One Charlotte Minister Turns 'Strangers to Neighbors' by Confronting the Church's Secret Segregation on Sunday Mornings

More than two-thirds of American churchgoers say their church has done enough to become racially diverse - so why are Sundays still segregated?

CHARLOTTE, NC, UNITED STATES, July 14, 2021 /EINPresswire.com/ --

A recent Lifeway Research study shows Sunday is still the most segregated day of the week, and many Christians do not see a need to change that. Researchers report, “Two-thirds of American churchgoers (67 percent) say their church has done enough to become racially diverse. And less than half think their church should become more diverse,” but one Charlotte minister has the answer to bridge the cultural divide. Meet Rev. Dr. Daynette Snead Perez, founder of Stranger to Neighbor Ministry. This dynamic world-changer is moving the church beyond hard conversations about race and bringing a Gospel-centered solution to pews, pulpits, and local communities.

Snead Perez, an intercultural minister, and the National Disaster Response Manager for Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, believes how we build relationships is the solution. As a Christian, it is foundational to our very lives and daily faith walk. A life lived for Christ includes serving many people regardless of their ethnicity, gender, generation, or social class. God commands the believer to be connected to Him first and then to one another. She believes the solution to bridging the divide begins with love. It is about our relationship with God and others as identified by the words of Jesus in Mark 12:30-31 New International Version, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

Dr. Daynette Snead Perez’s Stranger to Neighbor Ministry addresses how the elevation of the church begins with the strangers we meet and the relationships we build. With this, her latest book titled, “CHURCH: What to Do When Everyone is Like You,” coming this September, peels back the layers of how to build authentic intercultural relationships. Throughout the book, readers journey out of the wilderness of sameness into an unfamiliar landscape of cultural inclusion. Dr. Snead Perez’s ministry focuses on congregations, church leadership, and Christian organizations who want to be inclusive of others but do not have the tools to do so. The world traveler recognizes the difficulty of churches steeped in their own cultures who want to engage in a post-pandemic discipleship against a backdrop of asking the right questions and seeking the right answers to navigate a growing church community.

In her book, “CHURCH: What to Do When Everyone is Like You,” she provides the proven how-to methods for believers to teach at a Bible, congregational, or ministry team study. Drawing on her own personal experience as an African American woman who pastored a Burmese Refugee Congregation for three years in Eastern North Carolina and other Christian organizations, Snead Perez, uniquely positioned, walks us through the steps to move out of our congregational comfort zones. She soon found out that despite our cultural differences or the language we speak — the Word is the Word, is the Word. She delivered the Gospel truth, and that was enough.

In 2015, the Gardner-Webb University grad founded DIASPRA, a company that offers solutions to building relationships with people that are not the same as you: The acronym EGGS, that she coined and uses in her sessions, stands for Ethnicity, Gender, Generation, and Social class. Dr. Snead Perez believes that one of the major solutions “to do justice” is teaching and helping people reach across cultural lines for Christ and build meaningful relationships with people who may differ culturally but share the same heart for Jesus.

For more information, or to interview Rev. Dr. Daynette Snead Perez, please contact her at drsneadperez@diaspra.com or 704-684-3342.

Rev. Dr. Daynette Snead Perez
Stranger to Neighbor Ministry
+1 704-684-3342
drsneadperez@diaspra.com
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