SPEAKING TO THE CHURCH’S LEADERSHIP
The first step in preparing the church to address racism as a church is to speak to the church’s leadership. With their support, you will be in a much better position to respond to the multiple positions and diverse feelings that will exist in the congregation. Before you gather them together, you need to be clear about your purpose and the faith that under-girds those intentions.
You are about to enter a wilderness of uncertainty with lots of potential pitfalls and unexpected events along the way. As Viktor Frankl tells us in Man’s Search for Meaning, If you give a person a why, they can endure almost any how, but take away the why, and all barriers become insurmountable. For the people of Israel, as they crossed the wilderness in Exodus, what enabled them to keep traveling was God’s invitation to travel to a Promised Land. That was the WHY that enabled them to confront the HOW of hunger, thirst, snakes, and hostile tribes.
YOUR HOMEWORK
Knowing full well that like Moses experienced with Israel, you will not have full agreement in the church as you proceed in this wilderness journey of racism, first be clear about your own vision.
Begin by writing ten short sentences describing what you understand to be God’s call for your congregation in their anti-racism ministry. Take time to look at your ten sentences and refine them until you are satisfied that they reflect what you would want for your church.
Don’t be in a hurry, but when you are ready, here is your next personal step.
Looking at each of your ten statements, identify a key theological issue that under-girds each of your ten statements. For example, one of your statements is that you envision a congregation that can creatively deal with conflict when they discuss volatile issues. Your theological statement might be that we learn to love those who differ with us and be prepared to forgive them seventy times seven times.
YOUR LEADERSHIP
As the spiritual leader of the congregation, these are the statements and theological ideas you will share with your leadership. It will probably be best if this is the only item on the agenda. At your meeting, work with them to refine the ten statements into a vision for the church that they can support. They can change, alter, or add to the statements, but each must be accompanied with a theological rationale. Your goal together is to envision steps towards a more faithful congregation.
During this discussion, you can demonstrate another important feature of the process you are envisioning—Active Listening.
As each person expresses their thoughts, you simply reflect back the content by saying:
“So what I hear you saying is…..”
Or
“Let me make sure I’ve got this right…”
and then summarize their most important statements.
What you are doing is demonstrating an approach that you recommend for the entire church conversation. More on this later on.
IT’S TEAMWORK TIME
Working with your leadership, agree on four of the theological issues that you will develop in sermons to the congregation. Don’t hide the fact that you are laying the foundation for a church wide conversation on how your church offers ministry to the larger community and one of the major issues of society is the issue of racism.
Identify one Sunday each month that you will focus on each issue. You may alter this time frame, but I suggest you not crowd them all into one month. By allowing people to experience worship and sermons that are about other topics, it both gives them time to reflect and not feel they are being pushed only in one direction.
Ask your leadership to provide personal feedback and
Ask them to keep their ears open to other people´s responses.
Together identify questions and areas that can be developed further in future sermons, though not necessarily in that month.
As an additional twist, the congregation can be informed about this team project of pastor and leadership. You can share some of the issues that have been developed, and encourage feedback. The more you can engage the whole congregation in the conversation, the more you will build trust in the community and stimulate spiritual growth.
SEEKING TO FOLLOW
GOD’S CALL
Note a critical feature in this process. What you are asking of the leadership, and perhaps the congregation, is to focus on is the witness of the church and the spiritual development of the membership. By deliberately shifting the attention to the theological issues underlying the issues, you are asking people to ponder what God wants and not just personal preferences and concerns.
Don’t deny that you want to address the issue of the church’s witness regarding racism, but you want to do it as it is based on the church’s beliefs and ministry.
By engaging them in this process, your leaders and the congregation, will listen with different ears and will have an investment in the overall vision that you are developing.
IMAGINING GOD’S DREAM
Imagine the impact if a whole congregation can be excited about what God is doing among them. Like Israel and the early church, it won’t always be perfect among the people, but the vision can keep pulling the community forward and the disciples can continually grow in faith.
Video 1 may be helpful to explain the concept to your leadership
