Friends for Good

   What began as a monthly clergy lunch over theology has blossomed into a community of hundreds of people who have gone beyond shared meals to spur spiritual growth and lasting friendships.

   The 5-year-old initiative, Friends for Good, is designed to transcend racial, religious and cultural barriers and is based on the principle that it is easy to reject an ideology but harder to reject a person.

   The group, organized by a steering committee chosen from among the congregations, performs community service projects such as raising funds for the North Texas Food Bank, gift-wrapping for children in need and taking part in community Passover Seders and Iftar dinners. Each year, a new group of 100 people forms, and they come together for quarterly dinners.

   "As participants, we are asked to be open about how we differ from each other and use those differences to build respect and understanding,” says Elise Faustino, chair of the steering committee and a member of First Unitarian Church of Dallas. “It’s easier to get to know and appreciate each other when we feel that it’s safe to be authentically ourselves, even when that means we don’t agree on some things.”

   The atmosphere at a recent dinner held at the Islamic Association of North Texas in Richardson is charged with warmth and good cheer as the group gathers for a halal and kosher-certified meal. Each table is a mixture of the various congregations; they are immersed in conversations moderated by a facilitator. Additionally, cards are strategically placed listing table etiquette and rules of engagement for the participants.

   The group began with Imam Shpendim Nadzaku of the Islamic Association of North Texas; the Rev. Daniel Kanter, senior minister of First Unitarian, and the Rev. Keith Hileman, senior pastor of Trinity Fellowship Church in Richardson.

   In 2015, “the three of us started working on us having lunch kind of once a month. We started having theological discussions, how are we different, what are our communities like — and we started to realize what we are forming is a relationship, a friendship, but that that could also be expanded out to our congregation,” Kanter says. Senior Rabbi Andrew Marc Paley of Temple Shalom in Dallas joined the group in 2018.

   There’s an easy camaraderie among the faith leaders, with constant laughter and ribbing. (Nadzaku, for example, calls Kanter “the Grand Mufti of the Unitarians.”) But their sense of humor belies the hard work to overcome the inherent biases in their congregants. Even the faiths that had the most in common were divided, Kanter says.

   Michael Luyckx represents Trinity Fellowship Church on the steering committee. He notes that there is a “level of fear or apprehension in today’s climate,” and often a tendency to generalize about faiths. “Dispelling those myths and showing that one can have long-lasting, respectful and meaningful relationships across faith boundaries is what makes Friends for Good so special for me," he says