Recently, another church reached out to us to ask us how we (and other spiritual communities) are addressing racial equality and our success in addressing this priority issue. Here’s the response from our Pastor, Gabrielle Chavez
This is a very important subject for Christ The Healer UCC. If CTH UCC has any success with incorporating racial equity into our structure and program, it is the result of structuring and programming our entire theory and practice of church around Jesus‘s prayer “that they all may be one“ and engaging in activities that constantly bring us up against limited ideas about what that means relationally, politically, and ecclesiastically. Christ The Healer‘s vision is the wholeness of the body and mind of Christ. Our understanding of our spiritual and earthly mission is “Waking up, growing up, cleaning up, and showing up together for the kin-dom of heaven on earth”. Every Christ The Healer member creates and publicly shares a membership covenant with a personal spiritual growth focus toward that end annually. This gives us a foundation for interpersonal relationships that are honest and supportive of growing up into Christ, “in whom there is neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, slave nor free.” CtH gatherings reinforce teachings and practices that support our collective vision and mission, “listening in a state of grace“ and body electronics being two examples. In addition, in recognition of the need to repair our culture and church’s past sins, it has been a priority for me as pastoral leader from the beginning to seek proactively to empower the gifts and leadership of people of color who join us, which has resulted in significant diversity in our small congregation. I find that structuring church life and program to constantly grow our understanding and practice of personal and planetary wholeness creates church members and leaders with a consciousness and worldview that walks the talk of racial equity as a natural outgrowth of our way of ‘being the church’.