My wife and I are remarkably blessed with people who pray for us and our ministry to leaders. We have four different categories of extra faithful prayer partners. I'm daily amazed at this extreme blessing in our lives.
One man, from our WGL group (Whenever God Leads), a brilliant, creative, courageous, caring African-American brother of 11 years friendship, has responded to our latest prayer partner missive. This is one good man...concerned for the Kingdom come...and how we are all doing life together. I hope you will be both challenged and encouraged with his thoughts.
Every emergent gathering I've been to in recent years is extremely white concerning skin tones. What possibilities of inter-racial and ethnic working together are being talked about...and actually done...within the Emerging Church...especially in North America? My friend shares some interesting thoughts...both personal and thinking into the future.......
Wes and Judy,
What a joy and spiritual privilege to be on your WGL list and agree with your prayer requests. Your calendars allow us to pray specifically for your days. That's very good.
Proceed reading my musings in this note when you have a few minutes. This update on my journey rambles a bit. (Count me among your mentees at a distance)...
I've been acting a bit lately, a Christmas monologue I wrote, and a "Feast of Tabernacles" vignette. Real memorization, blocking, projecting. It's exhilarating, like most scary new steps are.
I am very sorry to have missed the McNair fellow's presentation down south. My wife sings every other Sunday, and it was one of those days, I think. Please keep me and us WGLs in mind when your creative friends come to this side of the Rockies. I want more exposure to that kind of presentation. I love this new area of my development as a communicator. A healthy step in my calling to tell stories, a step closer to film making.
2nd tangent - just saw the critically-celebrated film "Crash." A gritty, graphic portrayal of the darkness of men's hearts, as expressed through racism. As the bad old cop told the good, idealistic young cop, "Just wait until you've been in this job a while longer. You don't even know who or what you are yet."
Creationist Ken Ham points out that race is becoming discredited as a biological construct. There are no differences between a white man and a black man as species, but there are a million differences in genetic information (hair, facial characteristics, skin tone, eyes, height), into which most racial classifications fit. And then there's the "nurture" side. Culture - the super-complicated mix of inputs and circumstances and birth order. Even without a scientific basis for discrimination, we've got plenty of devices of our own to puff ourselves up and put others down. Man's inhumanity to man.
3rd tangent - Wes, one thing about the post-modern "emerging" church movement (whatever you want to call it) is that while the next generation is far more open to cultural diversity, X-ers and "Mosaics" still have some glaring racial divisions. The other fact is that the new young leaders in the African-American church are facing some challenges of their own (persistent underclass, young men in prison, family stress-divorce / out of wedlock children / abortion), and they're developing some ministry responses to those challenges that fit their unique context.
I find that so much of the important rhetoric coming from important voices like Erwin McManus and John Eldredge and Rob Bell are lost on young and middle-aged African-Americans, who are so removed from their hearts that they cannot begin to grasp the fullness of the abundant life God has in mind for his children. I sat in a room with a southern black pastor and his best 6 men. As we worked away at conveying "the message of the heart," it fell on deaf ears. Too many of us are missing the heart message.
It's as if all the people around you are speaking another language you don't understand. We all have a nagging awareness that there is another unseen dimension "out there," but near by. You can't grasp it, let alone participate in it.
(cut to movie clip) Kind of like the marvelous three-minute "invitation" scene from "The Matrix." Morpheus' question to Neo is a question to all those who are living short of God's revelation, unaware of his promises, unskilled at using the weapons and tools he provides.
MORPHEUS
"Do you believe in fate, Neo?"
NEO
"No."
MORPHEUS
"Why not?"
NEO
"Because I don't like the idea that I'm not in control of my life."
MORPHEUS
"I know exactly what you mean.
(Morpheus sits, pauses)
"Let me tell you why you're here. You're here because you know something. What you know you can't explain, but you feel it. You've felt it your entire life... like there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there... like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me.
"Do you know what I'm talking about?"
NEO
"The Matrix."
MORPHEUS
"Do you want to know what it is?"
NEO
Nods slowly.
MORPHEUS
"The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us, even now in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you to the truth."
NEO
"What truth?"
MORPHEUS
(leans in)
"That you are a slave Neo. Like everyone else, you were born into bondage, born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison for your mind."
And then the birth sequence, in which Neo becomes "born again."
Maybe black folks are deeper into the Matrix than mainstream America. We face generations of family disintegration, economic struggle, and tribalism, plus we watch lots more TV. Ironically, African-Americans are consistently, statistically more religious than the broad cross-section of Americans in all measurable categories. Hardship has its privileges.
Anyway, maybe I get to do something about all this. That's a big ol' hairy, audacious blank that the Lord has to fill in.
See you one of these days!
Steve
I recently had to speak at a women in ministry conf to black women pastors on the 'idea' that latinos and blacks should partner together. This is what I feel about all this 'stuff'...
a. the conversation is not just a black and white issue and it angers me that so many people think they "got it" just because they talk blk/white issues, they invite more blacks to an event, etc. etc. So the invitations have to be more inclusive period.
b. Each culture does have their own priority list and partnerships are based on how those lists can be addressed by working together...which i believe can and should be done but people just love to hear themselves talk (or write) about it all the time...I'm waiting for some concrete stuff to happen...one example...I got to go to the last emergent conf free because someone wanted me there as a Latina BUT then no followup, no invitation to stay connected as a matter of fact, the 'conveners' of the event never even spoke to me or the others who were came with me about making these conversations more inclusive.
c. people just got their own problems and becoming this pot of diversity just isn't their top ten things to do in 2005 (or ever)
d. the church emerging can still (and maybe does) look like the church diminishing in influence because these "little" big issues don't get discussed
my thoughts...
Posted by: liz rios | October 19, 2005 at 08:00 PM
Great thoughts. Thanks for including this, Wes. It makes me want to meet Steve!
Posted by: J.R. | October 20, 2005 at 08:15 AM
Thanks for this conversation, Wes... much needed.
For more I'd suggest these blogs...
http://www.theomoments.blogspot.com/
http://postmodernegro.blogspot.com/
http://emergentlatino.blogspot.com/
Posted by: Scott Dewey | October 20, 2005 at 09:40 PM
The question on the tip of my tongue these days for nearly every African-American Christian friend I run into is this, "Is the African-American culture post-modern?"
I've gotten a variety of responses, but many of them start with, "That's a good question," which supports the observation of others that not much thinking is going on around this issue. Among those I've asked are young professional guys in their 20's, my pastor, and a parachurch leader who has been involved in ministry for almost 40 years (some of those years as a pastor), but probably the most compelling answer was from a guy in his 20's who ministers with The Navigators in the Raliegh-Durham area. He lives and ministers in the 'hood but also has significant realtionships on some of the campuses which are all over that metropolitan area. He says that the African-American culture is very clearly becoming post-modern, that the younger African-American generations are already there across the spectrum: rich and poor, educated and uneducated.
His opinion is that we HAVE to begin retooling and or re-creating our church expressions to minister to this reality. He doesn't think it's impossible for a "modern" church to become "post-modern", but he clearly sees some of the huge difficulties and roadblocks involved in that change. "In Christ there is always hope," he said, but he also agreed that it would be a rare pastor who could/would reliquish some of the trappings of his "office" in order to become a "Frodo-like" leader.
On a personal level, this is all very difficult for us. As Anglos ministering in the African-American community (since 1990) it takes us years to develop a level of trust in a church fellowship which enables us to minister effectively in that place. To now consider leaving so much of what has been built is somewhat mind-boggling. Thankfully, all we have to do is follow the leading of our King!
Posted by: Rick Yorgey | October 22, 2005 at 03:06 PM