Everything is Backwards

The fourth reason to plant a racially reconciled church in downtown Cincinnati is this: racial reconciliation forces us to have a missionary mindset.

One of the most important things for aspiring missionaries to learn in preparation for the mission field is how to best communicate with people who are different from them. This is called contextualization. Basically, the patterns of communication that work for me in my context may not work so well in someone else’s context.

For example, I have spent two summers in Argentina leading short term mission projects. I had to speak to people who didn’t know English primarily and had different culture and customs. It was perfectly acceptable for men to kiss each other on the cheek. In fact, to not greet someone with a “beso” would have been perceived as an insult.

But they also had different customs in terms of food, time, family, and community. As missionaries, we recognized that this was their country, and to reach them we had to be aware of that fact and work within their context.

This experience has led me to a couple of conclusions regarding racial reconciliation in Cincinnati. First, we are first and foremost citizens of the city of God, and only secondarily citizens of any earthly city. God requires us to interact with one another on the basis of mutual love for each other and seek the highest good of other people.

Secondly, yielding our cultural preferences to another person is not easy to do, but can be learned with patience, practice, and accountability. Suppose a person is part of a church body that constantly urges him to consider the perspectives of a person of a different race. This person would learn to love and respect the other person because (1) he is his neighbor and (2) he is a fellow believer in Christ.

When I was in Argentina, many of their customs seemed strange to me. Yet I respected them because my purpose was to die to myself and show them Christ, not be a cultural colonialist. Likewise, there is much about the African American community that I do not understand as well. But since my citizenship is in heaven and not white America, God has called me to behave according to Christian conviction first and foremost. That’s what it means to be on mission: I respect my neighbor as a fellow bearer of God’s image before I indulge my own cultural preferences, even if I have good reason for them.

As Christians, our calling is to die to ourselves daily and follow Christ. We are to be good neighbors and not cultural colonialists. White people are terribly uncomfortable with this. What if, God forbid, we had to mix in some Fred Hammond with our Chris Tomlin? What if we had to follow a Bible study leader who votes for Obama (never!). What if this experience led us to places in our own hearts where we realize that maybe we’ve baptized white Americanism and called it Christian?

We can’t be cowards. It takes guts to consider other people as better than ourselves; to allow others to be first while we’re last. Regular American Christians don’t live this way, but missionaries do.

Here’s my prediction: a gospel saturated, Christ glorifying, self-denying, racially reconciling, poverty killing, cross-cultural church will send lots of missionaries to crazy places because the people will have developed a mind-set of gospel centered self-denial.

That’s reason #4 why I’m planting a racially reconciled church in downtown Cincinnati.

I wrote this in about thirty seconds in response to a comment on a previous post. Seriously, time yourself and see how long it takes you to crank out a stanza of rhymed cliches for a worship song.

I feel your presence in this place
Come and fill us in this space
Surround us with your love and grace
Touch us with your warm embrace

Bob Kauflin gives his list (as summarized on Between Two Worlds).

1. Aim to write the next worldwide worship hit.
2. Spend all your time working on the music, not the words.
3. Spend all your time working on the words, not the music.
4. Don’t consider the range and capabilities of the average human voice.
5. Never let anyone alter the way God originally gave your song to you.
6. Make sure the majority of your songs talk about what we do and feel rather than who God is and what he’s done.
7. Try to use as many Scriptural phrases as you can, and don’t worry about how they fit together.
8. Cover as many themes as possible.
9. Use phrases and words that are included in 95% of all worship songs.
10. Forget about Jesus and what he accomplished at the cross.

Thomas Chatterton Williams answers this question.

Black children would be able to avoid internalizing what James Baldwin called “the propaganda of race inferiority,” since every night on the news there would be a visible reminder that there is nothing whites can do that blacks cannot. That is the real change Obama offers-all of a sudden the world young black kids imagine themselves inhabiting would seem a richer place to live, one without an upper limit. To Biggie Smalls’ dismal list of career options afforded young black males-”You either slang crack rock / Or you got a wicked jump shot”-we could add the office of president. And in response to what Jay-Z cynically defined as the black man’s lot in life-”All we got is sports and entertainment/ Until we even, thievin”-we could say, No, not anymore.

The symbolism of a black man in the Oval Office would certainly advance the cause of racial equality in America. Unfortunately, we do not elect a symbol for President, we elect a man (or woman) who has a worldview and a set of policies that they wish to enact to shape the country and world to their liking.

If Obama were elected, racial reconciliation would improve in America. But the plight of the unborn will become more bleak. The black woman’s womb will be one of the most dangerous places in America, government expansion might make poverty worse in America which will adversely affect blacks, and an out of control liberal media will further their attempts to silence voices of dissension.

I wish to God I could vote for the first black Presidential to run successfully at the top of a major ticket. But I’m afraid the cost is simply too high.

One of the most refreshingly honest and penetrating albums for Christian consumption in recent memory is Derek Webb’s Mockingbird.

This album was marketed using the increasingly popular give-it-to-me-for-free-and-I’ll-pay-what-I-think-its-worth strategy. This was a good move, since most Christian bookstores wouldn’t stock it anyway because it contains such incendiary language as “sex” and “whore” and he dares criticize the Republicans as the Messianic party.

Released in 2005, this is during the 2nd Bush term where Republicans appeared poised to rule for a generation.

My, how things have changed.

There is one stanza from the song King and a Kingdom that sticks out to me:

there are two great lies that i’ve heard:
“the day you eat of the fruit of that tree, you will not surely die”
and that Jesus Christ was a white, middle-class Republican
and if you wanna be saved you have to learn to be like Him

What I find ironic is how relevant this sounded three years ago and how completely upside down and irrelevant this sounds now.

While visiting an African American church service recently, I was fascinated by how many Obama T-shirts were being worn by the attendees. Probably about the same percentage of cars sporting a “W” bumper sticker in a suburban church’s parking lot.

Another line from the song bears repeating, and this time it is directed squarely at those on the left:

My first allegiance is not to a flag, a country or a man…my first allegiance is not to democracy or blood… Its to a King and a Kingdom.

Here’s the point: George W. Bush was hailed as the standard bearer of consevative Christian idealogy and is leaving office with an approval rating hovering around  Jeffrey Dahmer’s. Obama is on the fast track to iconic status as a young and compelling black man in the nation’s highest office.

But perhaps his followers can learn from those disppointed soldiers in W’s army. To quote Derek Webb once again, “We’ll never have a savior on captial hill.”

There are so many reasons why its a good idea to plant a racially diverse church in downtown Cincinnati. Numbers one and two have already been covered, and I’ve got 8 more good reasons to write about. Three months after moving here, I’m very optimistic that this will work and that its God’s desire for this to happen.

Fortunately, I’ve identified the biggest obstacle to planting a racially diverse church in downtown Cincinnati: me. And the third reason why I’m planting a racially diverse church in downtown Cincinnati is to strip away my own barriers and, God willing, the barriers that other people have to forming genuine relationships with people of another race.

Am I willing to do what it takes to apply the gospel comprehensively to lingering and even undiscovered racial residue? If I am ready to do that in my life, the real test will be whether or not I will be willing to help expose the racial residue in others’ lives as well.

Last week, I had lunch with Chris Beard, pastor of another congregation in Cincinnati that is targeting racial reconciliation, and Sherman Bradley, a local leader in poverty ministries. This conversation challenged me that I cannot merely be content to be introspective and address issues in my own heart, I need to be an “agitator,” as Chris put it.

I believe that most Americans, both white and black, filter their perceptions of other people of different races through a grid of incorrect perceptions and assumptions that prevent genuine relationships from forming. Many white people will lock their car doors when a black pedestrian is near their car, for example. His appearance generates the perception that he is somehow a threat. Now, suppose a relationship is formed with this man and he becomes a trusted friend. All will not be remedied by this because he will simply become “one of the good ones.”

Suppose even further, then, that genuine friendships can be formed with about 10 or 12 African American men, from different neighborhoods. Now, there can be perhaps enough to begin to challenge one’s predisposition to assume that black men are a criminal threat. There need to be enough relationships formed with others of another race to change one’s overall perception of that race.

My contention is that the best place for these relationships to form is the body of Christ. This will be potentially more difficult for white people than black people, because we can easily tune black culture out and refuse to learn and understand it if we wish. BET is only one channel, and VH1 is just a click away. But black people must understand and work within white culture if they are to survive. In other words, black people already understand white culture automatically, white people can learn black culture electively.

That is where being an “agitator” comes in. I need to be the person who constantly brings up racially diverse perspectives into conversations. I need to be an advocate in the white world and refuse to allow white people to choose to ignore their black neighbors. I must not allow weak excuses for white disengagement in racial justice to go unchecked.

This will undoubtedly cost me relationships with white people and potential church members. So this is why the biggest barrier to planting this church is me: I often lack the courage to be an agitator. Planting this church forces me to face my own fears of not being liked by people who’s approval I crave. If I feel called to plant this church and am too timid and cowardly to confront white people with their racial residue, who then will do it?