This session is designed to explore how things have changed; the language we use, the understanding we have, the approach we take to issues around race and racism and how a willingness to grow and mature is right and important.
As you begin this third session, briefly recap some of the ground rules you agreed to create a safe space for discussion. You may find it helpful to revisit some of the things you explored in the previous sessions and invite members of the group to share how these things are impacting them and their parenting.
Explain that during this session, we are thinking about the way that the world has changed both within our lifetime and further back in history too. Invite the group to think about their own life experiences; what changes have they experienced that they would be willing to share?
20 Brothers and sisters, stop thinking like children. In regard to evil be infants, but in your thinking be adults.
1 Corinthians 14: 20
Encourage the members of the group to have access to their own Bibles and read together 1 Corinthians 14:20. Explain that the Bible has a lot to say about how we grow in maturity spiritually, but also in other ways. In this verse, we are challenged to grow up; to mature.
We mature individually, but we also mature collectively too. When we talk about the way that things have changed, this isn’t about us being nostalgic; it’s about celebrating the growth we have been through. Sometimes growth is painful, and some of the experiences we have collectively shared have been difficult but they are important too, so that together we can grow, change and develop.
Briefly summarise the issues raised in the chapter and read page 27, halfway down to the end of page 28.
Invite the members of the group to take a few moments of silence and to use this time to privately confess before God the things they know they need to repent of. Take some time to pray together, asking God to help us to grow and mature and develop a better way of thinking and talking about race so that we honour all those he has created, as he intends us to.
Share the family activity on page 29:
Encourage everyone to have a go at beginning this, before you meet again. Invite everyone to come back ready to share how they got on, or arrange a special time when the whole families represented in this group, can get together, specifically to share the outcomes of this activity. If they have copies of the book, invite participants to take some time to read chapters three and four, to help them to get a better grasp on the context for this.
If you have a Whatsapp group, you could send out a reminder during the week, before you meet again.
