Next Steps
We encourage you to complete Embracing Unity Academy, if you haven't done so, before coming to this page. Embracing Unity Academy will take you on a journey of discovery and is best consumed in sequence, like reading a book.
​
Congratulations to all who have worked through Embracing Unity Academy and reached this point on your journey through Embracing Racial Unity. Your dedication to understanding and unity is commendable.
​
As next steps, we encourage you to do the following:
​
· Join our Facebook discussion group and continue processing this material with others. Consider a multiracial small group experience where participants share their personal stories.
​
· Diversify your personal relationships. Commit to praying that God would show you how you can build honest and vulnerable relationships across racial, political and socioeconomic differences.
​
· Commit to a lifelong journey of learning. We have provided resources below that we recommend as next steps. As the prophet Isaiah wrote, "Learn to do right; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed..." (Isaiah 1:17).
​
· Identify one activity of repair that you can do, or join others in doing, and commit to this on an ongoing basis.
​
· Take others with you on this journey. The path to understanding and unity is best traversed together, in the embrace of a supportive community.
Resources
These are our favorite "next step" books:
​
The High-Definition Leader provides a fuller understanding of the Gospel and Paul’s ministry. It provides a compelling call to build mission-shaped, multi-ethnic churches that demonstrate genuine multi-ethnic unity and includes practical prescriptions for getting there.
Daniel Hill shares his own personal story about his journey of understanding his own white identity and then how that helped him understand the racial and cultural realities of others. This book is a great entry point into the discussion of race for white Christians, but it is best consumed with a friend of color.
Color-Courageous Discipleship provides a clear biblical theology for why racial solidarity is integral to discipleship. Whatever your race or background, Color-Courageous Discipleship is a guidebook to a deeper connection with God providing practical guidance for deeper individual discipleship.
​
David Swanson looks at how the White Church has been discipled by race and then provides a guidebook for changing our corporate discipleship. David Swanson posits that instead of seeking diversity as the solution to our segregation we must first address the discipleship that led to our segregation in the first place.
Reading Scripture from the perspective of Black church tradition is invaluable for addressing the urgent issues of our times. McCaulley provides studies on how Scripture speaks to topics often overlooked by white interpreters.
​
Movies to be watched in racially mixed small groups:
​
This movie presents multiple sides of issues related to police brutality and the struggle for justice and equality.
​
Other small group experiences:
​
A Beginner's Guide to Conversations about Race in an introductory course looking at the biblical, historical, and societal impacts of race in America and specifically the church. This is a 5 week experience designed for white people ... open for all.
​
​
​
