MISSION STATEMENT

Grace Relations Over Race Relations

Grace Relations teaches people to apply the grace of God to conversations about race and ethnicity, emphasizing grace relations over race relations.

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“The Bible makes it clear that there is only one race, one human race. And there’s one ultimate answer, and His name is Jesus Christ,” Ware said. “His grace is deep and strong enough to handle the sins of the past. We don’t want to forget history. We want to learn from it. So grace will allow us to go back without tearing one another down, and blame and shame. The grace of God is powerful enough to change us in our present dysfunction. We can see a Saul get saved and become a Paul. Ultimately, I believe it is the grace of God that will change the heart of us as human beings and not force us together by the hand of the law.”

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It Starts With Respectful Conversation
As Ware explained, the starting point to improving race relations is having respectful communication. “Let’s have some “us” and “us” conversations. Let’s listen to one another. We should understand one another and have respectful conversations.” Respectful conversations come from being open and mature, Ware added.

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“One thing that quite often happens is that you don’t have people mature enough to have an open conversation. So when people begin to speak, people begin to immediately get offended. And then the conversation, instead of being healthy, becomes very divisive. As James 3 states, there’s a wisdom from above and there is a wisdom from below. So much of our ‘wisdom’ is from below. It is sinful, it’s demonic, and it creates divisions and strife. We need that wisdom from above, which is what I try to model with having conversations that result in mutual understanding and deepening relationships.”

For more than 50 years, Dr. Charles Ware has been promoting reconciliation among ethnic and cultural groups. As an urban pastor, counselor, educator, and nationally renowned speaker, Ware helps Christians gain a biblical perspective on race through Grace Relations, a ministry he founded and operates under the College of Biblical Studies.

Loving Collaborations Lead to Lasting Change
A second goal of Grace Relations is to support loving collaborations, which Ware models through partnerships with like-minded organizations such as Answers in Genesis. He co-authored the popular book, One Race One Blood: A Biblical Answer to Racism, with Answers in Genesis founder and president, Ken Ham. Ware is a frequent speaker at Answers in Genesis conferences and has released six presentations on the ministry’s streaming platform, Answers.tv.

Ware also helps train churches on how to form their own collaborations. He recently worked with South African (Simunye) pastors from churches with different ethnic backgrounds who met together for a year-and-a-half and have developed strong mutual relationships through serving together in community events and prayer marches. They have released three race-related discussions on YouTube called Defining this Moment, which cover the following topics: definitions, the history of what brought us to this moment, and addresses the question of where do we go from here?

Personal and Community Change
Building bridges through Jesus can dramatically heal and transform relationships, such as those between Hutus and Tutsis after the Rwandan civil war. Ware has personally seen many lives changed over the years, including a woman who was so affected by a 15-week course that she partnered with Ware to condense it to a shorter training for leaders of her national organization that work with inner-city youth.

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“We must ask ourselves, what are some comprehensive things we can do in our context to bring personal change?” Ware said. “Maybe my community is my home, maybe my community is my church. What is in our context that we can labor together to bring forth that type of change that honors and glorifies God?”

Grace Relations offers biblically based and theologically sound training to pastors, churches, organizations, and individuals, which Ware said culminates in teaching people to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” Future leaders who are enrolled in bachelor programs at the College of Biblical Studies are required to take a course called “Culture, Race, and the Church,” which was developed by Ware and Professor Ken Davis. They’ve received numerous testimonies from students who say how much their lives have been changed by this course.

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(FROM: https://todayschristianliving.org/creating-a-new-story-through-grace-relations/)