“Our mission is to heal the broken race relations of the St. Louis region by harnessing the potential collective power of its diverse faith communities,” said Dave Gustafson, president of the Reconciliation Network. Their main project is a training program that has now been brought to hundreds of participants in several churches across the St. Louis area.
“We teach people to live what we call the ‘multi-ethnic life,’” said Gustafson. “Christians, who spend too much of their time in very segregated churches, learning that that’s not the way that we should be living our lives, that we are called to lead multi-ethnic lives with a diverse circle of friends. The continuing pattern of behavior of the church – that is, to be very segregated, especially on Sundays – is actually a huge contributing factor in the problems that we face here, not just in St. Louis but across the country.”
Brandon Wilkes, the Training and Education director of the Reconciliation Network, knows the power of multi-ethnic churches. His home church in Cincinnati “went from being 99 percent white to being a truly multi-ethnic, diverse church,” Wilkes said. After the shooting of Timothy Thomas in Cincinnati in 2001, that church was motivated to change how it was structured and take deliberate action to create a diverse worship space.
Then, Wilkes’ church sent him to St. Louis to replicate that here.
“St. Louis was actually on our radar because in Cincinnati we had heard about the Delmar Divide,” Wilkes said. “And when we heard about that, and when we started thinking about a place to plant a church, St. Louis was like, ‘They could use that here.’ So we got here, and then Ferguson happened.”
Wilkes and Gustafson met in the immediate aftermath of the shooting of Mike Brown.
“Dave and I, actually, out of coincidence, sat next to each other in the meeting about what pastors and the church can do to heal this divide,” explained Wilkes. “And that’s how we became friends, and then Dave told me about the St. Louis Reconciliation Network, and I told him – almost immediately – yeah, I’m happy to partner with you.”
Now, they’ve taken their racial reconciliation training program to hundreds of churches, and brought their work to thousands of St. Louisans. And their program works, Gustafson said: “Well over half of the participants in our classes have really changed their patterns of behavior as a result of the information they learned during the class.” And some, he added have truly become “activists in our communities, you know, really pushing for the elimination of racism, and bringing issues of biblical justice to our community.”
Their next project? Bringing their work to the schools. Gustafson referenced the students who were recently expelled from MICDS for their use of racial slurs.
“That’s right around the corner from my house,” he said. “And at my daughter’s high school, there was a very recent graduate of Ladue High who was photographed as one of the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, so this stuff is hitting pretty close to home.”
Wilkes and Gustafson hope their program could help ease tensions in the schools. “I think there’s a huge need for this in our school system,” Gustafson said, “and I think it’s an unmet need for training in this area.”
For more information, visit stlrn.org.
Free mammograms at church
Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine are offering mammograms at no cost to qualifying women age 40 and over on Saturday, November 4 at Christ Our Redeemer AME Church, 13820 Old Jamestown Road in Florissant (63033). The Siteman Mammogram mobile unit will be at the church from 8:30 a.m. until 2 p.m. Funding is provided by Susan G. Komen Missouri. Schedule appointments by calling 314-747-7222 or 800-600-3606 (option#2).
