Luis Cortés: Esperanza builds an ‘opportunity community’ for Latinos in Philadelphia

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.

Picture this: An old church is now a cafe. From 9 to 5, it serves coffee, cakes and sandwiches in the historic hallowed space, with light streaming through the stained glass. Young people with piercings serve chai and lattes to customers of all ages and socioeconomic backgrounds.

Then, on a Sunday evening, with the smell of coffee still in the air, people gather around tables to talk about justice and economics and to question the role faith plays in their lives.

It’s not a secret: the way we church is changing. Yet many of our structures and systems and ways of doing church still hang on a model from another era. Modern life is different. Work is different; dating, community life, technology — they’re all different. So shouldn’t church be different as well?

This is a question I’ve been asking for nearly 30 years. Perhaps it started when I took my college friend Kim home with me one Easter. When we went to church, everyone else got dressed up, but Kim just had jeans. Afterward, she said that while her experience in church had been nice in some ways, she had felt like a fish out of water.

After college, I had friends who were longing for conversations about meaning and purpose — but church was the last place they would look for such discussions.

Over the last 20 years, I’ve worked to create communities that offer space for deep relationships and deep questions while at the same time serving people less fortunate than ourselves. I’ve tried a lot of experiments, building the road as I’ve walked it.

In turbulent times, we look for the safe harbor, the thing that doesn’t change, to help us stay grounded. For the church, I believe that the gospel — not the form of church — is that thing.

As new forms of mission and ministry are taking shape, this is a moment of hope as well as pain. Just like the messy but beautiful process of giving birth, the re-imagining of the landscape of the church is an intricate dance of pain and promise.

There’s always a risk when we step into the new. We have to let go of something to make room for fresh things. Isn’t this a hallmark of the Lord’s leading? There is an invitation to trust. We don’t have to have it all buttoned up and figured out before we step out.

As someone who has lived and worked on the margins of the institutional church for decades, I am grateful, proud and optimistic when I see all the vibrant initiatives that are taking root. It is clear this is no longer a fad of the 90s.

You don’t have to look far to see breweries and bakeries popping up in restored church properties or in new monastic communities. Just look around and you will find kitchen table entrepreneurs putting idle church kitchens into service, using food to address loneliness and food insecurity. Churches are also leveraging their land to meet the needs of their neighbors with efforts such as affordable housing, senior communities and new economic development.

These new models are creating jobs, community and new financial futures for congregations. But they’re also showing the world a dynamic church, transforming the lives of people and the community around them. To me, that looks like the gospel in action.

If you are in a church longing to see something new, how do you know where to start?

• Don’t look back. When I travel, I’m often struck by the way that people in other countries seem to be looking ahead, looking forward. I find that in the U.S. and Europe we tend to look back to the “good old days.” This is not a time to look back but rather a time to look ahead and embrace the future.
• Lament. You do need to grieve what is being lost. The ability to grieve well is a signature gift of those with Christian faith. After all, we believe in a gospel of death and resurrection.
• Experiment. When you try new things, hold them lightly. If you want to do something with food, host a farmers market or a pop-up restaurant, but do it once or twice before making further plans and see what you learn. If you know a lot of people working from home, try a work-from-church day. As you set off to do some experiments, it is helpful to embrace a theology of enough and to approach it as a learning exercise.
• Serve. It is important to adopt an attitude of service and to make justice a priority. This starts by really seeing others, loving others and understanding the challenges they face. Launch a listening tour in which you ask questions, listen deeply and find out from your neighbors what they need most. Then start right there! It will lead you to bigger systemic issues, and you’ll be able to approach that complex work grounded in the experiences of those most directly affected.
• Be open to surprise. We know that the ways of God are not our ways. After all, God came to us as an infant and not as someone in power. Be ready to be surprised — and to surprise your community — by doing something new. The church is turning up and creating impact in ways that are unexpected.

I use the acronym BLESS to teach these five steps: Don’t Look Back, Lament, Experiment, Serve, Surprise.

The world hasn’t been expecting the church to radically create affordable housing, provide for those exiting prison, offer services for seniors, etc. To be honest, a lot of people see the church as an in-group seeking to push its own agenda. But that isn’t our story.

Churches becoming pubs and cafes and new housing developments? I say yes, because it is all part of the church becoming new. We can repurpose our sacred buildings so they can shimmer with hope and justice for all.

Resources:

Lake Institute on Faith & Giving’s Faithful Generosity Story Shelf, with case studies and stories of innovation

RootedGood’s Good Futures Accelerator, a course to help churches unlock resources and imagination

Faith & Leadership feature articles, with stories of innovation and creativity in the church

It was dark when a group of volunteers arrived at Bethlehem Farm, a Catholic community in the hills of West Virginia.

As their minivans pulled into the gravel parking lot outside the farm’s main house earlier this fall, the 10 students from the University of Notre Dame were met by the farm’s full-time caretakers, who extended the customary Bethlehem Farm greeting: a “welcome home” hug.

“Those were the hardest hugs I’ve ever had in my life,” said Matthew Dunne, the only freshman in the group. “My initial reaction was, ‘What have I gotten myself into?’”

Mark Van Kirk, a junior studying computer science, was also startled.

“I felt like I was being treated like a close friend,” he said. “I don’t normally experience that with strangers.”

Eric Fitts, Bethlehem Farm’s director, said that surprising hospitality is exactly why hugs have become such a part of the central Appalachia farm’s culture.

‘Simplicity is countercultural’

The farm welcomes hundreds of volunteers each year for weeklong retreats, where visitors work alongside the caretakers and mirror their way of life. Fitts said the farm’s model of hosting volunteers is in part for practical reasons — it brings in more hands to accomplish the work. But it also allows those volunteers to see mindful, intentional living with their own eyes.

“Whether it’s community living or the idea that simplicity is countercultural — it’s not the way, but it’s a possibility,” he said.

The Notre Dame students were on a midterm break, and all were enrolled in the school’s Appalachia Seminar. On their first morning, Fitts gave them a grand tour of the property. The land once belonged to the Kirwan family, who ran a Catholic Worker farm on the site from 1983 until 2004. The Bethlehem Farm organization formed there in 2005, although the land was then owned by the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston.

Fitts, a Wisconsin native, discovered Nazareth Farm in north central West Virginia while in college at Loyola University Chicago. Nazareth Farm is another Catholic community that emphasizes prayer, simplicity, community and service and offers service retreats for groups around the country. He fell in love with the way of life there and continued to organize trips to Nazareth Farm after going to work for Wheeling Jesuit University. During one such trip, the idea for Bethlehem Farm was born.

Fitts and others realized there were far more groups on the waiting list for Nazareth Farm than the organization could host. In addition, they wanted a farm that emphasized sustainable practices, which was not a focus of Nazareth Farm at the time. And they believed West Virginia needed more intentional communities.

“There was a neighbor who kept saying, ‘There needs to be more Nazareth Farms,’” Fitts said.

The diocese turned over the property to Bethlehem Farm in 2019.

The farm covers 91 acres, but only a small part is developed. Just below the house is a large pasture, where five donkeys take care of the grass. There are beehives that Fitts’ wife, Colleen, tends. The farm cemetery sits on a hill just above the pasture.

A little way off is the chicken house with its 45 unusually aggressive hens. There are high tunnels (also known as hoop houses), greenhouses, and garden plots of herbs, sweet potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, onions, and just about everything else that will grow in this climate.

The two residences on the property — one for caretakers, the other for retreat guests — are as eco-friendly as possible. There are solar panels on the roofs. The large, homey cabins are heated by wood-burning stoves, and the plumbing is connected to a rainwater containment system with a capacity of nearly 50,000 gallons. But caretakers still limit themselves to two showers a week, and guests are invited to do the same. There are signs in the bathroom advising guests to flush toilets only when necessary.

In the kitchen, food scraps get composted into fertilizer. There’s not a disposable plate or cup in sight. When guests arrive, they choose coffee mugs and label them with masking tape — to use for the remainder of their stay. Although breakfasts and dinners are made fresh every day, lunches on the farm are a smorgasbord of leftovers.

“I told my dad these people would probably survive the longest in a zombie apocalypse,” Dunne, the freshman, said. “They would survive and be happy.”

Fitts said it’s all just part of the community’s attempt to live out the Gospels.

“When we say we’re living the gospel, I guess the question is — ‘How?’ I think in our culture right now, the default is you’re going to be living destructively: toward the environment, toward yourself, toward other people,” he said. “We’re looking to live creatively.”

Home repair and evening prayer

During their time on the farm, the students split into three work groups. Each day, two groups would work on construction projects with the farm’s Repairing Homes, Renewing Communities program, which provides free labor for home construction projects and allows clients to pay for materials with no-interest loans. The remaining group would serve as that day’s “home crew,” preparing meals, cleaning the residence and planning evening prayer.

Two projects were underway when the college students visited. At one site, crews repaired a leaky roof by covering it with a new one made of metal. At the other, they measured, cut and installed new vinyl siding on a home.

Bethlehem Farm has other initiatives that go hand in glove with their home repair program. Its Sustainable Upgrade Fund allows families to use more durable, nontoxic and environmentally friendly materials in home projects for no additional cost. Its weatherization program helps homeowners insulate their homes to save on heating and cooling costs. And its renewable energy program gives low-income families 0% financing on solar panels. Volunteers help with all those projects except the installation of solar panels, which is done by professional contractors.

During groups’ first day at the farm, though, no one heads out to a work site. That day is spent doing some chores around the property and learning about the farm — and, more importantly, learning about Bethlehem Farm’s philosophy of service.

“So that we understand we’re not here to reach down a hand and lift up the ‘lowly poor,’” Fitts said.

While there was a renewed interest in helping poor Appalachians during the War on Poverty of the 1960s and 1970s, that assistance came with exploitation, Fitts said. The people of the region were often portrayed as uneducated, helpless and dirty, in need of outsiders to come and fix their issues. Bethlehem Farm is cautious not to perpetuate those stereotypes.

“We are coming with our poverty — the spiritual neglect in much of our culture, the poverty of ‘I’ve never pushed a wheelbarrow.’ And we come with our wealth, our strength, whatever it is we’re giving,” he said.

He emphasizes to students that the people Bethlehem Farm serves have their own poverty and challenges but also their own wealth — life experience, depth of faith, technical know-how, knowledge of local traditions.

That’s why Bethlehem Farm prefers not to use the term “clients” for the people it helps but rather “homeowners,” “partner families” or, even better, “neighbors.”

“Neighbors help neighbors. That’s a really strong trait of West Virginia,” Fitts said. “We just happen to be the neighbor who has 20 college kids come and visit.”

“It wasn’t 30 hours of prayer. It was two minutes. And then it changed your perspective on the work you’re doing,” Vaquero said.

“We were on God’s time — that’s what they would tell us,” Dunne said. “We would start prayer while it was dark, and by the end of prayer, it was light. You could really feel time passing.”

The group prayed again before breakfast. They prayed before leaving the farm to head out to work sites and again when they arrived at the work sites. They prayed before lunch, before dinner and before bed.

For junior Van Kirk, the emphasis on prayer helped him stay focused on the reason they were there.

“It made our work feel like it wasn’t just work. It felt like it was very purposeful,” he said.

The farm has another way of fostering connection among volunteers — by asking them to fast from technology during their stay. Cell service isn’t great on the property anyway, but the students said they initially found the lack of screens a little difficult.

“I remember, at the beginning of the week, every time I would stand up from a couch I would pat myself and check if I had my phone,” Vaquero said.

But as the week went on, she noticed that the lack of phones changed how she and her peers interacted.

“It forced us to be with one another,” she said. “I’ve realized after the trip, in group settings where there’s nothing to do, people look at their phones and scroll mindlessly. But [at the farm] there was no moment of silence unless it was prayer time. Someone would find something to talk about.”

Since returning to campus, Dunne has been thinking about how limiting screen time can make him more present with those around him — the way the people at Bethlehem Farm are, he said.

“They’re teaching us what it feels like to be part of a community,” Dunne said. “I could re-create that in my life.”

Gathered in a circle

Every Tuesday night, Bethlehem Farm hosts a community dinner. It’s open to anyone who wants to attend, but caretakers have a list of people they call each week to invite: neighbors they’ve helped in the past, members of the church they attend, other people from the community.

On the week that the Notre Dame students were there, about 40 people showed up. They filled every seat at the multiple dining tables, leaving a few guests to take a seat on couches and coffee tables.

The home crew worked on dinner all day, preparing sausage lasagna, butternut squash, garlic knots, gluten-free cheese rolls, Brussels sprouts, salad greens. One of the guests brought a Little Caesars Hot-N-Ready pizza, which the kids in attendance quickly devoured.

But before dinner was served, everyone gathered in a circle in the center of the room. One by one, they introduced themselves and talked about their connection with the farm.

Among those in the circle were Catherine Wheeler and her mother, Bobbie. They had been introduced to the farm through its home repair program — crews had fixed the gutters, porch steps and shower at Bobbie’s house. She now comes to the dinners almost every week and enjoys the opportunity to socialize with people from her community. Bobbie suffers from COPD and Alzheimer’s disease, and Wheeler, as her mother’s full-time caretaker, doesn’t get many opportunities to interact with other people. She said Bobbie enjoys the meals too.

“I can mention we’re going to dinner at the farm, and she’s ready to go,” Wheeler said.

Near the end of the circle stood Maury Johnson of Summers County Residents Against the Pipeline — SCRAP, for short. He was making his first visit to the community dinner, but SCRAP has been working with Bethlehem Farm for months to protest the Mountain Valley Pipeline project. The natural gas pipeline, which will span more than 300 miles from northwestern West Virginia to southern Virginia, doesn’t directly affect Bethlehem Farm but will run through neighboring properties. And the project’s largest stream crossing is just down the road.

“Bethlehem Farm has been protectors of this river for a long time,” Johnson said. “They’re not boastful. They don’t say, ‘Look at me.’ They just do it.

“The world needs more Bethlehem Farm,” he said.

Around the circle, heads nodded in agreement. Then all present bowed their heads and prayed.

As a sociologist, Jennifer M. McClure Haraway knows that relationships are good for people — many studies show this. In her new book, she makes a related argument: that relationships are good for congregations.

“Congregations need that kind of support just as much as we as humans do, because congregations are living organizations,” she said.

F&L: What would be your, let’s say, three top pieces of advice for clergy or congregations who realize they could use more connection in their communities?

JMMH: The first thing is to do what you can. Many ministers and congregational leaders have too much to do and not enough time to do it. I don’t want this book to become one more thing that they don’t have time to do. If all a congregation can do is the very most convenient and easy-to-develop idea, that’s better than nothing. The first thing is to do what you can.

The second thing is to nurture close relationships. It’s very important to have close relationships where there’s a lot of trust and where there’s a lot of interaction, frequent interaction, and there’s mutual support. So I’m going to be there for you and you’re going to be there for me, no matter what.

We really need those kinds of relationships. And those kinds of relationships can weaken if they’re neglected. They’re very important to invest in.

But my third piece of advice is not to forget about acquaintanceships. They may not seem as meaningful; they may not give us the same rich support as friendships. But because they can typically give us access to a wider range of information and ideas and resources and opportunities to collaborate, it’s important to keep them in mind.

F&L: You did your research in central Alabama. Are your findings particular to that context, or do you think they can be more broadly applicable?

JMMH: I think they can be more broadly applicable. There are thousands of research articles on social support and on those three kinds of social support, which happen across numerous settings. It’s not just something that happens among individuals in central Alabama. It’s not just something that happens among congregations in central Alabama. It happens everywhere in lots of different kinds of relationships.

The other reason I think it’s more broadly applicable is the other main concept that informs the book — “homophily”— which can be described in the phrase “birds of a feather flock together.”

We tend to prefer relationships with people who are similar to us in at least some way. In the book, I look at relationships within the same religious group, those that bridge across religious groups, those within the same racial group, and those that bridge across racial groups.

Homophily is also something that shows up in numerous studies in lots of different settings — friendships, marriages, work relationships, choosing what congregation to attend, which colleagues you become friends with at work. It shows up in so, so, so many settings. It’s something that is widely seen around the world as well.

F&L: You’ve studied all kinds of relationships. Do you find one type to be better than the others, or are they all pertinent in different ways?

JMMH: I think they’re pertinent in different ways, and they have different benefits and drawbacks. So when we think about relationships with congregations that are similar to us, those are the most convenient to develop. It’s sort of like the low-hanging fruit. If they have to go to denominational meetings anyway, then it’s a really easy way to build relationships with other ministers at other congregations. And so they’re very convenient, and they tend to be more trusting.

When there’s a shared theology and a shared approach to doing ministry and a shared governance structure, that trust makes it easier to share ideas and resources and to trust the ideas and resources that we get. It makes it much easier to collaborate. It’s much more convenient, because that trust is already there.

But one of the downsides is that you don’t get as wide a range of information. If you’re swimming in the same pool or breathing the same air, you may not get as wide a range of information.

So there’s a pastor of a megachurch, who’s part of a large church planting network, who talked about how when he goes to those network meetings, he absolutely loves all the information that he gets. And it’s all very pertinent to his church. But he also would love to sit down with his mom’s Methodist pastor, because he would get more ideas and resources there that he wouldn’t get through the network that he’s part of.

I think it applies to race as well, because there are barriers that hinder relationships between racial groups. A preference to build relationships within one’s denomination is sometimes by default a preference to build relationships within one’s racial group, because so many denominations are mostly racially homogeneous.

Or a preference to build relationships with other local nearby congregations is often by default a preference to build relationships with racially similar congregations, because of racial segregation. And then there are theological differences or political differences that can become barriers as well.

In my study, I found that most congregations by default are building relationships within their own racial groups, because they’re much more convenient. But there are benefits to bridging to different organizations.

Now, I would say the big downside of those relationships is that they’re not as close. I had a Muslim leader who said, “Well, we’re happy to work with other congregations toward social justice and making the community better, but when there’s a difference on a moral view, we’ll just go our own way.”

So they tend not to be as close, but congregations [willing to bridge] typically get a wider range of information and resources and a wider range of opportunities to collaborate.

Congregations that want to serve in the community who bridge across different religious groups or across different racial groups often hear about more opportunities. Our social circles where everyone knows each other and is really tightknit tend to be people like us.

When we have acquaintances, our acquaintances are less likely to be like us, and they’re more likely to be in other social groups. But those acquaintances can help us get a wider access to things.

F&L: So the advantage of people near you is that the relationship may be closer, but it may not offer you as much exposure to new things as a relationship across difference, which may be less close but offer you more in terms of new ideas or information or resources.

JMMH: Exactly.

F&L: So when you describe relationships, are you mostly talking about relationships between clergy?

JMMH: I look at four different kinds of relationships, and they’re not the only kinds of relationships that can exist between congregations. I look at friendships between the ministers, joint events between the congregations, ministers being involved in ministerial associations or clergy peer groups together, and then pulpit exchanges, where a minister is preaching or teaching or speaking at another’s congregation.

Even if the tie between some congregations is a friendship between their ministers, it still has a bigger impact than just those individuals. One minister might be able to share something — say, a resource that some lay leaders put together on faith formation for youth — with a minister at another congregation, who then shares that with their church’s youth ministry.

And there’s research that shows that for clergy who are involved in a ministerial association or clergy peer group, their well-being tends to be better, and they tend to get helpful resources in that group that they can then share to lead and minister more effectively in their congregations.

One of the examples I give in the book is two ministers talking, and one says, “Hey, this is really hard. I want to quit.” And the other one says, “Me too. Let’s go get lunch.” And then at the end of the day, neither of them quits. It’s good for both of their congregations that they were there to support each other.

F&L: You mentioned cross-racial relationships. How common were they in the congregations you studied?

JMMH: Only 30% [of the relationships] were between congregations with different racial compositions. And half of the congregations did not have any relationships with a congregation that had a different racial composition.

I think there are important benefits of bridging across racial groups, especially (and this is not unique to central Alabama) in a setting where there is a long legacy of racial injustice and where there’s still significant inequality and segregation by race. And so I think they’re important for helping to heal those divides.

But the difficult thing is that if a congregation doesn’t go about building them carefully, they can undermine what they’re trying to support. It can be easy for predominantly white congregations to unintentionally undermine congregations of color by assuming that [a white congregation] needs to come in and have all the answers and fix things. Or by not understanding the histories and dynamics that have gotten things to where they are and not working in mutually reciprocal ways with congregations of color.

That’s the chapter of the book where I give the most nuanced advice on how to build those relationships, because when they’re not built well, they don’t help to bridge the divides. They can make them worse.

F&L: In your experience, is it primarily white congregations reaching out to congregations of color, or does it go the other way as well?

JMMH: I didn’t have a way to quantify that, but in my interviews for the book, I was seeing it going from both directions. And there was often some kind of mediating organization, like a nonprofit a predominantly white congregation would work with that had connections to predominantly Black congregations. Or a racial reconciliation program that would bring together congregations and match congregations with different racial compositions to worship together and have meals together and serve together and have events together.

But there were also just ministers who did a good job reaching out across those divides and being bridges across those divides, though some of them faced pushback for doing so.

F&L: When you look at the research, what do you think is the most important finding?

JMMH: The most important thing that I want people reading the book to take away is that they’re not alone. And that regardless of what opportunities or challenges they’re experiencing or what support they do or do not have in their local context or in their religious group, I want them to know that that support is out there and give them practical ways to build relationships to access that.