Special Statement from the IYM
We at the Institute for Youth Ministry strive to live and work in solidarity with all people who have not ordinarily been centered in our ministry and society. We explicitly name our solidarity with Black people, even as we confess our continual need for repentance, learning, correction, and accountability. We join our voices to the great cloud of witnesses who are making the profoundly theological claim—Black Lives Matter. In a society that marginalizes, oppresses, exploits, and targets Black people, this insistence on the holy dignity and infinite value of God’s beloved children is the revolution made possible because of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The COVID-19 pandemic has again exposed a society that overwhelmingly identifies as Christian, while it has made a god out of whiteness no matter the consequences of this idolatry for fellow human beings made in the image of God. We reject this false god, and we refuse to perpetuate this heinous theology and the ways it manifests in how we do ministry. Our friends and family are dying, and our children and young people are watching. There’s too much at stake. There always has been.
The murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and so many of our loved ones have been lost to this evil. At long last, let this be a wake up call to the Church. Below are resources that we hope will educate, challenge, nurture, and inspire your ministry with young people as we navigate the ways that our racialized identities are integral to how we understand God, ourselves, and each other.
(Note: BIPOC is an acronym for Black and Indigenous People of Color, and we use it below as an inclusive term in an effort to undo Native invisibility and anti-Blackness in the popular acronym POC).