Resources

The following resources are a starting point (and by no means an exhaustive list) for your journey towards reconciliation and community building.  

For Business

Visions of Vocation: Common Grace for the Common Good (Garber)

Steven Garber helps the reader to take a penetrating and honest look at the world. While challenging us to avoid cynicism, he encourages us, for the sake of love, to embrace our responsibility to contribute to the welfare and flourishing of the world through a renewed vision of vocation.

Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business (Wickman)

This book is one of the few business books that actually provides a tremendous amount of practical help. Whether you are an existing business seeking to tighten up your operations or a new non-profit not sure where to begin building an organization, this book presents tools and insights you’ll use.

Nonprofit Sustainability: Making Strategic Decisions for Financial Viability (Bell, Masaoka, Zimmerman)

At Remerge we are constantly asking ourselves if we are actually doing what we say we are doing. This book provides processes and tools to gauge if you are on track, both with impact and sustainability, while also helping you to make strategic decisions moving forward.

For Community

Exclusion & Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness and Reconciliation (Volf)

Drawing on theological reflection and personal encounter with warfare in the Balkans, Volf demonstrates the many ways exclusion of the “other” contributes to perpetuating violence. He then helps us to move toward reimagining and realizing a new community of former enemies.

With Justice for All: A Strategy for Community Development (Perkins)

For those interested in the hard work of reconciliation that takes actual form in the world, one would be hard pressed to find a better teacher to begin with than John Perkins. From the “why” to the “how” this book is a precious resource.

Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition (Pohl)

In order to engage in reconciliation and build communities of peace we must recover to ancient practice of hospitality. Christine Pohl helps us to deeply and concretely understand this central, yet difficult commitment of welcoming strangers 

Churches & Community Building

The Space Between: A Christian Engagement with the Built Environment (Jacobsen)

If you’re a Christian interested in reconciliation and justice, but haven’t yet dug deep into how the built environment impacts these pursuits, then this is the place to begin. Jacobsen will help you to understand the built environment from a theological perspective and why it matters. He then provides insights into how to participate and engage in the built world around you in faithful ways.

Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design (Montgomery)

Charles Montgomery provides a master class in urban design in this one book. Can the way we design our cities affect our happiness? This book answers with an emphatic and convincing “yes” by showing you how.

Race & Place: How Urban Geography Shapes the Journey (Leong)

If our desire is to be a part of diverse communities and churches then this book is a great place for you to start understanding how geography adds barriers to fully realizing this hope and the practical steps to start moving towards more inclusive places.

Racial Reconciliation

The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race (Jennings)

“Why has Christianity, a religion premised upon neighborly love, failed in its attempts to heal social divisions?” Jennings traces how we arrived at this world of great division and provides a vision for how we might imagine new ways of being one. Jennings work is very dense and rigorous, so be sure to mentally prepare yourself before digging in.

The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism (Tisby)

Jemar Tisby takes the church on an unflinching journey to examine its history of racism within our own institutions. He then suggests how the church may create more faithful practices moving forward.

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America (Rothstein)

If you’ve ever wondered how cities became so racially segregated and why it’s still predominantly still the case today, this book provides your answer. Richard Rothstein takes a close look at how all levels of government imposed racial segregation on cities and neighborhoods across the country and why it still persists today.

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