ADVANTAGES OF HOPE
I know that there is plenty of stress in your ministry. Yet, like Israelites headed for the Promised land, consider how having a positive vision of hope to offer your congregation could affect your own spirits as well as energize your church and offer a beacon of hope for those in the larger society.
We have some significant advantages that can enable us to make a healing impact on our world.
- We already have formed communities that are connected to other Christian communities that contain every ethnic identity in the world.
- We have a shared faith in God who invites us to be part of that healing force that God intends.
- Confession and forgiveness are part of our continued ritual. We rehearse the stories of how confession of imperfection can liberate to healing possibilities in both the Hebrew Scriptures (e.g., David) and the New Testament (e.g, the disciples). White members are invited to discover the healing power of confession with the possibility of forgiveness that can lead to a renewed commitment to being a healing force in society. And Black members are invited to forgive like Jesus did.
- Our shared Scriptures tell our story of imperfect people like us who have learned the power of forgiveness to heal mistakes and give visions of a more perfect world. We draw our inspiration from a God who took a “no people” and made them into “God’s people,” leading them across a hostile wilderness to a Promised Land. Jesus chose imperfect disciples to found a church to reveal the power of grace.
- Together we can begin to rewrite the story of our church and society inspired by a vision of hope that can lead us across our own wilderness of racism towards a Promised land of healing and hope.
