Dr. Tony Evans on Church’s role in racial reconciliation

really dr. Evans doesn't need much of an introduction but these states dr. Evans they have tremendous impact and influence in these states and especially as they're building their church networks and I think when we initially had the coronavirus dr. Evans had a message called divine disruption and following coronavirus now we have this racial unrest this racial tension of these things that been bubbling below the surface now have come to the surface and we just want to be a voice of truth and be a voice of a law of a voice of grace a voice of loving our neighbors as ourselves and I just can't think of anybody better than to address the Daniell initiative States and dr. Tony Evans who is the senior pastor a founder of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship so dr. Evans it is a real honor to have you on let me give you as much time possible and hopefully we'll reserve some minutes at the end for questions and if these participants do have a question feel free to put it in the chat box and we will try to get those questions answered after dr. Evans addresses us this morning dr. Evans thank you well thank you so much I am delighted to be with you today and excited about your desire to bring the family of faith together in these tumultuous times I wrote my book on race called one thing grace 10 years ago and then they're unable to keep it in stock ten years later and like everything that's going on we were just talking this morning about updating it in light of the current events that are taking place in our nation what I'll start off with let me start with Hebrews 12 everything I do I try to start with a biblical theological framework I believe God has spoken and he has not stuttered there too every question gods answer and everybody else's and everybody else is wrong when they disagree with him and with that in mind the Bible says do not exceed more Hebrews 12 verses 25 to 28 do not ignore him when he speaks and he says it goes on to say the way he speaks is by disrupting the normal nature of things which he calls in that passage shaking or disturbing the order of things the bigger the disturbance the bigger the message and he says the reason why he disturbs the natural order of things is to shake up things on earth to reveal things from heaven what he calls in verse 28 is unshakable Kingdom God is shaking up he is disturbing through a virus and through our strength the natural order of things in order to advance his kingdom initiative the world view that we posture through our church and through our national ministry the urban alternative is the kingdom agenda which is the visible manifestation of the comprehensive rule of God over every area of life that's divided into the categories of the individual life family life church life and civic life what we are experiencing now is driven by a failure of the church in second chronicles 15 where I talked about the divine disruption the reason why it says God troubled them with every kind of distress in verse 6 it says it was personal distress when they went home and his family distressed it says city runs up against City so there was very distressed and it says nation rose up against nation so its conflict everywhere god troubled them with every kind of distress now if God is your problem politics is not your solution God is your problem social and social action it's natural solution because God is the problem and the reason why verse 3 says God is the problem of 2nd chronicles 15 verse 3 is because of the failure of the church it says that it says there were no teach increased didn't say there were no preachers he says they had failed when the church failed in the initiation of our nation to address this issue biblically and simply one verse would have addressed slavery in America where you know of course this is rooted and that is Exodus 21 621 16 which says anyone who kidnaps another person and sells them he shall surely die so slavery based on kidnapping was a capital crime but of course the economics of the knew of the new world made slavery a economic in the in the words of in the view of the colony and economic necessity that set in motion things that would would unveil a civil war then in order to keep the economy going PHP and edges criminal leasing so men were men were targeted to be because the Thirteenth Amendment said everybody's free unless you're criminals so the way to keep the workers the workers coming in and you had a criminalized and so you did you be criminalized for almost anything for them they still have the workers he had Jim Crow second would be the segregation laws of the south and and and then you had all of this was being endorsed actively or passively by the church theological systems were set up the curse of ham Paul's instruction to slaves obey your masters without including the masters responsibility to the survey I mean I hope it was a theological system you know so you hear the word you've been here there's a lot systemic racism we're talking about the the formal and informal embedding of systems that would would would keep people of color behind the eight-ball and while we recognize that in this case the angle community still had disadvantaged people they were never kept back simply because of skin color and that's where you hear white privilege come in so all of this all of this is to say that there was a great man of the church reason why you have a black church in the white church today is because the church wasn't being the church since the church was the theological engine to injustice it needs to be the theological solution for it the church is the only entity that's been handed the keys to the kingdom in Matthew 16 which is access to heavens authority no other system and the culture owns those keys we don't even own them as individual is that binding and Lucy is a corporate responsibility where God responds to his people when they are legitimately unified and so and of course I'll take questions as best as I can when I finish up this kind of giving you an overview so you've had this problem there and all it takes is a match to light it and so you have different kind of matches you have Martin Luther King a civil rights movement that's one kind of match then you have mr. Floyd's death that's another kind of match and then situational and so you got these matches lighting a fire now there's another side to this and there is black responsibility I know I'm talking black and white because those are the polar ends I know there are other segments involved in this so the principles would apply so there is another Sun but I don't want that to to negate I was told when I got on radio when I was trying to get on radio I was told by virtually all the white stations it would be too offensive for us to have a black speaker that was in 1986 if it wasn't for a letter from the human perspective by James Dobson who wrote wrote the Anglo stations and asked them to open up a door to allow us to get on radio then from man's perspective I know God could use another means I would not have to have had the opportunity to do that so there was a system that said we cannot allow and I know economic concerns racial sensitivities all of that we cannot allow a black speaker national radio so so these systems were in evangelicalism of course we know the Southern Baptist Convention came out and gave an apology for its formal segregationist teachings and news and not allowing black churches to become part of part of them and so they have apologized for that so so what I'm saying is that the church has been the route what we're seeing now is working out in society is the fruit of that route going on address spiritual theologically biblio centrally and Express socially so what we've been working on and we've been already doing it but we're formalizing it at the urban alternative is a three point plan that really coincides with some of what this initiative is about that every community can adopt simple yet if the church would do something either this or something like this we think it would go a long way to bring healing because you got all these voices out of being spiritual warfare because you got voices out here that are against against our faith in the name of dealing with racism in dealing with injustice which is a noble cause of course and when we should all be concerned about let me say this before I get into three-point plan in the Bible justice and righteousness are Siamese twins they are joined at the hip they're never seesawed where you know who one is up and one is down Psalm 89 14 says from his throne comes righteousness and justice Paul told Abraham in Genesis 18:19 raise your children in righteousness and justice and if you look at those twin towers throughout scripture you just pull it up you'll see them side by side over and over and over again while the Anglo church has been emphasizing righteousness the african-american church has been emphasizing justice and use uuuuu splitting the baby that God doesn't split God once I walked with him to reflect his standards righteousness but justice is the equitable and impartial application of God's moral law in society he wants both and because we've not treated both with the same tenacity the same fight and the same insistence both in the church and in the civil society the society has not had the pattern to follow that should have been established by the church and as a result we are we've been very anemic on this issue and we are we're behind the eight ball when Peter had his racial crisis in Galatians 2 vs. 11 my number one love verses I love most in scriptures is Galatians 2:20 I'm crucified with Christ nevertheless I live yet that is Christ lives in me the life which I now live I live by faith and self-doubt and suffering but what people miss is why Paul said that this story begins in verse 11 of Galatians 2 where Peter is eating with the Gentiles some of the Jews come Peter withdraws from the Gentiles because he didn't want to offend his own race his when he withdraws because of the breath the men of the circumcision that says his Jewish brother it says Paul saw what Peter did and what did Paul do he didn't hold a racial seminar reconciliation seminar he didn't say can't we all get along he said Peter you have insulted the truth of the gospel the way manner Peters already saved Peters already on his way to heaven but he makes it a gospel issue why would him this disconnecting from the Gentiles be called the gospel cuz that's what Paul calls because what we have failed to do is make a distinction a clarification between the content of the gospel and the scope of the gospel the content of the gospel is very narrow it is faith alone in Christ alone for the forgiveness of sins and the gift of eternal life it's a narrow message but the scope of the gospel is very broad and depending on the context you you can be referring to the content that imparts eternal life or the scope which discusses life lived out based on that eternal life in history and when you hear the word gospel now it almost always is related to to salvation in the Semitic use of it for you know for going to heaven when when when when there is a huge ease in the New Testament in the Bible is even used for sanctification in princess alone ian's 523 made the may the gospel of peace sanctify you so he used gospel for our sanctification so the word gospel is a big term when using related to its scope and so when when Jesus launches his formal ministry in Luke 4 he says he's come to preach the gospel the human Galaga the good news to the poor to the oppressed and then he says to set the captives free and then every time I heard that preached it was always Spiritualized to take care of spiritual poverty spiritual you know there's always spiritually but when you come to the end of that message he says and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord now guess what the acceptable year of the Lord is that's the end you believe in Leviticus 25 Leviticus 25 is acceptable year of the Lord which was every 49th year and guess what happened God restructured society slaves were set free that's what canceled people were returned to their own family home so that poverty would not be allowed to be generational I mean it was a recent so I'm suggesting that what we're dealing with is a divine disruption in order for there to be a divine reset unless God is setting the stage for the Antichrist and the return of Jesus okay if he's doing that one you know we can't judge that okay but we don't noted that Saturday so we have to we have to occupy until he comes we have to operate like it might well not be happening and so what should be our posture and so what we are suggesting is a three point plan we've done this in a few places across the country when Ferguson blew up we were asked to come in the urban alternative our national ministry to to help them with their situation phases point one is to gather the churches of a local community together for a solemn assembly so I'm assembling the Bible is a sacred gathering this is where things got so bad you are desperate for God to intervene sacred gathering so the churches in a community however they want to define their community where they're close enough to relate to each other and you gather you gather together as leaders then you gather your people together in a coming together now why is this because when there was a solemn assembly called you kind of stop what you're doing what business is the sacred gathering that's unified this is a whole theology in my service we still doing online services I talk about this on Sunday Christ called the unity from John 17 it'll be online at 10 o'clock Central Time Jesus keeps talking about make them 1 make them one make them one make them one make them on over and over again you find this call to unity be perfected in unity unity is oneness of purpose not sameness of person certainly not uniformity its oneness of purpose when the football team plays there's only one goal line there's not multiple goal lines there's only one and that one goal line 11 men on offense different races different histories different backgrounds same uniform I headed toward that one purpose so there must be a coming together for the purpose of establishing unity now here's why because verse 22 and 23 of John 17 says it is in the context of unity that God's glory is manifested God's glory is the visible manifestation of his attributes God is God whether you see him or not but he wants to be visibly demonstrated but he will not do it in illegitimate machinery and I say image element is unity because there's some things we're not to be unified over sin and you know flagrant false teachers but not to be unified over there but we have illegitimate unity and that's because we have a distinguished between membership and fellowship membership we can't all be members the same place we have different church polity we have for personal preferences that are not sin they're just different so that's that's membership but that's not the same as Koinonia Fellowship has to be related to our common bond in the faith so that's broader than membership so when we come together in fellowship in our communities we're demonstrating unity which invites God's glory into the location as a part of Phase one those pastors whose churches that are gathering stay in contact with each other on a monthly basis and now it's easy because we everybody learned how to do zoom man because they've had to so they can stay in contact with one another for prayer and for discussion for for corporate impact so that's that's phase one phase two is to speak with one voice so that there is no uncertain sound about the key issues that your communities face there must be not only be unity a fellowship but unity of communication to speak with one voice it ought to be they ought to be any certain uncertain samalisha braces on the issue of injustice on the issue of righteousness on the issue of the definition of family on the on many of these social issues will complain about them with one voice and will complain about a matters one voice in our own circles will complain about them but what we don't do is speak collectively about and and and that one voice is critical so we gather together to bring God in we speak with one voice and then the third one which is a huge word we serve together to impact the environment in our community good works Matthew 5:16 we what we do together I'll explain what I mean in a moment we let the church be visibly seen as salt and light let me see your good works not here your good words alone now I try to summarize this so I will get to deep there the idea is to have a visible manifestation of the church's corporate in back to the community now of a little bit one way we have promoted this and when we provide training on how to do this is the adoption of public schools and there's a reason for that schools have kids kids have parents that's church school and family and they're located in every community every church virtually is near a school there are 190,000 public schools in America 350,000 churches not all of those are evangelical but if you just took the evangelical churches there would be more than enough to cover the whole nation and what you provide is mentoring because what do we do we give a broken balance and you provide mentoring women who mentor girls liniment to boys they meet with the one hour a week you can do it at the school or on your church campus okay because the families are so disintegrated and you can't function where these families are you know african-american community we had crisis 70% of our children growing up without a father so we've got a we've got a billion that gap where the surrogate parenting that's how that's what God meant when he said he'd be a father to the fatherless and the mother to the motherless so if you had 20 churches in the community and they adopted the 20 schools in their community that's an impact and the beautiful thing is you have to create anything new because the structures are already there charter school and family and in our training we show you how to do it without confusing church state and all those questions that come with that and so we provide that training across the country but that's the only thing you can do I'm on a call after this call with the police chief of Dallas along with the police chief of our precinct of our local church we're going to adopt the police precinct so if you get the churches in your community to adopt the precinct then you saw the big problem for them because what you've done is you've answered the question about community engagement but you've done it to a spiritual entity because you adopted the precinct that's serving your community so now you get to you get to influence how community and police relationships go because you have an institution and your people which I'm sure in your case is going to be pro-pro good policing and you get to set the stage so we're gonna talk to them about the services that we're going to provide we're going to provide counseling for the for their officers who struggling we're going to provide invite them in to things our church is doing so that the people can see them we're going to have community workshops and seminars where they can come and we can bring them into the church inviting the community and we become repairers of the breach okay you can decide in our community we're going to eradicate homelessness okay or put a big dent in it by each Church adopting two homeless families or a black and a white church together adopting the same school or adopting the two families and you work together because here's the key to reconciliation reconciliation happens through service not two SIM cards when you serve together somebody else worse off than you then you get to know each other through your service so so you don't just have a workshop you have service and the Solomon suddenly called in Isaiah 58 and that solemn assembly it says I want you to get right with me he says this is the faster I choose he says that I want you to go serve the homeless and the oppressed and then he says you will be called repairers of the breach he says get right with me spiritually solemn assembly serve others and you'll fix the community Paul told a poll the Jeremiah says in jeremiah 29:7 he you know seek the welfare of the city in which I have placed you that's that's his baddest city you could have that was Babylon he told them to make Babylon a better place to live if you made Babylon a better place to live cuz cuz y'all will be there seventy years so so you didn't get nothing right no rapture right now okay you gonna be there seventy years and so you make it a better place to live you build families give your sons the daughter your daughters the sons you build the economy plant vineyards you build homeownership he says you improve the environment in which I have situated you because when you improve it if not only going to be better for them it says it will be well it will be good for you this is a this is a divine moment for a ecclesiological reset so when we relaunch this will send us across the nation a three point plan and as invited will come into a community and and facilitate this for for the benefit of of the local community because it has to be it's not gonna be anything it comes from the white house to fix this it can't it can't can't this has got to come out of every community and every community has churches now there's a whole theology here that we don't have time to get into I'll reference some of the books if you want to get them more detail but let me tell you in the introduction was in the introduction statement is three point plan I will make a statement because here's what's missing we have not developed kingdom disciples we said it again we have not developed kingdom disciples now I know we all use the term discipleship the Great Commission is not about justification and conversion it is about discipleship discipleship is where all of life comes under the lordship of Jesus Christ it is progressively learning to bring all of life jesus says all authority is given unto me the reason why he tells you to make the cycles and so he can transfer authority so the reason we don't see more Authority being transformed from heaven history because he says all authority is given to me in heaven and on earth is because we haven't developed comprehensive discipleship we develop personal disciples see but what does he tell you to disciple he says the cycle of the nation's we have interpreted that to mean going banja lies in every every country huh I know it goes much deeper than that nations are not only made up of people they're made up of systems they're made up of structures they made up of that anything was the doctors not supposed to be a doctor he's probably God's represented a lawyer's not supposed to be a lawyer is gonna be God's representative in the Bar Association I mean other people have to understand this comprehensive understanding of the Cyprus ship so so that that's that highlights kind of give you some theological framework some practical things we're working on we do have some resources we have Kingdom disciples that talks about the Cyprus ship we have the kingdom agenda which is the big book that kind of puts the whole package together we have the book on race I said one is embrace and you can look you go on tony evans org and you can see all the things we'll have a three-point plan up in a couple of weeks updated but tony evans not all will show you if you want to use any of those materials look at the divorce rate that's because we're not developing kingdom boundaries we got people getting married to be happy that's not how this works God did not create marriage for happiness happiness is the benefit not the purpose the purpose in Romans 1 are Genesis 1 is to let them rule what Satan is after is blockin rulership through destruction of family and it uses unhappiness to block that goal but if you don't have a kingdom perspective cuz the role of the church is not the church the goal of the church is the kingdom that's why I've been given the keys to the kingdom and when the church misses the kingdom it becomes about the church it will not get the authority from heaven that it needs to have and that it desires to possess I just want to first of all you know Thank You dr. Evans if nothing else I think we could all walk away right now and go what a message and what a reminder and I think what the Daniel initiative is trying to do is understand you know it's not a worldly solution to this it's not a cycler solution it's not a political solution it's the church being the church you

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Length: 32min 12sec (1932 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 22 2020