Word has reached my ears that Sisters Together finally found its way into your mailboxes. I hope you enjoy it—this is a great issue that highlights some of the things we hope to talk about at the Leadership Event this summer. By the way, if you have not yet registered for the event, you need to jump on it. Regular registration ends on June 1, and “the early bird gets the worm”… or in this case, gets the scholarship money to attend. This will be a dynamic event that you won’t want to miss!

Today I wanted to recommend to you one of the articles from this issue, Dee Darden’s discussion of mutual invitation on page 2. Your own campus groups can use her guidelines, based on Eric H.F. Law’s process for community Bible study, to open deeper and more respectful dialogue. It all seems simple at first: after speaking, I invite you to speak. Then you invite someone else to speak, and so on until everyone has spoken. You don’t interrupt one another, except maybe to ask a clarifying point. What’s so special about that, you ask?

In Law’s book, The Wolf Shall Dwell With the Lamb: A Spirituality for Leadership in a Multicultural Community, he describes the levels of perceived power that enter into any interaction between people. In any group, factors such as gender, race, social class, and age play into how people communicate. People from non-Western cultures may have deep-seated aversions to vocally stating an opinion in conversation, as Westerners have been taught to do from childhood. Younger people, like myself, may be hesitant to express thoughts that contradict those of our parents’ generation. Women who have been socialized to show deference to the opinions of men may stay silent in mixed groups (ever notice how many of us are quiet in the presence of guys?). The likelihood that someone will really communicate thoughts or feelings depends largely on these factors, and how much power that person thinks she or he has in relation to others.

The process known as mutual invitation is meant to level out these perceived power differences in heterogeneous groups. In it, people who never speak are given the opportunity to express their thoughts. People who are accustomed to speaking must sit back and listen until they get their turn. The process offers everyone the power to speak, and when exercised enough, empowers the silenced in other interactions as well. That’s why the language of invitation is so important—by inviting someone else, you peacefully lay down your own power to speak and allow someone else to pick it up. The process is all about sharing and communicating through divides.

From a theological standpoint, mutual invitation expresses our Christian belief that every person has value in the eyes of God. When we realize that some people have power and some people don’t, and we work to give up our power to someone else, it is a tangible expression of God’s love for them. It also points to the coming realm of God, when we will see one another as God sees us—equals before a loving Creator who sacrificed for all.

So next time you’re in a small group at church, on your campus, or even in other settings, suggest mutual invitation as a possible way to open the discussion. You may be surprised at insights that come from the most unexpected places.

“The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.” --Isaiah 11:6

Kelsey