Please read a statement from Elim Pentecostal Church, Huddersfield’s Leadership Team:
We are blessed to be a Church family with people from many backgrounds. This diversity and unity in Christ is something we celebrate, but also something we should not take for granted. When one part of our Church family is hurting, we should all hurt.
In light of events in the last few weeks, and after giving serious prayerful consideration, we the Church Leadership wanted to put out a statement to express our pain and grief at the appalling injustices happening to people from BAME (Black Asian Minority Ethnic) backgrounds. Sadly, this is not something that only happens in other countries, it is also an ingrained generational stain in our society. Members of our Church have their own painful stories of facing racial abuse, directly and indirectly. Therefore, we want to state what we are going to do.
We as a Leadership are committed to:
Listen. To humbly hear people’s hurts. This will be a time of listening, to help us to stand alongside and better understand.
Examine ourselves. To seek truth and justice by looking at ourselves, our Church and the society around us. To see what is good, but also to lament and repent of what is bad.
Commit to seeing change. To be more Christ-like individually and as a body. Where all our family, but especially those of BAME backgrounds, know they are loved, valued and empowered to be whom God has created us all to be. We have been blessed with people from BAME backgrounds on our Leadership in the past, we are committed to be more diverse in the future, and would like to see greater diversity in our Leadership Team from our next AGM.
Jesus prayed; “I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (John 17:23).
Racial injustice is not something we will allow to continue anywhere. We will be playing our part in building Jesus’ kingdom here, where the evil of racism is challenged and eradicated. We are all made in God’s image. Jesus went to cross for the world. By God’s grace and the Holy Spirit’s help, we will be the agents of change in our society and the church, to see transformation for Jesus.