From Colorblind to Courageous

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[0:00] for the children called God's Beloved Community. And there's an example of the book out there on the table. And I'll put another book out there too, so you can look at it afterwards if you're interested in looking at her book. But at this point, what we wanna do is just turn it over entirely to Reverend Sanchez. We're so glad that you're with us and people at home can see you and they can see your background and the screen that you're sharing, okay? So we're glad you're with us and take it away. And afterwards, there's gonna be questions and answers. And if you can ask questions here in the room and those who are at home, you can ask questions by sending me a text message and that text message number will be on the screen. So we're gonna turn it all the way over to you now. Thank you so much for being with us.

[0:41] Well, thank you so much for having me today. I cannot tell you how excited I am to join you virtually and especially that we get to combine for a joint service today. So I wanna send a double greeting to you, Foothill Covenant Church. It's been a delight for me over the past couple months to get to know Pastor Hans-Erik and Pastor Victoria, as well as Brian Smith and other members of the racial justice team. And I really do wanna take a moment to give Brian a shout out because he was one of the very first people to reach out to me right after my books came out. And so thank you so much. So that's fantastic. He was an early adopter and so happy to follow up today.

[1:34] I also want to greet you, Grace Community Covenant Church. I know Pastor Steve Wong well through my covenant connection, but as well, he serves with the Crescendo team, which is our ministry to 60 plus disciples of Christ. And he's doing a great job. And so I am delighted once again to be here with you and to share a little bit about my heart and some of my recent work in this area of color, courageous discipleship. And I will talk to you a little bit more about my background. But just to say, I do lead discipleship and evangelism for the evangelical covenant denomination. I've been doing that for the past eight years. So my heart is discipleship. I think. I've been talking about discipleship all day long, and I'm so excited to be able to make some connections, really important connections between discipleship and race in my most recent work. But let's begin, shall we, with some scripture. Okay.

[2:40] So this is Mark, Chapter 8, verses 22 through 25. Mark, Chapter 8, verses 22 through 25. They came to Bethsaida. And some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him. He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When he had spit on the man's eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, Do you see anything?

[3:08] He looked up and said, I see people. They look like trees walking around. Once more, Jesus put his hands on the man's eyes. Then his eyes were opened. His sight was restored. And he saw everything clearly.

[3:28] This is the word of the Lord. I know that Foothill, I don't know about both churches. I know Foothill has been reading through Color Courageous Discipleship and that this week you would be on Chapter 5, the theme of which is the connection between race and healing. And so I will be making some connections there today. Especially here in our scripture. But I also want to say that in general, I'll be doing a broader take today on our need for Color Courageous Discipleship based on this scripture.

[4:03] So a little more about me. This is my family. As I mentioned, we live in the greater Chicago area. I've been married to Mickey for 20 years. And Mickey works with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. So we are a ministry family. And then my two kids, my son just had his 13th birthday last month. And my daughter, Hope, is 9. Now this is a picture from our book launch party. And so although I couldn't bring, you couldn't be at the party, I'm bringing the party to you. Okay? And sharing a little bit of our joy with you. Another thing that I actually like to clarify for people because I do talk a lot about race and ethnicity is a little bit about my own background. And my family's background ethnically. So my last name is Sanchez. And people wonder, oh, are you Latino? Do you have any Latino background? The answer is no, I don't. Although I have plenty of Latino in my house. And so my husband, Mickey, is Colombian American. And of course, this makes our family Afro-Colombian. Now, I think that's special no matter what. But it's especially special.

[5:17] Because Disney put out a movie called Color Courageous Discipleship. And it's a movie about an Afro-Colombian family called Encanto. And my friends, let me tell you, we could not have been more excited when we saw a family that looks just like ours portrayed on the big screen. We never thought we'd see that in a million years. And, you know, the thing is, we are probably the closest you're going to get to meeting a family that's just like Encanto. We're a little bit magical as well. Kind of quirky and fun. And we also don't talk about Bruno.

[5:51] But now, what we do talk a lot about in my house is discipleship. Is discipleship. And I want to tell you a little bit about my journey with race and discipleship over the last several years, okay? So if you had told me five years ago that I would be writing a book about the connection between discipleship and race, I just wouldn't have believed you. Race is not anything that I have specialized in throughout my life. My thing has been discipleship. I absolutely love helping people to love Jesus more, read the Bible more deeply, share the gospel better. And I love all of the traditional discipleship things, Bible reading and prayer, spiritual formation, retreats, things like that. But, you know, it's not always the same. And so new questions actually began to nag at me in 2020. Questions about relevance and connection. In other words, how does all this discipleship stuff that I have spent my life pursuing relate to the racial challenges that we face now?

[7:07] What is the connection, right? And then even more, how is it that racism seems to have thrived in places where there are so many systems of racism that are not just about the relationship between people? The relationship between people. The relationship between the so-called Christian disciples. Right? Why is it when you pick up a classic discipleship 101 textbook, you probably won't find a chapter in there on race and ethnicity. It's as if these things are totally separate categories. Right? And what I came to realize in a powerful way starting in 2020 is that too long we have not made a connection between discipleship and race. We put these things in completely separate categories. categories. And the result is that too many Jesus followers are ineffective today. We're just confused when it comes to confronting our racial challenges. And so God has opened my eyes to this fact that if we want to make progress with regard to our racial challenges in our generation, we cannot keep doing discipleship the same way we've been doing it. If we want to dismantle racism, we have to connect race and discipleship. And we need to do that in a particular way. What we need is color courageous discipleship, color courageous discipleship. And so we're

[8:28] going to talk about that today. When I take a big picture look at the history of discipleship and race in our country, okay, the history of discipleship and race in our country, I think we can see three primary movements. And that actually, we're in the midst of one of these historic shifts right now. So friends, we're going to talk today about the history of race and discipleship in our country through the ABCs of racial discipleship. Got that? The ABCs of racial discipleship. What I mean by the ABCs is this. If we look at the history of discipleship in our country and race, we'll see this movement is a movement of race and discipleship. And we're going to talk about the history of this movement. So friends, we're going to talk about the history of discipleship. And we're going to move from color averse to color blind to what I hope now is a move to color courageous. I'll talk about that one more time. I'll say that one more time. Color averse to color blind to color courageous. A, B, C. We're going to start with color averse. What do I mean by color averse discipleship? Okay. So early American discipleship was basically color averse. What I mean by that is people were often discipled intentionally and unintentionally to be antagonistic to other races in one way or another.

[9:57] In the 19th century, for example, pro-slavery Bible teachers developed a distortion of discipleship that justified 200 years of slavery. And of course, there's no other way to be a disciple and to engage in slavery than to also engage in some kind of distortion of discipleship.

[10:22] There's a great article in Christian History Magazine, a part of Christianity Today, which tracks this question. Why did so many Christians support slavery? And here's some of the reasons that they gave. Essentially, they were able to distort the message of the Bible to be color averse. They engaged in color averse Bible exegesis.

[10:49] For example, Abraham, the father of faith, and all the patriarchs held slaves without God's disapproval. Canaan, Ham's son, was made a slave to his brothers. And of course, we know that African Americans today are exegesis. And so, they were descendants of Canaan.

[11:10] The Ten Commandments mention slavery twice, showing God's implicit acceptance of it. Slavery was widespread throughout the Roman world, and yet Jesus never spoke against it. The Apostle Paul specifically commanded slaves to obey their masters more than once, by the way.

[11:35] And Paul also urged them to obey their masters more than once. But the Apostle Paul also urged a runaway slave to return to his master. And so, on the basis of taking these scriptures out of context, there was a color averse discipleship that was promulgated throughout America.

[11:57] Here's another example of what this looked like. This is from the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., which I had an opportunity to visit. And it's the Slave Bible. The Slave Bible. So this was the Bible that was distributed among some slaves as part of regular Christian outreach and discipleship. And if you can read the small print, it says, Parts from the Holy Bible selected for Negro slaves.

[12:30] Okay, so whole sections of the Bible were missing here. Including, by the way, the entire Bible. The book of Exodus. Which, as you can imagine, you know, it's all about freedom from slavery. So that whole thing had to go.

[12:47] So, of course, the slave owners probably had the full version of the Bible. Right? But this is telling. Because we can see that in their own discipleship of their own people, all people, they probably emphasized certain Bible scriptures more than others. The Bible. The Bible. Fast forward to the 20th century, where we still see this strange mix of discipleship and racism. We see this clearly, for example, when it came to discipling segregation. Segregation. So folks got really nervous after the Brown versus Board of Education, the integration of schools and the defeat of Jim Crow laws one by one, and continue to want to disciple Christian people that segregation was a good thing. So even into the 1950s, pro-segregation citizens councils produced discipleship resources with teaching like this. What I'm about to read to you is from a disciple. It's a discipleship resource for kids. They knew you had to start early, which is why I also start early with my resources.

[14:01] The Bible teaches you to keep the races pure. In Acts 1726, you can read God's plan about the races. It says that God segregated or separated the races by putting them in different parts of the world. Segregation is Christian. And so again, these are concepts. It's coming straight from discipleship resource for kids. And as you can see, these are all examples. It's kind of depressing. So I don't really want to give any more examples, but these are all examples of how early American Christian discipleship in order to justify slavery and Jim Crow and so many other things really nurtured a color averse discipleship approach. Now, thank the good Lord over time. This kind of obvious color. Averse. Discipleship has been completely debunked. And really a massive turning point was in the 1960s, where discipleship and race began to morph into something else. It began to morph from color averse to color blind. And friends, this is largely the approach that we've had in our generation, a kind of color blind approach to discipleship. And really. And so I think that's something that we need to be thinking about. And so let's investigate that a little bit more closely.

[15:29] Ours has been the colorblind generation. And let's start out with this realization. Colorblindness is not all bad. It is not all bad. You know, I would take a colorblind person any day over an outright racist. Okay. So I think we can say we have made some progress. Here. The goal of colorblindness has always been a good goal. Equality. Right. There is a recognition that there is a problem here. Right. And maybe the solution to racial inequality is to downplay race. Right. In an effort to treat everyone equally.

[16:16] I also would say when it comes to a colorblind approach that. The. The reason it has appealed, I think, is because there is a lot of truth to it. Right. There are some ways in which we do need to look at everyone absolutely equally. We are all created equally in the image of God. Right. Uh, we are all equally deserving of dignity. Right. And so in those ways, of course, of course we are to look at everyone in the same way. One of the favorite, it's not the favorite quote, um, for a colorblind. Yes. But the favorite quote that a lot of the colorblind folks quote is the quote that's written by the boy who's a boy who's a boy who's a boy who's a boy who's which I will actually refer to a little bit later. And so here's the thing. Colorblindness in our generation has now been showing its limitations. Okay. It's mostly known for what it does not do, for what it doesn't do. Colorblind disciples don't see race. They don't differentiate. And they certainly don't intentionally discriminate.

[17:48] But come to think of it, colorblind disciples really don't talk about race or engage much in racial issues at all, right? Because why should you if what we want to do is downplay race? And that's where we start to get at the problem that in our day, colorblindness is showing its limitations, showing that it's ineffective at addressing some of our most egregious racial problems. And so we have to think about it. And so I think it's important that we start to think about it. And I think it's important that we start to think about that in our day, colorblindness is showing its limitations, showing that it's ineffective at addressing some of our most egregious racial problems because it downplays race. There's now reams of research to prove something very, very surprising. Now listen carefully. Reams of research to prove something very surprising, that a colorblind approach actually leads to racial inequity. A colorblind approach leads to racial inequity, precisely the opposite of what was intended. So the more colorblind you are, the more likely you are to reproduce or perpetuate racial inequality. So there has been, as I said, scores of research in many different fields of study to look at the impact of colorblindness. And a great resource

[19:03] that I would recommend if you're interested in looking at it is The Psychology of Racial Colorblindness, a critical review by Philip Mazzocco. And in this book, Mazzocco does a conversation with a woman who is a colorblind person. And she says, I'm a colorblind person. A comprehensive summary of the research on colorblindness to date. And here is his conclusion.

[19:24] Although the preference for colorblindness may be well-intentioned for some, the consequences of colorblindness appear to be almost entirely negative, both with respect to racial minorities and society at large. It's just amazing. And there are more and more people that are writing on this topic. And they're writing on this topic. And they're writing on this about this today. So I want to bring you up to date to this conversation. Here are some other resources that say much the same thing. Colorblind racism, racism without racists, colorblind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in America, and seeing race again, countering colorblindness across the disciplines. And so we are seeing again and again, colorblindness has its limits, and it's not getting us to where we want to go in terms of racial inequality.

[20:22] Why doesn't it work? If I could summarize it in one phrase, it would be this. It doesn't work because if you can't see race, you also can't see racism. If you cannot see race, you cannot see racism. You will be more likely to simply miss racial inequity that may exist in subtle ways, right? So you probably still won't miss the obvious racial violence and things like that. You're not going to miss that, but you might miss more subtle forms of racial inequity and racial bias, which is exactly what we've been discovering in our generation. And so the irony of our time is that today, few people, few people, many of us, intentionally embrace racism. Yet racial inequity firmly persists in nearly every area of life that can be measured. So the reckoning of our time, the racial reckoning of our time has basically been about colorblind racism. When I think of blindness, I think, again to our scripture, our scripture for today. Our scripture for today is very interesting. I mean, here we have an instance of a man who is blind and how Jesus deals with this man, right? It's this progressive kind of healing, which is odd. I mean, Jesus spits on dirt, which like, why did he do that? You know? And then he puts it on the man's eyes and he can see a little bit more.

[22:15] And then once more, Jesus puts his hands on him and then he can see clearly, right? It's a very kind of strange story. But for us today, I do see some parallels when it comes to this thing called color blindness.

[22:32] A couple observations I want to make about this passage. First of all, Jesus never solved any problems with blindness. Think about that now. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. The other thing that stands out to me from this passage is that sometimes Jesus, for whatever reason, may choose to heal our blindness in stages. Okay. And so this man, at first, he says, oh, yeah, I can see people. They look like trees walking around. Right. And so clearly he's seeing a little bit more than he did before.

[23:39] And there's progress. Right. And I can say I feel like the move from color averse, almost utter and total blindness to color blind. It's like, you know, we're seeing people now like trees walking around. We are seeing and we're seeing better, but we're not actually seeing clearly.

[23:59] There's still a little bit more healing that Jesus can do for us so that we see everything clearly. And I think, again, my friends, that that's a little bit. But of what's happening in our current generation, moving from color blind to color courageous.

[24:22] You know, at this point, I actually want to share just a little bit about my own story. As you know, if you are reading my book or pick it up, I tell a lot about my own story in the book. When I speak of going from color blind to color courageous, I am speaking of my own story, my own story. I'm not just speaking. I'm not just speaking to, you know, other other people. I'm sharing about how I myself went from color blind to color courageous. Now, let me say this.

[24:52] One of my all time heroes growing up. Was this lady right here. This is Claire Huxtable from the Cosby show. I just thought she was the best thing ever. This woman was a highly educated lawyer with a full time job. She had a beautiful townhouse in Brooklyn. She had five kids and her hair and makeup was always perfect.

[25:21] Right. And so I said to myself, I'm going to be just like Claire Huxtable. Right. All you need to do as a black family in America is work hard and then do well for yourself. And that's it. Right. That's all you need. That's all we need. Because, of course, race doesn't matter that much anymore.

[25:42] And so I'm going to share a little bit about my story. And, you know, I was raised to pay attention to black role models that really kind of stand out. The kind of superstar black role models. I found this picture online. Someone calls this picture the Black Black Roger Moore. OK.

[26:02] So there are, with no doubt, exceptional people of color who have broken barriers and have done very well. And they're very proud of themselves. And that is how I was raised. I will also say that I, my family actually was born into the South Bronx in a very under-resourced area. Primarily black. But because my parents were able to take advantage of a special. Yes. Yes. I'm sorry. Your audio is going to be off right now. Don't you? Oh. I'm sorry. You're going to have to help. I'm not going to make an announcement. I'm going to.

[26:42] Oh, sure. We can do it. We can do it. OK. All right. Thank you. All right. All right. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. maybe a little bit okay the black boy the boy the boy the boy the boy the boy the boy the boy the boy the boy the boy the boy I also, throughout my life, have had to cheat a lot. And I think that's hard because, for example, my family was born into the South, which was an under-resourced, or predominantly black area. But my parents were able to take advantage of a home ownership program for low-income families, and that moved us out to a part of Long Island, New York, which was predominantly white, and they're very well-resourced. So because of that type of program, that's how I was able to learn how to assimilate very well, my white culture, receive great resources and opportunities throughout my life.

[29:22] But what the Lord has done for me so lowly over time is that my experience was still an exceptional experience, still an exceptional experience. In other words, it's still an exception to the general rule that we raise in our country. There are, because we've been a colorblind generation, there are many, many people who are colorblind who might break through through special opportunities and working hard, but there's still this general rule of systematization and inequality in our country.

[29:57] And that is something that we all need to join hands and work together about. I also think it's a call of our generation as disciples. And I think about this church as well, about being a continuum to the generation that we're part of. First Chronicles says, The tribe of Issachar supplied 200 leaders, among all their relatives, under their command. They kept up to date in their understanding of the times, and they knew what they were supposed to do.

[30:33] So stepping back and looking at our present moment, here's what we can see. We have undergone a very interesting, similar experience in our generation that we did in the 1960s. Obviously, there's been mass racial justice protests in our time. And I didn't realize this, but the New York Times reported that in the summer of 2020, it's estimated that between 15 to 26 million people participated in racial justice demonstrations.

[31:08] We're a whole new generation. We can see that, obviously, we're living in a special moment. And so, what is it that we are to understand? We need to move from colorblind to color courageous. Colorblindness has gotten us further along in the journey, but not all the way. And colorblindness really does explain the stubborn resistance of racial inequality at a larger level in our country.

[31:51] So what do I mean by that? The persistence of racial inequality in the book? I talk about seven symptoms of systemic racism. Okay. And because I go into detail in the book, I won't go into, you know, excruciating detail here. But just briefly, what do we mean by ongoing racial inequality in a bigger way? Well, we're talking about what people call systemic racism, which simply means this, that society's systems persistently result in different outcomes for different races. And here are seven ways in which we see that. We see it in wealth.

[32:29] According to this, According to the U.S. Federal Reserve, white families enjoy a median net worth $188,000. That is almost eight times higher than black families and five times higher than Hispanic families. And white families continue to hold 90% of all the wealth in our nation, while black families hold 2.6%, despite other progress that has been made.

[32:54] Home ownership is the primary means of building wealth over time and achieving the American dream. Unfortunately, black ownership continues to hit all-time lows. The reasons for this are historic and complex. It's due to redlining and other discriminatory lending practices.

[33:17] 98% of home loans went to white families between 1934 and 1968. Today, things have improved, but not enough. Even today, blacks are less likely to be approved for mortgages. We see it with employment. Black people are two times more likely to be unemployed.

[33:46] And by the way, this has been true for the past 60 years. And whether or not the U.S. economy was booming or busting. In education, minority school districts receive $23 billion less than predominantly white school districts. And even when their behavior is pretty much the same, children of different racial groups are treated differently. For example, white students are more likely than blacks to be identified as gifted, even when their performance is similar. And black students are three times more likely to be suspended, even when they are not. We see this due to theáginae of the court's court court court court court court court court court the are convicted more often and are more likely to receive a harsher sentence. In fact, what we know from the research is this, the darker the Black defendant's skin looks, the more likely they are to receive the death penalty. These realities shed light onto why Black people are incarcerated at five times the rate of whites. It's no wonder that Black people comprise 40% of the prison population, even though they make up only 13% of the U.S. population. By the way, before I forget to mention this, in my book, I give copious, copious footnotes to all the research you can

[35:30] take a look at to see where this is coming from. Number six, healthcare. The COVID-19 crisis put into sharp relief the existing racial disparities of our time with healthcare, perhaps because people of color are less likely to be incarcerated. And number six, the áginae of the media media media media media media media media friends, severely underrepresented in our halls of power at all points of American history. For example, in 2020 corporate America, nearly 90% of Fortune 500 CEOs were white. And as of 2020, only two black governors have ever been elected in the United States, and only six senators since Reconstruction.

[36:40] I got this last slide from my friend Michael Emerson. He's the author of Divided by Fate, and in this slide what he does is he summarizes all of the research he's pulled together with proof for continuing racial inequality. And here, you know, he's pulled together 39 different areas where we continue to see inequality. Health, death, employment, marriage, occupation, life expectancy, child poverty, self-esteem, pollution, and so much more.

[37:15] And friends, here we have to ask ourselves a critical question, right? Why is this happening? And we have a choice to make. We can say either something is wrong with people, or something is wrong with the way that we operate, right? Either something's wrong with people of color inherently, which I don't believe, or something is wrong with the way we're doing things, and we need to change. This is something that disciples, the disciples of Christ, should care deeply about. And I believe we can do that as we make the move from colorblind to color courageous. We are in the midst of another shift where I hope many people will choose this, to move from colorblind to color courageous. And what do I define color courageous as? The courageous choice to see race in order to foster biblical racial equity, and to build beloved community, foster racial equity, and build beloved community, okay? Color courageous disciples don't passively ignore ethnic differences, but proactively embrace them and seek equality. This phrase, beloved community, is particularly beautiful and apt for disciples of Christ. And that brings me back to Martin Luther King. Okay.

[38:45] The phrase beloved community was popularized by King. And I want to explore it just a little bit with you. All of the books that I wrote, the entire point of them, if you read the subtitle, was to bring us closer to beloved community. So again, King, his dream went much deeper than this particular quote. And I had a chance to learn more about that in a pilgrimage this past summer to the King Center in Atlanta. This is where he was born. And I had a chance to learn more about his descendants or continuing his legacy and really defining it for us. What was King actually about? There, you have the opportunity to visit the church that he pastored, to see the home that he was born in. You can also visit his and Coretta's tomb. It is a beautiful, beautiful place of memory and honor. And right across the way from the tomb, there is something called the eternal flame. And just like it sounds, it never goes out. This flame just goes and goes. And it is a beautiful representation of the fact that we want King's dream to continue. So what was that dream, right? So that no one would be confused. They have a plaque right next to it. And it says this, the eternal flame symbolizes the continuing effort to realize Dr. King's ideals for the beloved

[40:14] community. His dream, as he said increasingly toward the end of his life, was a beloved community. A diverse community committed to loving one another with the very love of God. Here is one of my favorite quotes of Martin Luther King. I do not think of political power as an end. Neither do I think of economic power as an end. They are ingredients in the objective we seek in life. The creation of the beloved community.

[40:53] Again, beloved community can be defined as a diverse community committing to sacrificing for one another and loving one another with the very love of God. And friends, this is something that we can only do in the supernatural power of God. But for disciples, this is one way that, you know, racial justice looks and feels different. Maybe not. from the way of the world. This isn't just about rights and power and equality. Sure, those things are important, but ultimately we want people to know the love of God and we want to love one another with agape love. By the way, when I started writing, I realized there was nothing for kids about Beloved Community, which is why I wrote a picture book specifically for kids on Beloved Community. I want to let you know, anybody that has kids or works with kids, there's also a really gorgeous free activity kit that you can find at colorcourageous.com to get started early with our kids on these things like folks did in the past. This week, again, many of you are on chapter five in my book, Discipleship is Inner Healing. Be healed before you heal the world. The theme of that chapter is that healing and discipleship and mission are all intimately intertwined. One quote that I focus on in that book, again, is the supernatural nature

[42:25] of what we're called to. King said, only through an inner spiritual transformation do we gain the strength to fight vigorously the evils of the world with a humble and loving spirit. I agree that we need to start with an inner spiritual transformation that God could transform us so that we can be agents of transformation in the world.

[42:54] Remember our scripture from today that Jesus met this blind man, healed him a little and he saw some but I believe in a similar way, Jesus has healed us some when it comes to race but he has more than he wants to do. We that we might see everything clearly. The last story that I want to share with you is a visit I took this past summer to the Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. This is an amazing museum. You start out in the basement where you can experience what a slave ship was like in the underground part of the ship. Then you go up each floor and it takes you to a new generation of racial challenge. On each floor, there is a quote that represents the core racial challenge of that generation. I was, of course, very interested to see what was the quote they would choose for our generation. What was the quote they would choose? When it got to our time, what was the quote they chose? If the problem of the 20th century was in W.E.B. Du Bois' famous words, the problem of the color line, then the problem of the 21st century is the problem of color blindness, the refusal to acknowledge the causes and consequences of enduring racial stratification.

[44:27] Isn't that fascinating? That even at this museum, the Museum of African American History and Culture, they're recognizing that there's a problem of color blindness. This move from color blind to color courageous is truly the major challenge of our life, the major challenge of our times when it comes to race.

[44:46] Friends, I want to thank you again for having me join you today. I love to keep in touch with you. You can find me at colorcourageous.com, or you can also text me these days. You can text the word courage to 44144. That will allow us to keep in touch, and you'll also receive some resources to help you disciple others with these materials, a teaching guide, and the children's activity kit that I mentioned before. So you can text me at courage44144. I'm going to close now with prayer.

[45:24] Lord God, I am so grateful that you have us alive at this moment, and I pray that as disciples, we would understand the role we are to play in this moment. I pray that you would understand the role we are to play in this moment. I pray that you would understand the role we are to play in this generation.

[45:36] God, would you open our eyes even more when it comes to the challenges we face in many areas of justice. And today we lift up our racial challenges to you, God, asking for your supernatural power to be agents of reconciliation and beloved community.

[45:55] We pray these things in the name of Christ. Amen. Thank you so much, Reverend Sanchez. That was wonderful. And do you have time for a few questions? Of course. Yes. Yes, I do. Okay. She says, of course. And we're going to kind of alternate. When I mute myself, then they're going to make you loud so that we don't get the feedback. And the good news is that we restarted our Zoom on our end, and then you came through perfectly. So it was on our end and not your end. And so in the room, you can raise your hand if you have a question. Does anyone have a question right now and at home on your screen? You see a phone number and you can text me and I will get there.

[46:39] But who else has a question? Yes, over there, Steve Lee. And then when Steve is done talking, we're going to turn on her volume. And I was wondering if you could share a little bit more about . Did you hear that? No. Nope. Okay. So the question was, we really appreciated Steve Lee is here and his wife, Yuki, and their son, Yoshi. And they've been using your beloved community book for children. What family practices do you have for your children and Rachel to teach them these things? Oh, such a great question. Okay.

[47:48] You know, if I could recommend one thing and there's many things, you know, many things that I could recommend, including, by the way, one other incredible book by a friend, if you are a parent and are particularly interested in integrating racial justice into your life. I cannot recommend more highly the book The Race Wise Family by Helen Lee and Michelle Reyes. It's called The Race Wise Family. Helen Lee and Michelle Reyes. It's I would say it's just like my book, but really strongly focused on families. Okay. So with that being said, here's my favorite thing. So we have a variety of holidays and special observances in our country. That you can. use um as discipleship opportunities and by the way you don't have to do the same holidays every year or do all of the holidays right but you can say okay this year let's make a really big deal out of juneteenth okay and so learn about juneteenth um find an event you can go to get some uh faith-based books um that you can read to your kids about the history of slavery and what juneteenth is um and use it as an opportunity right because what kids i think and families need is these embodied experiences and if it can be fun in some way even better right so you could do that with juneteenth this year next year make a big deal out of martin luther

[49:17] king day the next year make a big deal out of you know asian american history month right and so for me you know um finding opportunities to observe things together celebrate things together is my favorite way to disciple my kids over time thank you so much and we'll take other questions what i'm going to actually do is you have a question stand in the middle and i'll walk up to you with my phone so she'll hear it directly other questions i'm going to prime the pump a little bit here i have a question to maybe move things along is um say like i'm 53 which some people think is young but i feel like is old and i look at my children and honestly they don't know what they're doing they're just old and they're just old and they're just old and they're Like, that's the goal. So obviously, today, we're talking about race in particular, but the Lord Jesus called us to partner with him in building the kingdom of God, right, in seeing more justice move forward in a variety of areas where there is injustice. And as far as I understand, right, if discipleship is an ongoing lifelong kind of commitment, then so is what is entailed with discipleship, right, including forwarding the kingdom of God, seeing injustice undone.

[51:07] Like, we don't graduate from the kingdom of God. But I would say this, that, you know, certainly each person has to decide. Well, what can I do? Or what are particular resources that I have that could be, you know, relevant here? So not everybody is called to engage the same way, but none of us graduate from discipleship.

[51:32] I knew you were going to say that, but I get that softball out there. Also, I have kids, you know, like yours. I have a 14-year-old, an 8-year-old, an 11-year-old. So I need to model this. Yes, you can model. Of course. Of course, and disciple others. Absolutely.

[51:51] All right. We're going to take some more. Hi, Michelle. Zach Nesberg. Oh, another person. Hello. How are you? If you were projecting forward five or ten years and you saw the church really embracing color, courageous discipleship, you know, can you give me like a pragmatic picture of what that would look like, you know, for you, for the church and for our world? Okay, that is a great question.

[52:28] Yeah, I'll say what first comes to mind. Sometimes people think that when I'm talking about colorblind to color courageous, I'm saying that every church needs to be a multi-ethnic church or look like a multi-ethnic church. That can be a part of this, but it's not actually the heart of this. Okay.

[52:56] Looking racially diverse can be a part, but it's not the heart of moving from colorblind to color courageous. There's a lot more I can say about that. But of course, a lot depends on whether you like look racially diverse in terms of where you're at, right, where you're located, what the demographics of your community are. And those demographics, of course, are constantly changing. So number one, I would say at the very least, we would, it would be good for most churches to reflect at least the diversity of the community that they're in and to be attuned to the needs of anyone racially marginalized in your area, right? And so I'd say that's kind of the bare minimum.

[53:40] But moving beyond that, I want to make an analogy for you here. So sometimes I'm a church. I'm asked by like a predominantly white church in the middle of Iowa or whatever, right? I'm asked, well, you know, again, how, how, what does this look like for us? And I like to paint this, this picture for them. Think about what many churches do in terms of global mission, right? Think about how, yeah, there's a whole lot of predominantly white, say, small rural churches in the United States that somehow, some way are still massively globalized. They're globally minded. They don't necessarily have, you know, well, they definitely don't have, let's say, people from an unreached tribe in as a neighbor, right? But they are aware of the need globally. They understand that there's a need to reach unreached people groups, and they have some sense of who they are, right? They can make connections. They can partner with missions organizations. That are getting involved on the ground. They can have they can raise awareness that through sermons and teaching and discipleship, and they could do a perspectives course and make sure that their kids and and disciples in the church are raised up with a heart for global missions.

[55:04] They can give financially to people they trust. They can visit right once they do have partners they can visit, and they can. There's so much they can do. Even through an occasion. In person and fleshed experience right and so I could go on. But the same way that you know a church can be global mission minded and be involved on these much larger levels, and have a heart for missions. My dream would be to see every church have a heart. Understand the needs around racial inequity, and have a heart and find different ways to get involved.

[55:47] Thank you for that. And let me get one here that came in by text All right. It's a very long question. So good luck. It says, How do we balance the inner healing and transformation? You call us to with the need to make a difference in the larger systemic nature of racism?

[56:12] Slash anti-sectarianism. And in addition to racism, there also seems to be a resurgence of anti-semitism. Do we throw up our hands and say to ourselves, What can my local church possibly do to affect systemic racism and simply focus on our personal lives?

[56:28] There's a lot there, but we will take it. Well, so I would I would say very similar to what I just said before. Right. There are other areas. Where we have made the connection that we want our church to be involved and to make a difference. We want to be involved and make a difference, even though the issue is massive. Right. And so think about, you know, child poverty and organizations like World Relief that allow you to adopt a child or to somehow get involved with child poverty or missions organizations that are reaching unreached people groups like unreached people groups. That's like that's so big. It's systemic. So no, of course not. Of course, you know, no individual or church is going to like, you know, massively move the needle by itself. But but we can have a heart for it. And the more individuals and churches that get involved in these small ways, we can make a big difference together. And so I encourage you to look at bright spots, you know, look at how you can have a heart, how you can get involved. Stay encouraged in terms of what is going well. Who is doing good work? Because, yes, we live in a world with massive darkness. Friends, we know this massive darkness. We're talking today about racial darkness.

[57:48] There's been a huge racial backlash since George Floyd, as you said, a rise in many types of racial hatred and even anti-Semitism. Yes, we can be focused on that and get discouraged. Or we can focus on the incredible progress that has been made in the last couple of years. And the people that are committed and how we can bless and join them.

[58:14] Thank you. I'm going to take a few more. I'm going to go to the middle of the church for people and come right up to me and stand next to me and ask the question. Come on up, anyone. I see a few takers, a few a few people who want to. I want to say that. Come on.

[58:35] I had I had I might go back and I had a few. I had another one. Anyone else? This is your chance. OK. One question, and I appreciated this in your in your book, Reverend Sanchez, was that the world has a left, for lack of a better word. We have a left and a right on this and help help the church. I'm not going to say find a way between them, but find a way that's different than that. So that we're not importing the world's way of having a dialog about it, which sometimes seems kind of toxic. How do we have these conversations with our amongst ourselves without these patterns that are external, hopefully to us? And how does and then how do how does the church change the world? I mean, that's why good luck on that one. But how do we. OK.

[59:34] Um. So the first thing I would say is that. As Christ followers, many have heard this phrase before. We don't follow the donkey or the elephant. We follow the lamb. Right. What that doesn't mean that you can't identify as a Republican or Democrat or whatever else. But it does say that, you know, our ultimate allegiance is to Jesus. And and Jesus doesn't fit perfectly into any political party. He doesn't. He never did. There will be some aspects of what the left is saying and doing that are in line with God's heart and there and others that aren't. And they're similar, you know, from the right. And I think the more mature we are as believers, the more easily we can see the strengths and weaknesses of any movement in terms of, you know, what Jesus actually wants for us. And so that's the first thing I would say. And I make that very clear in my book. This isn't about politics at all. I've got words for everyone along the political spectrum, as I believe Jesus would.

[60:41] So that's that's first. Now, the question of like, how do we as the church engage kind of in a different way than the world might engage with these issues? One critical thing. And this does relate to this week's chapter on kind of inner inner transformation, inner healing. I just say it's a reminder that we can't fight evil with evil.

[61:06] Simply put, we cannot fight evil with evil. And as King said, we can only overcome hatred with love. This is these are very biblical topics. And so to advance any form of racial justice in an un Christlike way is antithetical to our Lord.

[61:27] That's just what I'd say. Like, we're looking for grace. We are looking for forgiveness. We are looking for patience. We are looking for love. You know, just fill in the blanks. These are of utmost importance because ultimately all that we're doing here is for our Lord Jesus Christ and to represent him well. Another thing, Jesus didn't cancel anybody. He didn't cancel anybody. OK. The idea being, I mean, he let's be clear, he rebuked people.

[62:01] He definitely rebuked people. But he didn't cancel people. But by that, again, this points to the point. The heart of like, you know, no, our hope for everyone is to come into a saving relationship with Jesus and to grow.

[62:17] And we never give up hope with that. We never write off anybody on this journey. Right. That those are some thoughts on how, you know, we might have a different approach here. I think that's excellent. That really that really clarifies it. And I wonder, you know.

[62:37] There's a difference between canceling and rebuking. Yeah. I think some people who have been rebuked think they're being canceled, but they're not. They're just there's a difference. No, no, no, no. And there are some beautiful role models in our history. I was just going to say, we've got beautiful role models, especially many of the black civil rights leaders. I think especially of Martin Luther King and John Perkins and you know how they can beautifully rebuke while also extending love and patience. One one rule of thumb I have and I don't know where I heard this, but it's not original to me is that if I'm being prophetic in a moment and it feels good, I better be careful. It should break my own heart first and then I can speak the prophetic word. But if I'm doing it to make myself feel better, then I'm I'm part of the problem now.

[63:27] OK, that that is beautiful, truly, because, you know, as I think about Jesus and whenever he rebuked Pharisees or his own disciples, I think, you know, I'm not going to be able to do that. But the way that Godágina watches the whole things and everybody give a wave greetings to everyone I think we'll say goodbye now and as I said you can we can correspond later you can get a copy of this recording and everything so yeah such a joy thank you everyone and yeah may God bless you on this journey of building beloved community amen thank you you