- Community Engagement
We got a very nice thank you from the folks at Billings Forge Apartments. They were very grateful for our support of their Baclk to School BBQ. We hope to continue to build these relationships and connections with our neighbors!
"Hi Ben - I want to thank you so much with the partnership and the donations you gave to our residents in the BBQ and thanks for the extra mile you put in finding backpack donations from the Hispanic Health Council. We appreciate you!
Thanks to the volunteers that came from your church (Riverfront Family Church) they were awesome with our kids playing all those games.. I think they had more energy than the kids!! Say hi from me and many thanks for coming to the BBQ! 🙏 We really enjoyed having all of you at the BBQ with us!😊
Please let me know if you want to get involved with this community enagagement in the future. We are definitely looking for more opportunities!
- Justice Action Team
This statement was officially adopted by the RFC members on 8/21/22:
Riverfront Family Church is fully committed to the liberation of each person from the bonds of oppression and injustice, acknowledging that we all need to be liberated. This is our sacred work.
We believe in a God who loves us all, without exception, and that God’s love is both just and merciful.
We believe that it is our responsibility to work to heal the wounds caused when the Christian church has been used as a weapon of intersectional harm and exploitation. This is our spiritual responsibility.
We actively seek to expose and dismantle our complicity with beliefs and systems--including white supremacy--that perpetuate injustice and oppression.
We reject the violence and spiritual falsehood of relationships based on coercion or hierarchy. We embrace “power-with” relationships, elevate the value of communal responsibility over the value of individualism, and seek the ongoing creation of cooperative egalitarian community. This is the lived expression of our beliefs.
We value deep listening, humility, joy, relational power, transformation, restoration, and equity.
We commit to following pro-Black BIack, Indigeness, and People of Color (BIPOC) civil rights leaders & community leaders of all ethnicities, genders, sexualities, abilities, faith traditions, and generations--past, present, and future--in solidarity and with deep respect. We commit to supporting justice work as it takes shape in our congregation and beyond.
We believe justice and liberation of all of us is necessary for real love, joyful relationship, and the wholeness that the Creator intended for all of creation.
- Michael Minch
Friends, you are invited to Healing Conversations.
Our training workshop for conducting Healing Conversations will take place on Saturday, September 10, from 9:00 to 4:00. We will meet in our RFC space at Immanuel. There is no cost for the workshop, and we will have lunch together. You will pay for your own lunch.
There is still space available for participants, please let me know if you would like to join us. Feel free to contact me if you would like to know more about the training event.
Here is a brief description of the day’s work.
The United States is in a precarious situation. The divide and hostility between those on the cultural and political “right” and those who are typically understood as “liberal” or “progressive” has reached a dangerous place. As Christians, we are all given the ministry of peacebuilding and reconciliation (e.g., Matthew 5.9; 38-48; 2 Corinthians 5.14-24). I have become convinced that it is now time to implement peacebuilding and conflict transformation methodologies that are used in conflict zones around the world (e.g., Northern Ireland, the Balkans, Columbia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo). The first set of training events were conducted in Utah in March of this year. I am now at work to disseminate them across the country.
The day will include information about the importance of our stories, trauma, values, identity, fears, needs, and more. We will discuss the meaning of violence, peace, democracy, conflict, systems, truth, justice, compassion, reconciliation, humility, courage, and moral imagination. I will do some teaching, but mostly the workshop will be a matter of discussion and participation in practices of conflict transformation. Techniques necessary to overcome toxic polarization will be learned and practiced. The training event will have a double, overlapping purpose: to train participants in the facilitation of such an encounter group, and to model the organization and process of such an event.
The skills learned and information gained will be useful for engagement in conflict of various kinds (at work, in the family, etc.) even though my purpose and focus is located in the political danger of our moment.
You are welcome to invite others to participate in this training session and persons need not identify as Christian to be involved. The workshop will not rely on theological language.
I hope to see you on the 10th! Please let me know if you are interested.
Grace and peace,
Michael
Michael Minch
Education for Global Peace
801.651.5659
