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By sharing real-life stories of racial trauma, including her own, and how people overcame it, Rowe gives guidance to readers on how they, too, can find healing.

It feels like the world around us has been swept up in a narrative of life to death. But this is not the narrative of the gospel.

So how can we grow in living out God’s heart for racial justice? 

ÂÌñÒùÆÞ alumni Eddie and Kristen Yoon will match $25,000 of gifts to a special fund for Black Staff Flourishing. These funds will help Black staff for whom raising funds for ministry is an extra challenge due to historic inequities. Below, Eddie and Kristen share their heart.

International students or not, we simply don’t have control over the pandemic. But we do have control over how we respond. This is an opportunity to extend and be blessed by friendship.

Through contextualization, we can restore the beauty and value of our shared experiences and culture and reorient ourselves to see how our cultural identity relates to our faith in Jesus. Contextualization is more than being able to identify areas that aren’t working well; it’s reengineering structures and systems to cultivate a space and message that are relevant to the people in the room.  

I often think about the gospel and how it was presented to me. It was in the country roads of southern Arkansas, where my grandmother sang in the choir of a Black church. It was the hands raised, the strength of the Black women, and the rapping of the pastor that excited my soul. It always struck me that pain, joy, and hope could coexist. 

Even now, eight years since my last Trek, I constantly recognize how the Treks have taught and shaped me into the person I am today. They weren’t just summer missions trips. They were launching points for lifelong discipleship, where I learned how to persevere and follow God through adversity.

All this begs the question: how do we allow the good news about Jesus to take on the beauty and diversity of other cultures without infusing beliefs that are contrary to the gospel?