Update from the Racial Reconciliation Taskforce
This fall, a group of us began to study, pray, and meet together (in a socially-distanced way), as part of the Racial Reconciliation Taskforce. The mandate for this taskforce was to produce practical recommendations to the session as to how City Church can take steps to grow in being a reconciling church.
As a part of being on this committee, we read the pastoral letter on Racism to the PCA General Assembly. I want to read part of that letter here:
“As we address the issue of race, we do so not because it is politically correct, or out of any pressure from outward society, but simply because it is our desire that the convicting and restoring power of God’s grace in the Gospel be applied to the manifestations of racial sin of which we ourselves are guilty, and that those who experience the negative effects of these sins might know the healing power of God’s grace – that we who have been reconciled to God through Christ might become together a holy temple in the Lord, reconciled to one another by His Spirit.”
Our larger committee formed several sub-committees that each had a focus.
In the first subcommittee, we gathered research by reaching out to local churches regarding their racial reconciliation efforts. We had in-depth discussions with other local ministries about things they are doing in order to love their neighbors well. We came up with several recommendations for City Church to strengthen our own racial justice efforts as we are sent out to worship God, serve Richmond, and work for its renewal.
Another subcommittee assessed the partnership that City Church currently has with other organizations that are doing physical good in the community, as well as organizations that are preaching Christ crucified and risen in the community and equipping Christian leaders. Many of these organizations supported by City Church serve diverse communities in Richmond. This subcommittee came up with specific recommendations for ways that City Church can improve and support these organizations financially, practically and relationally.
Another subcommittee met and focused on congregational dialogue and prayer. They shared their prayers around issues of race and learned about what our session is already praying for. They talked about what repentance and lamentation prayer could look like and how we could tie those into practices we already engage in. They also discussed increasing church education, conversation, and service opportunities.
Personally, I was encouraged and challenged by the work and time on this committee. I was encouraged to see what City Church and other organizations’ efforts are in this area. But I was challenged to see the obstacles, barriers, and major improvements that must be made. I must constantly remind myself, and you, that our goal is not to seek diversity as an end in itself because this would be too small an endeavor relative to God’s mission. Our goal should be to glorify our Savior by cultivating a cross-cultural community that maintains a cross-cultural witness to the grace and glory of God. The Christian life and community at City Church should be an expression of the “breadth and length and height and depth of the love of Christ.” This will require humble listening, teachability, and wisdom as well as the proactive pursuit of individual and institutional change.
I am going to leave us with a reminder from Colossians 3. City Church, ”Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14 And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.”