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Do hybrid meetings promote or stifle equity? 

Guest commentary by Neal D. Presa

The “Chairs and Execs” Table of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) recently concluded a virtual meeting. This is a table that occasionally meets, bringing together in one place the chairs of boards and presidents/CEOs of the national agencies of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and Presbyterian Women for information sharing; celebrating areas of interagency collaboration and discerning future areas for the same; and discussing areas of mutual concern and interest concerning our shared life in the national context. The agencies are: the Office of the General Assembly, the Board of Pensions, the Presbyterian Publishing Corporation, the Presbyterian Foundation, the Presbyterian Mission Agency, the Presbyterian Investment and Loan Program, the Administrative Services Group of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), A Corporation, and Presbyterian Women.

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the challenge of finding a common schedule for all of us to meet, the Table had not met for some time.  It was wonderful to gather again – hearing friends and colleagues share about the incredibly impactful ministry that each agency is doing and how they are being faithful with the resources God has provided to be about God’s work of transformative justice in the world, of supporting congregations, worshipping communities, mid councils and ministry practitioners, among so many others, here in the United States and around the world.

One of the topics that generated considerable discussion and reflection was that of in-person meetings. Due to COVID-19 protocols, all of our boards have not met in person, and national staff have conducted their work either remotely or have transitioned to a hybrid model. Much like all of you as with my own family and ministry, we’ve had to figure out how to do ministry during COVID-19 and are looking ahead to what might be after the pandemic. Churches and worshipping communities are figuring whether and when to gather in person and how to do so safely.

So it is understandable, that as the 224th General Assembly in 2020 met virtually for the first time – bringing together hundreds of Presbyterians on a Zoom meeting – that the national entities charged with planning the next assembly scheduled for 2022 (even as we’re still in this COVID-19 reality) have been hard at work figuring out how to have our national council meet safely.  I am deeply grateful for colleagues on the Committee on the Office of the General Assembly and our stated clerk for the emerging details of that assembly next summer in Louisville, Kentucky: a hybrid gathering of some in-person plenaries and committee deliberations, and others through virtual means.

So, the impromptu question that came up at the Chairs and Execs Table was: Is hybrid here to stay?  Two colleagues – both white women – wrote in the Zoom chat that hybrid meetings are indeed here to stay, and that we can expect hybrid to be the new reality of who we are.  Let me add this important context to the conversation: The question of the future of hybrid technology occurred after we all agreed that more needs to be done to expand the accessibility of global language translation – seeing language translation services as a matter of equity – insuring that translation (orally and in written form) be provided for those with English as a second language, without the onus being on those needing it to have to request it so they can fully participate in all respects and in all aspects of our ecclesial life of governance and discernment.

I wonder whether hybrid meetings, particularly General Assemblies, are a foregone conclusion. Let’s set aside for a moment of theological reason of meeting in person. We are, after all, human beings created to be in physical communion and community one to another. There’s sacredness of the physicality, the tangibleness of occupying the same space and time. Let’s set aside for a moment the fact that we all are Zoomed out. We all are tired of “seeing” one another through screens. Let’s set aside for a moment the psychological dimension that it frankly is not healthy to be in Zoom meetings for hours on end.  And let’s set aside the financial piece, because hopefully the financial savings of having hybrid meetings into the future is not the driving reason for having hybrid meetings as “here to stay.”

The concern I raise here is one about equity. Since we talked about equity and engendering a culture of equity that provides accessibility to all people, including global language translation, the question is: Do hybrid meetings promote or stifle equity?

I am a Filipino American pastor theologian who has been involved in the national Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) for the past 23 years, having served on many national entities, attended/participated in 12 General Assemblies and served our denomination as its moderator in 2012-2014. Hybrid technology is not equitable in two major ways:

  • It assumes that all people have access to Wi-Fi/digital technology that is consistent and reliable.
  • It assumes that the best and only way we can communicate with one another and therefore, discern the will and mind of Christ is through screen shares, text messages, chat boxes on Zoom and documents (even those fully translated!).

To the first, not everyone – not every community, not every church, not every home – has the privilege or luxury of 4G/5G, fiber optic, broadband technology, let alone a home router or office router that has the bandwidth to sustain hours upon hours of meetings. That’s a question of equity, of access.

The second – communication through hybrid means – is a question of equity as well. And even more so. Asian/Asian American postcolonial scholar Kwok Pui-Lan speaks powerfully about “hybridity” — this reality that those of us in ethnic diasporas know all too well.  Hybridity designates multiethnic, multilingual, multicontextual, multiperspectival identities. I am a Filipino American Pacific Islander, GenXer, cisgender, married and father of two, a pastor theologian. We in the non-majority communities in society and in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) have navigated in our ministries and ecclesial contexts not only by understanding the rules, protocols and procedures of how the church in the national, regional and local contexts operate by reading all the reports and doing our homework, but more so, by body language, by speech, by gestures, by physical posture, by eye movements — we have learned to survive, thrive, flourish and struggle by detecting imminent microaggressions in the midst of macroaggressions. We can “read” a room by listening to vocal intonations, by shrugging of shoulders, by eye rolls, by breaths under the lips, by paper shuffling while we speak at a microphone and even by voting paddles being waved at us.

You see, hybrid technology is about equity because it does not account for the reality of hybridity — the reality of most of us who live with the exhausting, daily engagements of watching, of seeing, of reading those who are in front of us, beside us and behind us.  Let me put it more bluntly: Hybrid meetings lift up technology at the expense of human engagement where those of us in the non-majority culture are needing to visibly see, hear and sense our white majority siblings as to who might potentially be stabbing us in the back… or stabbing us in the front.

Neal D. Presa is chair of the board of trustees of the Presbyterian Foundation and past Moderator of the 220th General Assembly (2012) of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

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