Next Steps

Enjoyed a good meeting today with Pakou Her, director of trainer training for Crossroads (the organization that presented the retreat). Ms. Her lives in Kansas City and is available to assist us with Forming, Equipping, and Coaching teams created to eliminate anti-racism in church systems we serve.

Her email is: pakoucrossroads@gmail.com

Her cell phone is 816.853.9927

I'll be talking with the CCMA Executive Committee about a potential coaching relationship with Ms. Her and interested people in the region and possibly inviting Ms. Her to the next Council of Areas meeting to help make clearer some of our options to advance the cause.

All the best,
Bill R-H

Resolution Passes

Click here to learn about the General Assembly resolution concerning the Reconciliation offering.

Any good news to share?
BR-H

Talked with Chris Hobgood today

Chris says that when they began training with Crossroads, they envisioned that they would soon be joined by pairs of new trainers in each of the regional clusters (groups of regions that are geographically contiguous). That has not yet happened.

Training with Crossroads is about a 2.5 year and $36,000 investment. Most of the training is modeling, experimenting, evaluating, adjusting and repeating that cycle.

A resolution will be offered in the General Assembly to use Reconciliation offering money to staff the office of Reconciliation in DHM and 50% to fund regional programs.

If that goes through, what would it be like to plan to partially fund a pair of trainers (one person of color and one "white" person) to serve church and non-for-profit and government entities in Missouri, Kansas, Illinois, Iowa? If we coordinated planning and funding with a variety of church organizations, over a period of 2 years, I'm sure that we could raise the $72K to do that.

Oh, and PS. Does anyone have Devoree Crist's email address? My notebook is still lost.
Bill Rose-Heim

Upcoming AR/PR Follow-Up

Now that we're about two weeks out from the follow-up session on the 10th, are there things we can begin thinking and dialoguing about in preparation?

Can someone define the role of the "critical mass" of Af.-Am.'s in the training.

Need for more training?

Chris Hobgood and I will talk on June 7 about training and trainers. It would help me know what the perceived need is for additional training events in this part of the world. Any thoughts?

Carla Giger's Blog

Carla Giger is serving on our behalf in South Africa. To view her blog: http://cdgiger.blogspot.com
She'd probably appreciate any comments you would care to leave.

I've heard from some that a few of you are having difficulty getting onto the blog. Feel free to call me and I'll try to talk you through it. 816-632-2237.

BR-H

The Week After

Okay. We shared a significant experience - more profound for some, perhaps even frustrating for others.

I thought it might be a good idea to kick off the conversation with a look at what we are all thinking and doing about anti-racism in this critical time following the event.

One aspect of this conversation is accountability. That both frightens and encourages me. Perhaps with greater accountability, Christ will do more through us, more quickly and decisively.

I'm still pondering the implications of what I learned about the three levels of racism's inisidious power. One thing strikes me as needful right now. Unless and until I expand my circle of close contacts with people of color, anti-racism can remain a never completed duty (at best) or just one of a thousand competing intentions.

The longer I procrastinate about all this, the longer people I say that I love will suffer. So this week, I am taking inventory of my friendships and close work and business related associations with people of color and I intend to create some kind of icon that will help me to keep the urgency in this process of deep conversion to a pro-reconciliational lifestyle.

How about you? (Respond by clicking "Comment" or by posting your own thoughts at the top of this blog.)
BR-H