Talk With Your Children About Racism, Poverty, and Dr. King

When I was in the third grade, I sat next to an African American girl. I can't remember her name, but I remember very clearly the day she didn't show up for class. We all assumed she was sick, but about three hours into the day she suddenly appeared at the door, tears streaming down her cheeks.

"What's going on?" the teacher asked.

"I missed the bus, and I had to walk to school!" the girl stammered, choking back the sobs.

At this, the teacher quickly called for the office, and an aide came and took the girl away. About an hour later, she returned and took her seat next to me. She was no longer in tears, but obviously still upset. She sat quietly for the rest of the day, and no one in the class - including the teacher - said another word about what had happened.

Only as I grew older did I put the pieces together:

This girl was one of the students bussed from the inner city of Greenville, SC out to the suburbs where I lived. Her walk was about 6-8 miles on busy city streets. Think about that for a second.
And think about why a scared 8-yr old decided to make that journey instead of going home or to a neighbor's house. These days, I can understand the social realities that frame this story, and I can see that deep-seated issues of poverty and racism contributed to the circumstances that led to her dangerous decision.

That incident happened 20 years after The March on Washington and Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech, and in some ways it indicates improvement. My elementary school in the Deep South was integrated, after all. But in other ways, it indicates how far we have to go with education and awareness - even today.

Looking back on that day, it strikes me that the white kids had no idea what had happened. We didn't know how far away she lived, and we didn't think to ask why we weren't being bussed into her neighborhood instead. We didn't know that she had been taken to see a social worker, and that she had gone into state custody the minute school was out. Most importantly, we didn't consider that our sheltered suburban upper middle class lives were not the lives that some of the kids in our class were living.

Perhaps this is where we can turn a corner on the racism and the classism that is so persistent in our culture. Perhaps we need to give children the opportunity to understand and process the social realities around them, instead of presenting the world as some fairy tale bubble of abundance and equality to get burst at age 15, or 25, or 45, or never.

I was fortunate that I grew up in a family where social issues were common topics at the dinner table. But even I grew up with a level of naivete and ignorance about the problems being endured by the kid who sat right next to me - a naivete that can translate all to easily into adult attitudes of callousness and denial about poverty and race.

So tonight, I am going to gather my two boys - ages 7 and 8 - and watch the "I Have A Dream" speech with them. The whole speech. And then, I'm going to ask questions and listen, and help them get a better understanding of the reality many of their classmates in our desperately poor rural county in Virginia are facing. I encourage us all to do the same. 

It's Not About Us, Part 3 - Beyond the Institutions

In a recent evangelism meeting at my church, I tried to explain the concept of "third places." Most people have three places in their lives where they spend most of their time - home (first place), work (second place), and whatever their third place is. It can be a bowling alley, a pub, the YMCA - anywhere they spend a significant amount of time and find fellowship and a sense of belonging.

I encouraged each person at the meeting to think about their own third places (other than church) and the opportunities that might exist there for sharing the good news in a non-threatening way. Describing the youth baseball and soccer fields where most of the young families in my community spend time, I mused on the possibilities to reach people who either had lapsed from their faith or had never been part of a church.

The eyes in the room lit up as folks considered the potential. Immediately the comments emerged: "I always thought we had so few kids in worship because we don't have any kids in this town. But they are obviously out there." "That would be great if we could get some of them to come here on Sunday." "Imagine all those kids coming forward for the children's sermon!"

I tried not to sigh audibly. I had just spent 10 minutes describing some of the successful "New Worshiping Communities" of the Presbyterian denomination's new initiative.  It seeks to create non-traditional ministries that don't center around a Sunday service or the church building.

They had been enthused by the stories of a coffee shop that hosts Bible studies and raises funds for mission; a pub ministry that gets skeptical 20-somethings to talk about faith; and a running club that creates Christian fellowship among folks who aren't otherwise coming to church. "Why," I thought to myself, "can't these people think beyond their own institutional survival and see the bigger picture?"

But before I got too exasperated, I remembered that my thinking on this matter has only recently changed. Until about a year ago, I would have responded to such an opportunity with the same focus on boosting our own worship attendance and membership. My involvement on a regional-level committee has allowed me to explore the concept of evangelism in a deeper way. Before then, I too would have seen all these great new ministries out in communities as merely a means to an end - not as legitimate new churches in and of themselves.

So the challenge for traditional churches like mine is this: How do we encourage folks to think more deeply about the changing times and the need for adaptive strategies? How do we help one another move past those reflexive responses that measure 21st century ministries by 20th century standards?

Most importantly, how do we remind one another that the call to share the good news is a call for us to sacrifice ourselves and our preferences for the larger sake of the Gospel; to understand that the preservation of the institutions we love is not the ultimate point; to realize that in so many ways, "it's not about us." 

It's Not About Us, Part 2 - (The Church Yearns for Freedom)

(This is the second article in a series.)

The church is trapped, and the church yearns for freedom. We are trapped by many things:

1) Anxiety over declining membership and shrinking budgets.
2) Grief over closing and/or losing congregations.
3) Fear that our entire denomination is dying a slow, painful death.
4) Concern that the Christian church in general is becoming unpopular and irrelevant.

When confronted with these realities, we tend to turn inward to find explanations and solutions, which only leads to more anxiety. If only, goes the thinking, we had better pastoral leadership, or more relevant worship services, or more dynamic education programs, or stronger evangelism techniques, or hipper seminaries, or sleeker Presbytery structures, or snappier mission statements, or catchier denominational slogans, etc., etc. - then, we could attract back all those precious young people we never see on Sunday mornings. When these solutions don't work, or only partially work, we fall back into the cycle of anxiety and being trapped.

But as soon as we can realize that "it's not about us," and that we can be at peace with those realities, then we can move toward the freedom that God wants for us. Imagine how great it would feel to be freed from the following chains:

1) Weekly fretting over how many people come to worship or Sunday school.
2) Angst over the fact that most of the congregation is over the age of 40, or 50, or 60.
3) Constant fear that giving is going to fall short of the budget.
4) Worry about the cost of maintenance for an aging building.
5) Sadness that the Presbytery will need to close a few more congregations this year.
6) Anger at churches that are leaving to find another denomination.
7) Dismay over articles on negative cultural attitudes toward Christianity.

As important as these concerns might seem to us (especially #3), none of them represent the reason God called the church into being. Nowhere in the New Testament are we told that the purpose of the church is to maintain programs, buildings, budgets, congregational charters, and the reputation of our faith in the wider culture.

Instead, we are called to spread the good news of Jesus Christ in word and deed. Period. We are called to feed the hungry, comfort the lonely, heal the sick, visit those in prison, and speak out for justice and peace - all the while proclaiming our faith in Christ. Unfortunately, our anxiety and our helplessness over the loss of these other non-essential things have become the chains that keep us from proclaiming Christ. Which is why it is so important for the church and the people in it to make peace with the changing realities.

If our membership declines, even to the point we must find smaller facilities, then so be it!

If we must close some congregations, or even the majority of them, then so be it!

If our denomination becomes much smaller, or merges with others, or even perishes, then so be it!

If the Christian church in America becomes a minority, an outside voice in a secular culture, then so be it!

It's not that we want any of these things to happen, but rather that we can accept them and move forward in faith should they be God's will. The history of God's people is full of many amazing stories of rise and decline, and God has never failed to bring God's people through lean times into a future of great abundance.

The church is currently trapped by our disbelief in God's power over the present realities. Only when we are freed from our crippling anxieties can we be free to follow the Holy Spirit to the place God has prepared.

It's Not About Us (Or Why Declining Church Attendance Is Not Such A Crisis)

One of the best pieces of advice a young pastor can hear is this: "It's not about you. When a church member stops attending, it more often than not has nothing to do with the pastor - so try not to take it personally."

Perhaps the larger church, as we struggle with why our overall participation is waning, could follow the same advice.

Why aren't young people coming like they used to? In all our collective hand-wringing, perhaps the best answer is one we haven't considered: It's simply not about us.

Perhaps it has nothing to do with how relevant we are, what style of worship we use, how hypocritical we might seem, or anything that has to do with us and the way we do things. Perhaps it has everything to do with how the world beyond the church has changed, and not necessarily for the worse.

 

We need to get over our ego-centrism that tells us that the church is still at the center of the culture, and that if someone doesn't go, it means they have rejected us and rejected God. We need to get past the arrogant notion that we are the only place people can find spiritual truth and community. And we need to bury the all too-common belief that people are hopelessly lost without us, that they are miserable until they stumble through our doors - especially since much of the pain and alienation in the world has been caused by us.

Instead, let us be honest about the fact that the church is not for everyone. Some folks are better off the day they walk out our doors and never come back. In today's fast-paced, high-tech, postmodern, and globalized culture, we are merely one among many options that are out there for people to find fellowship and spiritual connection, and it's time we get real about the fact that we no longer hold a monopoly. If we expect to return to 1955 levels of membership, and then look inward for explanations when we don't achieve them, we are destined for disappointment, disillusionment, and defeatism.

Perhaps, then, we shouldn't beat ourselves up because the world has changed and so has our place in it. Perhaps we should just remain true to our faith and our traditions, interpreting them for new generations with new ideas and practices the best we can.

As a young pastor, it took me several difficult years of self-doubt and second guessing before I realized that Sunday attendance was not a function of the quality of work I was doing. It was more a reflection of the changing times. My role was to be adaptive, and to shape the ministry of the church in such a way to nourish those whom we could reach. The same principles apply to the larger church.

So the next time we are tempted to get down about slumping statistics, let us remember that sage advice. "It's not about us." And let us witness to the love and grace of Christ with a little more joy, and a little less despair.

Don't Go To Church - Come to the Party!

At this morning's worship service, the theme was the Parable of the Great Dinner from Luke 14 - that beautiful story where the invited guests are too busy to come to the party, so the host sends his servants out into the streets to bring in the poor, the sick, the lame, and the blind.

Every time I read this parable, I imagine the astounded looks on the faces of the "uninvited" guests who get to enjoy this magnificent feast. I picture the overwhelming joy and gratitude they must have felt to have been given this purely unexpected blessing.

So this morning, when I told this story during the children's sermon, I asked them to describe what the best party ever would be like. Then I asked them to imagine how amazing it would feel to actually get to go to that party. My intention was to get them to understand how great it is that the Kingdom of God invites everyone to an awesome party that is even better than the one that they imagined.

But as I sent the children back to their seats, and then proceeded through the routine of the rest of the service, it hit me square between the eyes that what I had just asked the children to do - to respond to God's grace with overwhelming joy and gratitude - is something that very few of us
adults do, at least in traditional mainline churches.

How many of us - clergy or lay person - come to worship feeling the joy, the awe, and the sheer astonishment at being invited to the Lord's Table? How many of us sing songs of praise, confess our sins, accept our forgiveness, and hear the Word of the Lord with as much enjoyment and as much zest as we would feel at a magnificent banquet?

I have known a few who sincerely feel this much joy in worship, but they are the exceptions rather than the rule. If we are realistic, don't we have to admit that the majority of folks in the pews (and in the pulpit) range somewhere between mild interest and sheer boredom? Don't we have to agree that duty and obligation are much more common motivations than overwhelming joy for people to come to worship?

This is not to say that most people in our churches are not people of sincere faith and commitment. I believe that almost all are. But for churches that still rely on the Sunday morning worship service as their central and defining practice, perhaps it is time for us to ask why our central and defining practice is one that so many people find so un-joyful. Perhaps it is time to ask why, even among our most faithful membership, skipping worship is becoming more and more of a common and acceptable thing to do.

Which brings me back to this morning's service. What I realized in asking the children to think of the Kingdom of God as an awesome party is that we as God's people have forgotten how to party. Or more accurately, we have forgotten how to make worship a party. We are like the invited guests in that parable who were overly occupied with their duties and obligations, and we have forgotten how to lay all that aside and just come to the table with open-hearted exultation.

This, I believe, is one of the chief reasons we have lost a generation and a half of young people. It's not that they don't believe in God, or don't desire the spiritual truth of the Bible, or don't hunger for God's grace. It's that the worship we tend to produce (produce, and not proclaim) does not reflect the overwhelming joy and gratitude that we feel for being called to God's table.

So whether we need to create new worship forms, whether we need to recharge the old forms, or whether we need to bring worship out into the world and into mission will be different in each context. But however we respond to the stifling reality of being "The Frozen Chosen," we need to make our worship a party. Indeed, we need to make everything we do a party. We need to make it the best party the world has ever seen.

From The Pulpit: Uninvited

(An excerpt from my sermon preached on July 21, 2013. The text is Luke 14:14-25, The Parable of the Great Dinner.)

... As much as this parable is about God giving a warning to those who are invited not to miss the great dinner, it is more so about God finding a way for the uninvited to get there. The main characters are not the three who miss the banquet because they are too busy, but instead are those who get to come in their place. At its core, this parable is about the inclusion of the excluded: the poor, the crippled, the blind, the lame, and those who have nothing better to do than wander aimlessly in the streets.

From their perspective, and from the perspective of those who are excluded in our society, this is not a challenging story at all. It is a beautiful story, a story of hope, a story of promise, and a story of freedom that gives them assurance that the coming of God’s Kingdom will not leave them behind.

If we look through the history of the Bible and the history of our own nation, it is breathtaking to realize just how many times God has made manifest the inclusion of the uninvited - and how much God is doing the same thing today.  If we are willing to look for it, and if we are willing to work for it, we will see similar glimpses of the Kingdom whenever those who are accustomed to being on the outside are invited in and given a seat at the table.  

This parable boldly proclaims this good news of liberation for all of those groups who face prejudice and exclusion. But it’s also good news for those who might feel uninvited on a more individual basis. Some of us might identify with the invited group, but at times - because of difficult circumstances in our lives, or because we find ourselves in a place where we don’t fit in - at times we feel like we have personally been uninvited from the table of God’s blessing. Sometimes, we feel like we are left wandering alone in the street while the party is going on inside without us.

So the good news is that God’s grace invites us all in, and that God’s love is especially given for those who feel separated, for whatever reason, from the glorious Kingdom that is being brought forth in our midst.

So the challenge that this Parable of the Great Dinner gives us is to be watching and to be ready for the unknown times when the Kingdom breaks forth, and to work today to include those who are uninvited. But the good news that lies beyond this challenge is so much greater. For the eternal party that God is throwing invites us all, insider and outsider, rich and poor, healthy and sick, seeing and blind, able-bodied and lame, busy and wandering. What a great party this is going to be!

 

Compassion, Not Judgment

(I am the pastor of a small-town church in southern Virginia, still somewhat of a hotspot for racist tensions. This morning, I felt compelled to address from the pulpit the verdict in the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin case. I had already prepared a prophetic sermon about judging the poor based on Matthew 20:1-16, so I decided to insert the following remarks before the Scripture reading:)


A few times from this pulpit, I have spoken about the increasing divisiveness that we are seeing in our nation – divisions that are political, economic, and racial. This summer, every time we turn on the news, it seems like something controversial and polarizing is being announced – whether it comes from the Supreme Court, from Congress, from the White House, from state legislatures, or – as we learned late last night – from a jury.

The announcement of the verdict of the Trayvon Martin case caps off a week that has been particularly polarizing. It seems like we as a nation are so determined to be against one another that we’re just bouncing from story to story continuing the same polarizing fight.

Now I’m not going to pretend that I know whether George Zimmerman is guilty or not. But the case has been a flashpoint for racial tensions, and I stand with my African American friends as I see in them the struggle, the pain, and the fear that is still a reality of their existence. No matter how we feel about this one high-profile case, we can all agree that racial divisions are still strong in this nation. We are far from realizing The Dream that Martin Luther King spoke of, and we are called to work in Christ-like ways to bring peace and justice to our nation at a time when it seems so much of our unity is fracturing.

One of the biggest things we can do to be an agent of peace and justice is to pay attention to the lesson of today’s parable. It is about some workers in a vineyard, and about their quickness to stand in judgment of others. The lesson Jesus is giving is that we are to approach our fellow human beings not with judgment, but with love and compassion.

 

In our divided times, standing in judgment of others is what we see too often. Working to defeat one another and condemn one another seems to be the rule of the day.  So let us now listen to the words of Christ from Matthew 20, where he calls us to a different path.

 

(After the service, I was greeted with many positive reactions to my words. One woman whom I feared would be angry with me told me a story about her grandson and his African American friend being stopped and searched by police. She thanked me for speaking so candidly. I would be grateful for any of your thoughts on these remarks, praise or criticism.)