The majority of American Evangelical churches have failed us.
The church has not taken the lead on important issues. It has stayed silent. It has played it safe. There is little distinction between how a Christian and a non-Christian interact on social media, handle conflict and approach a complex issue in society. Partisanship, perfunctory rhetoric, silence, and the failure to love our neighbor have pushed non-Christians and Christians away from the church.
In our own local churches, there was nothing, or very little, said about the killings of Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Breonna Taylor, and others. When George Floyd was murdered, many churches were forced to respond, and most did, but for the majority of churches, it was just one or two Sundays, a panel here or there, and then it was back to normal programming.
Where was the wrestling with the nuance and complexity of the situation? Where was the continuing education? Where was the prophetic voice? Where was the teaching on approaching an issue from a distinctly Christian perspective?
To bridge this gap, we launched Sunday to Saturday where we curate two polarizing topics a year while providing a distinctly Christian four-step framework to help prepare our minds and hearts before learning about a polarizing subject. The framework consists of:
- Pray
- Learn
- Pause
- Engage
Each topic includes a liturgical prayer to help you focus your mind and prepare and prepare your heart for the next step – learning. The learning stage is facilitated by our curated guided learning paths, learning capsules, and five questions.
The guided learning paths provide a printable, easy-to-use resource for learning about a topic depending on your learning style, media preference, available time, or our favorite resources. These guides represent hundreds of hours spent curating content that are distilled down to help jump-start your education.
The learning capsules take a topic, person, or term and provides 1-2 resources to watch, listen or read to quickly come up to speed on the basics.
Our five questions consist of the top 5 questions that are asked about a topic.
As your knowledge grows you will want to take the time to journal, ask mentors their thoughts, pray about what you are learning, etc. This is the pause step. It is vital that you pause before you enter the final step of engaging.
Engaging includes talking with friends and family about what you have learned to volunteering for a local or national organization.
Note that none of the four stages are static and, once you get going, not necessarily in a set order. You will flow between the four stages with trial and error, humility and grace. This is a lifetime commitment — not something to check off your to-do list and be done with.
Although the church may have failed us, we want to be very clear – Sunday to Saturday does not replace the church nor are our intentions to facilitate the abandonment of the church. We love the church. We are called to be the church. We continue to attend church.
Sunday to Saturday is a resource to:
- Jumpstart learning and facilitate thoughtful conversations within your community
- Provide a starting point to start a book club or discussion group
- Take a class or watch a movie with family and friends
- Help pastors research a topic and provide resources to their congregation
If you have any questions, comments, etc. please do not hesitate to shoot us an e-mail at hello@sundaytosaturday.com or reach out to us on Twitter at @SundaySaturd1.
Sunday to Saturday 