2017 was a year of change and transition for the Interfaith Leadership Council. But change is good. As an organization, it gives us the opportunity to reexamine our intent and improve our outreach efforts.
As we saw staff and volunteer leadership depart for other professional and volunteer endeavors, we gratefully acknowledge their contributions for pioneering the foundational directions of IFLC and we welcome new staff and board members to continue the mission of providing a vehicle to Detroiters to see each other’s individual humanity through our educational,
connection and conciliation initiatives.
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Our adult and children’s educational programming, respectively our Religious Diversity Journeys and Exploring our Religious Landscapes programs, continue to expand. This year, our RDJ has over 700 children throughout metropolitan Detroit participating and visiting five different houses of worship.
This is how I got the start of my involvement in RDJ 15 years ago, serving as an educational presenter about Sikhism as students visited my Gurdwara when my own children, now grown, were participants.
My involvement and groundings in my own faith led me to my interfaith work. I believe that when you set foot into another person’s house of worship, you get to experience the most intimate part of a person’s identity..
While their belief system may be different than yours you come to understand that within each religion, there is no monolith but instead a variety of ways to practice traditions and in this learning, you also recognize the very human aspirations of us all. We all have faults. We all have imperfections. Yet, we are all amazing and have the capacity of doing wonderful things through our aspirations.
In these confusing times, the work we do in recognizing ourselves in others through learning more of one another’s faith, seems more urgent than ever. IFLC in 2018 will continue its work and we encourage all of you to work with us to continue to bring Metropolitan Detroit's faith communities together.
