One key element of the first New Baptist Covenant celebration in Atlanta, in January 2008, was racial unity. The four leading African-American Baptist conventions scheduled their annual meeting in Atlanta earlier the same week, and many of their members also attended the New Baptist Covenant celebration.
As former President Jimmy Carter noted, it was a landmark event in the history of Baptists in North America, with over 15,000 in attendance, split so closely between black and white. African-American preachers and musicians/worship leaders graced the podium.
Yet, as I looked around the room during the meetings that week, I couldn't help but be struck by competing images. One was the inspiring image of such a large number of people of different colors, races, and cultures worshipping in the same room. The other was the discomforting image of a room divided. You see - though, if you looked closely enough, there were surely exceptions to be found - for the most part, people were sitting with their own "kind." There wasn't a lot of personal fellowshipping between races.
This isn't an indictment; after all, if we're assessing guilt, then I was as guilty as anyone. But we were all likely sitting with friends - and, let's admit it, most of us still tend to have more friends that are similar to us than are different than us.
Since that time, I've made it a point to discuss occasionally with friends - including African-American friends - the question of what we can do to encourage worship across colors, across races, across cultures.
My desire for us to worship together is not simply for the sake of worship. My concern runs deeper than that. There are perspectives and concerns experienced by people of different colors, different races, and different cultures that are largely unique to their own community. I have a friend who pastors an African-American church in a low-income community. He often shares with me concerning the problems faced by people in his church and community. But I can't possibly understand those concerns, those problems, because I live in a community whose makeup and circumstances are overwhelmingly different.
The only way I - and others like me - can begin to understand other people's concerns and problems, and thus better minister to them, is to spend time with them. Quality time! Worship should be only a beginning, a doorway into a deeper experience, into partnership for ministry. It should be the beginning of learning and understanding . . . of feeling and caring about the needs of those whose lives and experiences are wholly different than our own.
I'm encouraged to see that some are giving serious thought and effort to bridging the gaps between colors, races, cultures, and circumstances. A few months ago, I attended the first of Texas Cooperative Baptist Fellowship's regional assemblies. One element of the assembly was a multicultural worship service, led by a young man who has been leading such services for 10 years. In some instances, elements and languages from different cultures were combined in the same song.
This week, I've been further encouraged to read two articles about initiatives undertaken to bridge these gaps. In the Virginia Baptist Religious Herald, Matt Walters of Gardner-Webb University in Boiling Springs, NC, writes, "An interracial group of dozens of Gardner-Webb Divinity students and professors recently took up that challenge [racial tension] by sharing in a conversation titled 'The Future of the Church: A Listening Session on Racial Reconciliation.' The event was sponsored by the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina's racial reconciliation ministry team and the GWU School of Divinity Student Association."
In his article, Walters quotes Gyasi Patterson, vice-chair of the CBF North Carolina racial reconciliation minsitry team, as stating, "The goal for the CBF's reconciliation team, and I hope the goal for the global church, is not just diversity, or the presence of difference. We want community, real relationships with one another, and conversation is where community begins."
In an Associated Baptist Press op-ed column, David Gushee, distinguished university professor of Christian ethics, Mercer University, writes that last week "Mercer University held two events related to an issue that has dropped off the radar: racial reconciliation."
Gushee makes a particularly intriguing observation that "I was struck by how racial reconciliation circa 2012 is made more complex because each generation has its own distinctive experiences, memories, and challenges. My 25-year-old students can hardly imagine a church culture in which a college kid would be refused entrance to a sanctuary because of his skin color. It is astonishing that it ever was that way among us."
He goes on to write that Mercer's McAfee School of Theology is "now 48 percent black, 47 percent white, and 5 percent 'other' in our student population. I have asked around, and no one I have met has ever encountered this exact racial makeup anywhere. We are participating in what I believe is a providential experiment in biracial engagement."
Something is happening, and it is encouraging. Most of us in the church have been complacent about this issue of racial reconciliation. It has been, as Gushee observes, "off the radar" for far too long. But some among us are beginning to be very intentional about getting to know each other better . . . better yet, getting to understand where each other "comes from."
It won't be easy, and it won't happen overnight. But some are taking the first steps. May more of us find ways to become engaged in such multiracial "providential experiments." The result will likely be increased understanding and enhanced ministry that touches people where they are . . . in other words, the presence of Christ.
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