Juneteenth Celebration

Awareness, Relationship, Commitment

My Fellow Christ Followers,

This coming Monday, June 19 th , has been recently designated as a National Holiday celebrating the historic “Juneteenth” as the final end of slavery in the United States. It has also been called “Emancipation Day,” “Freedom Day,” “Jubilee Day,” “Juneteenth Independence Day,” and “Black Independence Day.” On June 19, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, TX, and announced the end of the civil war and the end of slavery.

This is a very important day for our African American siblings who express gratitude to God on this day of jubilation and liberation. Our own Oak Harbor community will be hosting a special celebration gathering at Windjammer Park at 12 noon. This gathering is being presented by the “Unity Fellowship” of House of Prayer Church and Mission Ministry Church of Oak Harbor.

I will be down there and I hope many of you will join me in cultivating life-giving relationships with our brothers and sisters from our local African American churches as well as others from our broader Oak Harbor community.

At the very center of the mission of Jesus Christ, in the saving of humanity from sin, is his healing work of reconciliation. He came to “…create one new person out of the two groups, making peace” (Ephesians 2:15b CEB). That is why our church has affirmed this statement as a grounding foundation for all of our work:

We also believe that Jesus followers are commissioned to learn how to appropriately engage their life of discipleship in these important ministries of

I have come to understand through my many readings and documentaries, there are three core truths we need to embrace to follow Jesus well in our context:

1. RECOGNIZE – Racism as an historic, systemic, pervasive injustice to humanity and an egregious offense to the heart of God who names us all His children.

2. REALIZE - We have been complacent, complicit and content in our own “majority culture” story while others have languished in harm and hate sustained by many blind spots.

3. RESOLVE – To own and act on our Christian responsibility to dismantle racism and work to reverse the long-standing injustices that have held our siblings in bondage to white supremacy.

Let this be our holy path to aliveness—TOGETHER!

Pastor David