Home Podcast John Onwuchekwa: Why ‘Racial Solidarity’ Is a Better Term Than ‘Racial Reconciliation’

John Onwuchekwa: Why ‘Racial Solidarity’ Is a Better Term Than ‘Racial Reconciliation’

What I would say to a church that finds itself in a community that is not ethnically diverse, I’d say, one, don’t chase after that as if that’s the North Star or the gold standard. Make sure that you don’t have any barriers that are in place that would keep somebody from experiencing Jesus as they walk in through the doors. But two, I’d spend a lot more time focusing on what socio-economic barriers may be in place for that church.” 

“What we are saying is all communities do matter, and we agree with that, and we’re trying to reflect that reality by investing our time and resources in planting churches and strengthening gospel work in the communities that we say all matter, but they conveniently get left off of the list.” 

“I’m not prioritizing social justice over the gospel because I don’t feel those two things are at odds.”

“We live on a side of town where when the pandemic hit, our kids didn’t have access to tutors and things like that, so they say that it’s going to take these Black and Brown kids in the West End nine to 12 months to catch up to their white counterparts that had it. What does the gospel demand of us? How can the generosity of God overflow to those things?”

“Call it what you want. I call it, we want somebody to experience the goodness of the gospel through all five of their senses. And I think when we put it like that, we’re all in agreement. So let’s be about that work, and come and help us with that work.” 

“I do think that missions work is the best way to understand what it is that we’re trying to do. It’s a targeted missions effort on our own soil.”

“Even the way the conversation is framed and the agenda that’s baked into the title, ‘racial reconciliation,’ oftentimes I see that term championed or thrown out in a majority context or culture, and the people that advocate for the need of it are those that often find it missing in their own lives.”

“What I often find from minorities is, ‘Wait a minute—my life is diverse. I have reconciled relationships.’ It’s often, what we’ve found, the majority culture context that lacks it and wants to make reconciliation a priority, where what we’re saying is, ‘No, I do think we need to talk about that, but I do think the reconciliation or the unity is a byproduct of something that we’re after.’”

“I think in the racial conversation, we do need to shift the conversation just from reconciliation to solidarity…and I think that’s what you see in Acts 6, right? You don’t get unity by talking about unity.”

“One of the major problems I’ve seen in the course of the past year is offering shallow solutions…Until you understand the nature of the problem, you don’t really know how to solve it. It’s reductionistic to throw sin as a blanket statement over the problems that we face and not really dive deep into, no, no no, specifically, how is that played out?”

“What I found is there’s been a lot of people who have just been ignorant to the history of what’s really going on.” 

Mentioned in the Show by John Onwuchekwa

Acts 15
Revelation 7

The Crete Collective 

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Jason serves as the Chief Strategy Officer at PastorServe, a ministry committed to strengthening the Church by serving pastors through personal coaching and church consulting. He also hosts FrontStage BackStage, a podcast and YouTube show, that helps pastors embrace healthy, well-balanced leadership as they develop a sustainable rhythm for life and ministry. Prior to joining the PastorServe team, Jason served as Vice President of Ministry Mobilization at Outreach, Inc., and as the Executive Director of the National Back to Church Sunday movement. Additionally, Jason served for nearly two decades in pastoral leadership, primarily as a lead pastor, in several contexts, including church plant re-launch, multisite church, multiethnic urban church, and an established suburban church. His experience as a lead pastor has provided numerous opportunities to coach and mentor pastors across the country. Jason and his beautiful wife, Monica, are the proud parents of six children and live on Anastasia Island, Florida. @jasondaye