We would like to welcome John Dempsey Parker as our new Director of Partnerships and Development. John has over 25 years of experience in North Carolina in asset-based community economic development, culturally appropriate and trauma-informed community organizing, community development finance, affordable housing, nonprofit management, small business and entrepreneurship systems development. Since 2016, John has worked primarily with faith communities, congregational leadership (clergy and lay), and social justice partners through past roles with the Faith & Community Initiative at NCSU’s Institute for Emerging Issues and the Ormond Center at Duke Divinity School. Throughout his career, he’s focused on nurturing collaborative community engagement and leadership development around community organizing, advocacy, and ministry.
Question: What should we know about John Parker?
“I grew up in Moore County, North Carolina, with a large extended family, and our family-owned, retail hardware store in Southern Pines. Our family’s civic and community involvement, along with knowing more than usual about our family history and genealogy, nurtured my early curiosity of history and other ways of being and living. In terms of education, I obtained a BA in anthropology (Wake Forest), MA in applied anthropology (Memphis State), and a Masters in Divinity (Duke). Since the mid-1990s, I’ve intentionally worked at the intersection of social movements, community organizing, economic justice, and policy advocacy within the nonprofit sector, faith communities, activist networks, and the community development field, primarily in North Carolina. I’ve been a friend, colleague, and collaborator with the NC Council of Churches since 2003.”
Through engagements, convenings, group work, coaching, and learning alongside clergy and lay leaders, congregations, judicatories, and partners, John aims to encourage diverse (intergenerational, multicultural, multi-faith, multi-sector and multi-issue focused), place-based collaboratives that are committed to affirming the dignity, worth and potential of all people. Ideally, faith leaders will dig deeper with others, collaborate around policy advocacy and program developments, and strengthen sustainable, resilient and thriving approaches to their community ministry.
John’s career includes directing a community development collaborative, community development finance, business and organizational development, teaching cultural and applied anthropology and nonprofit management, ethnographic research, and a variety of consulting work with small businesses, nonprofits, and philanthropic organizations. He serves on the boards of Repairers of the Breach and Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries plus he’s an advisory board member of the NC Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation Commission Process with the Beloved Community Center.
“We desperately need leadership that is oriented toward community building and culturally appropriate and responsible leadership that is careful and takes care. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King asks ‘Where do we go from here? Chaos or Community?’ and reminds us that we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. In many talks and writings, he calls for ‘a revolution of values’ that re-orders our priorities to live into ‘a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond’ our differences and calls for an ‘all-embracing and unconditional love for all’ which is named as a ‘force’ and ‘unifying principle of life’ The Council of Churches has been and should deepen its work to be in solidarity with our faith community and social justice partners. Through our partnership work, we will provide greater collaborative, capacity-building support for policy advocacy, plus community leadership development.”
“This also means exploring our histories with a critical eye. How did we get here? Everyone needs to know how the Doctrine of Discovery in the 1100s established a religious, political, and legal justification for colonization and seizure of land that wasn’t inhabited by Christians. It’s important to reckon with the past to build the future. The ripple effect of that colonial history is what justifies heretical religious extremism such as the toxic and dangerous white Christian nationalism which threatens our pluralistic, multi-racial, and multi-faith democracy. It’s important to explore, better understand, and heal our haunted histories. The Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery and the Beloved Community Center in Greensboro are important resource organizations and leaders in the arenas of truth-seeking and reconciliation.”
“The kind of leadership we need right now is imaginative and creative, centering equity and holistic wellbeing, exploring how we can flourish and thrive. This is a call to action that nurtures and cares, creates and builds, gives and shares, that cultivates and grows. To echo King again, ‘let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter – but beautiful – struggle for a new world.’ North Carolina’s state motto, esse quam videri, means ‘to be, rather than to seem.’ Can we have leadership that embodies the spirit of this ‘being’?”
Question: What do you do when you’re not at work?
“This will sound like work, however, it’s a calling: I aim for my efforts to support and strengthen creative, intergenerational, multicultural, multiracial, multi-faith, multi-sector, decolonizing, and abolitionist work for racial, economic, and environmental justice towards collective liberation. I’m committed to practices of radical discipleship and contemplative activism rooted in ecumenism, interfaith relations, and community-engaged ministry. Please feel free to engage me around these commitments.
On the more ‘fun’ and personal side, I enjoy long walks in the woods, and hiking in the mountains, and at the beach. I love nurturing spaciousness to write haiku poems, staying in touch with what’s going on in the world, merry-making and knocking around with my kids (two teenagers and a young adult!), plus deep hanging out with family and friends, especially with my partner and cultural anthropologist, Helen Regis. My intention is to welcome everything and not squander this precious life. Forward together!”
