Six Days in March
Next March, Pastor Chantel Makarawa and I are leading a trip to Atlanta, Birmingham, Montgomery, Selma, and Tuskegee. Anyone is welcome to come.
Next March, Pastor Chantel Makarawa and I are leading a group through the American South. Six days. The Martin Luther King Jr. Historic Park in Atlanta and worship at Ebenezer Baptist Church. 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. The Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery. The Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. A day in Tuskegee. We fly out of Wichita on March 13 and come home on the 19th.
We are going because loving our neighbors well means learning their stories honestly. That is discipleship, the same as prayer or generosity or showing up on a Sunday morning.
Here is what the week looks like.
Saturday we land in Atlanta and spend the afternoon at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights. Sunday morning we worship at Ebenezer Baptist Church, in the sanctuary where Martin Luther King Jr. and his father both preached. Then we ride west toward Birmingham and stop in Anniston, where a mob burned a Freedom Riders bus in 1961.
Monday we sit inside 16th Street Baptist Church, where a bomb killed four girls on a September morning in 1963. No sermon does what that room does. Across the street is Kelly Ingram Park, where police turned dogs and fire hoses on children.
Tuesday belongs to Montgomery. A boat up the Alabama River to the Freedom Monument Sculpture Park. The Legacy Museum, which traces four hundred years from enslavement to mass incarceration. Then the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, where eight hundred steel columns hang overhead, one for every county in America where a lynching was recorded.
Wednesday we drive the trail to Selma, stop at the Lowndes County Interpretive Center, and walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge together. On foot, the way the marchers did.
Thursday we go to Tuskegee. Friday we fly home.
This trip is open to anyone. Members of McPherson First and Little River, and just as gladly people from any church across the Great Plains Conference or beyond it. You do not need to be a historian or an activist. You only need to be willing to look honestly at our shared past and listen for what God might be saying about our future.
The cost is $3,096 per person from Wichita, and it covers airfare, hotels, most meals, entrance fees, and gratuities. The first deposit is $300 and comes due November 17.
We have room. The full itinerary and registration are at eo.travelwithus.com, and I am glad to talk with anyone who wants to ask a question first. Come travel with us.