Story
THE RISING LEADERS FELLOWSHIP is a one-year intensive leadership development initiative for BIPOC faith leaders involved in spiritually grounded justice efforts. The fellowship aims to impact the ecosystem of the movement for justice by building a resilient network of faith leaders of color who act as the “lungs” of their faith and ethnic communities, while building a community of emerging faith leaders of color that remain connected into the future.
The Rising Leaders Fellowship will engage BIPOC millennial and Gen Z leaders with Sojourners’ faith-rooted advocacy and mobilizing initiatives as well as Sojourners magazine and online publication. Sojourners seeks to build hope and create positive change that impacts individuals, communities, the church, and the world. Through the Rising Leaders Fellowship, Sojourners will sow into future mobilization efforts and add capacity to the field by training and supporting leaders in the movement.
Values
Integrative Spirituality
Centering The Margins
Storytelling
Rootedness in Community
What Is The Fellowship About?
The fellowship is designed to foster relational resiliency and will be structured around three areas of development: relationship with self, organizational change, and movement building. Through facilitated sessions and practices the cohort will learn skills that will help them thrive amid trauma and chaos in each of these three domains of leadership.
Core experiences to develop relational resilience will include vocational self-assessments, emotional awareness exercises, emotional regulation practices, and family systems theory applied to organizations. We will also touch on adaptive leadership as a method of engaging with an ever-changing world.
History
The Idea
The idea for this fellowship sprouted from a series of consultations organized by the Open Society Foundation. These consultations consisted of discussions with diverse faith leaders exploring how we could work together more effectively towards justice in the United States.
Vibrant Voices
We were interested in amplifying the vibrant voices of faith leaders of color in order to both increase the number and capacity of their congregations and ministries participating in justice struggles, and to move moderate faith leaders towards understanding and engaging in the larger, national political context. Many important learnings and collaborations came out of the consultations. You can learn more here: https://www.faithleadersofcolor.org
Support
Since the consultations with the Open Society Foundation, we have been exploring how we can continue to support young and rising faith leaders of color who are doing justice work in their communities. This year-long leadership development and community building fellowship is an important next step.