How to Start a Chapter: An Interview with Dale Avers and Dominic Surya
Call To Action Chapters manifest the Church we believe in at the local level. They are the roots of our church-justice movement, providing on-the-ground responses to church injustice. Together, chapter members create just and inclusive faith communities.
A chapter is a group of Catholics who have affiliated with Call To Action and who come together on a regular basis to be a Catholic community and to work for justice in their Church and local context. Call To Action has chapters across North America, from Alaska to Florida. Call To Action chapters are independent local groups. While chapters are autonomous, they benefit from consultation and coordination with Call To Action’s national organization.
There is no single blueprint for a CTA chapter. We encourage people to start chapters to meet the needs of their own communities. Some chapters primarily host house churches, prayer circles, or community gatherings. Others organize campaigns on the local and state level. Some are closely affiliated with parishes, while other chapters form specifically because a parish has alienated some of its members.
CTA Chicago gathers, 2019
Dale Avers and Dominic Surya have recently founded or restarted chapters in Syracuse, NY and Chicago, IL, respectively. I interviewed them about their chapters, raising some frequently asked questions. The models of the Syracuse and Chicago chapters are descriptive, not prescriptive! They are just two incarnations of CTA’s presence throughout the country.
If you would like to start a chapter, we encourage you to reach out to us at cta@cta-usa.org. We can connect you to CTA members in your area and list your group on our national site. CTA is happy to support your local efforts, but we hope that this interview demystifies the process and illuminates the diversity and flexibility of our chapter model. Chapters are led by you, the Church at the grassroots.
Interview
Many cities throughout the country have had chapters at some point over the decades. Both of you started or restarted chapters in places where CTA chapters were once well-established but had become inactive. How did that affect your efforts?
Dale: CTA Upstate New York had been dormant for a couple of years as many former chapter members were aging out. In our case, the chapter came back into being because of the child sexual abuse scandal. I was looking for ways to channel my frustration about that issue. So in a meeting about our frustrations and pain, members were realizing that the need for church reform was at the basis of the scandal. Our parish priest mentioned that there had once been a CTA chapter in the area, so we decided to become a CTA group.
The chapter is based in Syracuse, but it pulls from Binghamton, Rochester, Buffalo, and Utica. As the only chapter in our area, we function as a sort of umbrella. We’ve been around for about two years now.
Dominic: I think the Chicago chapter was originally incorporated in the 90s, when CTA was based in Chicago and started drawing people from around the country for conferences. CTA had run an ad in the New York Times, drawing interest and eventually chapters across the country. The chapter was last active sometime in the last decade, so there wasn’t an active organization when I came in. When I joined Re/Generation, I decided that forming a chapter in Chicago was more feasible than forming a progressive Catholic group in a more local context like a college campus, which I’d tried to do in the past. Many young adults are involved in our chapter, but we are now pretty close to generational “parity,” with several elder regulars.
Two BVM sisters who know people from the old chapter are involved, and a few others from the old chapter have reached out to say that they’re glad that people are bothering to keep the chapter up. Not starting from scratch made a difference in a few ways: we had access to the national office’s network, a well-established name that people could research, and we now have a few people from the old chapter involved.
Dale: I felt a little trepidation using the CTA name at first because of politics. We didn’t actually set out to start a CTA group, but I also heard from former leaders who were glad that someone was taking over. Meeting up with Jim FitzGerald, former CTA Executive Director and leader in Albany, was also very helpful. I was able to collect an email list from the old group, which gave me a starting place.
How did you recruit people for your chapter?
Dale: We started out of my parish in Syracuse, and there are two liberal parishes in Syracuse that we mainly draw from now. We didn’t gain much traction reaching out to other parishes. It’s hard to figure out how to reach disenfranchised people, though, those who aren’t officially affiliated with a parish at all.
We’ve broadened our focus beyond the sex abuse crisis, but we initially attracted people by coalescing around a specific issue. Eventually, we felt that there wasn’t much more we could do, so we broadened our focus to look at underlying structural issues in the Church such as clericalism. We meet every two months and usually get 10-20 people at each meeting. I also send out mailings to our list every few months.
Dominic: I’d say that the more people you have at the very beginning who are committed to starting a chapter, the better. Having a team of two or three versus just one founder makes a difference. I co-founded the Chicago chapter with Lissa Rommell, my Re/Generation mentor, and she was actually the only person who came to the chapter through a personal connection with me. She brought in a few people, Claire Hitchins from CTA national brought in a few people through her connections to students (especially at Loyola), but our website and consistent mass-emails account for about half of our membership. It’s easy for chapters to become closed groups if they don’t maintain a mailing list, and I think openness is essential if you believe that church is for everyone, not just the people in your demographic. Setting aside one larger event, we’ve had around fifty people join a regular gathering at least once, but our typical meeting size has now stabilized at about ten. I actually did email each of the 300+ parishes in Chicago to let them know about the chapter, but I never heard back from any of them.
What is the leadership structure for your chapter?
Dale: I’m starting to see the need for more organization, so we recently solicited volunteers for secretary and treasurer. It’s important to have broad-based leadership for longevity’s sake.
Dominic: We’re still trying to figure it out in Chicago. Some people would like to see a more egalitarian structure than president/secretary/treasurer, but we don’t have a concrete alternative right now. We have at least five people who are actively thinking and meeting about this, though, so we have something to work with — ask me again in a couple weeks!
Where does your chapter meet?
Dale: We’re lucky to be able to meet in our parish hall, which not all CTA chapters are able to do. At this point, we’re doing a Zoom/in-person hybrid for our next meeting, which should help more people attend.
Dominic: We’re also fortunate to be able to meet in the basement of the Passionist House, which houses priests and brothers at Catholic Theological Union. It’s a big house where only men can live, though, and it might be uncomfortable for us as a chapter to discuss that as their guests. We’ve also avoided using the term “liturgy” and not done the Eucharist.
What sort of financial expenses does your chapter have? How do you meet them?
Dominic: We don’t have many expenses. I donate $12 a year for our website domain. We rented a meeting space for $60 when we first started meeting, which was a lot for a small group, and when we passed the hat, we didn’t get quite enough to cover the cost. We’re lucky to now meet for free in a semi-public space. Though we could in theory meet in someone’s home, that would present other logistical challenges, so a public space seems better.
Dale: Our chapter has never collected or spent money. We have access to free space. There is a bank account that has funded CTA’s “freeway tours” across Upstate New York, but we don’t draw on that money regularly. Down the road, potential expenses could include developing a website or organizing a regional event.
Dominic: None of our local chapters are staffed, funded entities, but I’m interested in what that could look like. Can a majority-young-person chapter without staffing survive? What you can do when you pay someone to work one day a week is considerable. We could explore untapped avenues, like philanthropic funding, parish contributions through money or in kind contributions, or even buying a house.
How do you build an inclusive chapter? (in terms of race, class, age, gender, sexuality, etc.)
Dale: We’re lucky because our parish priest has given us a model of radical welcome and universal acceptance. He has been involved in CTA for many, many years and is a strong supporter of the chapter. Many Africans and African Americans attend the church and our chapter membership is representative of that. I recently asked attendees to invite one person to attend our next meeting, to broaden our circle. Bringing in young people is the hardest task for us. Older people want to connect but don’t know how. I’m hoping we can involve the Re/Generation program of CTA to help us reach out to younger people. I’d also like to work on anti-racist programming within the chapter.
Dominic: In Chicago, our chapter is most challenged by race. Since we’re almost entirely a white group — I’m the only regular of color — I want the chapter to work on being anti-racist before I work on getting more races in the chapter. And we’ve only had one regular who’s a straight man, I think.
What have you gained from connection with the other chapter leaders and CTA national? CTA national holds monthly chapter leader calls for people across the country.
Dale: I’m new to the chapter leaders’ group and many of them have been around for much longer, so that’s an interesting dynamic. I’ve met some great people; for instance, Jerry is a chapter leader in Texas and we keep in touch regularly, just checking in about our efforts.
Dominic: I think that the chapter leader calls are a useful space for pulse on CTA membership. Many chapters are communities more than organizations, so the chapter leader calls currently function as a community.
Final tips?
Dale: It takes desire to start a chapter! The rest is fluid. Chapters can be casual and informal — or formal. This space can be whatever you want it to be. But it’s hard if you’re all alone. Start out with two or three people and more will follow.
