Most of the Region’s Reconciliation Team, which works toward the missional imperative of becoming an anti-racist, pro-reconciling church, was gathered with other regions’ leaders at the annual assembly of the Northeast Inter-Regional Fellowship (NIRF) at Ohio’s Camp Christian earlier this week.  The assembly, which was led by the Rev. April Johnson, Disciples’ Minister of Reconciliation, allowed the 7 regions’ teams to share in an exploration of the challenges and opportunities we face in bringing God’s justice to life in our communities and world.

Much of our time was dedicated to spending time together in our teams to set priorities and begin establishing action plans for our next steps.  The key goals that we have begun work toward  include:

  1. Enabling the team to have more effective, ongoing contact and growth together.  Toward this end, we have set another meeting for this year, and have planned for conference calls and other electronic communications on a frequent basis.
  2. Raising awareness of our pro-reconciling initiatives in all dimensions and constituencies of the Regional Church.  For instance, Rev. Johnson will be joining us at the Regional Assembly in April, 2010, for workshops and other consultation.  We will be working with our Regional Board and its departments and commissions to educate and advocate for reconciliation.
  3. Engaging the congregations and clergy of the region in an examination of our local settings and the entry points for reconciling work.  We will be working with our youth at camps, with pastors (especially around baptism discussions in Pastor’s Classes), and others who will be preparing the way for God’s loving reign of justice and peace to be made known in our world.

Congregations and pastors should expect to see some significant conversations develop that we believe will do much to overcome the many kinds of divisions that bring harm to persons, congregations and wider communities – including racism, sexism, classism, and other “isms” that stand in the way of the gospel being fully known in our world.

It is the hope of the team that the conversations begun in this effort will expand for the sake of God’s glory.  Watch for more of this good news to come!