This interpersonal connection is more important than finding a worship style that white, black and Latino will all like. (Good luck with that.) God did not call us to put on a multi-cultural display on the weekend but to live out a multi-cultural wonder throughout the week. When we begin to live multi-cultural lives, our events will very naturally take on a multi-cultural flavor. As believers who have been united in Christ, we aren’t pursuing sameness but a covenant community of oneness.
The power to pursue this kind of unity is found only in the gospel. This is where we as Christians can offer something our society can only yearn for. Our society wants us to be aware. At key moments of national tragedy, they want us to interact. But they can’t offer a way for us to love each other like family. But we in the church know that we are a family—black, white, Latino, Asian, Arab and every other ethnic group that God has lovingly created. As the old saying goes, the ground is level at the foot of the cross.
Practically, for those of us in church leadership, pursuing gospel community means we structure our services differently than if our entire church were white. It means we prioritize diversity in the leaders we’re developing. It means we host forums where we can have a safe space to talk about our ethnic differences. It means we engage in and deepen multi-ethnic friendships in our small groups.
This kind of unity turned heads when Christianity first burst onto the scene in the first century. And if we pursue multi-cultural lives, it’s going to turn heads today, too.
Is 11:00 Still the Most Segregated Hour in the SBC?
As I consider diversity and racial reconciliation in the future of the Southern Baptist Convention, I see many of the same obstacles and many of the same opportunities we have dealt with on the local church level. I suspect that the path to diversity and reconciliation in the SBC will look similar to the one we’re taking on the congregational level. We have to be intentional about inviting other brothers and sisters into conversation and leadership. We need to recognize the leadership gifts of brothers and sisters of color that God has placed in our midst and embrace their wisdom and influence. Truthfully, we’ve always needed them, but we need them especially now in these difficult days. We need to recognize that they are God’s gifts to us.
The good news is that the SBC is actually very well poised to make these moves. God is raising up new leaders. Of course, I am painfully aware that our history presents significant difficulties. The SBC was forged on the wrong side of the racial question and at far too many key points in our history, our leaders have been either (at best) slow to adopt or (at worst) resistant to needed cultural changes. Some of our leaders even presented “biblical” defenses of slavery and segregation. Thankfully, the SBC has made statements clearly condemning these racist attitudes in our past. I think of the 1995 resolution, “On Racial Reconciliation,” in which the leaders of the SBC publicly repented and apologized for slavery’s role in the formation of the Convention. More recently, in 2014, Alan Cross made a motion for the Executive Committee to form a task force to assess how far we’ve come regarding diversity. Those recent statements don’t erase the stain of racism from our past, but they do presage, I pray, a more united way forward. Justice begins with repentance.
More important than official statements by a Convention that gathers once a year, however, is the reality of what takes place on a week-to-week level in our actual churches. More than 21 percent of Southern Baptists are non-white. Let that sink in, and praise God for it. The numbers, in fact, align rather closely to the national census statistics. The U.S. population is 12 percent African-American, 16 percent Latino, and 4.7 percent Asian. The number of Southern Baptists in these demographics is similar: 7.4 percent African American, 6.7 percent Latino, and 3.9 percent Asian. Now, much of this diversity reflects congregations that are mostly homogeneous, and we have a lot of room to grow in individual churches pursuing reconciliation at the church level. But Convention-wide, we are reflective of the demographics of our national “community,” which is an encouraging start. (And we’re much closer than the mainline denominations, which are nearly all white.)
We are, contrary to many expectations, a rather diverse Convention. The real work for us going forward is to bring our leadership into alignment with where our people are. Nearly a fifth of our churchgoers are black, Latino, or Asian, but our leadership still falls far short of that mark. The leaders are there, and we all stand to benefit from the treasures they bring the Convention. But we’ve got to give them the platform to do it.
By God’s grace, I know we can get there. What we’re seeing happen at The Summit Church—though we have much, much further to go—proves to me that we can. The Father God wants it; the Son of God promised it; the Spirit of God will accomplish it.
A Mountaintop Moment
Our nation desperately wants to see racial unity. But events of the last few years have revealed that the divide between whites and blacks in the U.S. is deep and painful. Our society yearns for change but lacks the power to achieve it.
I believe the SBC is in a kairos moment regarding race. Kairos is a Greek word for time that implies a specially appointed moment in history. I believe that God has appointed this moment in the world for the church to rise up and demonstrate a unity in Christ that the world yearns for but has been unable to accomplish.
