CS 1 - Into the Fullness

And this has been my journey since being exposed to race and the church at a large white church in Grand Rapids, MI. How does a white farm boy from Bumpville, PA (yes, a real place), come to live in the black Mecca of the US and give his life to Christ’s work of racial reconciliation with a group called OneRace Movement?

It all started back in 2006 when my wife and I were a part of a megachurch, which was white,  outside of Grand Rapids, MI. The church was trying to align themselves with  “God of the oppressed” theology, as it is clear from the Scriptures that God holds a special place for those who have been marginalized. They did a whole sermon series on the book of Exodus. They invited a pastor who is African-American to preach from Isaiah 58 about God’s heart for a certain kind of fasting that, “looses the chains of injustice and unties the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke.”

He shared about his experience in that decade of being called, “boy” at a restaurant by a white man in Grand Rapids, MI and what it was like as a black man living in a majority white culture in America. “Boy” is a racial slur going back to the Jim Crow era and I had no idea what he was talking about. It was in that moment that I felt a deep sense of conviction from the Holy Spirit that this is what I was to give my life to: God’s heart for racial unity in the church. 

I remember realizing in the days and weeks ahead as the scales began to fall from my eyes, “Wait, I came from what culture? My ancestors did what? I never understood how it was constructed, and how the white church was one of the biggest proponents of racism. I couldn’t believe that I had never heard this before. No one ever taught me this history in school. I couldn’t believe the culture that I came from that had done this and that this was in my DNA. In that movement I felt led by the Spirit prompting me to give my life to this work and to commit to the reality that everything my ancestors did, I was going to do the opposite. 

I had breakfast with Pastor Marvin and he was gracious enough to answer all of the questions I had for him as a white man who was clueless to his reality. He recommended I read a few books and start educating myself on the racial history of our country and the complicity of the church. I changed my degree in seminary to a Masters of Intercultural Ministries because my wife and I knew God was calling us into this work. Dr. Reggie Smith began to mentor me in this work as he was pastoring a church in inner-city Grand Rapids and was the adjunct professor at the seminary.

Dr. Reggie pointed me to Divided by Faith, the work of Dr. John Perkins, Christianity Development Association, and many other resources. I did a research paper on how Christ broke down the dividing wall of hostility between the Jews and the Gentiles from Ephesians 2, and as I did, I fell deeply in love with a God that longs to reconcile all things in his son, Jesus Christ.

In 2008, we spent a month living in an African-American community in historic South Atlanta, interning with a non-profit that was doing community development. My wife and I fell in love with the neighborhood and the people living here. After the month was over, we were invited to move back into that community, but at the time we weren’t ready to raise funds and fully move into a community experiencing distress, plus we felt like we had more to learn. 

I was really wrestling with whether or not God was calling us to this work and in August of 2008 I asked the Father for a dream or vision as I went to sleep one night. This is abnormal for me as I typically don’t do this, but was sensing the Father’s leading in that way, so I asked. I woke up the next morning and was amazed at the dream I had just had. In this dream I was sitting on a set of bleachers next to a football field with four young black men. The key thing is that I was sitting with them, I was not in a position of power, but in a position of learning and humility. 

At that moment we weren’t ready to move to Atlanta and so we moved back to Orlando. In Orlando, we were exposed to Polis Institute’s “Serving with Dignity” and the need to live out a dignified interdependent relationship with those different from us. It was through this training that Christ made it very clear as a white man coming from majority culture that I was to be a learner more than a teacher, particularly in the world of racial reconciliation. The words of author Donald Miller resonated with what God was doing in my heart, “Be careful of a white guy with a masters degree, because he thinks he knows it all.” This was deeply convicting as I met all three; I was a white guy. I had a Master’s degree. And I really did think I knew it all. 

I was so deeply impacted by the Serving with Dignity training that I began to raise funds under Polis and we moved to Atlanta in May 2011, to live in historic South Atlanta, work at a small church in the neighborhood under leaders of color, and begin to connect with and share with churches the message of Serving with Dignity. It was the Serving with Dignity training that opened up a lot of doors for me to talk about race within majority white churches, as one of the organization’s lessons pushes deeply into racial and cultural differences and how the Gospel breaks down these barriers. It was also the experience of sharing life with young black men in the neighborhood that deeply shaped the way I saw how little culture cared for their lives and how they were constantly harassed, profiled and accused simply for the color of their skin. These stories shaped me profoundly. 

In 2015, I burned out from ministry and realized that was as a result of a lot of unhealed wounds in my soul, which Christ was inviting me to look into. The reality was that I was living a divided life and wasn’t facing the deep wounds of my past and that Christ was inviting me to reconcile the divided life inside of me. The result of this healing is the discipleship training, Loving Freely, which I have put together. I firmly believe that in order for us to be honest about reconciliation, we must allow this to happen in ourselves first and be honest about the ways in which culture has shaped us.

In 2018, a group of men journeyed deeply into the racial history of our country and its impact upon ourselves through Latasha Morrison’s curriculum at Be the Bridge. This training took the reality of the problem of race in our country and church from an intellectual level into my heart and soul. The journey with these men climaxed when we visited Bryan Stevenson’s work with the Equal Justice Initiative at the Memorial for Peace and Justice to honor the over 4,400 men and women lynched in our country because of white supremacy in Montgomery, AL.

I got connected to the OneRace Movement in late 2017 when I met with Josh Clemons. He shared the vision of what the OneRace Movement was trying to call churches to and from that moment, I was in. I had the honor of co-leading a Reconciler Group of Pastors and Leaders in the Southeast part of the city with Pastor Arthur Breland of United Church. At our first meeting around 40 pastors and leaders showed up to hear about the OneRace Stone Mountain event. In 2019, Pastor Arthur put together a march to commemorate the street name change from Confederate Ave. to United Ave. and we walked together with over three hundred fellow believers in a spirit of unity that was amazing. The Holy Spirit’s presence among us was palpable.

I joined the OneRace Movement as the Director of Groups and Mobilization in January 2020 to work under Josh Clemons as the Director of Groups and Mobilization, as my heart and passion has always been to do this work on the street level. Conferences and marches are beautiful and good, but if we’re not pursuing the new humanity in the norm of life, the structures will still be there and never change. 

It’s always been my heart to equip people to read the Scriptures through the lens of racial reconciliation, pray deeply about the demonic forces of racism in our city, read books written by leaders of color that dive deep into the history of our country and church, and make small, spirit-led, intentionally organic steps towards being the church God intends it to be.

I get asked a lot as a white man, why do you do this when you don’t have to? First, it is God's heart. It’s his heart that his body here on earth is one and we are not, as Jemar Tisby’s The Color of Compromise documents well. This is modeled in Jesus’ prayer in John 17 and manifested in the book of Acts, where we see what happened as a result of the Gospel changing people’s hearts.

Second, God has hard wired me for diversity. I have loved seeing things from a different perspective. I have close friends of color who I have given them permission to point out my cultural blindspots of whiteness. I really value what other people teach me from the way they’ve walked with Jesus and read the Scriptures. God’s redeeming all of creation to what’s revealed in Revelation 7 as, “and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before eat throne and in from of the Lamb.” Jesus taught his disciples to pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” God wants us to live his future reality here and now.

Third, I firmly believe I am the one laying half-dead in the middle of the ditch in Luke 10, in need of Jesus. This was the point of Jesus sharing the story of the good Samaritan, pointing out the rich young ruler’s need for a savior. Being shaped by the majority culture to have all of the answers has made me aware that the more I learn, the more I don’t know, particularly around race. It’s not that I don’t have certain knowledge of the Scriptures and theology, it’s just that I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface on the deep knowledge of God when it comes to race and culture. This is why I love to consult the majority white church on these issues and help them to see their blindspots when it comes to race, culture and class.

Fourth, I am a more complete and better follower of Jesus because I’ve been mentored and impacted by people who look nothing like me. I am a firm believer that in order to live out the fullness of God’s kingdom and live the vision of Revelation 7 here and now, we must be willing to be influenced by people of other races, cultures and classes. Reading Howard Thurman’s “Jesus and the Disinherited” in Seminary shaped me in deeply profound ways. Fifth, after being exposed to the racial history of our country and church back in 2006, as documented in the seminal book, Divided by Faith, I felt the Spirit lead me to move against the stream of racism that the church and culture swims in. This has been something we’ve committed our lives to by the grace of God.

It has been a journey out of my native culture into embracing the beauty of all cultures. When we remain in our own homogeneous units, we’re missing out on the beauty and diversity of the kingdom. 

And one of the biggest ways this has happened for me is having other followers of Jesus who don’t look like point out my cultural blindspots, exactly like what Paul did to Peter in Antioch.