A Plan for Color-Courageous Discipleship
Our practices of discipleship require clarity, courage, and commitment. Here are some of the ways we call our members to deepen their color-courageous discipleship.
In her book Color-Courageous Discipleship, Rev. Michelle Sanchez invites churches into “the courageous, lifelong journey of following Jesus, dismantling racism, and building beloved community” (19).
In this deepening of our discipleship, God invites us on a healing journey: to enter confession and repentance, and the mutual healing of giving and receiving forgiveness. God invites us to live in light and truth, which may mean learning things about ourselves, our church, and our world that we would prefer to minimize or ignore. God invites us to embody self-giving love, seeking the good of others even if those ways of thinking, seeing, and feeling are not our own experience.
At First Covenant, we are on a journey of becoming color-courageous disciples: Followers of Jesus who don’t erase or overlook our diversity, but see it as the fullness of God’s own image in our collective humanity. As we continue to learn and grow, we are committed to developing new pathways for discipleship and learning. We are committed to examining our values and practices, in accordance with the six-fold test for multiethnic ministry. We seek to do what love requires, growing up into the fullness of God through these values:
Growing in intercultural awareness
In our local congregation, we represent a multitude of cultural experiences, backgrounds, and values. We celebrate these as gifts that strengthen our discipleship, and seek to humbly learn more about one another without assuming cultural superiority or normativity.
Examining our own racial identity
In the same way we are curious about the lived experiences of others, we want to practice ongoing self-examination about our own racial identities. We want to examine the stories we have been told and not told. We want to become self-aware of the ways that white supremacy has maligned all of us, distorting how we view ourselves and one another.
Diversifying our discipleship influences & teachers
We are committed to diversifying the voices, mentors, teachers, and leaders who inform our understanding of God, the Scriptures, and our life together. We will examine the discipleship content we read and listen to, seeking a varied and diverse set of teachers, mentors, scholars, pastors, and wise believers.
Strengthening our mutual bonds with sister churches and ministry partners
We are committed to mutual ministry with our multiethnic sister churches in East Portland. In our mutual fellowship and worship, we find creative ways to partner together to bear witness to God’s dream for humanity to be a diverse and flourishing community.
We invite you to explore and learn more from the many gifted pastors and leaders in our denomination on our denominational resource page.
