HOW WOULD YOUR CHURCH RESPOND?

MAKING USE OF THE CHURCH EMAIL LIST

While we all have been frustrated with the restrictions necessary because of the pandemic, I want to suggest one benefit that churches can make use of. Despite ourselves, almost the whole church is a lot more comfortable with some elements of technology. Consider the possibilities of your church email list making use of a church wide conversation about any subject. Even church wide assemblies fail to actually generate conversation from the whole church.

Consider the possibility of making use of a series of brief questions or surveys that enables you to engage your membership in a conversation. If you make use of a program like Survey Monkey or Convert Kit, you can even graph their responses and quickly paint an image of the church’s thoughts that you could then use on a Zoom conversation.

DEVELOPING A CONVERSATION ON RACE

While you could do this with any subject, I want to provide a series of questions that might engage the membership in reflecting on the relationship of the Gospel and racism. In later blogs, we can explore the possibility of extending this process to developing a conversation with other congregations in the ONE BODY OF CHRIST, but for now let’s focus on your particular congregation.

IMAGINE HOW YOUR CONGREGATION WOULD RESPOND

Pick a couple of questions. Send them out. Graph the responses without names, Send the graph summary along with the second set of questions.

1. Bringing up the subject of racism:

A. Makes White people defensive.

B. Makes Black people angry.

C. An opportunity for healing conversations

D. An historic source of stress and injustice

E. Other

2. The biggest barrier to talking about racism is:

A. The guilt that White people feel.

B.  Black people’s belief that nothing will ever change.

C. Feeling helpless to solve an historic injustice.

D. Fear of stirring up conflict among people.

E. Other

3. Being Black in this society:

A. Means you begin two steps back.

B. Causes many Whites to be nervous near you.

C. Is a cause for pride in strength to survive.

D. Results in poor health because of continual sources of tension.

E. Other

4. Being White in this society is:

A. Belonging to the majority in society.

B. Benefiting from many special advantages.

C. An opportunity to misuse power.

D. An opportunity to be a blessing to others.

E. Other

5. A barrier to honest Christian talk among Black and White Christians:

A. A history of racist behavior that is in the church’s memory bank.

B. Inability to trust that God could guide the journey to healing and hope.

C. Fear that it might challenge all of us to make significant changes.

D. Denial of the intimate relationship between faith and our life behavior

E. Other

If Black and White Christians could have an honest conversation about race:

A. All might be surprised at what they heard from Christian neighbors.

B. Their growth in faith would be profound.

C. Anger, hurt, and guilt could be healed.

D. It would be empty talk with no significant change.

E. Other

7.  Scriptures I think speak to the church’s behavior with respect to race relations are:

A. You should love your neighbor as yourself.

B. The parable of the publican and pharisee.

C. Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done.

D. The world will know you are my disciples if you love one another as I have loved you.

E. Other

I would support multi-church inter-racial church conversations:

A. If I believed that God was calling us to participate in such conversations.

B. If it was faith based and not just a disguised political activity.

C. If it includes honest Scripture and faith foundations.

D. If I were convinced there was a reasonable basis for hopeful change.

E. Other

Have fun, help your congregation to have fun, and may you all grow in the process.