It’s a story I hesitate to tell today, because 33 years after the fact, it almost seems surreal. But in 1990, I was doing my job as a crime reporter for the Dallas Times Herald. On a particular Thursday night, I was driving around South Dallas, looking for story material. That part of the city was hopping. Jamaican gangsters ran the crack cocaine trade, and awful stuff was happening all the time.
On this night, I got totally lost. I hadn’t lived in Dallas very long, and for some bizarre reason I thought that a church whose name started with “Pleasant Grove” would actually be in Pleasant Grove, in Southeast Dallas. But I was in the heart of the ‘hood, in South Dallas. Totally different neighborhood. Hey, folks—we didn’t have GPS back then. We had spiral-bound Mapsco books, and you had to flip through them while you were driving in the dark, drinking your Slurpee, and stressing about making your deadline. Somehow we managed.
I was looking for churches where the leaders prayed for the healing of crack cocaine addicts. I figured I’d go to the part of town where there were a lot of crack cocaine consumers.
Well, I breezed past the strangely named Pleasant Grove church—it’s still there, in South Dallas—and ended up on a one-block branch of a side street. I spotted two churches—one a nice-looking brick building, and the other a white house with a crooked church sign. There were lights on in both places. I decided to aim for the brick building—it looked more like a church—but then the Holy Spirit stopped me in front of the white house. I mean the Spirit of God manifested in my car, very loudly (I speak metaphorically), even louder than the Trinidadian soca music I was blasting in my Honda Accord. I looked at the janky church building, and thought, really, God?
I parked my car across the street and walked toward the door. It was dusk, and I found out later that choir practice was getting out. A girl of about 10 was standing on the sidewalk, next to the street. I walked up to her, reporter’s notebook in hand, and asked four quick questions.
“Do you believe in healing prayer?”
“Yes,” she said, with energy.
“Does your minister pray for crack addicts?”
“Yes.”
“Are any getting healed?”
“Yes.”
“Would you introduce me to your pastor?”
“Yes,” she said, then turned around and pointed to him. He had just stepped outside the front door of the church. “There he is,” she said. And that was the last we ever spoke. I turned my attention to her pastor, and I began popping questions. And thus was the beginning of not only a front-page Sunday story, but 22 years as a member of this Black Pentecostal church. (I didn’t join right away—that wouldn’t have been kosher as a professional journalist. But I made a decision in my heart.) The nucleus of the church was several men and women who’d been miraculously healed of addictions.
Now about that 10-year-old girl. No one knows who she is. I never saw her again, and in a church of about 50 people, you get to know everyone pretty quickly. I’m not very good with children’s ages, but there was no girl of that approximate age attending the church at the time.
I tell you this story for one reason. If you are a member of the majority culture and earnestly desire racial unity in the church, is it possible that God is calling you to “cross the line” by faith and become part of a worshiping community of another culture? Could it be that you are the change agent, instead of waiting for your church to change?
Earlier this year I was complaining to an African-American friend about how difficult it was to find a Pentecostal-Charismatic church that expended more energy toward racial unity than propping up Donald Trump’s failed candidacy. My friend gently reminded me that there were hundreds—nay, thousands—of pastors of color in neighborhood churches who never bowed the knee to the image of Donald Trump.
And that is so true. I can’t believe I hadn’t thought of that.
What is God telling you? Is it time to cross the line?
I crossed the line, initially because I was chasing a story, but also because God had already planted a seed in my heart about racial unity in the Church. I had only a wisp of theology to back it up, a sense deep inside that we were meant to be together—that, in fact, we are stronger together—but I have concluded now that Revelation 7:9-10 is paradigmatic for the Church today. Though it takes place in heaven, we are to seek it in the present. It is a picture of what God intended from the beginning.
In this passage of John’s Revelation, a great multitude of “every nation, tribe, people and language” stands before the throne worshiping God as equals. These redeemed people possess their glorified bodies, yet the distinctions of race, ethnicity, and language remain. You could say they are engaged in multiethnic worship: The white-robed saints glorify the Lamb of God as distinct “nations” with languages and cultures that transfer into heaven. The angels, elders, and “four living creatures” approve of this praise and add their “Amen!” to it.
We see from this biblical passage that God esteems differences, colors, and cultures, evidently desiring a symphony rather than a solo. This is the way he meant it to be.
This poses a contrast to the liturgy in many modern-day “diverse” but majority culture-led churches, where the music and preaching are put through—to borrow a term from my journalism days—the “blanderizer,” producing a soft-white form of word and worship, stripped of any distinctly ethnic features and designed, I would argue, to make white worshipers feel comfortable.
How about getting uncomfortable?
This passage also contrasts with separatism—or, even worse, being content with the fact that Sunday-morning worship remains the most segregated hour in America, the one time when the government does not legislate our behavior, yet we choose to self-segregate. (I am not speaking of Black churches that formed separate communities in response to white people’s racial hatred, as well as the necessity to ensure the well-being and survival of their people, or churches created to spiritually nurture people of other languages.)
What does it say about the depth of our identity in Christ when we always look to worship with people who are like us racially, ethnically, and socially? When it’s always about whether I feel comfortable?
The body of Christ, after all, is not an affinity group or social club; it is the fellowship of the friends of God, those who have received new life through the Son and have set their hearts to obey him.
I will say it again: Is God calling you to take a big risk and cross the line?
Or will you wait till the match is lit in our incredibly divisive time? Because the tinder is bone-dry, and you are playing chicken with disaster. When the conflagration comes, it will be too late. You will be an intruder, a possible danger, instead of a potential beloved brother or sister in Christ.
A response from an African-American Christian: In the late 1990s, my husband and I embarked on a transformative journey, transitioning our family from the familiar surroundings of a Black church to a multiracial congregation led by a white senior pastor. The leadership part is super-important to mention because while we were doing our best to love each other as sisters and brothers and not simply as friends, looking back, the gospel was delivered through the lens of a white American perspective. In retrospect, I strongly believe people of color in our church had inadvertently assimilated. The underlying complexities of race deeply ingrained in our individual and collective identities were largely overlooked.
I also firmly believe that the profound impact of these issues is often underestimated, and it is only through the intervention of the Holy Spirit that we can uncover the subtle traces of the enemy on our souls. While I advocate for crossing over, it is essential to do so with the intention of exploring the concealed aspects within our hearts and churches. Love and curiosity must be our guides as we strive to comprehend, through uncomfortable dialogue, the diverse hearts and perspectives of those around us.
A collective commitment to holding unity in one hand and acknowledging differences in the other is crucial. Engaging in open dialogue that elicits tears and prompts repentance is the path to God bestowing beauty upon His Church in exchange for the ashes of division. It is through this process that we can navigate the hidden depths of our hearts, fostering a sustainable transformative unity that transcends the surface and embraces the richness of diversity.
Next: What the racial unity journey actually looks like.
