May 30, 2003

"Regional AIDS Interfaith Network (RAIN)"

An interview with Rev. Amy Brooks, Rev. Debbie Kidd and Rev. Debbie Warren of the Regional AIDS Interfaith Network (RAIN), and 2002 Leadership for a Changing World awardees.

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Leadership for a Changing World
Welcome to Leadership Talks. Today's guests are Rev. Amy Brooks, Rev. Debbie Kidd and Rev. Debbie Warren of the Regional AIDS Interfaith Network (RAIN), and 2002 Leadership for a Changing World awardees.

Can you each give us a brief personal history and tell us how you came to social justice work?

Debbie Warren
I’m originally from Jackson, Tennessee and I moved to the Carolinas when I finished seminary in 1980. I served as associate minister at two congregations and worked at an AIDS hospice before founding RAIN.

The Bible stories I learned as a child – that later became the sacred texts studied in seminary and the overwhelming needs of persons living with AIDS in the late 80’s and early 90’s provide the foundation for my social justice work. HIV/AIDS provides an important opportunity for the faith community to prove its mettle, to reach out and put our sacred texts into action. It was important to me and continues to be important to me to bring the resources of the faith community to the HIV/AIDS pandemic and to bring the faith, inspiration and strength of people living with AIDS to the faith community.

Amy Brooks: I grew up in rural western Pennsylvania, which was pretty conservative and Christian. Within that context I sometimes felt like a bit of an outsider and that created within me a sense of compassion for others. I was raised primarily in the faith tradition of Unitarian Universalism, which has a strong strand of social activism and social justice and stresses appreciation for all people regardless of differences. In fact, my experience within the church challenged me to explore different cultures and religions, which I did in school before deciding to go into the ministry. These studies brought to me a powerful understanding of the need for healing and the power of the sacred in every culture. This, combined with a strong sense of compassion for others made working outside congregational ministry the context of my work. I finished seminary in 1992, served for a year in a church before training for two years as a hospital chaplain. In 1995 I started working at RAIN with Debbie Warren. The work of RAIN fit my own vision for a ministry that works across the boundaries of culture, class, gender, religion, and sexual orientation – all the social boundaries that too often keep us apart and cause us so much pain.

Debbie Kidd: I was in church and extremely active during my childhood and adolescent years. This continued when I went to college where I was active and held some leadership positions within the Baptist Student Union.

My ministry career began in 1979 as a Minister of Music and Family Ministries. The churches and titles varied, but that career tract continued until 1994. At this time I began my chaplain career; serving as a hospital chaplain for over two years and becoming commissioned as a military chaplain in 1996. It was during the hospital chaplaincy that I felt the shift in my ministry focus from helping the church to go beyond its walls of existence to helping the needy to find their ways inside those walls. I served as the first hospital chaplain for the Infectious Disease clinic and thus began my exposure to HIV/AIDS and its impact on people.

Pittsburgh Pa
It is obvious that all of you are great leaders. At what point did you decide to use your resources and collaborate to build such a progressive and humanistic program?

Debbie Warren
For me, in the late 80s and early 90s, it was seeing the sheer need of people living with HIV and AIDS who were so isolated, particularly isolated from communities of faith that they had grown up in. And because my background as a minister and seminary training I wanted to bring resources of the faith community to respond to the AIDS issue and that’s where I began. And the program has really evolved through the years as my colleagues and as the needs of people living with AIDS has changed.

Brooks: When I joined this organization I didn’t know all that much about HIV/AIDS, but I think my interest or my call to ministry had to do with bridging differences, working across boundaries. And when I began to understand what kind of situation people living with HIV had to face it just felt like a really great match. So I just wanted to be a part of an organization that tried to promote healing and to pull people together in the community. It felt like RAIN was a place I could do that.

Kidd: Coming from a church staff background where I did have other colleagues, not that we always agree on everything here, but the beauty is what we’re doing on such an issue as HIV/AIDS and bringing the community together. The added plus was the people that share the same vision like Debbie and Amy and all the rest of the RAIN staff and the volunteers that I work with. It’s like you get to battle a cause that you really want to battle and the people that you hold hands with as you do that is what makes you want to have a job and a career like this. You couldn’t do it isolated; wouldn’t want to.

LA, CA
Why and how did you choose the model that you use (i.e. CareTeams) to tackle AIDS and HIV in your community?

Debbie Warren
When I began my work in the AIDS community in the early 90s, one of the fortunate things for me was there were already folks doing AIDS CareTeam work in the West. And I went to visit one of those projects out West. The closest one to me was Little Rock, Arkansas, and I met the director Trudy James and she became a mentor to me in AIDS CareTeam work. They had already begun doing educational programs in the congregations and they were already matching them with people living with AIDS in their community. And we had a particular affinity because we were both working in the South and rural South with AIDS and all the stigma and fear and misinformation, and so we struck up a wonderful friendship which has really helped RAIN get off to a wonderful, wonderful strong footing. Our CareTeam approach has changed as AIDS has changed and HIV has changed. My colleagues could speak more to those changes.

Kidd: One of the things I share when I do the training as to why you ask people to volunteer for people with HIV and AIDS is a story from the Old Testament. It’s the story that, in essence, talks about Moses being a leader. The task before him, if he held his hands up his task would be successful. If he let his hands down, the task would be unsuccessful. So there were two colleagues that were assigned to Moses and it says when his hands got weary they sat Moses down and they used stones and held up his hands. So the two people, his colleagues, helped the mission be successful by helping Moses keep his hands up. So what that says and what we do, I say to volunteers, is people that live with HIV and AIDS need someone to help hold their hands up. But our volunteers also need someone to help hold their hands up. It’s a task that is accomplished and is successful only if they work together for the same goal or task. That’s one of the reasons we do this as a team.

Richmond, VA
Have you noticed any changes in the beliefs of religious communities with regards to AIDS and/or homosexuality? Reduced stereotypes? Wider community acceptance?

Debbie Kidd
There ARE responses to the needs of those living with HIV/AIDS from the religious communities, regardless of denomination or religion. Once educated, some people respond. This says to me that people respond to help with awareness, education, and care when it comes to people affected by HIV/AIDS. It may not be quite as easy to reach an institution. In that case, the acceptance and support may not feel as large as desired.

We have noticed changes and growth and yet in one conversation or action we can still hear the comments that remind us that there is much work to be done in terms of awareness and education. For example, recently in our area, a Baptist church was ‘kicked out’ of its local association because the pastor baptized two gay men.

Bethesda
How major is the challenge of convincing your community HIV/AIDS is not a "homosexual" disease? What approaches do you take when addressing that issue?

Amy Brooks
It seems the challenge for helping people understand HIV/AIDS is not simply about homosexuality, it’s about behaviors. And people often equate HIV with poor behaviors. It may be homosexuality, but it may also be promiscuity, drug use, all of which people tend to look down on and feel that those that engage in that deserve what they get. That may be the biggest challenge. I do have to say, though, that there are still a number of people that see it as a primarily homosexual disease. These folks tend to be more in rural areas and it seems to coincide with lack of educational opportunities. I think there’s some misunderstanding in the immigrant community, Mexican/Hispanic community. Stephanie and Karl, both in the minority program, still wrestle with the perception of homosexuality as a sin and have been doing a lot of work with folks to help them understand about compassion in the face of homosexuality in the church. I think there’s still a strong correlation in pockets of the African-American community as well.

I think one of the most powerful approaches is to bring someone with you who is HIV positive. You let the people who are listening or who are there to learn more have a firsthand opportunity to meet someone living with the disease. This goes a long way towards breaking down stereotypes, especially if the person doesn’t fit into stereotypes of homosexuality, for example.

Kidd: One of the things I’ve done is focus on kind of what Amy said that it’s about choices we all make. Some of those decisions and choices were made when we were adolescents. And I ask those that I might be speaking to to remember when they were an adolescent or a younger adult, and can they remember if they made all the right choices in their lives. Most of the time, I don’t get any hands raised. So people understand that it’s about choices, decisions that people make, and it’s harder when they’re younger, uneducated, not a lot of support, maybe feeling alone, that sort of thing.

One of the other things I do from the Christian position is I talk about the time that Jesus healed people. The healing happened without a lot of question. Jesus healed someone who was blind. There was one time where Jesus did a healing and he was asked was it this man’s sin or his parents’ that he was blind. And Jesus said neither, it was to show the work of God. And I think that’s where we try to focus, to show in this work, in this ministry the love and the work of God, whoever their God is, without a lot of question.

Birmingham, AL
What have been the biggest challenges you’ve faced in your work?

Debbie Warren
One of the biggest challenges has been to keep up with the changing needs of people living with AIDS. Creating a program, training and maintaining volunteers takes a tremendous amount of energy. When the needs of the people you are serving shift, it requires a shift of the program and volunteers. I think another challenge is finding your way into people’s hearts. Everyone has many demands on their time, energy and money. There are many causes and needs. HIV has an added obstacle because many people are still afraid and ignorant of the facts. If the desire is not there, in the heart, it can be tough to bring people and congregations to a point where they want to help people living with HIV. People living with AIDS often feel isolated and I think people working on this issue do too.

Brooks: One of the biggest challenges for me is responding to the attitude – ‘if you have AIDS, you’ve done something wrong.’ So when I speak before a group, I remind folks of the sacred texts that call us as a people of faith to be present with those who are suffering and to practice justice and mercy. I also take someone living with HIV or AIDS to tell their story and if that is not possible, I tell the stories of people living with AIDS. I think folks can shut down when they hear a lot of facts and statistics, but when they hear the stories and experience the people, hearts are opened.

Kidd: Raising money has been pretty difficult at times. People in the South don’t run out to an AIDS gala or fundraiser. We don’t have any celebrity endorsers and corporations who sponsor AIDS Walks in other cities shy away from a connection to AIDS in conservative Charlotte. Some also flatly say, “We don’t give to faith-based work.” But you know what, we’ve held on and have steadily grown some of our fundraisers and our donor base. We haven’t been able to add additional staff as we have wanted, but we’ve held on.

Lexington, KY
You work in both urban and rural areas, do you have to approach the work different depending on where you are?

Amy Brooks
All: Yes.

Kidd: Yes, it’s definitely different. Just last night I had a meeting in a rural county and the case manager for HIV/AIDS attended my meeting. And to give you an example, one of the things that she said is that she wanted to begin to use some of our RAIN CareTeam volunteers to help do some of her educational presentations because if other folks see her talking and doing so much about HIV/AIDS and then they see her go to the house of someone, they end up putting 2 and 2 together and assume that perhaps the HIV/AIDS lady is going to see someone that has HIV. I don’t hear that happening in Charlotte. Some of the folks living with HIV/AIDS in Charlotte aren’t quite as concerned or its just not an issue because they don’t run into the same people. So the approach is different in the sense that here, Charlotte, the CareTeam would freely be seen with their care partner, a person living with AIDS. And in rural areas they don’t have that freedom or don’t feel like they have that freedom.

Brooks: I have to agree that issues of confidentiality in the rural areas is much greater than in the urban areas. Oftentimes it’s difficult to find people how are positive who want to speak out in the rural area because they are afraid that neighbors or friends will see them and discover their status and talk about them. People are afraid for their children if they were to disclose their status, the effect it may have on other family members. It affects whether or not they want to go with the treatments. I work in a clinic in a rural area and we still have people who come to clinic, realize a friend or neighbor is already in the waiting room, and they dive into the nearest office and refuse to come out until that person is gone because they’re afraid, even though that other person may also be positive. I think in the rural community also there seems to be a stronger role for the pastor. I find my smaller rural congregations tend to do better when the pastor is on board, whereas in the larger or more urban congregations there seems to be enough diversity and opportunity where people don’t seem to feel the need quite as much for strong pastoral leadership.

Warren: It’s also true for African-American congregations. Our staff has to sit down and have long conversations with the minister first before the congregation can be approached with education about AIDS because the pastor in the African-American congregations really is the gatekeeper for information in his or her church. And that’s different from a lot of the Caucasian congregations that we work with particularly in urban Charlotte. A mission or outreach committee comprised of laypeople might be the driving force for participation in RAIN.

Kidd: One of the things I’ve done in the rural areas is advertise an HIV/AIDS meeting and I always feel it’s important to say not everyone coming is HIV positive. So we have a support group. It’s called Living Positive and it’s for people affected by HIV/AIDS, and we advertise that not everybody that attends are HIV positive, so people can feel free to attend.

Mongtomery, AL
A recent government study shows that 48 percent of African Americans believe an AIDS vaccine already exists, and many others share this view. How do you challenge these beliefs and keep people aware of the epidemic?

Debbie Kidd
Education is the key to helping people understand the nature of HIV. Providing educational presentations in congregations, nursing homes, clinics, schools, community centers, seminaries -- all are avenues for education. Creating opportunities for the media to report on and address the issue is also critical. The new medications that came out in 1997 changed people’s perception of the disease. With proper treatment many people can live with HIV as a chronic disease. However, because of stigma and fear, many people still do not deal with the disease and wait until it has progressed before receiving treatment. Many people are still dying from AIDS related illnesses. Although HIV is no longer an epidemic in this country, it is a pandemic, all due to a lack of education and resources for adequate treatment. Although medication is available in the United States, people do not have equal access to care. There is no cure for HIV and there is no vaccine to prevent infection.

Boston, MA
Have you faced any difficulties because you are women? Has this been an added challenge in working with faith communities?

Debbie Warren
I think in many ways it’s been helpful to me being a woman because there’s a lot of anxiety and fear around HIV/AIDS and because I’m female and I’m very short and I’m soft-spoken, I present the message in a very non-threatening sort of demeanor. And I think that has helped people hear the message and relaxed their fears enough to really take in what I wanted to communicate.

Kidd: I would say most churches and communities of faith, if they’re willing to listen to the topic of HIV/AIDS it seems to me they’re open to that coming from a woman preacher. I have not really run into anybody not wanting to listen. Would we get any further in our ministry and work here if we had more male clergy on our staff? If we had more would that open more doors? Possibly.

Brooks: I have felt that there have been times when I’ve been in a room with sort of a denominational group and it’s been almost all men. And the thought has crossed my mind that I may not be the best person to break into that kind of network of male clergy, but if I were a man delivering this message it may have a different impact. Because there certainly have been times when I’ve spoken to groups of clergy and there just hasn’t been a strong follow-up on their end. I think the other piece I would add is simply that I think a lot of congregations see women in church doing a lot of things and recognize that there really is a powerful role for women in the church. That makes it very acceptable.

Gainesville, FL
Congratulations on your award, it is well-deserved.

How do you share responsibilities among your leadership group?

Debbie Warren
The way we work together as a team has evolved as the organization has grown and as our work has changed. We used to sit down and discuss most aspects of our work and make decisions together. As the organization and workload grew, we moved to a different style and we began dividing up the various responsibilities by expertise, geographic location, or number of responsibilities. We learned to trust each other to do what needed to be done and I think we became less perfectionistic.

We gather each week to reflect on readings, stories and texts that speak to our work. We share our blessings and concerns for ourselves, our CareTeam members or CarePartners (people living with HIV or AIDS) our community and our world. It is a grounding time, just as we ask our CareTeam volunteers to take time to ground themselves through reflection and small group sharing when they meet together.

washington, dc
You mentioned that one of your biggest challenges is trying to keep up with the changing needs of those you serve. What is the process you work through as a team to do that and what has been the biggest shift you have seen since you began this work as far as the needs of those living with AIDS?

Amy Brooks
I think easily the biggest shift has been that people are living much longer. When RAIN got started people were still dying, HIV was a death sentence. The teams were trained to help people with end-of-life issues. Now with the new medications many people are able to work, consider getting married or having relationships, having children, buying homes, and so we’ve had to figure out how to train teams to work with people who may be dying, but who may also be living with HIV for a long time. And so as a staff we’ve had to sit down repeatedly over the years and talk about what are the current base needs and how do we want to train and support our volunteers to meet these various needs. So we actually did this most recently last year, and identified through a strategic planning process where we wanted to focus our energy. And one of the most important things that we identified was a new arm to our services, new area of our services that we’re calling pastoral care services, which includes some counseling and group work to provide alternatives for folks who may not need a full care team at this point in their life. And we also have talked about how we can focus our teams on specific needs that people living with AIDS might have, such as transportation and support for taking medication over the long term.

Juneau, Alaska
How do you reach out to conservative faith groups/denominations who have attached AIDS to homosexuality, and therefore, may be reluctant to support your efforts?

Debbie Kidd
My first response would be we pretty much respond to the people who ask us to come. That keeps us busy enough that we’re not cold-calling. So if they call us we reach out, but if not, it’s not something we do. When I think some of the individuals from the church that would be my answer, that we reach conservative faith groups through individuals. I think of one person on one of my Catholic teams who’s a member of a very conservative church. Her church is not involved with RAIN. She heard enough about RAIN that she came to a training. From time to time she will do things in her church that raises awareness, be it as minimal as it sometimes is. But the answer would be through individuals that respond to RAIN and then go back to their faith group.

Warren: I was just thinking that some conservative congregations, particularly in the minority community, who may have joined us because their pastor attended a clergy roundtable program offered by the RAIN pastoral staff. Their pastor has an opportunity to hear local statistics and to discuss theology and hopefully move to a more compassionate theology toward persons living with HIV/AIDS. And sometimes those programs have led to the pastor going back to speak to his or her congregations about getting involved in RAIN.

Leadership for a Changing World
We have time for one more question:

How do you each of you sustain yourselves and your staff while working on a such a difficult social issue?

Debbie Warren
It’s been critically important for me to have mentors and a wonderful therapist to share my grief with and to support me through the inevitable changes and challenges in a growing non-profit organization. I think our weekly staff reflection time is an important part of sustaining ourselves. Oftentimes, people share what their stressors are or a staff member may say to another staff member, “I’m concerned about the number of deaths you’ve had recently, how are you taking care of yourself?”

We celebrate with each other as much as we can. Everyone’s birthday and other milestones are celebrated. Some of our staff members take personal retreat time. Last year after 7 years of working in AIDS, Amy needed to take a whole month off and we worked it out so that could happen. This summer I’m going to the Oregon wilderness for a week-long retreat and then I’m taking a week of vacation after that.

Amy Brooks: I think cultivating a personal spiritual life is the most important thing to sustain me in my work. On an individual level that means taking time for myself, reading, writing, meditating, music, exercising. On an interpersonal level it has meant cultivating friendships, interests and opportunities that take me away from the context of my work. Sharing a meal with friends has become a centering ritual that grounds me and gives us the opportunity to provide feedback, perspective and support. Last year I took a quilting class that was just pure fun. Tapping into my creativity gives me energy. As a staff we try to have fun together – we celebrate birthdays and other occasions. We are very supportive of each other whenever someone is struggling. We take time to remember our blessings and share our concerns as a way to center ourselves before our weekly staff meeting.

Debbie Kidd: Each morning when I come into the office, before I do any “work”, I read from one of my “books”. This serves as a reminder that I am not alone, and that the work I do is holy. I try to take ‘vacation’ breaks during the day, leave the office, get fresh air, do something different. I also journal almost every day of my life, both in the office and in my home this helps get my thoughts out of myself and onto a page, it feels cleansing. I try to exercise realizing that it is all connected…physical, spiritual, mental. My key words these days are balance, trying to maintain a balance between work and play; laughter and tears; career and home, etc. Focus, I must try and focus on what I am doing in order to complete a task and feel good about its completion and finally, and fittingly so, finish, finding ways to celebrate accomplishments, “whew this is over”…and so is this.

Leadership for a Changing World
Thank you for joining us today for Leadership Talks with Rev. Amy Brooks, Rev. Debbie Kidd and Rev. Debbie Warren of RAIN.

For more information contact:

RAIN Inc.
P.O. Box 37190
Charlotte, NC 28237-7190
Phone: 704-372-7246
Fax: 704-372-7418
Email: d.warren@carolinarain.org; d.kidd@carolinarain.org; a.brooks@carolinarain.org
Web: www.carolinarain.org

Please join us for future Leadership Talks.

Amy Brooks

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