Race, Gospel & Mission

"I'm in my forties. I’ve never been invited for dinner in the home of a white family." It was a distressing remark from this friend of mine—a pastor of a church and an African- American. I had recounted to him the story that my Caucasian worship pastor had invited an African-American family over to eat dinner. Both couples were in their twenties with young children. They shared the same faith. They shared similar lifestyles and values. But they rarely share the same space. While eating dessert, the conversation turned to race relations. That's when the black couple remarked, "This is the first time we've been invited for dinner in the home of a white family."

This is a staggering realization for some. It is a shrug of the shoulders to others. Most whites would fit into the former camp, blacks the latter. I don't find it a stretch to say that African-Americans are more racially aware, and that Caucasians tend to operate as if everything is fine. That is, until they run into a glaring and obvious problem.

I want to expose this problem - really a sinful cancer in the Church - to the mostly Caucasian Christian community in my audience. And, more specifically, to the Reformed, Missional, Church planting circle of which I am a part. Most of us don't even have racial problems on our radar screen. But I'd like to shine a glaring spotlight on them for a moment. In case you haven't noticed - our schools are integrated, our workplaces are integrated, but our lives are not integrated. For the Church, a literal family of God, this is a problem.

The words of Martin Luther King, Jr. still hang ominously over our heads 47 years after they were first uttered:

"We must face the fact that in America, the church is still the most segregated major institution in America. At 11:00 on Sunday morning when we stand and sing and Christ has no east or west, we stand at the most segregated hour in this nation. This is tragic. Nobody of honesty can overlook this."

Authors Emerson and Smith expand the segregated lifestyle beyond Sunday mornings in their classic, Divided by Faith. They recount - not only do we worship in different places, but we eat in different restaurants, we watch different entertainment, we live in different neighborhoods.

Now consider our, pardon the pun, whitewashing of Scripture. Quick - can you name the black African people group that is mentioned more times in the Old Testament than the Arabs? It's the Cushites. They're mentioned some 54 times in the Hebrew text (see J. Daniel Hays, From Every People and Nation, page 36). Clearly, God sees an important role for African peoples. They are one of the nations included in the Abrahamic promise. The same promise about which God said through Paul, "And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.” (Galatians 3:8, ESV)

Let's make this abundantly clear. This is not, first and foremost, a crisis of church growth or political correctness or even diversity education. This is primarily a crisis of the Gospel. The Gospel was, and always will be, the good news salvation for the nations (Greek ethnos, or nations, from which we obviously get the English word ethnic).

It's obvious to say that we're not presenting the full narrative power of the Gospel if by speech and by life we exclude the nations. The biblical "one anothers" - the deep sense of community and togetherness described in Scripture - is one of the primary means of testimony in the Gospel for the Church.

The nations are not just Sudan, or Singapore, or Slovenia. So often we view the nations as “over there” or “over seas.” But the nations are in our American cities. Consider my hometown of Charlottesville, VA, a small college town. It's nearly 70% White. But that leaves 30% of other ethnic and racial groups. That is over 12,000 people that we can't afford to overlook in the Gospel!

This bleeds into a second problem - mission. A recent trend is to journey into all manner of "creative" mission, delving into sub-groups and sub-cultures. We speak of mission to artists, to homeless, to commuters, to soccer moms. I would never be taken seriously if I discouraged such outreach! But, we must not do so to the obvious overlooking of the nations. I would suggest no church or church plant can be taken seriously as missional who does not have an intentional, consistent, advance of the Church into cross-racial groups within ones own city of influence.

So, I return to our dinnertime discovery. How do we, motivated by a love of the Gospel, begin to cross racial lines, share space and community? A few suggestions:

1. Repent and learn about the racial divide among brothers and sisters in Christ. Read Divided by Faith by Emerson and Smith, From Every People and Nation by J. Daniel Hays, One Body, One Spirit by George Yancey.
2. Intentionally enter into conversation with friends and acquaintances. Remember to follow point #1 and be "quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger," (James 1:19)
3. If you don't have any friends of another ethnic background, pray. You'll be amazed at how God answers your prayer to live out the Gospel among the nations.
4. Be a learner. Study your city. Find Black-owned, Asian-owned, Latino-owned businesses and support them. Restaurants can be notoriously self-segregated, especially Black/White.
5. Pastors - consider putting this in writing. Make stated goals for your church. Put a mission statement on paper. Our church created a Deacon position around the issue of racial reconciliation. This ensured that we would have "boots on the ground" and would not submit to a passing phase.
6. Again, pastors - consider a cross-racial hire. There's no better way to be serious about the issue than for your staff team to look more like "the nations."

I really believe that the Church in America is awaiting a revival and renewal along these lines. A world with a faux diversity is watching a Church with a very real segregation problem.

Imagine if we were able to offer them a genuine, biblical diversity with the nature of God and power of the Gospel at its core. We'd see nothing less than an advance of the Church among the nations, for the glory of God and the good of His people.