Dear People of St. James’,
It is truly an honor to have Bishop Alinafe Kalemba of our companion diocese, the Anglican Diocese of Southern Malawi with us this Sunday. Bishop Kalemba will drop in for part of Sunday’s Forum Hour, preach at the 10:15 am service, and visit with us following the service.
For the last five years, I have been serving on the World Mission Board of the Diocese of Texas. This board distributes grants to Anglican and Episcopal organizations around the globe that are working to achieve the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (formerly the MDGs or Millennium Development Goals), and it oversees and nurtures three companion diocese relationships (North Dakota, Costa Rica, and Southern Malawi). As the liaison to our companion diocese of Costa Rica, I have learned that companion diocese relationships are not simply about sending financial resources or mission trips to another place; they are covenants to grow together in God’s mission for the church in our unique contexts and to learn with and from each other.
In the context of the Costa Rica relationship, this looks like establishing rich lines of dialogue through reciprocal presence and relationship. Yes, we do send at least five well-resourced mission teams yearly to Costa Rica to assist with a diocese that is building and repairing an infrastructure for sustainable ministry and outreach. But, we also have established a regular rhythm of exchange of delegations. Every other year, a delegation from Costa Rica attends our Latino Lay Leadership Conference at Camp Allen and visits local congregations, missional communities, and outreach programs. In other years, a delegation from Texas attends the newly established leadership conference in Costa Rica and visits communities there. These exchanges have generated rich conversations, which are ongoing throughout the year, about Vestry best practices, building sustainable outreach initiatives, ministry with youth and young adults, and the work of multilingual, multicultural, and multigenerational congregations.
One of these conversations started at St. James’ this past year when the Rev. Daren Evans from the largely afro-caribbean congregation of El Buen Pastor in San Jose visited our Wednesday night young adult group. We talked about a number of things, but eventually the conversation made its way to the impact of the racial history of Costa Rica on the mission of El Buen Pastor. Until the 1950s, the afro-caribbean residents of the Limon region were not allowed to live in San Jose; they were confined to their own part of the country where the majority worked in shipping ports or on the banana plantations. And so, it is easy to imagine that when the doors were finally opened for afro-caribbean people to settle in the capital city, they would establish their own community and their own church, Iglesia El Buen Pastor, and they would carry with them their style of worship in English, because of their Jamaican roots. Now their missional challenge is engaging their younger Spanish-dominant generation who mix freely and socially with the mestizo community, and they need to open their gates and be known to the city around them. Our conversation turned to the very real difficulties of acknowledging and grappling with a racial history of oppression, the church’s critical role as a sanctuary for a minority, the new demands of a generation that did not share the experience of their elders, and the challenge of opening doors to the dominant culture. Of course, we didn’t solve all the problems, but we gained new perspective and we have a new partner in mission and conversation.
Bishop Alinafe Kalemba comes to us from a growing diocese that does exciting work in the education of young people, but faces significant challenges from the devastation of climate change and flooding. Let us listen to him and with him for what the Spirit is saying to the Church.
Rev. Eileen
