Background: Trishla Jain, an undergraduate student, interviewed Gretchen Rydin on April 8, 2013. Rydin is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), where she currently serves as the community outreach and service leader for her congregation's young adults. In this conversation, Rydin reflects on how to engage other faith groups in joint service collaborations, the meaning she derives from one-to-one service, and what Georgetown students can do now to give back to their community.
Could you tell us about your personal faith journey and what drew you to pursue interfaith collaboration in your life?
I am driven by social justice and the missions behind it. Whether that is because of my faith or my connection to humanity, I am actually not sure, but I think that the message is the same. Growing up, I read scriptures and went to church where I heard these messages of love, kindness, and peace. In college, I really struggled with religion, and there were a lot of challenges that I faced. However, I was always drawn to helping the poor and the needy and bringing peace to communities.
When I finally settled in Washington, D.C. almost four years ago, I decided that I really wanted to be part of my community and make an investment. I was a part of my church congregation, which is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but I wanted to be involved in D.C. itself. I wanted to work with the poor and the homeless, and I started thinking of interest groups and constituencies that I did not have a lot of contact with, such as the visually impaired and women who are victims of domestic violence. Then, I found organizations that had volunteer programs and I got involved.
Because of that I learned more and more about how to leverage the skill sets of the average person and help them understand how they can serve their community. I was able to bring that into my faith community, and all of the sudden people started coming to me and asking for ways that they could volunteer and be of use to their community, or even how their professional offices could become more engaged in D.C. Out of the blue I became this resource for people. Then when we started working with other faiths and discovered that they were doing similar things, it was the same thing. You start talking with one person, and you find out that a certain Lutheran community feeds the homeless on one night at a specific organization. It is the nature of community outreach; it was exciting to work with people just because they had a love of God and a love of community and a belief that we are the solutions to the world’s problems.
What do you believe is the importance of interfaith dialogue and events such as the D.C. Young Adult Faith Leaders Summit? What impact can this kind of collaboration have on our society?
Initially, it is just getting these groups together and finding our commonalities. Some religions and faith traditions pair better than others, but it is still important that the door is open on both sides of the faith engagement. That means that my group wants to do interfaith activities, and the groups that we work with in interfaith communities want that same engagement. I have tried getting support for projects with groups that were more lukewarm, and it is just hard to engage. You really want the energy on both sides. We go in with an attitude that we are not here to convert or convince you that our religion is better than yours. It is a mutual recognition that we acknowledge our humanity, that we are driven by something that is above all of us, and that we are connected to each other whether we believe in the same technical God or not.
We are united by something that draws us together. Practically, we share a lot of the same problems. We work with the same organizations, and perhaps we pass the same homeless people on our way to the Metro or while driving on Rockville Pike. How do we come together and improve the programs we have to offer and the groups that we are mobilizing? How do we partner and improve the experience for our members across the board? I think we do that through best practices and through figuring out what one faith-based group has done well. We have the same problems engaging our own communities, so learning from one another is key.
Then, we would actually partner with them down the road. It is small-scale right now, at least for my congregation, but that is good because I have found that the most meaningful work is one-to-one. It fits the Christian theme of the lost sheep, with Jesus Christ as the shepherd, always ready and willing to serve the one. I think there is a theme there that one-on-one service, or small group service, is very meaningful. Even though from a policy perspective it does not always make as much sense because we want to try to impact change to large groups, one-to-one service can be the most meaningful for both parties to establish a relationship. That is where I see these interactions from the interfaith summit and other relationships we are pursuing going in the future.
How does your faith inform the service work that you do?
I approach that question two ways. Scripturally, in the Book of Matthew it talks about feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and visiting the sick. I think when I first moved to D.C. and I was thinking about community engagement, I used that scripture as a foundation. I used that to look at what kind of projects we would want to do, and I focused our projects around that call to justice. That is why we started working in nursing homes, hosting clothing drives, and providing dinners for the homeless.
Down the road, I thought about underserved communities in general, so I looked more at women and children and how I could serve those populations as an individual. Then, I just called around, did some research, and found where I could be useful. I also looked at organizations that foster the one-on-one experience. For example, I volunteer with the Columbia Lighthouse for the Blind, and they match each volunteer up with a person in the community who is blind. The organization’s involvement practically diminishes, and you are responsible for contacting that person and arranging visits to read mail, go shopping, or help them go places that are difficult for them to otherwise access considering their disability. Similarly, I have a mentoring organization that I work with, Best Kids, that is also one-to-one. They match you up with a mentee, and you are responsible for reaching out to them or their caregiver directly to arrange regular get-togethers. Personally, I know that works for me and that is how I derive the most meaning, so I structure my volunteer work around that idea.
How did you realize that you derived the most meaning from one-to-one service?
The Church of Jesus Christ Church of Latter-day Saints has some very strong structural programs. One of those programs is something called the Relief Society, a women’s organization that dates back to the church’s inception in the 1800s and is an integral part of church administration. Its goal is to take care of one another and of the families who are members of the congregations. This structure has survived and evolved today. Within in this structure is a program called “visiting teaching” which assigns each woman two other women within the congregation to look out for, whether that is making sure they have food if they are sick or a ride to the airport or something. It is one-on-one service.
It is a way that you can feel connected to your faith community, to your sister, and a way that the leadership in those communities can know that their members are being ministered to. It embraces a culture of connection and meaning. It is how Jesus Christ would administer his gospel in a very real way. When I moved to D.C. several years ago, that was something that I wanted to be more involved in and committed to. Out of that I realized that I really enjoyed this one-on-one idea and I felt that I could provide something useful to others. I was not a believer in the program before because I thought it was forcing random relationships with others. However, I realized that it was not random. It is inspired by God and is a very real way to demonstrate Christ-like love and become a true disciple of Christ.
Do both faith groups in general and interfaith groups specifically have unique places in service work and social justice?
I think that they do, but that they are limited in some ways because of the nature of political discourse. In terms of faith communities I think that it is important to recognize that the motivation is part of that religion. Service, love, and kindness come from a person’s religious conviction, and they are engaging because of that conviction. I think that when you have a university or nonprofit or business that recognizes that there is work to be done and there is community responsibility, it is different than when you are looking at faith organizations, which look at individual responsibility and people who are engaging in this work because it is a call and duty. So, I think that there is a bit of differences in motivation.
In terms of interfaith, I think the themes of social justice are the same across all faith patterns. That is what is beautiful about social justice—how it crosses all of those religions, which I think even validates the cause. It is easy to come to the table with an interfaith group, even if you disagree on some core doctrine, and put those differences aside and agree that we need to help this project or this group of people. It is a place for agreement.
What is your message to the average Georgetown student?
When you are in college you write a lot of papers. One of my struggles in undergrad was that I would write these papers that were beautiful commentaries on society, but I wondered what this paper was really doing to benefit society or change the world. Service opportunities are a way for you to leverage who you are and what you can give in a meaningful way. They are a way for you to change the world in a very small but meaningful way. Do not take that lightly. Realize that you do have a responsibility to your community. You do not have to wait until you have a B.A. or M.D. or J.D. or MBA degree to be of use to your community. They need you now. They need you to give your time and your energy. I think that there is a duty there. And because of that you will derive incredible satisfaction and have a much more enriched undergraduate experience because you will be able to link the service that you are doing in the immediate with what you are going to be doing in the future. I encourage young adults to get involved in whatever medium possible. It allows you do something tangible and can help you put things into perspective. Just serve. It is awesome!
