This is an open letter from Path To Publishing to every pastor who feels frustrated as they watch youth who grow up and leave the Church, and wonder, “What can I do?”
The answer: Help us open the doors to communication around religion and its role in improving race relations.
Religion gets a lot of pushback in today’s environment because it is seen as a bunch of rules and regulations leveraged in an effort to control and manipulate others. It’s safe to say that most people’s first brush with religion is experienced as “Rigid Expectations, Legalistic Indoctrination, Growing Inconsistencies, and Overbearing Nosiness.”
That’s not pleasant. It’s not something anyone wants. And that’s why people walk away.
However, at its core, religion isn’t about the rules. It’s about the relationships. It’s a set of concepts for helping people learn to live in healthy relationship with one another, with God, and with their environment.
When religion is done the right way, it shows up as “Respectful Empathy, Loving Intentions, Guided Instruction, and Ongoing Nurturing.”
Nikki T. Anthony’s new book, The Price We Pay, is told from the perspective of a Black teenage girl whose experiences with religion are not always positive. It is the church, though, that rallies together to help fight back when racial tensions in the community reach their height.
We encourage pastors to leverage this book as a means of helping parents and teens engage in open, honest conversations about religion and its role in helping to unite people to fight for a common cause while at the same time helping to heal racial divisions. The results of these conversations may not, at first, be what parents and pastors would like to hear, but lasting change cannot happen without them.
We aren’t asking pastors to do this without support, though. Our pledge to those pastors who step up and join this movement is that our service will not stop when the book is delivered.
We will offer Study Guides to help pastors, teens, and parents engage in productive conversations about race relations and religion’s role in helping to heal those divisions and unite communities. We’ll also offer access to the Magnetic Thought Leadership Training needed to implement what they’ve learned and lead the way to a better, brighter future for all races.
To discover more about Path To Publishing and our plans for The Price We Pay, visit our crowdfunding campaign at https://ptppress.com/taking-a-novel-approach-to-change. Those who sign up to #JoinTheConversation will receive an invitation to join our private LEADERS community.
And to learn more about our traditional publishing imprint, PTP Press, visit www.ptppress.com.
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