The rise and sustained presence of movements such as Black Lives Matter have contested any illusions of social progress, putting social justice and issues like police violence squarely within the focus of popular culture. All indexes point to social justice as a central value to younger generations. Unlike older generations who often turned to the church for meaning-making on social issues of the day, many young people are turning to social movements and other secular justice spaces to find community and meaning. Justice is not the new “mission field” for churches. Unchurched folks can sniff out counterfeits. I contend that the church is the new mission field. The work of justice is an invitation for the church to remember its first love, the God who was lynched but whose Spirit lived on through a grassroots movement of dissident disciples.

Churches and pastors are asking how to respond to the racial and social justice crises in their backyards and of our time, rooted in their faith. They are pressing for more than the occasional courageous conversation on difficult topics, cross-racial pulpit swap, poverty simulation, and charity work. Pastors and laity are being challenged to show up in the streets for justice in ways that don’t take over. The Christian market has recently exploded with books on the intersection of faith and justice. Often these books do not link particular justice issues with strategy and a Christian justice tradition, or offer rich prose and stories that would benefit the busy and non-technical reader. I will interview ten pastors and Christian leaders across the US who engage in justice ministry with different approaches and from diverse ministry contexts, and social and geographical locations. I will put my learnings from these interviews in conversation with my own perspective and practice of justice ministry over the last 16 years to write a book I am under contract with Baker Academic for entitled Justice: Gathering for a New World.