I've moved my blog to http://17seeds.org. Please visit me there. Be sure to change your subscription information and feed addresses.
Sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused you. Thanks for your continued support and input.
~Linda Leigh Hargrove
About 17 Seeds
Hi. My name is Linda Hargrove. I'm a North Carolina native. I write (fiction mostly), I design things, and I'm an adoptive mom of three boys.IN THE BEGINNING
Around 1992 I became involved in an urban ministry called Building Together Ministries (BTM). As a CCDA ministry, BTM has racial reconciliation as one of its tenets. My husband and I became co-leaders of racial reconciliation discussion groups that we called 'supper clubs.'
The clubs were made up of blacks and whites from various denominations throughout the region. Each month we met in homes and church basements to discuss how we, the church, might better address racial problems in our country. We used books like More Than Equals by Spencer Perkins and Chris Rice and Breaking Down Walls by Raleigh Washington and Glen Kehrein.
THINGS GOT RADICAL
In 1995 I began a personal Bible study of John. When I started John 17 it was like I was reading a new Word. Jesus's prayer for oneness struck a cord with me. In my eyes, we Christians weren't living out that prayer. It saddened me.
I felt God's leading to do something 'racially radical' so that, as John 17:22 states, the world might be drawn to Him. Around that same time, God was leading my husband to become involved in a predominately white church. I gladly followed. Within a year, we became members and started a racial reconciliation prayer group. In time I began speaking at the church's women's conference on racial reconciliation.
THEN CAME ISAAC
In 1996 I started writing my first novel, The Making of Isaac Hunt, to help Christians better relate to the principles of racial reconciliation. In 1997 my husband and I moved our highly educated selves into the 'rough' part of town around BTM, striving to live out one of the three Rs of Christian community development--relocation.Reconciling faith and race is not an easy thing. This blog is my attempt to understand race in this country (a mighty big task) but more importantly, to plant seeds of oneness within the Body of believers across racial lines.