This is not a formula or a step-by-step guide in any formal order. It contains suggested ways to start an on-going conversation with your family addressing the issue of racism at the family level. We strongly encourage you to ask questions with “listening and hearing heats” as the main goal, then take time to process and pray for wisdom before responding in this on-going conversation.

Read a picture book about a person from a different culture/race than your family OR invite someone from another culture/race to your home for a meal or coffee. Have fun together. Trade off sharing stories about childhood experiences and growing up in your family contexts. 

  • · How is their life different from yours? 

  • · How is their life the same? 

  • · What do you think God thinks about this person and the things that happened to them? 

  • · Pray a blessing and encouragement over them before they leave. 

Proactively engage your kids around a distressing event or behavior witnessed. (One family at Joy church called a family meeting and proactively showed the George Floyd video to their 5-year old thru teens and then recommended using some of the following questions.) 

  • · What do you see? What have you seen on the news or Social Media lately or what do you know about it? 

  • · How do these things make you feel? Validate feelings and assure them with what you are doing to keep them safe. 

  • · What do you not see that this video doesn’t include? 

  • · When you watch this, what do you feel? What do you want to do? 

  • · How do you think those people were feeling? 

  • · Do you know why they were angry? 

  • · What do you do when you feel like something is unfair? 

  • · What could have happened differently if someone had done something? 

  • · What could we do today to show love towards people who are different then us? 

Watch a movie or read an autobiography together of a famous activist in history or a fictional depiction of a racially difficult era for the US such as colonization and mistreatment of Native Americans, during slavery/ civil war era or the activist era in the 50s and 60s. 

  • · Use a few of the above questions. 

  • · How do you imagine things could have been different in our nation/city/family if the US had started off without slavery or by living alongside Native Americans? 

  • · What about now? How can we reverse or heal the wounds in people’s hearts from our past actions?