New MDG campaign aims to spark transformation

Lenten campaign will involve four pilot congregations from around the diocese

Trainers from Harvard's Kennedy School of Public Policy help launch program

Epiphany weekend 2008 witnessed the birth of a new phase of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) campaign in the Diocese of Minnesota. Individuals representing four churches from across the diocese met at King’s House in Buffalo with the diocesan MDG Leadership Team and trainers from the Kennedy School for Public Policy for a Leadership Team Training Weekend. The focus of the training was to learn how to engage the skills of community organizing in the new MDG Congregational Campaign, the goal of which is to transform the Episcopal Church into a powerful effective force for the elimination of global poverty by 2012.

Members of the MDG Task Force and representatives of the first round of pilot congregations

The first pilot programs for this exciting project will run during Lent at St. Anne’s, Sunfish Lake; St. James on the Parkway, Minneapolis; St. James, Marshall; and St. Paul’s, Duluth. These churches represent a wide cross-section of the Diocese of Minnesota, spanning four different regions; involving urban, rural, and suburban parishes; and including Total Ministry to program-size congregations.

The goal of the Lenten campaigns in each church will be that 50% of its members pledge 0.7% of their incomes to an MDG project. It is important to note that the main focus of the campaigns will be on participation — the goals are set for number of people participating in pledging 0.7%, and not on how much money the congregation wants to raise.

The movement will not end there, either. The task force's vision is to use its learning to coach a group of ten, use their learning for another group of twenty, and then continue to grow, involving more diocesan churches in each round, with the eventual hope of taking the program to the national church.

Telling our own stories
The tactics and strategies the teams will use to accomplish this goal include skills that are traditionally used in community organizing, such as the use of public narrative, which organizers believe is the single most effective tool available to mobilize people to act. Public narrative is the art of demonstrating how values become action through the simple but powerful act of telling one’s own stories. At the Leadership Training, team members had the opportunity to learn firsthand that each of them did have an important story, and that telling that story could move others to action.

After seeing public narrative demonstrated by the Kennedy trainers and Project Coordinator Devon Anderson, each person constructed and shared a story of how the challenges and choices in their own lives resulted in their being interested in fighting global poverty and coming to this training. These stories were then expanded to include the individual’s involvement in their parish communities and then to include a call to action for this campaign. One parish team member was so moved by a fellow member’s public narrative that she made her pledge on the spot, stating, “I really was not going to pledge; I was just going to give my time to the project. I didn’t think I could afford to give money, but my team member’s story was so powerful, I’ll find a way.”

At the end of the campaign, the pledges from the congregations will be pooled in a common fund, and those who pledge will engage a collective decision-making process for how to invest the funds. Each pledge will entitle the pledger to voice in the process. The hope is that by working together in this way, congregations will find themselves joyfully and creatively engaged in doing the Gospel mission in a new way together.

“The MDG project's top priority is learning," says The Rev. Devon Anderson, Project Coordinator (pictured above). "As our diocese figures out how to link together and engage mission work, our MDG project provides a chance for congregations to learn and experiment with working together around a common area of interest in mission. What excites me most is that we have leadership teams that are willing to risk something big for something good. Being out on the edge is fraught with anxiety and uncertainty but it is also a brave thing because it firmly places the vision ahead of the fear.”

The Rev. Kate Hennessy is the communication coordinator for the diocesan Millennium Development Goals Task Force and a local priest at St. James, Marshall.