Worship While It’s Warm

We should never be ashamed of our testimonies. For they reveal the overarching supremacy of God in how He can make any path straight through the sacrifice of His Son, that provides the way to go from brokenness to wholeness. Our testimonies should also reveal a recognition of the insufficiency of our determination or self-will to bring correction to our lives because we have one day decided to turn the spiritual light bulb on.

Somehow we, or rather our flesh, wants to take at least some credit for whatever spiritual alignment is achieved but I see in scripture a much different scenario. I consider as examples, God’s sovereign choice of His election of Israel, His mercy towards gentiles pre-Christ (Rahab and Ruth), His rejection of individuals from His chosen race (Esau and Moses failure to enter the promise land) and His grace towards sin and disobedience (David and Jonah) .  Under the covenant of grace, I consider the overwhelming share of passages that speak to His choosing and his calling.  In Acts 16:14, Lydia’s conversion to the Lord again demonstrates that it is God who turns the hearts towards Himself for it says that “the Lord opened her heart to respond…”

So continuing my testimony journey that I began chronically a few months ago but got disrupted for a variety of reasons, my story is representative of the work of the Holy Spirit that I believe is simply carrying out the sovereign dictates of a loving God who calls whom He will. At the end of my last post, I indicated how I had gone so far seeking my own way that my decision making processes were completely dependent upon my judgment and rationale. Whatever life I had declared I would live for Christ, I had long since abandoned. So when I moved to Boston in 1994, it was no big deal that I lived with Karl. My moral compass was skewed and my judgment was clouded by sin, because that is what sin does.

Karl and I married in 1997 and I was 4 months pregnant. He was reluctant but I did not care because I was determined to not bring a child into this world out of wedlock. In hindsight, Karl was not a marriage friendly partner for he had qualities and characteristics that were much better suited for single life. He did try at times, though, but was so under-representative of the elements of a quality love relationship, one that should be marked by unselfishness, mutual respect and mutual consideration.  My life just wasn’t going the way I thought it should and by the end of 1998 I found myself in a state of dispair and utter loneliness. So deep was my despondency that last week of 1998, as I sat in front of the TV for hours on end and wondered why my husband just laid in bed all day and completely ignored me, that I considered ending my life.  I just knew there had to be so much more.

Ironically, I had began developing a friendship with the wife of Karl’s oldest brother, both of whom were faithful and joyous believers in Christ.  Not knowing my story or the fact that I had once made a confession of faith, Mary would sometimes drop a little nugget or 2 about faith in Christ.  I would remain silent.  My mother-in-law, also a strong believer would join in the chorus of praise and encouragement.  Unbeknownst to either one of them but very known by the Holy Spirit, their commitment and dependence on Christ and the peace that ensured, eventually would make a considerable impression on me.  Everything was about to change.

After laying in bed for days on end, Karl collapsed late at night, that first Sunday of January 1999.  After 24 hours in ER at the local hospital, he was transported to one of the major Boston hospitals and spent 2 weeks in intensive care.  It was determined that his kidneys had completely stopped working and he would have to go on dialysis.  He would later receive a diagnosis of lupus.  During this time, I was confronted with the examples of my in-laws, which made me vividly recall the confession of faith that I had once made and the peace that I once knew.  By the 3rd day in intensive care, the Holy Spirit had so seized my heart and in the stillness of my house late one night, I dropped to my knees and told the Lord that the prodigal was ready to come home.

I immediately picked up the bible and began reading again.  One passage of scripture that made an indelible impression on me is found in John 6:66-69.  After many deserted Jesus, He asked Simon Peter did he want to stop following Him also.  Simon Peter responded with words that still echo in my heart today “Lord, to whom shall we go? you have words of eternal life.  We have believed and have come to know that you are the holy one of God.”  It continually lets me know that everything I ever needed, is found in Christ.

It has not been a smooth process since that time for many difficult days were waiting for me.  Karl’s harshness towards me only intensified with his illness over the next 5 years.  I worked full-time with 3 of those years engaged in a 50 mile commute from East Providence to Boston.  I endured repeated hospital visits, was a pharmacy gopher and set up the dialysis machine every night.  Later, I would transport Karl to the clinic 3 times a week.  And, I had to almost single handedly, take care of a very hyper and rambunctious child.   Yet during that time, my greatest joy was found in worshipping and serving the sovereign, gracious and loving God who called me according to His purpose, who provided redemption from the bondage of sin through the sacrifice of His Son, who declared that He would never leave me nor forsake me, who has provided a seal through the Holy Spirit’s baptism and who promises to perfect that which He started.

For most of Karl’s sickness, I sent up earnest prayers for healing, deliverance and a healthy marriage.  One day I stopped, changed my tune and surrendered to God having His way in the situation.  A few months later, Karl passed away.  That was August 2004.  Since that time, I experienced some rough patches in the sanctification process but have fixed my gaze upon Jesus, the author and perfecter of my faith.   But more significantly, I believe it was because He has fixed His gaze upon me and continues to draw me in to His plan and purpose. And as I am embarking on my first semester at DTS, who knows what He has in store?

I found this article recently posted on CNN, compelling in light of my most recent post.  I continue to carry an impassioned belief  that the church for whom Christ died should operate in a manner that dumbfounds the world through through loving relationships that may not make sense from a social or humanistic perspective.   After all, didn’t Jesus say that they will know we are His disciples by the love we have one for the other.  But can we really do that and remain racially segregated?

Here’s the article…

Why Many Americans Prefer their Sunday Segregated

By John Blake
CNN

(CNN) — The Rev. Paul Earl Sheppard had recently become the senior pastor of a suburban church in California when a group of parishioners came to him with a disturbing personal question.

They were worried because the racial makeup of their small church was changing. They warned Sheppard that the church’s newest members would try to seize control because members of their race were inherently aggressive. What was he was going to do if more of “them” tried to join their church?

“One man asked me if I was prepared for a hostile takeover,” says Sheppard, pastor of Abundant Life Christian Fellowship in Mountain View, California.

The nervous parishioners were African-American, and the church’s newcomers were white. Sheppard says the experience demonstrated why racially integrated churches are difficult to create and even harder to sustain. Some blacks as well as whites prefer segregated Sundays, religious scholars and members of interracial churches say.

Americans may be poised to nominate a black man to run for president, but it’s segregation as usual in U.S. churches, according to the scholars. Only about 5 percent of the nation’s churches are racially integrated, and half of them are in the process of becoming all-black or all-white, says Curtiss Paul DeYoung, co-author of “United by Faith,” a book that examines interracial churches in the United States.

DeYoung’s numbers are backed by other scholars who’ve done similar research. They say integrated churches are rare because attending one is like tiptoeing through a racial minefield. Just like in society, racial tensions in the church can erupt over everything from sharing power to interracial dating.

DeYoung, who is also an ordained minister, once led an interracial congregation in Minneapolis, Minnesota, that eventually went all-black. He defines an interracial church as one in which at least 20 percent its membership belongs to a racial group other than that church’s largest racial group.

“I left after five years,” DeYoung says. “I was worn out from the battles.”

The men and women who remain and lead interracial churches often operate like presidential candidates. They say they live with the constant anxiety of knowing that an innocuous comment or gesture can easily mushroom into a crisis that threatens their support.

“It’s not all ‘Kumbaya’ and ‘We are the World,’ ” says Sheppard, the pastor of the Northern California church, who was raised by his father, a Baptist preacher, in the black church. “There are plenty of skirmishes.”

Can’t we just be Christians?

If it’s so tough, why bother? That’s one of the first questions interracial churches must address.

DeYoung says he encountered many blacks who said they wanted a racial timeout on Sunday.

“They would say, ‘I need a place of refuge,’” he says. “They said, ‘I need to come to a place on Sunday morning where I don’t experience racism.’ ”

Whites also complained of their own version of racial fatigue, other scholars say.

Theodore Brelsford, co-author of “We Are the Church Together,” another book that looks at interracial churches, says whites often say that church should transcend race.

“They’d say, ‘Can’t we just get along without talking about race all the time? Can’t we just be Christians?’”

Not really, say advocates for interracial churches. They argue that churches should be interracial whenever possible because their success could ultimately reduce racial friction in America.

American churches haven’t traditionally done a good job at being racially inclusive, scholars say. Slavery and Jim Crow kept blacks and whites apart in the pews in the nation’s early history. Some large contemporary black denominations, like the African Methodist Episcopal church, were formed because blacks couldn’t find acceptance in white churches.

Large denominations like the Methodists, Baptists and Presbyterians split over race in the 19th century when their members clashed over the issue of slavery, Michael Emerson, a scholar on interracial churches, recounted in his book, “Divided by Faith.”

But interracial church advocates say the church was never meant to be segregated. They point to the New Testament description of the first Christian church as an ethnic stew — it deliberately broke social divisions by uniting groups that were traditionally hostile to one another, they say.

DeYoung, the “United by Faith” co-author, says the first-century Christian church grew so rapidly precisely because it was so inclusive. He says the church inspired wonder because its leaders were able to form a community that cut across the rigid class and ethnic divisions that characterized the ancient Roman world.

“People said that if Jews, Greeks, Africans, slaves, men and women - the huge divides of that time period — could come together successfully, there must be something to this religion,” DeYoung says.

Biblical precedents, though, may not be enough to make someone attend church with a person of another race. Something else is needed: a tenacious pastor who goads his or her church to reach across racial lines, interracial church scholars say.

The Rev. Rodney Woo, senior pastor of Wilcrest Baptist Church in Houston, Texas, may be such a person. He leads a congregation of blacks, whites and Latinos. Like many leaders of interracial churches, he is driven in part by a personal awakening.

Woo’s mother is white, and his father is part Chinese. He attended an all-black high school growing up in Port Arthur, Texas, where he still remembers what it was like to be a minority.

“Everyone understands the rules, the lingo, the mind-set — except you,” he says. “It was invaluable, but I didn’t know it at the time.”

When he became pastor of Wilcrest in 1992, he was determined to shield his church members from such an experience. But an exodus of whites, commonly referred to as “white flight” was already taking place in the neighborhood and the church.

Membership fell to about 200 people. At least one church member suggested that Woo could change the church’s fortunes by adding a “d” to his last name.

“The fear there was people would think I was Chinese,” he says. “There would be a flood of all these Asians coming in, and what would we do then?”

Woo kept his last name and his vision. He made racial diversity part of the church’s mission statement. He preached it from the pulpit and lived it in his life. He says Wilcrest now has about 500 members, and is evenly divided among white, Latino and black members.

Woo doesn’t say his church has resolved all of its racial tensions. There are spats over music, length of service, even how to address Woo. Blacks prefer to address him more formally, while whites prefer to call him by his first name, (a sign of disrespect in black church culture), Woo says.

Woo tries to defuse the tension by offering something for everyone: gospel and traditional music, an integrated pastoral staff, “down-home” preaching and a more refined sermon at times.

But he knows it’s not enough. And he’s all right with that.

“If there’s not any tension, we probably haven’t done too well,” he says. “If one group feels too comfortable, we’ve probably neglected another group.”

Going from “they” to “we”

Sometimes, though, a determined pastor is not enough. Interracial churches can also implode on issues far more explosive than worship styles — like sex and power.

One such issue is interracial dating. Some scholars and leaders who deal with interracial issues say it’s not unusual for parents in racially-mixed churches to leave when their teenage kids begin dating.

Woo saw that exodus at Wilcrest. Some parents talked about the importance of a multiracial church, until their kid became attracted to someone from another race within the church.

“As kids began to date, some things get revealed,” he says. “They didn’t want their kids involved in interracial dating — and that’s not just whites.”

Accepting black leadership is another touchy subject. Most interracial churches are led by white pastors. A congregation typically becomes all-black if a black pastor is hired, says DeYoung, the “United by Faith” co-author.

“As long as the top person, the senior pastor, is white, power sort of resides with whites,” DeYoung says. “But when that shifts, it does something psychologically to people. People usually leave.”

Black pastors who do gain the acceptance of interracial congregations still have to watch themselves. Some white parishioners, even progressive ones, get uneasy when a black pastor gets too fiery in the pulpit, says Brelsford, co-author of “We are the Church Together.”

“A black church sermon that could be understood as impassioned might be interpreted as angry and defensive by a white congregation,” Brelsford says. “It could kick into fear of black men.”

Sheppard, the black minister of the church in California, says he modified his style to appeal to all sorts of people.

He says he abandoned the pulpit pyrotechnics he learned growing up in the black church when his congregation’s racial mix changed. He also carries his authority lightly, dressing casually in the pulpit and consulting with church committees before making decisions. In conversation, he’s relaxed and accessible.

“I’m very aware of how rare this is,” he says of being the black minister of an interracial congregation. “I’m humbled by it.”

The people in the pews must also do their share of adapting, scholars and ministers say. Only when ethnic groups no longer feel compelled to abandon their entire culture on Sunday morning can a church claim to be interracial, Brelsford says.

An interracial church isn’t one in which all the black members act, dress and worship like the church’s majority white members to make them feel comfortable, he says.

Interracial churches resist “taking one dominant identity and forcing everyone to fit into it,” Brelsford says.

That appears to have happened at Sheppard’s church in Northern, California. Since its rocky early days, it has now grown to a multiracial congregation of about 6,000 people. Whites, blacks, Asians, Latinos - all now attend.

“We refuse,” Sheppard says, “to be a one-flavor-fits-all church.”

Interracial congregations often include people who probably wouldn’t have become friends in any other circumstances. They are people like Dwight Pryor, a black man who grew up in segregated Mississippi seeing blacks brutalized by whites. He says he grew up disliking white people.

Today, Pryor says he is best friends with a white member of Wilcrest, a man who grew up in Alabama during segregation in a family that hated blacks.

When Pryor sees his friend on Sunday, he says he no longer sees a “they” or a “them” trying to invade his world. He sees his brother in Christ.

“We come to love each other,” he says. “When I look into his eyes, I can see the love of Jesus Christ. He and I have become friends.”

In Paul’s letter to Philemon, he is appealing to Philemon to regard Onesimus as a brother.  Not such an easy thing to do for Philemon because apparently Onesimus was not only his former slave, but transgressed against Philemon in some way (vs.11, 18).  The heart of Paul’s plea is don’t look at Onesimus as a slave and someone that has wrong you.  When you see him, see him as your brother in Christ.

This begs the question of how do we see our brothers and sisters in Christ, especially with respect to race.  Does the saint who is African-American look on his white counterpart as a white person or as a redeemed component of the larger body, the body of which the African-American is also part of.  Does the white christian regard the latino with partiality and suspicion should fellowship dare be elevated to a greater level of intimacy than the superficial nomenclature of brother in Christ?

As I am exploring churches in Dallas, I am finding such a racial polarization that I think would not exist.  But it does and that even amongst “Bible” churches, with nearly identical doctrinal statements.  I have been to churches with all white congregations and I have been to churches with all black congregations.  And I am asking the question if through our segregated service, are we really representing the Body of Christ, or do we first see ourselves individually and corporately through racial and social lenses only applying the label of brother or sister in Christ as a matter of convenience and appropriate verbiage.  It does seem like convenience plays quite the role in our separatedness but I’ll get to that in a minute.  I can’t help but think that the  substance behind that label is lost when we segregate and choose to stay in our corners of churchy comfort.

When we come to Christ, 1 Corinthians 12 identifies that though we are many members, the Spirit baptizes us into the kingdom as part of the whole. Therefore, how we operate both individually and corporately should correspond to the unification of the Spirit in the body. We are no longer are own and the impact should be a compulsion to see ourselves as intricately linked to other members. What’s interesting is that Paul places the perspective of who we are to one another in context of spiritual gifts (vs. 1). And these are the same gifts that we are to use for one another (1 Peter 4:10) and this serves the purpose of building up the church (Eph 2:16). Because the body is who Christ died for and who is His bride. And I can’t help but think that when we segregate on the basis of race, that we are withholding the spiritual enablements that have been granted to us and reserving them for those that WE deem worthy. I believe that’s what James refers to as “partiality” and I think it must grieve the heart of God.

Therefore, I think the most important aspect of our relation to one another is that it is in accordance with a spiritual unity that must take precedence over a social or cultural one.  Here is where racial lines must take a back seat to the unity in the Spirit and identification with our position within the body - we are one in Christ.  Consider Galatians 3:28:

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ.

And wasn’t this at the heart of Paul’s plea to Philemon?  Though he was a slave, don’t see him as that.  See him as a brother.   But more than that, treat him as a brother.  Don’t just call him that but really be that.

I do recognize that cultural foundations play a significant role in the make-up of our assemblies and ultimately, our selection of a church. Because let’s face it, it is far more comfortable to associate with people of our own race. The contrast of musical styles alone can drive each group to their separate corners and has. Preaching styles differ. The black preacher can use an impassioned homiletic that might be confused with anger. The white preacher’s deliverance may appear boring to some cultures.

But given our position in Christ, I consider our call to brotherly love and service a prompting to step outside of our comfort zone to engage in intimate fellowship with people of a different race. I found it interesting that in the service I attended this past Sunday comprised of nearly all African-Americans, one of the pastors cited the passage in John 4 where Jesus approaches the woman at the well and clarifies what true worship is, “God is a Spirit and they that worship Him must worship Him in Spirit and in truth” (vs.24). But I think the greater recognition of this passage is the fact the Jesus went out of his way to “fellowship” with a person of another race, who his human race considered contemptible and inferior. And he deviated from His linear path in order to convey what true worship was. As New Testament believers, isn’t true worship operating as the Body of Christ, linked to one another in a way that would dumbfound a worldly system defined by cultural and social norms?

Perhaps Jesus’ actions here should serve as an example for us regarding our cultural comfort.  It is easy to fellowship with people that look like us, sound like us, worship like us.  But maybe the greater law of love would have us to be a little uncomfortable in consideration of the greater good, to endure a musical style not of our preference, to gain a better understanding of the other race through meaningful and intimate dialogue and relationships.  For we who believe in Jesus and acknowledge Him as Savior are part of the church, not black church, white church or hispanic church but Church. And perhaps if we change the lens of perspective in consideration of our brothers and sisters, regardless of race, maybe we might see a little more diversity in our congregations.  That is my hope and that is my prayer.