Change the Story | Lisa Fields

I'm excited to be here y'all might be sleepy after lunch my name is Lisa fields I'm the founder and president of the g3 project the g3 project is a Christian apologetics organization dedicated to helping like Christians know what they believe and why by show of hands right is everybody familiar with apologetics in here okay most of you are I'm glad because some people think apologized actually saying I'm sorry so it is important visitor to ask that question before I start because apologetics is given a defense for the faith comes from first Peter 3:15 but I'm not here to wax eloquently about apologetics today I'm so thankful for the invitation from Josh and Hazen and the whole team a one-race to be here the four hundred conference I'm so honored I am extremely tired but I'm excited to be here we just finished our two-day annual conference yesterday and somebody said you're speaking after that I was like it sounded like a good idea until so today oh but I'm excited to be here I really loved the theme that went with this the know your story on your story and change your story and Josh says I was actually what did he want me to speak on he said the changer story part and as I begin to think about that I was like how do we change this story in America we're celebrating this 400 year mark as a historic thing but how in the world do we get good fruit from a rotten fruit how can we get good fruit from a rotten root I was thinking about that because for many in America and Christianity when we think of Christianity in our context we think of terror we don't think of something good if you're in the african-american space so as I mentioned I'm an apologist and people will say well was it distinct in in the black apologetic message that's not in the white apologetic message and I always say that in in black apologize we're not caused solely concerned necessarily with the existence of God many black people believe that God exists but we are concerned with where God is in our suffering and there's this notion in our suffering that if this is the Christianity that's been fed to us why would we trust it because it seems to only work for white men so we do an HBCU tour with the g3 project and the questions that we seek to answer on historically black colleges and universities is Christianity and white man's religion and many say why would you think that and I think one of the most helpful ways in which I think through this critically is thinking about a book that called Jesus and the disinherited and in Jesus and the disinherited the author in that book Howard Thurman notes that he used to go to Daytona Beach every summer to visit his grandmother and every summer his grandmother would have him read the Bible but she would only pick out certain passages in the Bible for him to read she would never let him read any of Paul's letters she would focus in on the Gospels and the Psalms and he said it always bothered him and one day he got up enough courage to say grandmother why can't I read any of Paul's letters and she said my slave master used Paul's words against me and I vowed never to read Paul again so when I think about Christianity being a white man's religion I think about the ways in which it's been manipulated to service white men and to oppressed black and brown peoples in America and so when we think about this know your story on your story change your story it's important that if we want to get some good fruit from what seems like a rotten root that we must live out the message of the gospel in a way that challenges the American Christianity that has been perpetuated in our country because many times when we see things in American Christianity or white evangelicalism we see a hyper focus on the Gospel message but so little comes out in the food of our lives in Matthew Jesus says something interesting he says in Matthew 17 verse 15 and I'm reading from the NLT I like it because it's the written on the sixth grade level and even though I have an m.div I still enjoy reading on a sixth grade level beware of false prophets who come disguised as harmless sheep but are really vicious wolves you can identify them by their fruits that is the way that they act for many in America we have not seen the real fruit of the Gospel message we've seen strange fruits hanging from trees with blood on the leaves and the roof because the Bible is seen as a way in the method of manipulation not a tool of liberation and the voices of many so if we're ever going to correct the problem if we're ever gonna change the story we got to live out the whole message I love what he told Ezekiel eat the whole roll the bitter and the sweet not just what benefits you not just what you like but the stuff that's hard to digest the stuff that puts your power in check the things that challenges your history and your own personal narrative the things that challenge your Savior complex the things that make you hang out with black people when it's to serve them but not black people that are your equal that's the kind of bitter and sweet word we must eat if we're gonna live out the whole Council of God I always talk about this in apologetics in two ways because I Ergun caner in his book encyclopedia of popular apologetics says something that I think is so vital he talks about the two wings of apologetics he talks about them it being informational and incarnation 'el and many of us focus on the information we love to preach and proclaim the book but there's another aspect that's just as important its incarnation it's the living out that message because what is what good is it to preach and teach that Jesus got up on the third day if you don't submit your life what good is it to be able to tell you that the Bible is authoritative and give you all the logical answers for it but you don't live under its objection what good is it to be able to articulate the importance of the imago day when you still don't care about black and brown people being shot in the street so we must have not only information but the Incarnation and we are really pendulum people we go from one extreme to another but I always like to describe it as two wings on a plane now for all y'all who flying here I'm assuming most have flown which wing would you rather have before you take off the left wing or the right one and many times we wonder why our Christian witness always goes down because will they have one wing on our plane we have either information or incarnation and God is saying the Gospel message to move forward in America with all our history in our baggage we don't need both wings on our plane because his witness has been going down because we focused on one side or the other so that's one of the ways we change our story as we live out the whole Council of God that means I'm passionate about justice but I'm also passionate about personal piety and holiness because just as God is a chess God he is a holy God and I grew up Pentecostal so what the what do they say holiness is still always right and that we not divorce God's attributes from one another but we hold them in tension that's the whole Council of God because if we just preach justice without talking about God's holiness and without lifting up his word we'll have no foundation in which to execute that justice so we must live out the whole counsel of God we must have Orthodoxy and orthopraxy number two we must connect ourselves with the story I talked to many people across the country who say well that was my ancestors how are you gonna hold me responsible for my ancestor sin and I always find it interesting dr. Perkins because we preach a gospel message that holds humanity responsible for the sin of one person we hold humanity responsible for the sin of Adam we are born in sin shaping and iniquity and we are not divorced from the father of humanity so we preach a gospel that connects us from the fall of one man but when we get to America we're connected to original sin of Adam but we disconnect ourselves from the original sin of America [Applause] and if we do that then our gospel has no effect because we're trying to convince the world that they're sinners because of the fall while arguing that we have no part in America's original sin we indeed become hypocrites in the minds of Americans and so it's important that we think about this critically that we connect ourselves I love as I'm reading through the Old Testament and I see Ezra and I'm so empowered by the fact that challenged by the fact that he talks about the sin of Israel and he's repenting and he's always using us we he's repenting I'm like Ezra you're not even I don't know guilty of some of this stuff you're repenting for but he seizes that inner connected we got to see their selves as interconnected in the West we separate ourselves we live in isolation but the Bible is written for us as a community our Father which art in heaven hallowed be thy name thy kingdom come thy will be done there's our daily bread thinking about others not just ourselves and it's what seeing Jesus through Middle Eastern eyes the author talks about Mother Teresa and she was in Calcutta and then Calcutta she was taking some rice to those women and children who had been without food and this woman had been without food several days and she had four or five children and they took the rice to her and they as they take the rice to work immediately when she got the rice she split it in half and left and Mother Teresa and those were with her we're looking at each other were like what what is where is she going with it what is she what is she doing and when she returned back they I said where did you go to and she said they were hungry too in her own personal suffering she still had the knowledge that her neighbor was suffering that her neighbor and her children too needed food to eat and so many times we are so self-centered we are only thinking about ourselves that even in our realistic comfort in America we don't see others I love in Scripture God says but he looked on them he had compassion sometimes we have no compassion because we don't see anybody other than who's in the mirror compassion comes it seems when I'm able to look at another and see their vantage point and then empathy comes and then I start to do something about what I see see what was so amazing in that story that the author noted is because the lady that went and saw and took the food in spite of her own suffering wasn't even a Christian but because she could see the compassion and the empathy came and even in her own suffering she looked out for another when is the last time you saw someone other than yourself and when I'm talking about yourself I'm talking about your race your family your things that serve you when was the last time you look for someone other than yourself so you must connect yourself to the story the last thing I'll leave you with is we need to repent and repair one of the ways we all know repent means to turn so we must confess it usually we confess when we connect ourselves to the story well we disconnect that repentance seems hard because it's like what am i repenting for but then when we repent and seek to find ways to repair the situation I eat things like reparation we'll see that that when we repent and we see we'll see there there's need that comes with repair and reparation so like for instance when we see that there is a discrepancy economically between blacks and whites we stick to ourselves how are ways that we can repair that breach what are some ways that I could use my privilege to benefit another what are some of the ways that I could use my gifts and talents to help another one of some of the ways my white church can help the churches that are african-american not the safe churches that I plant but the african-american churches that have existed in the community for years that need something what a ways that I could give to that community and what are the ways that I'm hurting the community by preaching a message that there's no gospel in that community when there's five black churches already in their community that have been doing the work for years and they can't do more work if you take that million dollars that you put into the new church plinth and put it in the existing church that's already existing but may fear because it's not safe or theologically sound enough for you because we seek to colonize more than we seek to help and sometimes our reconciliation falls on deaf ears because it looks like church planning and taking new people who feel guilty about privilege and putting them in the hood without funding the projects that have been there for years then if you took their hundred thousand dollars and put it to that black church that had already been running it would thrive and do more than it ever you ever could imagine because they already have the trust in the community so I'm running out of time but I want you to think as we go forward as we as we think about these things that this conference has to put before is knowing your story owning your story changing your story that you remember that you got to live on the whole counsel of God connect yourself to the story repent but also seek for ways to repair thank you [Applause]

Channel: Jude 3 Project

Views: 2,825

Rating: 4.6036038 out of 5

Keywords: Jude 3 Project, Lisa Fields, Race, 1619, slave trade

Id: uibBJVEMWnU

Length: 20min 34sec (1234 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 30 2019