L. Gregory Jones and Kelly Gilmer: Cultivating institutions that nurture holy friendship
http://www.faithandleadership.com/content/l-gregory-jones-and-kelly-gilmer-cultivating-institutions-nurture-holy-friendship?page=0,0 Shared practices that enable us to recognize the interconnected character of our stories and to re-narrate our lives in more life-giving ways must be at the center of our institutional DNA. August 14, 2012 | Throughout his life, Tsietsi Mashinini, a young black South African, had been told he had no value as a human being. That changed in the mid-1970s, when he found a discipleship group in a local Methodist congregation. The people in that church befriended him, not just as casual friends, but as holy friends. They challenged his sense of having little self-worth. They encouraged him to claim his gift for leadership. They helped him dream of the end of apartheid. Mashinini went on to become one of the leaders of the Soweto Uprising of June 16, 1976, an event that South Africans name as pivotal to the beginning of the end of apartheid. His dream bec...