The Divided Mind of the Church

from Chicago Illinois my pastoring greater Union Baptist Church on the Westside yeah best side yeah I have a BA degree in biblical studies and Christian education from Trinity College in in the early 70s since then I've been to an independent study and research was awarded an honorary Doctor degree by the Chicago Baptist Institute for my studies on the black and African presence in the Bible and I am the president of the National Black evangelical Association Brian larette's i pastored the Abundant Life Christian Church in Mountain View California right there in the Bay Area I did my bachelor's degree at philippi College a Bible did my master's degree from Talbot School of Theology and I'm currently working on a doctorate of ministry degree I'm a doing Smith passed the House of Hope here in Atlanta graduate of Morehouse College with a BA the men from United Theological Seminary I studied ITC and also Southern Christian Universal I received my masters preaching for 31 years and serving as an adjunct professor as well in their preaching and leadership honored to be here awesome to have this distinguished panel I can't take the credit for this title this title comes from dr. Raphael Warnock book the divided amount of the black church was this an excellent book that I recommend all of you read in dr. Warren nuts book they divide amount of the black church he acts this important question does the gospel mandate insists that the church organize its institutional life so as to address itself primarily to the slavery of sin or the or the sin of slavery how would you respond yeah so I would say that is it's a great question Lisa I would say it presents kind of an either/or framework where the gospel rightly understood it's a both/and framework what I hear in that question is orthodoxy versus orthopraxy and it's both so when Jesus is asked what's the Great Commandment he says love the Lord your God with all your heart mind soul body and strength that's vertical but the second is like it love your neighbor as yourself that's horizontal or John says how can I claim to love God whom I don't see yet hate my brother whom I do see so you the the framework is always vertical and horizontal if you took Ephesians chapter 2 vertical verses 1 through 10 saved by grace through faith but then in verse 11 he jumps into the ethnic implications of that so I would say the gospel knows nothing of vertical reconciliation without addressing the issues that divide us horizontally I agree with the commentary and I think that the way we live tends to be either/or or too much of our living isn't either/or so I think that the question is being raised also to help us discern how we are living that we tend to live predominantly in social justice gospel or predominantly and you know salvation you know by grace by faith gospel and the gospel is really whole yes holistic yeah I trying to recover a concept called gospel Isis holistic good news messengers of Jesus Christ that that deals with the salvation of the soul and the salvation of the whole jesus said the Spirit of the Lord is upon me for he has anointed me to gospel as the poor full-stop now all the rest social justice is the explication of gospel izing the poor that's so very important because it's a holistic that you trace it through the New Testament so whole allistic concept God is concerned about the soul salvation but he's concerned about the whole of one's life and in where one lives yeah I think the challenge is how we define the word gospel are we looking at gospel from its perspective as Jesus taught it or we're looking at gospel from the perspective of an Americanized Republican eyes gossip right and seemingly to me most of what is being perpetuated now even in African American spaces faiths spaces is a gospel that has been passed bequeathed to us by the oppressors and as a result we've now taken on the mentality of the oppressor that's right and so as a result we really don't know what the gospel is I think there has to be a redefinition and because language determines culture and so I think when we say gospel that means different things from different people yeah and if I could just in all caps just support that see I think this conversation has white theological fingerprints all over it what I mean by that is all roads lead back as it relates to the genesis of this question to the early 20th century and the fundamentalist modernist modernist controversy where basically you had this great divorce in the church where fundamentalist says no the gospel is just vertical so let me just go learn truth learn truth learn truth and of course they didn't march in the streets with King or stand up against injustice or any of that the modernist which their progeny we would call liberals or progressive they said no the Gospels all horizontal but because they had no vertical truth to be buttress to they lost their gospel effectiveness in the world right but these were conversations that began in the conservative in the white evangelical church the black church did not have the luxury to go down the either/or route so we had to both preach a robust gospel every Sunday that led you to the cross and low-key adopt kids and feed and all of that stuff so III think that's important to give that historical perspective you know from my perspective I just believe that all of us use the word gospel but we're talking about different things you know which gospel whose gospel and I think that we overlooked the fact that even in the New Testament Paul had a gospel and Peter had a gospel and they were divided minds and that acts 15 the church had to come together and settle the matter and they came up with you know what's good to the Holy Spirit in us and so I wonder did you know this is just a crazy question did Peter stop preaching his gospel or so when we say gospel we're all not talking about the same thing right and so my argument is that what we tend to do based upon our lived experience the neighborhood's we come out of the places we come out of the people who taught us we take one set of Scripture and give it priority and that priority becomes our theology and then we preach our theology and so we have a whole lot of Gospels we have a prosperity gospel we have a denominational gospel you know I mean by denomination of gospel I was a member of a church and 65 people left because a church across the corner was preaching Jesus only that baptism in the name of the Father the Son and Holy Spirit was not baptism you had to be baptized in Jesus name if you hadn't been baptized in Jesus name you ain't been baptized 65 members of the church left and went over there said they had never been baptized because they've been baptized so I call that a denominational gospel so when we say gospel which gospel are we talking about and I think that many places are you know let me stop ya or how's that gospel manifested in a particular setting I think because we get into that secular secular dichotomy the gospel is spiritual but the gospel is also social the gospel is eternal all right so we start with and and there are certain beliefs of gospel Jesus died for our sins according to the Scriptures he was buried and he was raised on the third day and he was seen by a whole bunch of folk that the gospel didactical as we teach it a man in high points but the gospel is also back to Galatians Paul telling Peter you hypocrite you hypocrite you didn't follow through on what you believe in part I don't care about the pillars in the church so-called and and and Paul held Peter feet to the fire all right so so Peter had the truth but he wasn't fleshing it out like he should so my reflection about divided mind is is it's always been a divided mind in the church about the gospel because the gospel isn't an event a God the gospel is are happening Christ coming into time yes changing giving all of us a new future and the Scriptures are trying to catch up with the event right so the way that I try to look at it is I'm on the social gospel liberation black theology side how did I get there I was thinking about this as I was reading device mine when I was six years old we had moved into a white neighborhood and the white people is the southside of Chicago start moving in droves my mother put out a Santa and painted the Santa black I'm talking 1966 in 65 I'm telling you no back here and people would stop and make comments and and they were angry I saw that so when I come based upon my african-american lived experience I believe very definitively that if the gospel is not liberated in spiritual and social then it's not the gospel just right but if I make my gospel the only gospel then I run the risk of putting in cultural dominance can I say that let me shut up yeah so the Southern Baptist like this now in fact that's a Sunday there was a statement released about social justice and the statement said in essence that social justice was a distraction from the gospel of Jesus Christ now you don't have to agree with social gospel but to say it's a distraction from the gospel to me that runs the risk of running your cultural dominance next to or into the gospel domina that's what I mean so let me stop there because y'all help me am i if you know the planet look you know what I hear you saying and I think it's something that that all of us need to need to settle in and this is not a critique at all it's it's impossible to do hermeneutics to do theology without some semblance of bias right so that experience of the black Santa and the reaction to it shaped you the problem becomes so when I teach preaching at a seminary and it's a mostly white most of my students are white first day of class first exercise I say it's a class called preaching reconciliation how do you preach in such a way that's conducive to draw multi-ethnic audience and the first exercise I say what's black preaching and they'll raise their hands what's black theology they'll raise their hands then I'll say well what's white preaching what's white theology silence it's it's hard to describe what you have normalized it's it's like asking a fish to describe water so the problem isn't bias it's when I don't see it and then I couple it with power that's the problem that's it anybody want to add anything today well in your name God you know you name your power basis God you know you name your place of authority so if we're gonna be in these kind of conversations I think that we have to be able to name our own theology we have to name all the sources I experience and then we can be in some level of dialogue that's right but if we normalize and I say to a person my gospel is the only gospel then I think that's arrogance and pride there's absolute ties a better word than normalized making it absolutely I think a good follow-up question because I think when we're thinking through this and thinking about the attack on focusing on the social aspects of scripture I think about the slave palpable and it seems like even though sometimes evangelicals suggest that they are for the whole whole canon their framework still seems lay Babu ish where the old test that most of the Old Testament is thrown out and there's a hyper focus on the New Testament apart from the old and if you look in the Museum of the Bible the highlighting of how the I believe it's 1890s a Bible which that all the liberation passages are taken out so it seems to be the framework in our conservative spaces it's still kind of slave Bible ESCO would you how would you would you I think when you look at you know watershed moments in terms of the evolution of Christianity particularly in our context when we talk about romanization your opinion ization of the faith in terms of its characters in terms of the principles being principles that were espoused to basically maintain the Empire and so what has happened is Pharaoh always will have difficulty in seeking to bring equality everybody and I think what has happened is as I said earlier in America there is a fear and a dominance I think we look at the scriptures in any of themselves when you talk about people dominating other people and the usage of violence for the purpose of subjugating other peoples and other groups and I think what has happened as a consequence is faith and the religious religion in terms is now complicit with the political Empire to maintain right control right and anything that's on a front or anything that may be a threat to that is problematic yeah and so and so what happens now this whole thing of pie this whole thing of ethical morality and more relativism now it's more on the singing in terms of our present day because with the with the fear that the majority has and that's why I think even President Trump so many people are able to look beyond whatever because even in terms of what he has done for the furtherance of oppressive policies and theologies and so that's why many persons who in evangelism are now sold out they've sold you know they receive thirty pieces of silver because they don't want anything that's going to be an affront to that power base and so it's about flushing our voices up or it's invite it's about inviting people to the White House who look like us who are gonna blow smoke and continue to be Amos and Andy and tap-danced 4:12 for a nation even in from a theological perspective and so that fear is still there and so it's about pushing the voice of the emancipator's and liberators and so even though the canon that slave bible is not any longer the customs and the spirit of it yeah it's still very much a lot right and the and trumpism you know this didn't start with trumpism it's a long stream of white supremacy racism white nationalism white male rulership one of my mentors William Hyrum Bentley said that early on Europe for almost a thousand years interbreed with itself about 960 years I think he said and they during that time were they in braided mung themselves they developed an ideology to conquer the world and out of that white supremacy came colonialism in all the rest that flows from that and we call it ideology and they stamped God's approval on it used the word to stamp God's approval on a perversion of the word one of my pastor used to cause he said what in theology because theology is what is true to God it was ideology all right and that's what we're seeing manifested in trumpism folk trumpism could not be what it is except that loyal base who adhere to the president who said that he could shoot somebody down in Times Square and his base would still be with him there's something ungodly and apostate among white evangelicals who adhere to that all right yeah I think the original intent or one of the points that raffia Warnock made has made in this divided mind is that it's impossible to do social justice work without piety and it's impossibly pietistic and not do social justice work though we've divided it amongst ourselves to be in one camp or the other the reality is when we approach it biblically or from a holistic perspective one will lead to the other in the other try to do social justice without a piety or prayer life or a faith or devotional life and if you got a divorce in life and it's just about the church and we're not able to do anything about it something is so I think that the book is trying to raise the point to us that in reality we need both so we are in the black church have a tradition because it's not just they are I don't want to say black evangelicals that's not the core that's not the way that I want to say it there are african-americans who adopt the same level of piety and there's a long history and strand of it just like there's a long history and strand of the social justice side and so and then black theology so I think what he's trying to tease out is this tension that has been amongst us and how can we unify that's right and come to something that's connected so we really can make a difference for black people in this country maybe maybe you'll hello maybe you'll get to this later on I think the example of Jesus gives us especially passed orally is that faithful gospel preaching your you can't put a label on it meaning if if your theology fits snugly within a conservative or a liberal framework your theology is too small see I think you would leave some of Jesus's sermons and you'd say I think he watches MSNBC Matthew 25 whatever you've done for the least of these but then you read leave some of his sermons going know he watches Fox News what he says about a sexual ethic what he says about marriage and divorce yeah it's very conservative so again I think this piety and and justice orientation I think it defies labels see I think some Sundays my people a segment of my people should be frustrated with me because my theology doesn't fit within a human category right so I think when you when you try to incarnate both of those robustly you're going to be an equal opportunity abuser and it's I think it's fair to say that a lot of black churches transcend those binaries they don't they don't even see those binaries is something that needs to be even discussed why do you think that he raises that even though in the black churches that binary seems to not be be there in a lot of black spaces my experience is that the binary is there and that could be different than the advanced experience in here you know my sense is that we if we're not careful we will tend toward a unchallenging Pietism because we live in a complex world with complex issues and so if you make a justice move in the area of same sex so you make a justice move in the area of the Equality of women in ministry oh yeah yes a whole lot of binary you gonna get some some pushback and some boycott or as I know a person that was called to ministry as a woman and several people they're not coming back to the church because they called the woman this is I'm tell my knight 2:19 think I'm not like mm-hm oh yes a binary out there and I guess the binaries for black churches may look different because immediately when people think of social justice they think of the poor and black churches caring for the least of these and not necessarily other issues that in the more liberation extreme would think that goes along with it so they some people have limited to just caring for the poor well look to those issues they're like okay that's what the binary presents itself I'll go there like I don't I don't know how I do faithful gospel ministry in the Bay Area without handing people a Christocentric framework for engaging our friends in the gay community I don't know how I do that and the moment you start trying to engage that marginalized community in a place like the Bay Area because see churches in the Bay Area tend to be hotbeds of legalism because you get frustrated Christians who can't say what they really want to say at Google or Facebook during the week so they'll come to your church and they'll just vent their legalistic views right and so we're going down this road because our church it's historically been hush-hush on it and I'm just trying to go we've got to engage them and if we're talking about equipping you to make disciples you've got to figure out based on the Scriptures how to engage people and the moment some of them who are struggling now this is this is how I read the scriptures I who are struggling in that area who are saying pastor I'm same-sex attracted I am trying to live out this holiness thing that's fine for me because I got stuff I struggle with too and I will struggle until the day I die we all got stuff that we struggle with the key word is struggle well the moment I start saying okay you're struggling well you can have a position whatever in the ministry now some folks that you thought were gospel people who are watching all of this the binary starts to emerge to your point whatever that issue may be it could be women and men Street it's there and it comes out and it's ugly I mean we know the black church is not more or less and when you talk about the challenge that I've seen is every context is different you know when I you know my mother saw the families what kind of coastal and so the Pentecostal side of my family that was not a huge focus on social justice it was more spiritual more eschatological that shall praise God and let our faith and I worship you know be the opiate for us help us deal with what we're facing women could be included a little more to a certain extent other side of that education was not was not how to prioritize my father saw the families Baptists and most systematic more structure but not as much presence in terms of the movement the holy spirit of involvement of women mm-hmm go national diapers convention in the sixties you had this big rift between JC Jackson and dr. King you know so you get the progressive convention that splits out of the same convention because those binaries have existed historically and I think to a certain extent they still exist today but the challenge is because of social media and YouTube every context is different because now you have I know some friends who are kind of cost of a very social justice incline mm-hmm I know some who are more evangelical more conservative or about piety and so every context is different now in this and so those lines I think of being somewhat erased however the binary still is prevalent and relevant in terms of our trying to extract it and trying to deal with it it's a very relevant you you brought out something that I want to address one of the the theme of this is bridging the gap between the church in the Academy for this year and one of the things that I've noticed I grew up Pentecostal feel very much in the Pentecostal church my father's my pastor he's right there and then I went to a white evangelical seminary during that time I went to a black Baptist Church so I got him I got exposed to a lot of different experiences throughout my seminary life and one thing you learn more in spaces where people are not necessarily fans of the Academy is that seminary is I'm sure you've all heard it cemetery and there's this in our churches this divide between the pew and the pulpit where preachers will get seminary training and then feel like there's no relevancy to the people so there's a divide between the pulpit in the pew how do we bridge that gap with our theological training where we bring people along the journey with us and don't feel the need to divorce what we learn in the Academy from what we preach on Sunday and have integrity because I think one of the challenges is I can believe a certain thing but I'll preach another for the sake of the congregation but I don't really believe it how do we bridge that gap well first I would say I think every pastor especially new pastor to a given context that's true of where I walk in as a new pastor in a congregation and maybe there's 80% alignment but there there's some things where I'm going I've got a different view on this and I want to help shape and move this group of people to go in this direction that they're not used to and I'm gonna have to exercise some diplomacy to get them there whatever that issue may be you may walk in and you want more of expressive worship or maybe you're trying to move more of a charismatic direction but maybe you want to implement more women into whatever it may be I think every pastor when you walk into a situation it's a fixer-upper honestly and that doesn't make me fake that doesn't make me disingenuous there's some things where I got where I say as a leader that's a year five thing I'm gonna get to that in your five imma bite my tongue right now but we're gonna get to that your five years whatever it may be long range plans I would say that's most pastors nurse that kind of tension that's right and it's one thing to delay a revelation and it's another thing to go opposite what you've learned all right jesus said to his disciples I got a whole lot to say to you but you can't deal with it now but later on you'll be able to deal with it you see and so its progressive revelation yeah before the congregation and and I think all of us ministers we have to be careful about trying to a careful of bypassing church trying to get to church by passing persons who are right there in my face whose church immediate ministry versus pursuing the ideals that I have of what church ought to be you see I think the Lord would have us to to bloom where we're planning and to deal with ministry that's right in our face all right and believe in God that he will take the church to another level in his good time in his good way but I can't walk over Uncle Jimmy and I can't him in and Jane because I'm catering to this elusive ideal of what the pair of thematic church is and ought to be I've got two men - my father's and my mother's let me say unfortunately in the african-american church a to minister in too many instances in two minutes places the african-american church unfortunately is the only place you can go in some quarters and leave your brain at home and and so James Cohen said talked about the importance of that being a Socratic moment in the church and I think when we talk about bridging the gap between the ecclesial and the academic communities one things that I haven't noticed in my own context I can't speak for everybody I'm just speaking my own experience is a lot of times persons with the Academy are so frustrated with the church that they're not a part of it and so it's difficult to transform something that you're not a part of that's right in other instances you have passes and leaders in African church unfortunate because there is no set standard of credentialing for nation in some places some of our more systematize denominations have credentials and prerequisites but unfortunately a lot of more carnal churches you can falter back up a collard green truck and if you've got a good tone you know and you can pull it you know you can get you can get called to a church and and so what has happened when you look at I'm speaking after American churches sometimes we notice televangelism and the popular ministers and preachers and bishops you know you know the top 10 in terms of notoriety and popularity 80% of them have no seminary training yeah seventy-seven percent of them have no back law degree now I'm not I'm not espousing that God can't use you unless you're trained that's not I'm saying what I'm saying is sometimes it's hard to champion education if that's not been your experience or it's also difficult for you to be inviting and engaging to the academic community if you've got what you've gotten without it and so because of fear on the side of those who not educated and frustration on the side of those who are academically involved as a result we keep missing each other and that's a strength and power that can come as a result of that merger what we continue to miss it because it has become more incarnation 'el and it has to be a hybrid approach to it and unfortunately we don't see that happening in too many instances in terms of mainstream churches I want to do from the seminary side it's not a secret that in many places a lot of seminaries are going through very difficult times shrinking selling buildings because the educational model that we're offering yes is really not suffice in for this moment and so we need a level of creativity about the programming and the degree programs and some of that is happening all around and so one of the things that I'm excited about is that we try to do a ph.d program that was connected to the church around the concept that we call practitioners scholars that just because your practitioner does not mean that scholarly questions don't arise out of your praxis and practice of ministry that you want an advanced degree to deal with so just as it for quick just as an example in our PhD and preaching but you can't graduate from the program if you don't go out and in your community teach two classes preferably two non seminary trained preachers because we're not going to play this you got to have a $3,000 class to get us well you know we'll beat up people for who they are watching but if the only way that you can get this level of education is I paid $3,000 for a seminary class and we're sitting up in the ivory tower no we got to go out to the community we got it we got to take you know so you can't even you can't graduate for my if you don't do two classes in your community preferably for people who are non seminary trained and teach preaching to them because I'll stop let me stop that so one of the things that I felt personally passionate about what it is relates to the Academy pastoring in a multi-ethnic environment I intentionally started a residency program see I feel like you know there's two kinds of hospitals there's there's the service oriented Hospital that just says we're gonna deal with the issues that you have and we're going to minister to those needs but then there's teaching hospitals we're teaching hospital says now we're gonna service your needs but we're gonna create a space for those who who need to grow in their gift for them to for them to practice on I actually think that's the model all churches should go for is the teaching hospital model by the way the black church I grew up in that's what they did you know that that's youth Sundays where they would let me graciously at the age of 17 practice my gift of preaching and most musicians started out there I think one of the diss services that make a church movement has done is in our effort to be so perfect and polished we we we don't allow the younger generation venues to grow in their gift I think that's a major problem right major problem and the traditional black church I mean you start I remember five year old kids banging on drums yeah that's that's where you did all that when I pastored when when we launched our first residency program in Memphis Tennessee I was unashamed we're going after minorities and I would stand them from my congregation and I would say I need 150 about to send these black preachers to school and we gonna give them a stipend easiest money I've ever made mm-hmm because I think I attached it to a justice piece and it was it's a form of reparations it's a form of reparations I need you to help me close that educational and economic gap by taking that money and sending these people of color to school and I think if you've got the means to do that as a pastor to encourage your people it's the easiest fundraising you'll ever do I'll stop right there come on down for reparations if you're in here or you're watching on live stream and you want to help a young black girl pay off her student of reparations I'm looking for it today we could take some questions from our audience one of them is it seems like a lot of people want to talk about the gospel again how can what is their definitive gospel definite is their definitive definition for the gospel how people ask is there a definitive translation and I heard Fria critics say this all of them will save you if you live on translation so rather than argue about the King James the new international all of them will save you if you live up so whatever gospel that you see if you live it if I see social justice or Black Liberation Theology and I live that thing to the fullest I'm gonna come to the very heart of the gospel of Jesus Christ because I'm gonna run up into powers and principalities and rulers of this darkness the Prince of the air oh I know Jesus and if you think evangelizing people and saving souls is the way get out there and do it because when you get out there and do it you're gonna run into people that's got social issues and social problems they gonna ask you so my sense is to avoid the doing we sit around and argue about who's got the right gospel when my point is whatever God tells you do it and if you get busy and I get busy and we get busy somewhere this maybe just idealism and we gonna meet in the middle somewhere because the gospel is gonna lead you to the needs of people or the pieces up needs of people gonna lead you to the gospel yeah I I used my point of departure Luke 4:18 what Jesus said when he come to Nazareth and it opened up the scroll lies Isaiah 61 and said the Spirit of the Lord God is upon me for he hath anointed me to gospel lies the poor I keep saying that a one gallito in greek verb used over fifty times new testament very important . to gospel eyes the poor we say if your message is not good news to the poor it's not gospel it must be good news to the poor let's baseline recovering of sight to the blind healing those who are bruised you know lifting up those who oppressed down that's gospel that's social ministry behind that someone called Jesus Nazareth manifesto when he come home that's what he laid on the table to the kinfolk and but what he was saying and he said and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord he was talking about Jubilee yes amen every 50 years very that's right we don't hear much about Jubilee do it yeah too many Jewish folk nobody else doing Jubilee to set folk free pay off debts folk every 50 years family reunion land being restored to the clan family amen Jesus came proclaiming Jubilee I mean setting folk freedom I called you believe the pole man's hope and holiday and it was so hot for Biblical covenant people that they dropped it they still do Passover hello Yom Kippur Tabernacles all up but you don't him talk about ain't getting nobody baby ain't let him go debt-free they ain't talk about that any time I'm turning laying back over that's gospel you understand what I'm saying that's that's that's that's hard gospel that that hits every stratum of society or turns everything on his head amen and and and and so there is content there is substance to gospel amen and but it must be good news to poor that's the bar amen we must meet the Box if the message is not good news to poor folk call some of these churches our cater to rich folk hello I'm listen to somebody so my churches cater to rich folk and they they got seats you can buy amen to sit up close to where the action is and all of that kind of stuff that's not that we should our churches should not cater to them all right call it what you want to call it we must cater to poor folk yet that usually help some rich folk shown us but if you want to find them you go down there with a pope folk are that's where you spend his time can I get one more response i if your gospel oppresses me I think there are many Gospels but they are oppressive Gospels and my line is when your gospel oppresses me or my gospel the press is you so I wrote a line before I'll be a slave or a slave master I'll be buried in my grave and go home to my Lord and be free I don't want to oppress anybody yes with my gospel that's the destined if my gospel or you know of course it's easy for us to talk to the gospel to press puno black people oppressed we oppress you know that we're pressed but we don't talk about the ways in which we oppress people and as oppression in the black church that we don't want to address and so I think that that's the that's a standard for me anybody else wanna for me I think on the major challenge that we have is reintroducing Jesus of Nazareth as Assumption sent the central theme and focus of the gospel when we look at other passages sometimes there are times when would you do your exegesis you hear me loose you think that Jesus is the contradiction with Paul and no that's another conversation tomorrow but I just think in a real sense if we would just do what Jesus did and I just think Jesus is the hidden or the lost figure in terms of our curricula and Proclamation and our ministry it's about Empire and gospel is supposed to be good news but it's good news for whom you know and I think when you look at how Jesus integrated women how Jesus dealt with the seal Phoenician woman you know how he in my opinion grew beyond the labels of his Jewish upbringing you know to deal with her in dehumanizing language which was the culture of his day but her persistence allowed him in my opinion to grow beyond and move beyond even his Hebrew limitations because if I can't die for you if I can't see your humanity and hear your daughter then how can I die for the sins of the world and I think you're not opposed to a little dog you know as some people have have interpreted passage but for me Jesus has to be the sin of attraction what he does with the oppressed the outcasts the least the last and loss and if we would introduce and do what Jesus did I think a lot of out front we can meet more in the center and just strip ourselves when I pre understandings our own biases or the things that I own fears of each other because a lot of what's happening America now is in fear and I think and the basis of it is because if it's true that by 2050 that whites are gonna be in a minority I think a part of that fear is guilt and thinking that if we ever become the minority then they're gonna do us how we did them and I just kind of what I just feel and so I think with a lot of people but if we can reach it but if we can reintroduce Jesus you know as a central focus of our faith I believe a lot of our societal issues will be eradicated another question that came in is how do we address black churches that operate like white church spaces and I'm not sure how this what they're trying to get it here I don't know if this black church is becoming more leaving traditionalism and adopting fog and church in the dark and different things that they feel is normalized in white culture and leaving traditional spaces or they're talking about just doctrinally so if you could address both yeah that would be that'd be good you know it was interesting I wanna be careful how I word this I have seen I'll back up a little bit my Bible college experience was at an all-white institution that in many regards I'm grateful for but in many regards it took me a couple of decades to to just grow out of some bad habits that I had been given and it was almost like when I got there and I write about this in my in my latest book inside or out outsider it's almost like when I got there I heard stuff that I had never heard of my in my black church now my pastor was a was an expository preacher very solid very biblical but then I get introduced to this thing called systematic theology then I start hearing about dispensationalism and all this other stuff what they didn't tell me is you got to be careful with systematic theology because you cannot contain the infinite God in a man-made system yeah so you got to always be humble no matter what your system may be well because the power dynamic was an all-white faculty pressing down their their theological perspectives to some minorities we now got a pseudo kind of awoke miss that we said we need to go back to our black churches and educate them on some things and sometimes I've seen individuals minorities who have been solely discipled by whites and there is this thing that happens to them where they feel like a badge of their spirituality is they've got to out white their white disciple er and then they start taking churches and inevitably they take the white fingerprints that the discipleship was marked with and then they they subconsciously use that stuff as a standard for so for example for example I never heard the phrase disqualified from ministry until I got around white pastors never heard that phrase before the posture of the black church has always been how can we salvage this because it's cold out there how can we be redemptive here white churches just cut you I just disqualified from I never heard that before well now you get young black leaders who go through those institutions get discipled and they start mimicking that same stuff in their churches and the havoc it has wreaked grieves me and I would add that I think some of the root of the problem is is not a good understanding of the black church or black churches and the role that it has played in the freedom and affirmation of a slave people here enslaved people here in America where would we be if it wasn't for the black church invisible institution or visible institution where would African descendant Americans be we have to look at the black church not just song on the surface we got to look at it historically and we got to look at it in depth reason for being God one reason God raised up black church to keep us alive in America you know I think a part of our issue is something about our pathology that still makes us believe that you know the white man's ice is colder a lot of times I've noticed with a lot of ministries particularly and in white churches you have more resources so you can invest more you you can put 1520 million dollars in a youth you can paint it and make it feel like it's a quasi distant world and yet when you come back home to your church and you know - you know friendship a Macedonia Travelers Rest you know you got to go to the MX you understand and so and so what happens when we're when we're able to assimilate and be in those spaces the services and the quality and so it's about skinny jeans and it's about default machines and the lights and it's about Hillsong so that for us becomes the paradigm for what's correct and what's not Orthodox and so what happens we think that that's the way that's the right way to do it so we leave our practices we leave what's important to us and then as a consequence we see some of them begin to adopt some of the things that we've dropped so we you know we write our songs we write you know so we move from songs that have meaning and Theological efficacy and spirituality and now we are saying seven eleven songs we say the same seven words eleven times and so now it all looks the same because we're trying to you know to integrate into something that it's not who we are historically and and what I found is that you know if Franklin Frazier talks about it that sometimes the more I thought we become then sometimes the more our people get disenfranchised or disheveled with the lack of what they see in our churches and so we run to that unfortunately because it looks like the picture of success and so we abandoned the thing that has kept us and sustained us and then the fact that we have to grow in our churches in terms of our theology in terms of our practices and then sometimes when unfortunate things happen in cases of malfeasance or other issues we tend to create this caricature of the church and we paint all the same churches of the same brush you know as if every african-american preaches a thief every American preacher is driving a Bentley or Rolls Royce not realizing that 75% a person about 80% of our preachers a Bible Acacia but because they're not visible and seeing we painted right with spam brush and we dam the african-american church because of this character we've created these few individuals I think there has to be a return to it and the other thing I want to say if if these present times haven't shown us that the people we've read are places we've run to as African Americans if I'm going to the church and that Pastor I don't care how big the facilities are I don't have any mention to have or how we're the small groups are run but if that church cannot speak to the issues that affect my teenage son who has to be fearful of every time it gets in the car it's gonna be shot I pull it over because that pastor wants to maintain the Empire and I deal with the holistic reality of all hope all that constituency I have major problems with that any black person or any of minorities in a place and that person can't speak to the whole because they're afraid of offending people that's really not multi-cultural don't don't show me that you have multiculturalism because you got some Negroes in the choir let me see I've been on the Finance Committee how many in leadership and I'm gonna have some serving so I think that's the piece that we have too much other maybe it's my old age but I've given up trying to convince people and I'll have dialogue but a lot of this stuff is unconscious in people's minds you know cognitive scientists say that 2% of our thought is conscious 98% it's unconscious and our moral very moral values lie in the unconscious right so talking about my mother when she painted the sound of black right and I what messages I got coming out of Mississippi they came from Mississippi my father's number one goal in life was to get his kids out of Mississippi cuz ain't nothing in Mississippi for his kids right so I had all that I got all so yeah social justice I see it I feel it I I get it I get it I get it but at this point in my life I'll dialogue with people but if dialogue distracts me from the work I'm trying to do so I'm not necessarily trying to convince white evangelicals I'm trying to out vote them in the you know I'm trying that's what I'm not I have dialogue but when dialogue reaches a point dislike well you know we just need to count the votes and you know and see where they are because trying to get people to be different than who they are is exhausting and so I thought the question was directed to trying to get somebody not to be who they think they need to be which is exhausting work that distracts me from the real work I've been given to do this is the last question and we're gonna end here and I think this is a lot of people in churches have to relate to the sentiment that think kind of parallel academics to modern day Pharisees that totally miss Jesus so focus on I just an academic successes no that's it I think they're saying that the their peer I well I don't know what they're saying I wasn't but I'm trying to frame it the best way I can respond that I think the sentiment is that that so focused on the academic that you're missing Jesus okay and this this focus around all you need is the Bible you don't do you need a seminary really to do ministry I believe that you need some level of education that God makes possible and available for you everybody can't go to seminary but everybody can get some education everybody should step up their educational game to the highest level that is possible and available to equip themselves to give the best chance to reach people with the gospel I don't I think we live in an age my Dean says this Dean Leah gunning Francis she says we live in the age of the glorification of ignorance we glorify ignorance now and so I'm not saying that everybody's got to have an m.div I'm not say anybody but you it's at the level that God places you God probably is gonna put some educational opportunity and so take advantage of it and be better so you can better Minister understand the gospel to administer gospel to people yeah I would say I'm absolutely agree for me what's backup so a part of my problem with the younger generation is they're so pragmatic let me just go ahead and get the degree or whatever that they short cut some things and for me what seminary did the number one thing seminary gave me wasn't Greek Tools or Hebrew tools it just gave me the discipline of study that as a pastor I carry with me every single week and look I love the Internet but we've got to be careful with the internet as someone once said the Internet is the friend of information but the enemy of thought and I'm looking at a wave of preachers who I'm not seeing a whole lot of thoughtfulness and however you instigate that thoughtfulness it doesn't have to be formal I mean they've marveled at the disciples but you do need to have some sort of education I think sometimes if we're not careful as young ministers you know sometimes if you're not properly balanced I'll have wisdom the educated preacher education can lead to a sense of elitism in terms of the local parish and where it leads the the young pastor of the seminarian to develop a Messiah Complex and sometimes it can make you disrespect the context of those who serve before you because now I'm here to save the day you know this con game was lost and God birthed me in heaven as it sent me down generationally with my education and so sometimes I think it can create a wedge so that's that's one issue that I would caution however I think that was a time in my grandfather's day when ministers had a call from God but didn't have the means or the ability to go to seminary or Bible College or whatever I think in this present day there's no reason why a young person's been called can't be trained okay I mean if you want to get a license to be a cosmetologist in the state of Georgia you've got to go you've got to be an apprentice you've got to show that you can put perm and you can cut the hair you know you got to service somebody and go to making and take the State Board if you want to be a licensed plumber you have to go to the process and so you know and for me it's problematic when the worst thing that can happen with my barber my cosmetologist they are negligent is that I'm bald if my plumber is negligent the worst thing happened is my basement is flooded with water if my dentist is negligent the worst thing happened is I need a set of teeth if the doctors negligent the worst thing that happened is I died but if the preacher is negligent that can have eternal repercussions I just think that preparation particular for younger generations information is too available and there's no reason why you got to invest in people you can't stand before people have prepared and I know the Lord speaks to us and the Holy Spirit does call things out remembrance but you got to put something down for the Holy Spirit to call back up and so I just think for younger ministers that no reason why a young Minister those who coming up now can't get some formal education to prepare themselves for the work of ministry that's just my personal opinion I my pastor used to say learn all you can and can all you learn another pastor said he will wrote a poem and I can't quote it but the idea was you learn enough to get to peak efficiency in other words you learn enough to serve that ministry to which God has called you to and so that you have peak efficiency and serving those people you know and I think I think that's good because the Academy should be a servant of the church and not vice versa Kadim II should serve the church and I'm trying to study dr. Thomas the history of this whole thing and the evolvement of seminaries and how they became separated so much from local congregation and they became masters rather than servants of local congregation so the role needs to change it's it's based on a 12th century model of Education where you pull people out you separate them you cloister them and you feel them fill their heads with knowledge and so it's a name for it and I read an article on it but I forgot it so I have to Eve me I got to dig it up and I'll email it to you but yes 12th century you know because the discipleship is a model of education yes right so the seminary is based on a model of education that according to the market is not working now right because there's not being funded and these schools are most of them many of not all that many of them are selling property shrinking because the model of education that we're propagating is not working in the marketplace it's not meeting the needs of the students yeah I sit on the board of a Christian University and it's um I mean Christian universities now are charging upwards of forty fifty thousand dollars a year and we are out pricing our constituency right and I actually think it's it's good for the church cuz I don't know what in church is well you just told us twelfth century where we said if you want to get serious about your Bible you have to leave the church mm-hmm and go somewhere else to get that I think with with the education crisis that we're going through financially especially in Christian circles I think I think it's poised to arc back into where it started from which is the merging of the Academy with the local church you know and so much for the life of the church passes with scholars and scholars with pastors you know you look at some of the some of the the church fathers or there was a which is what we call the practitioner scholar model there is you can you can pastor and you can be an intellectual yes what why do we have to separate the two at least in my life I never wanted to separate the two because in the ministry context I was in I was being forced and challenged to answer questions that I needed scholarship to deal with I needed somebody that could think deeply about the biblical text and give me for example a womanist you know theology or a woman is hermeneutic I needed that to minister to my context so the assumption that we have that that intellectual T is separate and distinct from the pasta is a false dichotomy to make its good well we want to thank our distinguished panel let's give them a round of applause all hearts and minds clear on the panel all hearts a nice clear okay so churches and as you as I mention it reparations now this concludes day one of courageous conversations 2019 we're so thankful for all our sponsors that helped us put this on would you put up the sponsor sponsor PowerPoint please yet so we want to thank the and campaign impact Network logos RZ I am the CAC Institute Columbia Theological Seminary South Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary bc i black Christian influences gordon-conwell and Reformed Theological Seminary for sponsoring us this year without them none of this would be possible so I'm so so thankful for them and you are dismissed [Applause]

Channel: Jude 3 Project

Views: 19,568

Rating: 4.7669902 out of 5

Keywords: Courageous Conversations, the black church, Bryan Loritts, Lisa Fields, Walter Mccray, E Dewey Smith, Frank Thomas, House of Hope, black church, divided mind of the church, christianity, white evangelicalism, black liberation theology, womanist theology, cogic, baptist, ame, black evangelicals, black lives matter, black millennials, gospel, gospel preaching, pastors, apologetics, churches, multiethnic churches, steven furtick, mike todd, td jakes

Id: LoN7nUoFRcg

Length: 74min 56sec (4496 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 17 2019