness help in your context?
Corrigan claimed the citation infringed on his freedom of religion.
After an initial hearing in federal court, prosecutors decided to defer the charges. That means that as long as Corrigan and the other volunteers don’t get charged with anything else before August, the prosecutors will drop the charges.
Corrigan said Pham has since met with leadership from the Federal Protective Service and ICE to maintain volunteers’ right to be in the hallways. So far, the volunteers have been in the building every day, but sometimes they have to navigate federal employees who don’t want them there.
The restrictions are toughest, Corrigan said, at immigration court, where volunteers are facing increasing limitations in the waiting area and have been banned from the hallways. The courtrooms are often too full for observers because of a recent increase in the number of people scheduled per judge per day.
For faith leaders in other places thinking of implementing a similar program, Santarosa, Corrigan and Morales-Palos said the most important thing is to start. It doesn’t have to be every day, they said.
“There is not a perfect way, and if you wait to be ready, you will never be ready,” Morales-Palos said.
Reyna-Gutierrez recommended finding a legal services partner for advice on how to observe safely. Santarosa suggested using a buddy system with people who are interested, and Corrigan said that faith leaders might be surprised as to who and how many raise their hands to help when presented with the program.
“We may not change something. We’re not going to change the laws,” Corrigan said. “But we know we’re there. The brothers and sisters know we’re there, and the community knows we’re there. Maybe what matters to me most is there are many folks who don’t look the other way.”
What is a cause or activity that is worth potential conflict with authorities?
Questions to consider
- Is there ICE activity in your area? Who is it affecting most?
- What events break your heart or move you in your context?
- Is there anything in your personal history or ministry’s history that can help you understand what to do in the present?
- How can being present or being a witness help in your context?
- What is a cause or activity that is worth potential conflict with authorities?
Black women have always been called. For generations, we have pastored as evangelists, intercessors, teachers, midwives of faith, and community builders. We preached without pulpits, shepherded without titles and carried congregations without recognition. Often denied ordination, we led anyway.
More and more, Black women are being officially appointed to the position of pastor, from small congregations to historic pulpits. They are also working as ordained ministers across many contexts, like hospitals and nonprofit sectors. This awakening, though well overdue, also carries significance that deserves deeper attention.
I say this from experience. There is a cost in being the “historic first.” The appointment often comes with theft and quiet exploitation, where your work is used, your ideas repackaged — and yet you remain unpaid, uncredited and unseen. Institutions issue press releases that praise your appointment even as actions betray both their words and God’s will.
As a Black woman leader in ministry, I’ve been a pawn in someone else’s strategy, never told I was even in their game. Oftentimes I have been forced into administrative roles and mentored to remain in my place. The pressure to do everything with nothing is a quiet violence I endured across church and secular spaces.
While interviewing Black women pastors for research and through my work with Black Women Write for Freedom, I have heard many painful stories. One woman shared that she was sent to lead a congregation after a male pastor abruptly stepped down mid-year. For more than two years, she carried out every pastoral responsibility: preaching, offering pastoral care, managing the budget and leading the church. Yet she was denied both the benefits and the official title of senior pastor. Despite feeling deeply slighted, she continued her assignment unrecognized and unprotected with full awareness that she was being treated unfairly.
What happens to the mental and spiritual health of Black women when they realize they were chosen not to lead, but to clean up? Not to thrive, but to survive? Not to partner, but to be admin support? The appointment itself is not enough; there must be support and belief in the calling from the congregation and those who appoint.
When denominations send Black women into churches that male leaders have damaged and ask them to rebuild from the wreckage, we are being thrown into the deep end and expected to swim, often with little to no support. And when things don’t turn around fast enough, the blame quietly shifts to us. The system asks us to revive dying churches without providing what we need to thrive.
I am deeply concerned about the well-being of Black women in church leadership. I often find myself watching with one eye closed — not because I don’t believe Black women should be in positions of authority, but because in my experience institutions are hard to trust. The celebration of our presence is not always matched with the protection or respect needed to allow us to succeed.
Black women continue to face second-guessing, diminished authority and outright dismissal. We are called “sister” instead of “reverend.” We are asked to preach from the floor rather than the pulpit. We are made to feel, explicitly or subtly, that we do not belong. One pastor said it plainly: “There’s this idea that Black women don’t have to be loved or appreciated.”
I spoke with Black women serving in historically Black denominations and in predominantly white ones, often in what are called cross-racial or cross-cultural appointments, and a clear pattern emerged.
Even when Black women are appointed, boards and leadership bodies often function in ways that undermine us. The systems that should support our leadership can, instead, work against us. Whether through gatekeeping, unequal pay or the absence of spiritual care, the message remains clear: You may be present, but you are not fully welcomed, and you must labor twice as hard for what others receive with ease. One pastor, reflecting on the emotional toll, said, “You can have the tools and intelligence, but if your soul is not protected, that’s dangerous.”
What has been most helpful to me, and to other Black women leaders I know, is being told the truth of what the work will actually require. Too often, that truth is camouflaged by shame, manipulation, or fear that leaders won’t come or stay if they know what they’re walking into. But withholding reality does more harm than good.
We need honesty. We need mentorship. We need resources. We need trust. These are not extras. They are the foundation that allows us to lead, stay well and do the work with integrity.
This is why networks like the RISE Together Mentorship Network and WomanPreach! Inc. are essential. Black women need holistic support: mentorship, mental health care and tangible resources. Without that, the appointment alone can feel more like a setup than a step forward.
Black women are not just navigating unjust systems; we are imagining and building new ones. When we are met with equity, sacred space, honest communication and tangible resources, we are free to lead from our deepest strength.
We are not projects to manage, tokens to showcase or obstacles to overcome. We are full partners. It’s time to move beyond symbolic inclusion. We deserve environments that invest in our well-being, honor our authority and equip us to thrive.
We have always answered the call, leading with vision shaped by generations of resilience. Now, systems and communities must answer our call with trust, equity and real partnership. As one United Methodist woman pastor said, “No place is perfect, but every place doesn’t have to be hell.”
The appointment alone is never enough. Perhaps someone in leadership will read this and have enough faith to believe that our experiences are enough. As one woman shared, “I don’t want future Black women pastors to endure what we did.”
Our faith compels us to go, to create and to innovate — regardless. But it would be holy for others to join us, not as gatekeepers, but as co-creators.
Because when systems fail to support us, when justice is delayed or denied, it doesn’t just harm Black women — it disrupts what God is trying to do through us. These disruptions are not only institutional; they are spiritual. And too often, they result in unexpected and cruel experiences, not because we weren’t called, but because we weren’t cared for.
Don’t tell the Rev. Luis Cortés that Esperanza is something special.
It is, of course. And he appreciates the compliment. But he doesn’t think that an institution like Esperanza, which serves the Latino community in North Philadelphia, should be special.
“A place like Esperanza should be normative. We have 30 neighborhoods in the city; there should be 30 Esperanzas,” he said. “There should be 30 places where you can participate in the arts, where you can learn about and play music, where you can experience different forms of dance, where you can learn photography, where you can learn how to add and subtract.”
Just because people are poor doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have the same things that everyone needs for a good life, he said.
Founded in 1987, Esperanza seeks to help the residents of Hunting Park, a majority-Latino neighborhood, have the same opportunities that other residents of the city enjoy. It focuses on education and economic development, including affordable housing, schools, housing counseling, immigration legal services, workforce development, youth leader training, and a fully accredited branch campus, Esperanza College of Eastern University.
The organization — its name means “hope” in Spanish — has more than 600 employees and a budget of more than $70 million and is a model for other institutions across the country.
Cortés, who is a Baptist pastor, worked with Hispanic Clergy of Philadelphia to found Esperanza. He earned an M.Div. at Union Theological Seminary and a master’s degree in economic development from Southern New Hampshire University.
In this interview, he talks to Faith & Leadership’s Sally Hicks about why he founded Esperanza and why he thinks institution building is key to social change. The following is an edited transcript.
Faith & Leadership: You have a goal of building an “opportunity community.” What do you mean by that?
Luis Cortés: Our ontology has a set of concepts and categories, and the relationships between these are fundamental. There is a Creator, and there are the created. Those are givens, as fact. So we start there. The other thing that’s given, as fact, is that all human beings are equal in God’s eyes.
If you believe that, then you must believe that we should try to provide a great opportunity for everyone to become that which God would have them become. To be in service to humanity is to assist everyone to develop to their highest potential. That’s our modus operandi.
This understanding then is followed by the question, what do you do with the poor? The mission work is to create a place where you provide all residents the opportunity to live a quality life. What must you provide for people to reach their ultimate goals, to be able to serve humanity better despite their economic situation and to have them feel they have a good quality of life?
This is what becomes an opportunity community, the development of all things needed for individuals to reach their potential. As an example, we built a theater and we have cultural pieces, like teaching dance, teaching music, all from a cultural perspective.
All people come from and have a culture. We have a language, we have music, and for Latines, we are in exile — we’re away from where our culture was based.
What do we do to create an opportunity community — a community that understands your class and your culture and helps you build so that you can have a great life staying here in this neighborhood or you can use what you learn here and have a great life elsewhere?
F&L: How did Esperanza begin?
LC: I was the founder of Hispanic Clergy of Philadelphia in 1981, an outgrowth of developing a field education system for Latine students at Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary. It was about 26 clergy from about 18 different denominational entities.
These clergy were all in the same Philadelphia neighborhood, and they had never really worked together until we organized as a field education consortium. As a group of clergy, when we would get together, like any group of highly motivated concerned citizens, we inevitably become active on challenging issues of the day.
We were getting together to discuss field education, quite mundane. And then all of a sudden, conversations shifted to, “They shot a guy here last week” or, “The police did or didn’t perform,” and we just moved in the direction of the conversations and became a civil rights organization.
During that time, Pew Charitable Trusts did a study on religious institutions, and as a result, we got funded for three years to start Esperanza and to work in clergy education. The clergy hired me to do it, with the mandate to do the clergy education and create a proactive organization, Esperanza.
In the beginning, the more we helped an individual family, the more it hurt the local church. As we helped individuals, the family moved farther away from their church, eventually joining a suburban congregation.
What we learned as a group was, it doesn’t matter if our people leave to improve their lot, as long as we create an institution that remains to assist those that stay or can’t get out.
Our philosophy became that we will work together to create Hispanic-owned-and-operated institutions. We began working on that theory of institution building where we could control the mission and agenda of our community, as opposed to the present-day external control.
We as Hispanic people in this nation have never focused on this on a large scale. We’ve never created our own institutions. What we do is we assume that we will inherit the institutions of America as we become a larger part of America. But that is not how it works. The institutions that provide for and control our neighborhoods are all managed externally: police, fire, schools, streets, most businesses.
So we decided we only wanted to create Hispanic-owned-and-operated institutions. We had enough Hispanic institutions that were doing social service, so we decided to not compete with our follow Latine agencies. We focused on education and economic development.
We wanted to do education because education is the first step and we understand institution-building as economic development.
When we first got started, it was like, “How do we help people?” Now it’s, “How do we help our institutions help people?”
F&L: How did you come to appreciate institutions in this time when there’s a lot of cynicism, a lot of distrust, a lot of anger around institutions?
LC: Since our nation’s beginning, Alexis de Tocqueville noted that it is associations and the institutions that they create that make Americas unique.
We’ve got to think positive. We serve our communities and our neighbors. So if everybody would do as well as they can at their community-serving job, whatever that is, we should be headed to a better place.
As the religious population lessens, there will have to be alternative institutions that defend the rights of the poor. Historically, the church has responded to the poor first through charity, then the development of institutions like hospitals or schools. Advocating to change unjust laws.
If that faith role dwindles, we have to figure out who or what replaces that. I see that as a major problem for the future.
F&L: In addition to the institutions, you are making change in individuals. The documentary “Esperanza: Hope for Our Cities,” for example, shows that commitment. Why do you stress self-belief, grit and confidence?
LC: I went to public school in Spanish Harlem. When I got to elementary school, they said to me, “You can be president of the United States.” And I looked around, and it’s old, it’s decrepit, it’s dirty, it’s outdated, and I’m like, “Nah, no way.”
For many people, it’s hard to self-motivate if you don’t see anyone else around you achieve success. We need our youth to “make it.” Last year, in our graduating high school class, we had MIT, two people at Carnegie Mellon, and one girl went to Wellesley, among a plethora of state colleges and universities. It is now normative.
Part of our model is we must have modern equipment. The space must be super clean. Visitors come to our place and they say, “Wow, this is so clean.” It’s a compliment. I understand. But it also says something about their expectation.
When I’m told, “Wow, this place is clean. This lab is so modern,” what are they saying? That in their preconception of economic poverty, they did not expect a first-class lab here. They did not expect, because of the economics, this place to be spotless. They do not expect your top five students to go to those schools, and you have one of the top college-graduating high schools for Hispanics. They do not expect that.
Whatever prejudice they brought in begins to be challenged, right? It’s like — look at this: MIT, Harvard, Penn. When they see that, they say, “Something special is happening.”
While there may be truth to that, it’s only special because other people won’t do it. Our team at Esperanza figured out how to do it, creating a culture of opportunity.
I believe there’s nothing that we can’t do. It’s just about how much time you have and what are your priorities. People ask me about this all the time — “How did you do it?”
Well, you find the need and fill it. And once you fill it, create an institution behind it, then find the next need and fill it. And once you fill it, create an institution that survives until it can thrive.
F&L: You mentioned the cleanliness, and you also insist on giving Esperanza’s students and other participants the best in other ways. Why is that important?
LC: We start with the concept that we should have what any community has. If you look at most communities and the arts, for example, they have access to experiences and ways to learn; they have ways to experience music, acting, dance and painting or visual. We have to create the avenues.
First we got the theater, and then through the theater, we do dance. But we also brought the best of the region. So the Philadelphia Orchestra plays at our theater; Opera Philadelphia sings in our theater; the Philadelphia Chamber Orchestra plays at our theater; Philadanco and the Philadelphia Ballet dance in our theater.
We communicated to these arts institutions, “When you come to our neighborhood, it has to be your A team.” Normally when they go to a community, they send the B and C team so they can work and practice as they serve a neighborhood project. At Esperanza, if the A team ain’t coming, you don’t come.
The artistic talent also has to give time during the week to work with students. Not just Esperanza schools, but there are about 10,000 public school children in our neighborhood. They do workshops and our community youth interact with them. After their theatrical performance, they sit and answer audience questions for 15 minutes. We have found the arts groups love these interactions as much as our residents do.
F&L: You also work on gentrification. How much of an issue is that for you?
LC: The bottom line is that urban communities near centers of our American cities where working-class Spanish-speaking people live are being dismantled by an upper middle class and above who wants their land and their housing so they can capitalize economically and culturally. It is happening everywhere.
Cities are happy with the gentrification or displacement of our neighborhoods, because it means a better tax base for the city. So when the city gains, the economically disadvantaged lose. That’s a constant struggle.
We need to build up equity in Black and brown communities. The No. 1 equity builder in Black and brown communities is not giant companies; it’s mom-and-pop commercial shops and home ownership. What we can show is, as we lose the housing, these mom-and-pop shops are destroyed.
So, the real question is, do we really want to help Black and brown people, or are we just saying we do while we actually cash in on their assets?
In America, they’re taking our neighborhoods under the guise of mixed income communities. In St. Louis, Black neighborhoods are being bought up by universities. West Philadelphia, it’s universities and science centers. North Philadelphia, it’s another university and the corporate needs. So they push people out of their long serving neighborhoods.
Today, young professionals don’t want to spend money on a car to live in the suburbs. They prefer to live in the city, not have a car. They’ll just Uber and use the money saved on transportation for restaurants and recreation, which is fine. But the economic burden falls on the economically disadvantaged, who need to move farther away to more expensive housing, losing the businesses that cater to their needs.
It’s interesting that progressive communities are the ones that gentrify Black and brown neighborhoods. It’s not the conservatives. Conservatives avoid minority communities, while progressives enjoy moving into a culturally mixed neighborhood until they extinct the original ethnic group that was there.
Progressives move in during their early professional career, purchase housing cheaply, live there for five years and make six figures on their “investment.”
It’s a real interesting dynamic where we fight the conservatives on one side and we have to fight the progressives on the other. They do have one thing in common: they’re white.
The role of the church should be different. How do we talk to progressives to say, “Listen, I know you can make money by moving into my neighborhood, but you’re hurting us. How do we really build a mixed income community?”
There’s a dynamic that’s happening in our country. San Bernardino, Phoenix, Calle Ocho in Miami, San Antonio, Philadelphia. Chicago, with three distinct Hispanic neighborhoods. They’re all under the same pressure.
F&L: How do you keep from being overwhelmed when everything you describe is extremely complex? It’s difficult. Yet almost 40 years later, you’re still hopeful.
LC: I am a minister. I believe in God. And in the end, we are all called to serve others. Despite all the problems, our job is to persevere and pursue. And persistence is the name of the game.
When we first got started, it was like, “How do we help people?” Now it’s, “How do we help our institutions help people?”
More than 16 years ago, on the first day of my first real job in higher education, my supervisor treated me to lunch. Over grilled cheese and tomato soup, she said something that has stuck with me all this time: “I believe in you, and I want this job to be an opportunity for your growth and development, so let’s be sure to focus on that.”
I was coming out of a toxic church situation, and my new supervisor’s offer of support and mentorship gave me hope in my new role.
I am grateful for having had many wonderful mentors in my career as a pastor and higher education administrator. Their generous investment in me has inspired me to mentor others.
My first leadership mentor was my mother, who, after serving as a super church volunteer for more than 30 years, finally accepted a call to ordained ministry and served for 15 years as a senior pastor.
My mother modeled inclusion; for example, she took a special interest in the youth group kids. Every year, we hosted a big Halloween party at my parents’ farm in rural Illinois, with my dad driving the hayride tractor. Mom would work the phones, organizing transportation to make sure all the kids could get there.
She frequently disrupted our church system by not only serving as a woman in a leadership role but also including other women in leadership positions.
Achieving inclusion in leadership continues to be a problem across institutions. The number of women, and particularly women of color, who reach senior leadership roles continues to be small. In higher education, a clear majority (58%) of college students are women, yet only 33% of college presidents are women. Approximately half of college students identify as a race other than white, yet 73% of college presidents identify as white.
Representation is not more abundant in the church world, and in many ways, is worse. In my own United Methodist Church, where women are widely accepted for ordination and are a clear majority of members, only 32% of clergy are women. And the church remains one of the most racially segregated institutions in the United States.
This lack of representation in senior leadership roles is a wicked problem that requires individual, institutional and systemic solutions. I’ve come to believe that one important piece of the solution on an individual level is mentoring.
All along the way, I have felt frustrated that I am not making a bigger impact — and a bit terrified that I, as a white male, will do more harm than good by seeking to mentor people with identities different from mine. It puts a knot in my stomach to write publicly about my intentions in this area where I have so much to learn, but it is starting to seem more problematic to be silent. I recognize that white men can play a key role as gatekeepers.
I’ve had successes and failures. I’m happy to say that of the 21 employees I have had the privilege of hiring, most have been women and/or people of color, and most of them are thriving in new leadership roles. One of my proudest professional accomplishments was pivoting the leadership of a church I planted to a woman who has since led that church for more than 10 years.
I’ve also made mistakes. In one instance, I pushed one mentee too hard in my eagerness to develop what I saw to be her talents. In the end, I apologized and acknowledged, “I did a bad job of listening.”
In the academic literature on leadership development for women and people of color, mentoring comes up frequently. Recent studies that center the voices of women and people of color suggest that while mentoring may be helpful, what’s needed most are people who will move beyond merely mentoring to advocacy on their behalf.
I am now convinced that mentoring and advocating for mentees is crucial to progress. I’ve found success with a particular style of mentoring I think of as “mindful mentoring.”
Mindful mentoring moves beyond simply investing in someone to identifying, addressing and dismantling the systems that lead to disparity and inequity. The starting point is awareness of who is in your sphere of influence.
One theory I find useful is Leader-Member Exchange (LMX), which attempts to describe the quality of exchange in the relationship between leaders and the people influenced by them.
It describes an in-group and an out-group. In the workplace, those in the in-group have a deep connection and high-quality relationships with the leader. Studies have shown that being in the in-group leads to higher job satisfaction, commitment, performance and innovative behavior.
Those in the out-group are under the supervision of the leader but lack the high-quality connection of the in-group, and all the outcomes previously mentioned are worse.
The first step to being a mindful mentor is awareness. I know how easy it is for a white male in a senior position to forget his privilege, and I recommend a simple exercise to help leaders be mindful of their relationships.
Take a sheet of paper and draw two large circles, one inside the other. Label the inner circle “in-group” and the outer circle “out-group.” Next, write in the in-group circle the names of the people in your sphere of leadership with whom you have a great connection.
Then fill in the out-group circle. Finally, apply the lens of gender and race to the names on the paper. Who is in your circle(s) of influence? Who is missing?
When I first tried this exercise, I was surprised and disappointed to see how many people in my inner circle looked like me. I now complete this exercise twice a year. It’s helped me be aware of who is in my in-group and to strategize about how to move women and people of color from the out-group to the in-group.
Being a mindful mentor includes doing your own work of self-awareness, striving for cultural humility, uncovering your own implicit biases, and perpetually attempting to understand why these representation disparities exist in the first place.
It’s easy to get overwhelmed at the scale and scope of the work that needs to be done, but being a mindful mentor is practicing hope by focusing on what is within your control. Be aware of your immediate context and think concretely about what you can do today to make a difference.
I have two little daughters, and my deep desire is that they will grow up in a world where their gender will not limit the leaders they can be. Currently, their primary care physician is a woman, and we have many female family friends who are medical professionals. The other day, one of my daughters asked me, “Daddy, can boys be doctors too?”
I said, “Yes, boys can choose to be doctors too.” This kind of upside-down thinking motivates me to be the best mindful mentor I can be.