NHC Pastors Vince (Christian education) and LaTonia (marriage and family life) Lambert.	Dr. Stephen Lim (front row left), AGTS associate professor of leadership and ministry; Jean-Claude Duncan (front row right) AGTS alumnus and Air Force Chaplaincy Candidate.

AGTS hosted a dialogue between ministers, scholars and AGTS students on April 6 and 7 in Chicago. Bishop Ed Peecher, member of the AGTS Board of Directors, hosted the event at his church, New Heritage Cathedral (NHC).

Participants testified to their own experiences, and Dr. Johan Mostert, AGTS professor of community psychology, presented a case study of reconciliation in the Apostolic Faith Mission, the largest Pentecostal church in southern Africa.

Participants dialogued about solutions to the racial tensions and discussed recommendations to present to the AG’s Commission on Ethnicity.

“In dealing with issues of race and reconciliation,” said Darrell Geddes, participant and executive director, Urban Academy, Minneapolis, “I feel it is necessary that intentionality be practiced by people in both the majority and minority positions.”

Danielle M. Poulson, an AGTS student who participated in the event, commented, “The agnostic, Buddhist, Muslim, etc., is watching. We must be mindful, as a denomination and more importantly as representatives of the body of Christ, to be set apart from the status quo. Lack of racial tension in the church is one of the issues that would distinguish us. A change is definitely in the wind.”

Read the recommendations submitted to the AG's Commission on Ethnicity.