Talking, Listening &
Learning Together
Capturing This Crucial Moment to Disarm Racial Divides
pg. 18 — lightandlifemagazine.com
by Jeff Finley
Five African American leaders in the Free Methodist
Church – USA gathered June 7 with the Board of
Bishops for a Facebook Live conversation, “Talk, Listen &
Learn Together,” which has now been viewed more than
25,000 times and shared on Facebook more than 300 times.
Bishop Linda Adams said the church is in a position to
speak up about race relations and racism, and the bishops
were “in a posture of listening” and “approaching this
conversation with ears wide open to one another and to
God.” She cited James 1:19–20, “My dear brothers and
sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to
listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because
human anger does not produce the righteousness that God
desires.”
Bishop Keith Cowart read from the 2019 Book of
Discipline’s statement on racism in the “Dignity and Worth
of Persons” section, which includes the commitment to
“lament and repent for the ways that we have been complicit
in or failed to recognize acts of racial oppression.” Cowart
later noted that some of life’s most painful conversations
are with family and added, “If we’re going to confront the
dysfunction, we have to have the conversations, and they
have to be real, and they have to be authentic.”
/lightandlifemagazine.com