This and previous posts in this series have been incorporated into the Introduction of my online article, “A Comprehensive Church-Based Ministry to Men.”
From its beginning, Promise Keepers put a huge emphasis on racial reconciliation. And heaven knows that Americans, and White Christian Americans in particular, need to be reminded on a regular basis that racism is a blight on our country and contrary to everything Christianity stands for.
Racial reconciliation: what Promise Keepers got right
Without having to say a word, Promise Keepers showed by example the blessings that come when the love of Christ reigns in the hearts of people of different races.
The first and most prominent way PK promoted racial reconciliation was with its programming. At stadium events, minority — especially Black — worship leaders, musicians, MC’s, and preachers were well represented.
The second way PK promoted racial reconciliation was with its staffing practices. As the organization grew, it consistently sought out leading minority talent from around the country, with the result that 27% of PK’s staff was minority. A prime example is Dr. Raleigh Washington, who eventually became the President of Promise Keepers.
Racial reconciliation: what Promise Keepers got wrong
As magnificent as Promise Keepers was in exemplifying racial reconciliation in practice, there was one event where PK stumbled badly, and that was the pastors conference in Phoenix in February, 2003. This was the second pastors conference PK hosted. The first was in Atlanta in 1996.
The Atlanta conference had 36,000 pastors in attendance, and while there was an emphasis on racial reconciliation at that conference, the primary focus was on edifying and building up the pastors in attendance in their spiritual walk.
I did not attend the pastors conference in Atlanta, but the pastor who went with me to the Phoenix pastors conference had attended the one in Atlanta and talked glowingly about it. But he soon realized that something about the Phoenix conference was very different.
The theme for the Phoenix conference had been announced as “Come Near to Me,” a theme that suggested to him and to me that this conference, like the previous pastors conference, would be about deepening our spiritual walk with the Lord; that the theme, “Come Near to Me,” was describing God speaking to us and and inviting us to “come near” to him.
As it turned out, we were greatly mistaken. Instead of the conference being about having a greater spiritual depth to our relationship with the Lord, the conference was actually all about racial reconciliation. The “Come Near to Me” theme was intended to refer to minorities inviting whites to “come near” to them. This, in spite of the fact that there had been nothing in the promotion of the event mentioning racial reconciliation.
Over the course of the weekend, there was a Black presentation on racial reconciliation, then a Hispanic presentation on racial reconciliation, then an Asian presentation on racial reconciliation, then an American Indian presentation on racial reconciliation. There was even a Hebrew/Christian presentation on racial reconciliation. That was the entire conference!
And on top of it all, we were left with the same old “being without doing” problem every PK conference had: we were told to go find a Black (or Hispanic, or Asian, or Native American Indian, or Hebrew Christian) pastor and befriend him. That was it.
I remember my pastor friend telling me after the conference that he had been so encouraged as a pastor at the Atlanta conference, but now he just felt depressed. In reality, we had been the victims of a bait and switch.
And we were not alone.
As it turned out, the individual responsible for overseeing surveying the pastors as they exited the Phoenix conference later joined my non profit’s board. He said the response in Phoenix was really bad. The pastors attending felt betrayed and angry, like they had been tricked. Promise Keepers never again regained the trust of those pastors. It was another unforced error on PK’s part, and another bullet to its foot.
The moral: you cannot force racial reconciliation.
Racial reconciliation and the early church’s ethic of unity through sacrificial service to one another
Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus.
Of course, cultures and races have clashed since the beginning of time. Discrimination, prejudice and bigotry seem endemic to the human condition.
But there was one group of people who succeeded, for the most part, in overcoming vast differences in cultural practices and racial preferences during a time of increasing diversity and rapid change. That group of people comprised the early church.
The first Christians knew one thing: Christ had died a horrible death for their sins in order to reconcile them to God, and now the risen Christ intended for them to be reconciled to each other the same way; that is, by sacrificing for each other. “In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus.”
Thus, when it came to the concept of reconciliation, the early believers had two things going for them: they had a clear picture of what reconciliation looks like, and they knew specifically what to do in order to accomplish it.
The early church knew vividly what genuine reconciliation looks like
From the very first days of the church, believers enjoyed a high sense of reconciliation with each other. “They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts,” we read in Acts 2:46. Again, in Acts 4:32, Luke tells us, “All the believers were one in heart and mind.” In other words, these believers just liked being around each other.
Later, Paul would write an even more vivid description of what reconciliation is like: “Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit,” Philippians 2:1-4.
Notice the nouns Paul uses here:
- encouragement because united with Christ
- comfort from his love
- common sharing in the Spirit
- tenderness
- compassion
- joy
- like-minded
- having the same love
- being one in spirit
- nothing selfish
- nothing vain
What Paul is describing here is a healthy community of human beings who are completely reconciled to each other and who feel utter joy while being around each other. They are this way because of their shared faith in Jesus Christ.
But how? How did these believers achieve and maintain this amazing state of unity?
The early church achieved and maintained unity through sacrificial service to one another
The first believers were determined to achieve one thing in particular: that there be no needy person among them. They accomplished this task by voluntarily liquidating their personal property to meet pressing needs as they became apparent (Acts 4:34-5:4), by sharing their food and possessions with each other (Acts 4:32), by stressing the importance of work (Ephesians 4:28), and even by taking on second jobs (Acts 20:32-35).
Paul summarized these attitudes and practices of the early believers beautifully when he wrote in Philippians 2:3-4, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.“
Deacons as ministers of cultural reconciliation
But soon a problem arose. The apostles began discriminating against the Hellenistic Jewish widows when they distributed food and this caused dissention. As a result, the church instituted the office of deacon and appointed seven of them to oversee this ministry (See Acts 6:1-6).
While native Jews and Hellenistic Jews were not racially distinct, they were culturally distinct. Hellenistic Jews were from Greek sections of the Roman empire and were, therefore, looked upon with suspicion by native Jews. Thus, by instituting the office of deacon, the early church accomplished “cultural reconciliation,” an accomplishment so impressive that it resulted in the conversion of a large number of priests (Acts 6:7).
That is cultural reconciliation.
The collection for the saints in Jerusalem as a ministry of racial reconciliation
But soon the church expanded to include Gentile as well as Jewish believers. And at this point the church began wrestling with genuine racial prejudice. Numerous issues arose with the introduction of Gentiles into the church: Should Gentiles be required to be circumcised? Are Jewish and Gentile believers on equal footing before God? Should Jewish believers eat with Gentile believers?
Besides resolving these issues on a theological basis — and on one occasion through a divine vision — a primary way the Apostle Paul encouraged racial reconciliation between Jew and Gentile was with his Gentile collection for “the saints in Jerusalem,” that is, for the poorest of the poor believers in the Jerusalem church. This mission to the church in Jerusalem was a major part of Paul’s ministry. In fact, he devotes two chapters to this topic in 2 Corinthians.
“This service that you perform is not only supplying the needs of the Lord’s people but is also overflowing in many expressions of thanks to God. Because of the service by which you have proved yourselves, others will praise God for the obedience that accompanies your confession of the gospel of Christ, and for your generosity in sharing with them and with everyone else. And in their prayers for you their hearts will go out to you, because of the surpassing grace God has given you. Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!” (2 Corinthians 9:12-15)
That is racial reconciliation.
My experience with racial reconciliation through sacrificial service
It was mid September, 1965, and it was my first day back at school after summer vacation. I was now officially a proud 8th grader at Audubon Junior High School.
After lunch, I walked across the hot asphalt that was our “athletic field” to my science class in the temporary prefab classroom that had been hastily installed to house the increased number of students caused by the baby boom.
When I entered the classroom, I found an empty table and chair, plopped my books on the table and myself in the chair, and looked at the chalkboard up front.
And there it was.
The Watts riots
On the chalkboard, written in beautiful cursive, was a message to us students from a Commander in the California National Guard. It turned out that my science classroom had been used by this Commander as his command post during the six day long Watts riots, which had occurred a month earlier.
The note he left thanked us for the use of our classroom, and for the use of our asphalt athletic field as a staging area for his guardsmen and their vehicles. And then he concluded by saying that he hoped that nothing like this ever happened again and that blacks and whites could live together in harmony.
The Watts riots were a traumatic event for me. Our home was just outside the curfew zone and for six nights I and my family watched from our second story balcony as business after business on the horizon went up in flames like tiki torches.
Riding in our car to church that Sunday morning along Crenshaw Boulevard, the western boundary of the curfew zone, we passed national guardsmen on the street corners sitting in their jeeps, rifles in hand, along with blocks of stores with boarded up windows, some with “Black owned” spray painted on the plywood.
Unfortunately, following the Watts riots, the hope expressed by that commander for peaceful coexistence between blacks and whites in Los Angeles was dashed to pieces almost thirty years later by the Rodney King riots.
By 1993, the year of those second riots, I and all four of my siblings had moved out of our childhood home. Mom had passed away, leaving my widowed father to ramble around alone in that huge four bedroom house.
I assumed Dad would eventually die at the hands of blacks
Over the course of the almost three decades since the Watts riots, things had gotten much worse in our neighborhood. “Boyz in the Hood,” the all too realistic Hollywood movie about black gangs in Los Angeles, was filmed just five blocks away from Dad’s home.
Just a few months before the Rodney King riots, Patti and I made the mistake of taking a vacation to California from Texas and stayed overnight with my father. That night we heard people yelling and screaming, gunshots being fired, and a LAPD helicopter flying overhead shining a searchlight on the neighborhood. It was terrifying.
But in the morning, my father, who was in his late 80’s and almost completely deaf, knew nothing about it because he hadn’t heard it.
For years the family urged our father to move. It was just too dangerous. Dad had been robbed at gunpoint, assaulted, carjacked at gunpoint, and had his home set on fire. But he wouldn’t budge.
“That can happen anywhere,” he would say every time someone did something awful to him.
Finally, in exasperation, we gave up badgering him and assumed he was going to eventually die by being murdered.
The Rodney King riots
Then the Rodney King riots happened. My family already had a heightened concern for Dad’s safety, who was now in his 90’s. But the Rodney King riots sent it off the charts.
Over a period of five days, more than 50 people died in the riots and 2,000 were injured. 1,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed and 12,000 people arrested. It took 10,00 National Guard troops, 1,100 Marines and 600 Army soldiers to quell the violence.
But unlike the Watts riots, which happened only near our home, this time the destructive mayhem of the Rodney King riots surrounded it.
My sister, who was Dad’s primary care giver, lived about twenty miles away from Dad’s home. But the riots made it too dangerous for her to get to Dad and take him to her house.
In the midst of chaos, beauty
But then something remarkable happened. Dad’s black neighbors took it upon themselves to protect him and make sure his needs were met. They checked in on him constantly and, since he couldn’t go to the grocery store himself due to the violence, they brought him food.
I know this sounds like simple stuff, but it was so comforting to me and our family to know that Dad was being cared for this way. Even now, decades later, it brings tears to my eyes as I write about it. As a result, I have a deep love and affection for those black neighbors who came to my elderly father’s aid in his time of need.
That is racial reconciliation.
Epilogue
As I conclude this section on Promise Keepers, I have so many fond memories. But I also have one deep regret.
If only Promise Keepers had taken more seriously its example of the men’s ministry at Grace Community Church in Lincoln, Nebraska. Imagine what could have happened if PK had championed men’s team ministry to widows, single moms, and fatherless children to the tens of thousands of men attending just one of its stadium events.
“Hey, everyone, we want to draw your attention to the men of Grace Community Church. They are using teams of men to serve their “male-less households” and they are seeing amazing results. We want to encourage you to follow their example and go back to your churches and form your own teams to serve the widows and single moms in your church. And we also want to encourage you to use your teams to reach out to African American and Latino widows and single moms. Let’s see if we can get 1,000 churches with men’s team ministries!”
Promise Keepers could have accomplished with just one stadium event what it has taken me twenty years and almost one million donor dollars to do with my ministry.
And what if Promise Keepers had promoted men’s team ministry in every one of their stadium events? If they had, there would be tens of thousands of churches with teams of men serving hundreds of thousands of widows, single moms, and fatherless children to this very day.
But it was not to be.
Instead, the Lord took an unsuspecting pastor, who thought he would always be a pastor, turned his life upside down, and sent him on a mission.
This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.
_______________________________________________________________
Learn how to form teams of men for every widow, single mom
and fatherless child in your church at NewCommandment.org.
_______________________________________________________________
