Persons and People
Are you one of those persons who sometimes says "persons" and other times says "people?" I don't know if a grammarian would endorse my delineation, but I tend to use the phrase "persons" when I'm referring to the needs, priorities, values, and actions of individuals. I tend to think refer to "people" when I am talking about the way people act a collectives.
I mention this because within the life of faith, I think it's important to think about both what it means to grow as individual Christian persons and help other Christian persons grow and how we act together as the church--as the people of Christ. I think this distinction is embedded in our name. We are the Christian Church (people) Disciples of Christ (persons). I believe that what is good for us, God's will for us, as individual persons will be good for people as a whole. And that if we attend to what is good for people as a whole we find that it is in the best interest of individual persons. But I don't think it is always easy to see this inter-relationship.
As Disciples of Christ, we value two principles that are hard to hold together: Freedom and Unity. We want the self-governance, liberation, and thriving of individual persons. We value each person's freedom (note: we also protect each congregation's freedom which is usually how we mean it in a Disciples context). At the same time, we have said "unity is our polar star." We work for reconciliation between people and mutual respect and collaboration.
The Christian Church in the Southwest requires two different trainings periodically of our clergy with standing. Ordained and Commissioned and Active Retired Ministers are expected to complete a six-hour Healthy Boundaries Course every five years and an Anti-Racism/Racial Reconciliation course once every three years. And often when I talk to clergy about these requirements, the clergy want to tell me how much they dislike them.
They tend to point at their own consistency as persons with regard to personal integrity, attention to their fiduciary responsibilities, their active anti-racist work, etc. In other words, they as persons don't think they need the training. I could argue with them. I think each person needs to be consider and reflect on these matters personally and periodically. But I also see our involvement in Healthy Boundaries or Anti-Racism courses as a way for us to demonstrate our shared commitment to ministry that facilitates human thriving and seeks to avoid damaging persons and to building a world where the patterns of systemic racism are confronted. Individual persons must register for, attend, and hold the record for their attendance, but the whole work is that which we do together, as people.