CALIFORNIA
Healing and Spirituality
Dr. Jaime Romo
“So, you got your Resolution for Safe Churches and Healing Communities.” A woman said to me in the parking lot after the vote had been taken by the Annual Gathering delegates. Every year, 145 United Church of Christ congregational representatives from the Southern California/ Nevada Conference (i.e., diocese) gather to assess the work they do together and propose new initiatives. She smiled and walked to her car.
“My resolution?” I thought. It’s OUR resolution. An overwhelming majority of the people who could vote voted for this, representing the collective church, based upon a central UCC principle of ‘covenant.’ Coming from a Catholic background, I jokingly call the UCC the ‘church of you can’t make me.’ The UCC operates from a grass roots, local governance model, unlike other more hierarchical models, which have been critiqued as more bureaucratic or practicing window dressing when it comes to preventing and responding to sexual abuse. This local governance model is refreshing and democratic, as well as frustrating in that it can seem very time and labor intensive to reach consensus and then implement what was reached by consensus.
My church sent the Resolution to the Conference and now it will go to the National Synod next year for acceptance by the National UCC, and I am proud of this effort.
Perhaps the only reason my church got involved with this issue was because five years ago a registered sex offender showed up one day and asked to be able to participate. And that later became the catalyst for me to take up a formal role as a Commissioned Minister for Healing and Healthy Environments, a first in the UCC and perhaps in any faith tradition. Church leaders from across the country called my pastor to ask for our policy and he urged me to take up this formal ministry (to coach ministers and lay leadership teams to create meaningful abuse prevention policies and healing practices) that I naively thought would be enthusiastically received.
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