Mission Mississippi has a renewed goal of trying to bring about racial harmony in the community through building relationships across many cultures and backgrounds.
Photo: Recardo Thomas
The reverends Giulianna Gray and Herron Wilson are adamantly determined to keep the assignment and vision of Mission Mississippi alive and vital through the work of the Indianola chapter. After much prayer and contemplation, the reverends Gray and Wilson gathered with the other members for a special luncheon on Monday.
The group is comprised of members from various churches, denominations and ethnic backgrounds across Indianola. And the purpose for the luncheon was to discuss moving on to the next level.
Keeping in line with the purpose of Mission Mississippi, they presented a threefold initiative with the purposeful goal to build and sustain stronger cross-cultural relationships among its members and Wilson added that by building these stronger connections they would be promoting the grace and the gospel of Jesus the Christ.
The overall purpose of this latest proposal is to facilitate Christ-based racial healing one relationship at a time.
“The new initiative calls for us to select a person or persons from this group to invite to lunch at least twice per month,” Wilson said.
Additionally, Gray said, “We’re trying to build deeper relationships with one another through encouraging members of the group to have meals, two-to-two or three-to-three and to intentionally mix diverse groups, so that we can move beyond the surface and really get to know one another.”
She said it is her hope that as they build relationships they will come to know each other. “Which means hopefully then we can learn to trust each other more and work together. I think there has been a legacy of separation,” Gray said.
Wilson added, “I don’t think you can work together unless you trust each other. Hopefully the bonds that we build here will strengthen our work in the community. We don’t trust each other because we don’t know each other.”
Gray and Wilson affirmed that the concept was well received and the members have already begun pairing up and will meet for meals twice in March and then come together in a large group in April.
During these personal gatherings the participants are expected to share life experiences that relate to race or racial incidents, childhood and family background, educational struggles fueled by racial divide and more. The objective is to help others get a sense of who their fellow member is “from a heart perspective.”
Wilson stressed, “There is no hidden agenda. What we’re doing is to develop relationships only.” Gray harmonized with Wilson that the only agenda was to build deeper relationships with one another. So that we can move beyond the surface and really get to know one another.
In their presentation the reverends presented the group with and expounded upon Mission Mississippi’s three requirements needed for building successful relationships: personal initiative, prime time and truthful dialogue.
“We’ve done well at developing relationships and we feel it’s time now to deepen those relationships,” Wilson said.
They maintain that successful relations require each person to make a move and step beyond insecurities, invest important time, not just left-over time and be honest in their communications.
Wilson said this next step does not come with any special timeline or culmination date because they understand that building trusting relationships take time.
“We want to really encourage the participants to get to know each other on a personal level,” Wilson said.
The special Monday session was to accommodate some members who could not make it on Thursday; however, making a permanent change has not been decided.
Gray said it would depend on what is convenient for the participants. They meet regularly at various churches on the third Thursdays of each month at noon for lunch, a brief message and prayer.
Mission Mississippi is a group of persons from diverse backgrounds with a goal to bring people together to build relationships across racial lines so they can work together to better their communities.
They come together and discuss issues that possibly divide, so they can conquer the hindrances.
Anyone with questions is free to contact the Rev. Giulianna C. Gray, at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church at (662) 887-4365 or the Rev. Herron Wilson, at Delta Missions, at (662) 887-1800.
