Rev. Kristopher Sledge, Dr. Rodney Smalls, Kara Patrick, Brian Smith and Dr. Drew Hart.
“No one wanted it to end,” said Drew Hart, Messiah University professor, author and program co-director.
The “it” was Messiah University’s “Thriving Together,” a two-year journey of racial justice education and learning, embarked upon by 12 local churches.
Each congregation brought three participants, one of whom had to be a ministry staff member or pastor.
“What we wanted to see were churches who at least had some backing from the leadership,” said Brian Smith, program co-director and chair of Biblical and religious studies at Messiah University. “A pastor or associate pastor who believes that this is important enough work to invest in, and bring some lay folks along who are committed to it.”
And they were committed.
They read books by noted theologian Jemar Tisby, professor and historian Henry Louis Gates Jr., and Hart. They traveled locally to sites that hold restricted deeds and covenants, documents that restricted the sale of the property to whites only. They watched documentaries about iconic events within the civil rights movement and climbed onto a tour bus and visited these places, often talking to those directly affected by these events. These included a woman beaten as a teenager on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., and the sister of one of the young girls killed at the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Ala.
“The violence that took place was eye-opening because the news clips only showed what happened on the bridge,” said Dr. Rodney Smalls, pastor of Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church in Harrisburg. “The beatings continued all night long, into even the churches.”
One woman explained how her sister had blocked out the beating until years later when she saw herself on the news, causing all the memories to flood back.
The civil rights tour galvanized the group, as they traveled and ate together for six days.
“There were some really deep bonds,” said Rev. Kris Sledge, lead pastor of the Journey Church in Harrisburg. “I could just sense that people were really eager to learn. And so there was this trust that was built.”
And trust did have to be built. Bringing people from diverse denominations, ages, races and life experiences doesn’t immediately lend itself to gut-level discussion. Smalls described that some participants weren’t convinced at first that folks were “going to go as in depth as we needed to go.” Initially, the conversations did stay at surface level, but built over time.
This required some significant personal reflection.
“It was very much an opportunity for each person and congregation to deeply reflect upon their own bias or their own privilege, the way in which they participate either actively or even casually in a racialized world we live in,” Sledge said.
Honest Dialogue
The group first learned what a racialized society looks like and how it impacts everyone. Black, brown and white people are all affected by this environment.
“Whether you’re Black or white, all of us participated in the racial divide itself,” Smalls said. “So, all of us have a hand in it. Whether it was because of oppression but also how we react as a result of oppression.”
Learning these hard facts wasn’t easy, but through this intentional, trusting environment people were able to humble themselves, be uncomfortable, and show grace.
A few interviewees described an older man in the group who acknowledged, “I just didn’t know” (about the systemic racism of redlining, restricted deeds, etc.). At first, some Black participants responded with, “How could you not know?”
“But then you can understand that—when you’re so insulated and what you know has always been,” Smalls said. “How are you going to know unless there’s an honest dialogue? And that’s why I love what happened here, and honest dialogue was able to happen.”
Embracing other people’s perspectives poses a challenge for folks who are accustomed to having their perspective at center stage, with no real need to understand coexisting realities.
“Folks in the majority—white folks in this situation—typically have a harder time listening to the experiences of others and then accepting them as reality without moving first defensively,” Smith said. “So, it is a challenge to hear some things that don’t sit with your experience of reality.”
Leaders now feel empowered to take these difficult discussions back to their congregations.
“The biggest thing I think I learned was how to even lead this conversation,” Sledge said. “This is a helpful framing for even how to talk about race.”
These conversations aren’t comfortable, but that’s all the more reason to have them.
“I need to keep doing things that are uncomfortable, because if I stop doing things that are uncomfortable, then I’m not doing anything,” said Kara McKinney, a member of Grantham Brethren in Christ Church.
This experience was not meant to be exclusively academic. Participants were offered grants to create programs in their churches that work toward justice. Congregations are creating racial justice initiatives and commissions within their churches. Others have begun studies around racial justice to bring members along on the journey they’ve been on.
“I do think that the more we learn, and the more we’re educated, the deeper we get, and it becomes more real, and we want to do more action,” McKinney said.
Smalls’ church, Macedonia Missionary Baptist, held a 2023 Good Friday service including seven of the churches involved in the cohort.
“The church was packed,” Smalls said. “And the choir was incredible.”
Hart hopes that congregational action will include active participation in anti-systemic racism work even as it appears to take sides, or be political.
“Jesus took sides with the vulnerable, the least and the last,” Hart said. “They also really should get out into the public square and take sides, and it doesn’t matter what political party.”
A new cohort of Thriving Together began in September. Likely this group will have the same educational, life-changing experience that the last cohort had.
“It can’t stop there,” Smalls said.
For more information on Thriving Together, visit www.messiah.edu/thrivingtogether.
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