About
The Evangelical Covenant Church is committed to advancing the mission of God through the multiethnic mosaic of churches, of which we are all a part. We celebrate the diversity of the mosaic of God’s people and churches and seek to reach the entirety of our diverse mission field as well as unify the church by breaking down dividing walls.
Becoming a Beloved Community is a resource suite designed to equip, inspire, and challenge churches to develop awareness, understanding, and action towards joining God in making things right in a broken world.
The resource suite provides the tools for you to conduct a seven-week sermon campaign series structured around the Six-Fold Test for multiethnic ministry, a tool for churches to live more deeply into the call of the full expression of God’s church. Tools include sermon videos and transcripts, a small group curriculum, and other resources that your church can use to engage your congregation in deeper experiences.
Campaign Resources
The seven-week series includes sermons for each week. Each message was written and delivered by leaders across the Covenant and covers one of six questions that congregations can engage in that equips them to live more deeply into multiethnic ministry.
The resources include English and Spanish transcripts that may be used as a sermon introduction or creative element. A campaign overview provides a schedule that your church can use to engage the entire congregation in a season of discovery, learning, and renewal.
- 1 series introduction sermon video in English with an English and Spanish manuscript
- 9 sermon videos in English with English and Spanish manuscripts
- 2 sermon videos in Spanish with Spanish and English manuscripts
- 6-week Bible study guide for small groups (PDF)
- BLESS: In Living Color downloadable guide for how to approach BLESS in an intentionally multiethnic way
- Additional resource list including Kingdom Mosaic Bible Study, Love Mercy Do Justice resources, and recommended reading list
The Six-fold Test for Multiethnic Ministry
A six-fold multi-dimensional test has been adopted by the Covenant Executive Board, with the additional support of the Council of Administrators, the Council of Superintendents, and ethnic leaders in the ECC. This test is not meant to be sequential but supports action moving forward on multiple fronts.
- Population: Is the Covenant reaching increasing numbers of people among increasing numbers of populations?
- Participation: Are we finding ways to engage life together through denominational, conference, and local events, service and fellowship?
- Power: Are the positions and structures of influence (boards, committees, and positions at both the conference and denominational level) influenced by the perspective and gifts of diverse populations?
- Pace-setting: With additional perspectives, burdens, and gifts in our midst, what new ministry opportunities is the ECC now better positioned to strengthen and initiate?
- Purposeful Narrative: How do the stories of new backgrounds become incorporated into our overarching history? How do all of these streams flow together into one story moving forward?
- Practicing Solidarity: In what ways are we standing with and advocating for the multiethnic mosaic? How are we sharing in the suffering of others on both an individual and communal level?
Sermon Series
Participation
Sanetta Ponton | 2 Corinthians 8:1-15
Pace-Setting (Spanish)
Alejandro Carrizo | Acts 16:6-40
Practicing Solidarity (Spanish)
Evelyn Perez | Luke 10: 25-37
Bible Study Guide
This small group discipleship resource helps Covenant churches and affiliate ministries deepen their understanding and application of the Six-Fold Test for Multiethnic Ministry (SFT), increase intercultural agility, and catalyze the pursuit of justice, equity, and racial righteousness. When taken together the Six P’s can be a powerful tool to help the Evangelical Covenant Church lead with equity and cultural intelligence and to leverage diversity.
BLESS: In Living Color
God’s dream is for every nation, tribe, people, and language to worship before the throne of Christ (Revelation 7:9). It is our privilege to enjoy a foretaste of that destiny now as we choose to go beyond blessing people who are just like us to intentionally blessing people across boundaries of difference. In the process, we will find that we too are challenged, enriched, and blessed.
Written by Michelle Sanchez, Executive Minister of MDD, BLESS: In Living Color is a free 10-day devotional course on multiethnic evangelism delivered to your inbox daily.
Resource List
Covenant Resources
- Justice Journey for Kids
- Youth Curriculum
- Life Together Bible Study/Sermon Series
- Invitation to Racial Righteousness
- Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI)
- Inter-Cultural Intelligence (ICI)
- Shalom Circles
- Criminal Justice and the Church
- Sankofa
- Immigration Immersion (A collaboration with The Global Immersion Project)
- Journey to Mosaic (Northwest Conference)
- Journey to Mosaic (Midwest Conference)
- Justice Journey (East Coast Conference)
Race and Place: How Geography Informs Our Pursuit of Reconciliation
- Race and Place: How Urban Geography Shapes the Journey to Reconciliation, by David P. Leong
- The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, by Richard Rothstein
- The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race, by Willie James Jennings
- Shalom and the Community of Creation: An Indigenous Vision, by Randy Woodley
Understanding Race and Ethnicity
- Beyond Colorblind: Redeeming Our Ethnic Journey, by Sarah Shin
- Mixed Blessing: Embracing the Fullness of Your Multiethnic Identity, by Chandra Crane
- Ethnic Identity: Bringing Your Full Self to God, by Steve Tamayo
- The Minority Experience: Navigating Emotional and Organizational Realities, by Adrian Pei
Understanding Your Neighbor’s Experience
- God Is Red: A Native View of Religion, 30th Anniversary Edition, by Vine Deloria Jr.
- Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope, by Esau McCaulley
- Brown Church: Five Centuries of Latina/o Social Justice, Theology, and Identity, by Robert Chao Romero
- The Future of Evangelical Theology Soundings from the Asian American Diaspora, by Amos Yong
- The Hidden Wound, by Wendell Berry
Broken Communion
- The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism, by Jemar Tisby
- Rediscipling the White Church: From Cheap Diversity to True Solidarity, by David Swanson
- Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America, by Christian Smith and Michael O Emerson
- White Lies: Nine Ways to Expose and Resist the Racial Systems That Divide Us, by Daniel Hill
- I Bring the Voices of My People: A Womanist Vision for Racial Reconciliation, by Chanequa Walker-Barnes
Fulfilling the Greatest Command
- I See You: How Love Opens Our Eyes to Invisible People, by Terrance Lester
- Welcoming the Stranger: Justice, Compassion & Truth in the Immigration Debate, by Matthew Soerens and Jenny Yang
- Rethinking Incarceration: Advocating for Justice That Restores, by Dominique DuBois Gilliard
- Always with Us?: What Jesus Really Said about the Poor, by Liz Theoharis
- Color-Courageous Discipleship, by Michelle Sanchez
History that Informs Our Journey
- Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery, by Mark Charles and Soong-Chan Rah
- Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, by Isabel Wilkerson
- The Cross and the Lynching Tree, by James H. Cone
- Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America, by Juan Gonzalez
- Driven Out: The Forgotten War against Chinese Americans, by Jean Pfaelzer
- Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans, by Ronald Takaki
- How the Irish Became White, by Noel Ignatiev
Healing from Racial Trauma
- Healing Racial Trauma: The Road to Resilience, by Sheila Wise Rowe
- Mother to Son: Letters to a Black Boy on Identity and Hope, by Jasmine L. Holmes
- Bipolar Faith: A Black Woman’s Journey with Depression and Faith, by Monica Coleman
- My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies, by Resmaa Menakem
Children and Families
- Color-Courageous Discipleship Student Edition, by Michelle Sanchez
- God’s Beloved Community (picture book), by Michelle Sanchez
- Return to Sender, by Julia Alvarez
- American Born Chinese, by Gene Luen Yang
- Henry’s Freedom Box: A True Story from the Underground Railroad, by Ellen Levine
- Trail of Tears, by Joseph Bruchac
- Fish for Jimmy: Inspired by One Family’s Experience in a Japanese American Internment Camp, by Katie Yamasaki
- The Breaking News, by Sarah Lynne Reul
- A Place Where Sunflowers Grow, by Amy Lee-Tai and Felicia Hoshino
- She Came to Slay: The Life and Times of Harriet Tubman, by Erica Armstrong Dunbar
- Pancho Rabbit and the Coyote: A Migrant’s Tale, by Duncan Tonatiuh
- Love to Langston, by Tony Medina
- The Bracelet, by Yoshiko Uchida
- Hidden Figures: The True Story of Four Black Women and the Space Race, by Margot Lee Shetterly
- Harvesting Hope: The Story of Cesar Chavez, by Kathleen Krul
- Little Leaders: Bold Women in Black History, by Vashti Harrison
- Dreamers, by Yuyi Morales
- The Name Jar, by Yangsook Choi
- Howard Thurman’s Great Hope, by Kai Jackson Issa and Arthur L. Dawson
- Something Happened in Our Town: A Child’s Story about Racial Injustice, by Marianne Celano, Marietta Collins and Ann Hazzard.
- I Love My Hair! by Natasha Anastasia Tarpley
- Counting on Katherine: How Katherine Johnson Saved Apollo 13, by Helaine Becker
- Sit-In: How Four Friends Stood Up by Sitting Down, by Andrea Davis Pinkney
- The Youngest Marcher: The Story of Audrey Faye Hendricks, a Young Civil Rights Activist, by Cynthia Levinson
- The Story of Ruby Bridges: True Story of a Civil Rights Icon, by Robert Coles (Author)
- Hand in Hand: Helping Children Celebrate Diversity, by Ella Campbell
- 40 Ways to Raise a Nonracist Child, by Barbara Mathias and Mary Ann French
