church & Pastors

Commitment

PRAYER

Possibilities for action steps include:

  • Partnering with African American congregations to develop prayer walks and prayer vigils in both communities.

  • Share community prayer concerns monthly.

  • Invite partnering congregants to special prayer events being held at your church.

  • Formulate prayer groups and/or partners that specifically pray for your relationship and the hearts of the congregants.

Building relationships

Possibilities for action steps include:

  • Multiple pulpit exchanges with a African American Pastor.

  • Create an interactive experience for your congregation and a African American Congregation.

  • Build a committee with African American consultants from aN African American church to join the fight to dismantle systemic racism. Pay them for their time.

  • Leverage your church systems by offering them to a small African American church to build their infrastructure.

Learn & proximate

Possibilities for Action steps include:

  • Read The New Jim Crow, The Color of Compromise, I Bring the Voices of My People or Divided By Faith.

  • Watch “Just mercy,” “13th, “”I am Not Your Negro, “ or “When They See Us.”

  • Host movie nights or book clubs around the above selection or others.

  • Participate in a local or national virtual JustUS Conversations.

  • Race & Grace Monday Prayer Initiative with 24/7 Prayer Network.

  • Update your book and video collection regularly in order to grow your resources and share with others including your children.

Financial redistribution

Possibilities for action steps include:

  • Give a (large) reparations type gift to an African American church with no strings attached.

  • Introduce your largest donors and encourage them to give to a Black pastor’s ministry.

  • Become a financial sponsor of a African American-led nonprofit.

  • Create a justice fund that will receive ongoing donations. Ask African Americans to serve on this distribution team.

  • Recapitalize African American banks by transferring your church’s money to an African American owned bank. (Justice Deposits)

Advocate for racial justice

Possibilities for action steps include:

  • Use your sermon time for a panel discussion on race. (include African Americans)

  • Hold a service to lament for complicit participation in radically unjust systems.

  • Preach four sermons on systemic racism and the Kingdom of God.

Organize & Mobilize

Possibilities for action steps include:

  • Actively participate in Urban Education and Housing Reform Initiatives.

  • Seek out Policy Champions in your geographical location seeking systemic and structural institutional transformation. (Ex: Social Change: https://socialchange.site)

  • Join organizing meetings of a local community group in the neighborhood of your partner church.

  • Attend community organizing training.

  • JustBUSINESS: Empowering the Church to generate racial equity in employment by leveraging the social capital within churches and establishing new networks of connection between churches or different races.

FOr additional information, please contact:

Rev. Bryan Ward | Chief Strategy Officer

Email: bward@rewireteam.org

Phone: 651-334-8209