Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
This week the staff and I have been working on how we will structure the conversation about race and reconciliation. As we worked on this, we identified three goals.
Learn how to talk about difficult topics with love and grace, lest we teach that Christianity is irrelevant to life.
Learn how to talk about racism because it is a pressing issue, the light of Christ is illuminating, and silence is not neutrality.
Grow as disciples of Jesus Christ, to be transformed to offer a graceful witness and live more faithful lives.
It is important to share that our purpose is not to make you think like us or even fully agree. For one thing, your staff is on this journey as well. We are not experts. None of us has first-hand experience living as a person of color in the United States. Because we are still learning and growing, we see ourselves as partners on a shared journey.
For another thing, we trust the Holy Spirit to be at work in our church and in your life. As long as we listen to each other and seek to follow Jesus, we will end up where we need to be, even when we don’t fully agree.
Difficult conversations are always made more difficult when there aren’t clear ground rules. Here are some ground rules that the Presbyterian Church has gathered to help us discern the mind of Christ together (Click here for the link.)
Our hope is that we do this as Jesus would have us do this: to treat one another as Christ would want us to, listen to voices Christ would want us to attend to (particularly the voice of “the least of these”), and follow where he leads.
Next week we will start exploring competing definitions of terms that are being used in this conversation. Following that, we will look at issues relating to the criminal justice system, residential segregation, Presbyterian history regarding race and reconciliation, etc.
In Christ’s Service,
Raymond R. Roberts, Pastor