Month: June 2020

When studying to be a pastor, I envisioned my future to look very much like my past. I assumed my white middle class family would serve a white middle class church. [I’m still playing catch-up for all the perspectives I ignored.]
Instead, God called me to a place with incredible diversity. Then He gave me both a commitment to our diverse neighborhood a desire that our church reflect our community.

But desires don’t always turn into realities as easily or quickly as you’d like.
Renovation Community still leans majority white, but not by much. And we continue serving a diverse community. Our Parsonage is the only single-family dwelling on the street. Neighbor turnover is high but white families rarely move in.

For years, our church has been committed to serving some of the poorest families in our community. Poverty effects all races. But in our neighborhood, many of our poorest families are non-white.

Today, other than my wife and sons, I didn’t see a single white person. Three people from our church family helped me around the building and with our drive-through meals (our summer day camp is closed this summer due to Covid, but we’re still offering meals). They’re black. Our funeral director renting our building (also part of our church family) and his assistant are Latino.
Today’s families who drove through our food line were Black and West African. Other days we’ve served Burmese and Latino.

When Jesus taught listeners to love our neighbor as ourself, a man once “wanted to justify himself” and asked, “who is my neighbor.”
Jesus didn’t answer the question. Instead, he responds with a story and then calls us to be a neighbor like the Good Samaritan.

I relate to the questioner’s desire to justify himself. If I’m commanded to love my neighbor as myself, my deceitful heart will always choose neighbors like me. It’s easy to love people like me.

I don’t know what to do about the overwhelming racial tension in our country. But I do know that my neighbors have changed me. Proximity promotes responsibility. I am my brother’s keeper…my neighbor’s keeper.
Regularly interacting with people unlike me taught me I must strive to be the neighbor Jesus had in mind.

Jesus shows me how far I have to go as He teaches me each step of the journey.

This afternoon our 7-yr-old asked about “protests.” While our 3-yr-old listened in, I explained recent protests were about ways “people have been unkind to black people a long time.” He responded “but we’re not unkind to black people.”

For years, our boys have been the only white kids on our street. Our oldest has seen predominantly non-white children attend our summer day camp and feeding program, watched daddy help diverse people at our Parsonage front door, worshiped in Renovation Community’s services with beloved black church members, and saw two all-black congregations share our church facility in harmony.
He heard the dissonance between the world I described and the life he saw. And he felt the need to say “we’re not unkind to black people.”
[Of course, Scripture says “the heart is deceitful.” Even when we aren’t overtly unkind to others, our “deceitful heart” can hold prejudices our conscious mind overlooks.]

No human one wants to stand accused of something they haven’t done or be lumped-in with others’ terrible actions.

But for reasons I don’t fully understand, we often feel “accused” simply when we hear someone voice their pain. Or we feel the need to assert, “I’m not like that.”
And if we did cause pain, our consciences tempt us to deny or minimize it: “you’re too sensitive;” “I didn’t mean it like that;” “that was so long ago;” etc.

Years of marriage counseling revealed I couldn’t truly hear my wife’s pain because it all felt like a personal attack.
But relational Healing occurs when we listen to another’s pain, regardless of whether we are the direct cause.

I don’t understand life as a black person in our country. But I know my own temptation to interrupt someone mid-sentence when I feel “attacked” by their pain. I know our human nature to bristle when we feel falsely accused. I know my desire to assert “I’m not like that” can override any desire to hear another’s pain.

May we listen well.

When an individual or entire ethnicity voices their pain, may we listen well— suppressing our temptation to self-defend, claim we’re different, or minimize another’s pain.

Healing comes from Listening.

“slander no one, be peaceable and considerate, and always to be gentle toward everyone.” Titus 3:2