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• 1 2021-04-20T19:40:59-04:00 Recommendations 9 plain 2021-04-26T15:18:10-04:00 Based on my takeaways, I came up with the following recommendations to share with the 2021-2022 HCFA Executive Board and Leadership Team, Ministry Fellows, and community as a whole.

  Encouraging Informal Events

  After having conversations about how impactful informal events have been and how students have often felt more welcomed into the community after being invited to an event, my first recommendation is that we should have a more straightforward way to allow both members and leaders to host informal events.
  
  My idea is that students will be able to fill out a form requesting a small grant to host informal events including study breaks, movie nights, trips to Boston, etc. with about 5-10 other people within HCFA. Students would be encouraged to invite a range of members (across class years and genders, leaders and non-leaders). This form would be sent out weekly as a part of the HCFA Weekly Newsletter, and Exec members could review the requests during their weekly meetings to either approve the request and follow up with the student about receiving the funding to hold the event, deny the request and ask the student to rethink their event, or forward the student's request to the Events Team if the Exec Team thinks that this event could be better suited to be a large group event open to the entire fellowship.
  
  Additionally, HCFA leaders should be encouraged to host more informal events; the Exec Team could remind leaders to reach out to members about once a month and invite them to attend both informal and structured events.

  Workshop Series on Embracing Differences

  Following the success of our Winter Break leadership workshop series and students' perspectives on valuable conversations to hold within the fellowship (see Takeaways section), my second recommendation is to host a workshop series on embracing differences both internally within HCFA and externally in the Harvard community and beyond. These workshops could be co-facilitated by a Ministry Fellow and student leader (potentially a leader on the Outreach or Social Action teams), and could include the following topics:

  • Navigating Differences within an Interdenominational Fellowship
  • Sharing Your Testimony on Harvard's Campus: Standing Firm in Your Beliefs 
  • Bearing One Another's Burdens: Inclusion in HCFA
  The purpose of these workshops would be to offer students actionable steps to embrace other people and accept other's differences with love in order for us to build a stronger community and continue to develop Christian leaders. This series could be held virtually during Winter Break similar to last year's series in order to keep members engaged during the break, or a weekly time could be reserved for three weeks during the Fall or Spring semester to hold the workshops. 

  Identity and Community Conversations

  My last recommendation is to have intentional conversations about outreach to the broader community, differences within our body, and identity during retreats. These discussions would be facilitated by student leaders (potentially Exec Members or leaders on Outreach or Social Action teams) with a goal for members to first reflect about their own experiences within the fellowship, listen to others' experiences, and consider how we can grow as a united body of believers. These conversations would have room for large group discussions as well as breaking up into small groups, and would include everyone at the retreat versus the workshop series for which members would choose to participate. As a result, the leaders planning the workshop would need to be more cognizant in making sure that no one feels excluded from these conversations, particularly new members, non-believers, or people exploring Christianity for the first time. It will be important to offer framing for these activities / discussions by using a structure like the following: 1) Introduction and Prayer, 2) Activity / Discussion, 3) Debrief, and 4) Closing and Prayer in order to ensure that members are comfortable sharing vulnerably.
  
  One activity that could be included in these conversations is the Fishbowl Activity (see Aisha Abdelhamid and Avery Robinson's Identity Work & The Fishbowl Exercise training video for more details). Fishbowl can be used to engage members in conversations about identity and community. Facilitators list topics or questions to discuss in the "fishbowl", or the inner circle. People are separated into an inner and outer circle, in the inner circle, a few people have a discussion, and in the outer circle people actively listen to the discussion in the inner circle. HCFA members can discuss prompts regarding specific identities that pertain to them and how they navigate their faith community, a topic for which they hold a belief that may be a minority viewpoint, or additional topics (see Topics to Address in a "Community Conversation" at the end of the Takeaways section).