Take the Racial Equity Challenge

Dear First Presbyterian Community,

Like all of you, I was shocked and saddened by the murder of George Floyd late last month at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer. Mr. Floyd is the latest in a long line of unarmed African American men who have died at the hands of law enforcement officers in our nation. The intractable nature of the problem adds anger to our grief. We have seen that anger boil over across the country in the last two weeks.

Many of us are asking, “What can we do to solve the problem of police brutality? What can we do solve other problems such as the achievement gap between white students and African American students, or the income gap between white households and minority households? The problems seem so enormous that we don’t know where to begin.

Here is one place we can begin. It’s called “The 21-Day Racial Equity Habit-Building Challenge.” Two racial equity trainers, Dr. Eddy Moore, Jr. and Debby Irving, created this 21-Day Challenge six years ago. It was their response to their own frustration at not having a quick answer to the question, “What should we do?” It’s based on the idea that it takes 21 days to instill a new habit. The Challenge asks you to do one thing per day in one of the following categories:

• Read

• Listen

• Notice

• Connect

• Engage

• Act

• Reflect

You can find suggested activities in each category at their home page, https://www.debbyirving.com/21-day-challenge/. There’s also a printable grid you can use to track your progress.

My challenge to you is Take the 21-Day Racial Equity Habit-Building Challenge. We’ll start Monday, June 7 and finish Sunday, June 28, the date of our first scheduled in-person worship service since the pandemic broke. Of course, if the challenge works, we won’t finish on the 28th. We’ll find that we’ve instilled a new habit in ourselves—seeking racial equity for all people—a habit I hope lasts a lifetime.

If you decide to take the Challenge, let me know! Text, call, or email me. I’ll be posting about it on our Facebook page and our website blog daily. Please add your comments to the posts so that we can learn from each other.

You’re Difference-Makers. I believe you’re up to this challenge! I believe it is the work that Christ calls us to at this moment, “for he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us” (Ephesians 2:14).

Grace and Peace to you,

Marvin