Our History

The Intercultural Community Center in Dearborn (ICCD) is a new intercultural community association in Dearborn, Michigan being nurtured by English-speaking Christ Episcopal Church (CECD) and Arabic-speaking Mother of the Savior (MotS), who share the building that houses these worshiping congregations. ICCD gathers individuals and groups from diverse cultural backgrounds to cultivate meaningful and long-lasting relationships, share and learn from one another, and work and lead together in education and service projects for the wider community. Christ Episcopal Church has a long history in Dearborn, beginning in 1866, and founded by prominent Dearborn families, including the Ford family. For nearly thirty years its current building has been a community center for many social groups and civic organizations in Dearborn, as well as international organizations, to have office space, hold meetings, and host events. It is now developing its space into an intercultural community center that hosts events in the building. The development of the ICCD is expanding this concept outside the building into the wider Dearborn community and beyond as it develops partnerships to address environmental issues, food security concerns, and expand cultural awareness through relationships between the many diverse people who live in SE Michigan.

The ICCD began in earnest when Bishop Gibbs called Halim Shukair, a Lebanese native studying at Virginia Theological Seminary, to The Episcopal Diocese of Michigan to lead a new mission to Arab-American Christians in Southeastern Michigan. The diocese and CECD developed a partnership for a missioner position on diocesan staff and a curacy (new priest training) position with CECD and Halim was ordained to the priesthood following graduation in June 2018. A few weeks later, Bishop Kreiss (Southeast Michigan Synod, ELCA) asked whether Halim could also serve Mother of the Savior (MotS), a nearby Arabic-speaking congregation, because their pastor was leaving, and members of MotS immediately became the foundation of the new mission community. MotS brought a wonderful and diverse community of ethnic Arabs from throughout the Middle East, including Christians with various Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant and nondenominational backgrounds.

In 2019, the church with which MotS had shared a building closed, and English-speaking CECD and Arabic-speaking MotS joined together at Christ Church in a partnership in faith. (https://youtu.be/MxeqFaSGhW4) In addition to sharing Halim as a priest, MotS and CECD became acquainted during the months before the move. MotS and CECD began living together, sharing some bi-lingual worship experiences, and holding relationship-building dinner conversations using materials from Eating Together Faithfully. After years of renting space from other Lutheran churches and having former clergy tell them what to do, MotS needed agency to grow its own unique identity and leadership within a context of intercultural awareness, appreciation, and hospitality. CECD also needed to adopt intercultural practices to move past assimilation and minimization and enable each congregation to be fully who we are and celebrate our differences. The Revs. Terri Pilarski and Halim Shukair applied approaches from Eric Law’s Kaleidoscope Institute, Bowen Family Systems Theory, and The Intercultural Development Inventory to support these adaptations. Some lay and clergy leaders in the congregations also took community organizing training, significant aspects of which are important parts of the development approach to CECD, MotS and ICCD.

Building on our experiences with intercultural partnership, CECD and MotS are developing ICCD to gather individuals and groups from diverse cultural backgrounds in Dearborn, cultivate meaningful and long-lasting relationships, share and learn from one another, and work and lead together in education and service projects for the wider community. CECD’s vestry originally created an Intercultural Community Center task force in a new effort to build community among the organizations housed in CECD’s building and to potentially develop some educational and service activities together. The story of the partnership between CECD and MotS has been shared in the Dearborn community, and, by the second task force meeting, other outside organizations were also interested and invited to participate. In addition to initially providing leadership and facilitation for the development of ICCD, CECD provides program and office space for ICCD, MotS and other community organizations. We continue to build on new relationships and the task force and smaller work group development and activities continue to grow. The willingness and desire of other community groups to partner in ICCD shows their respect for and trust in the relationships and activities they see happening.

The practices of intercultural community development which ICCD is learning, applying, and developing are engaging people, extending and deepening relationships, crossing boundaries and healing divisions, and building community and community leadership while serving the community to meet critical needs. These approaches readily involve more people, develop more leaders, and build on and go beyond traditional church outreach, community center development and mission project strategies with which we began.

In 2022 the ICCD was awarded a $260,000.00 grant from Trinity Wall Street Philanthropies to develop a solid infrastructure for the ICCD including a bi-lingual website, board of directors, staff, and acquiring its own 501(c)3 status as a separate organization from CECD and MotS, though it will continue to be housed in the same building with CECD and MotS.