I have had the privilege in the last few months of meeting with a group of pastors from both black and white churches across the Mississippi Gulf Coast. We gathered with the recognition that Sunday morning is still the most segregated time in our country, and I have been pleased to find that the heart of these men is not for more black or white churches, but for churches that reflect the diversity of God’s kingdom.
At the end of our meeting this afternoon, I was struck by what a profound shift this would be for most of our churches. Why? Because we have valued segregation as a means to church growth for so long. While we have not generally valued racial segregation as a church growth principle (certainly not publicly at least), we have segregated ourselves in a myriad of other ways in the name of church growth and for the sake of the comfort of both unbelievers and members.
For years, Sunday School was the primary evangelistic arm of the church. And what did we do? We segregated Sunday School. Many times we did this by age, but often we segregated by marital status, parental status, etc. The problem is not that it is never okay for younger people or older people to gather to study the Bible. The problem is that we were trying to reach people and disciple people by appealing to their comfort and creating groups of people who were just like them. We were segregating people with the aim of reaching them to a Christ who made both Jew and Gentile one by tearing down the dividing wall of hostility between the two groups (Ephesians 2:14-15).
Now, the worship service is the primary evangelistic arm of most churches. So what do we do? We divide our worship times along many of the same lines that we divided our Sunday School classes. And we are surprised that the church is not unified! The problem we have now with integrating our churches is not just racism, but to integrate our churches we have to go against the model of appealing to people’s comforts and their desire to fit in. Worship with people who are not like you is not always comfortable. Studying the Bible with people who have a different perspective from yours is not always comfortable. But both are a valuable part of what being a part of a body of believers should provide.
So ridding ourselves of the racial division in our churches is not just a problem of racism; it is a problem of how we do church. We already have people leaving our churches because they don’t like the music (to use one example). And this is when most of the people in the church are of the same race, roughly the same socio-economic status, and were raised in generally similar cultures. Imagine what will happen if we begin to worship with people of different races and cultures who worship to styles of music far different than the styles that people are already leaving our churches over.
I don’t mean this to be discouraging but to try to be realistic about the problem. The racial divide in our country is hard enough to overcome, but I don’t think we will be able to overcome that divide in our churches until we stop appealing to people’s comfort in order to get them in our buildings. I don’t think the cause is hopeless. I believe the Spirit of God can unite his people. I just don’t think it does us any good to proceed thinking that racist and prejudicial attitudes are the only obstacles to be overcome.
A Family of Faith 