One Sunday last fall, Bill Hybels, founder and senior pastor at the Willow Creek Community Church in Chicago’s northwest suburbs, was preaching on the logic and power of Jesus’ words “Love thine enemy.” As is his custom, Hybels was working a small semicircle of easels arrayed behind his lectern, reinforcing key phrases. Hybels’ preaching is economical, precise of tone and gesture. Again by custom, he was dressed in black, which accentuated his pale complexion, blue eyes and hair, once Dutch-boy blond but now white. Indeed, if there is a whiter preacher currently running a megachurch, that man must glow.
Yet neither Hybels’ sermon, nor his 23,400-person congregation, is as white as he is. Along with Jesus, he invoked Martin Luther King Jr. Then he introduced Shawn Christopher, a former backup singer for Chaka Khan, who offered a powerhouse rendition of “We Shall Overcome.” As the music swelled, Larry and Renetta Butler, an African-American couple in their usual section in the 7,800-seat sanctuary, exchanged glances. Since Hybels decided 10 years ago to aggressively welcome minorities to his lily-white congregation, Renetta says, few sermons pass without a cue that he is still at it. “He always throws in something,” she says. She’s been around long enough to recall when this wasn’t the case.
In 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. famously declared that “11 o’clock Sunday morning is the most segregated hour of the week … And the Sunday school is still the most segregated school.” That largely remains true today. Despite the growing desegregation of most key American institutions, churches are still a glaring exception. Surveys from 2007 show that fewer than 8% of American congregations have a significant racial mix.
This is a wonderful article about real struggle in parish ministry. God bless Bill Hybels.
The last paragraph is especially moving.
During my stay of almost a year in Springfield, Missouri, I attended (among others) Solid Rock Assembly of God, founded by a black pastor who thought it was his destiny to plant the first black congregation of the AoG in the AoG’s world headquarters city. He was wrong. Springfield already had plenty of black Pentecostal and Evangelical churches, and did not need another one.
While the black churches in Springfield all have some white members, and the white churches all have some black members, the difference between them was always unmistakeable. As a man in a cross-cultural marriage (he was an islander from Barbados, and she was a deep south Alabaman), this pastor ended up founding Springfield’s one and only cross-cultural church. It attracted many out-of-state students attending the local bible colleges, and provided a comfortable place for those in trans-racial marriages.
The mix at the church was about two-thirds white and one-third black and we got along fine. That is, all except for during the “worship” portion of the service, i.e. the group singing, during which no one could decide whether we were supposed to clap on the upbeat or on the down beat.
In my opinion, one of the biggest (and most recent) barriers that will continue to stall integration in the mostly white, mainstream denominations will be the liberal doctrines now being incoprorated there.
It is my sense (and I’d love to hear other opinions on this), that black and Hispanic Christians in the U.S. today, disapprove of these same-sexology abominations at a significantly greater percentage than do whites.
You are correct about the theological barriers, upnorfjoel. A bigger barrier is the clash of cultures. As long as blacks and whites reside in different cultural milieus, they will be most comfortable sticking with their own cultures. This is less true, for instance, in California than in the Deep South.
The same applies to Hispanics. I attended Victory Outreach churches, which is primarily an Hispanic ministry. In Califonia at least one-third of each congregation is non-Hispanic. (They have separate congregations for Spanish-language services.)
My wife and I were part of a very well integrated church, an Every Nation church. The worship was fine except it was too loud for me but I was a distinct minority in that case and race had nothing to do with it. The first congregation we were part of was about 45/45/10 afro, and anglo american and other ethnic groups. The second church was probably about 85/10/5 at the time. Globally, Americans are probably the largest national group followed by Filipinos but no one national group really seems to stand out although the leadership is disproportionally American.
One Sunday a visiting white preacher with a Southern Drawl explained that his children are African American because he had raised his children in South Africa. Our local pastors were African American. On another occasion while the church was looking for new property to acquire, one of the white congregants approached a landowner. When our pastor visited the landowner on a separate occasion the landowner quoted a price that was at least twice what he had mentioned before.
Any church that is not just ‘Christ Centered’ but ‘Christ Obedient’ and grounded in scripture will be engaged in the difficult task of lovingly discerning God’s truth. This has been true of all the churches we have been part of. Churches that are Christ Obedient and have a high proportion of minorities may have more legitimacy in the worlds eyes. The vote in California on proposition 8 suggested that minorities may be more conservative on social issues than previously assumed but I think the picture is complex.
If you are interested in the topic some of these other sites may be of interest:
[url=http://www.fbclr.org/]Fellowship Bible Church[/url] – A conservative, very white church. Every week they squeeze in at least a comment and sometimes devote a number of minutes emphasizing racial unity within the church (or they used to). They used to have a partnership with a predominantly African American church. It would be interesting to know how things have developed.
[url=http://www.thehopeconnection.org/]Hope Christian Church[/url] – Harry Jackson has been a very outspoken opponent of the gay marriage law in DC. The church is predominantly African American with a minority of anglos.
[url=http://www.everynation.org/]Every Nation Churches[/url] – The mission of Every Nation is to establish at least one church in every nation in our generation. One man has established about 200 churches in the Philippines. He is a former Episcopalian.
Please do not forget this is one of the Roman Catholic Church’s greatest strengths and always has been. The issue is far more complex than just that of race. I found the article a bit sentimental and narrow.
South Dakota’s Diocesan Conventions are 50% Native American. Building non-patronizing interactions between conventions is the greater challenge, and Bishops have been calling attention to this for decades. Congregations tend to be spread well apart by distance and culture and are not very integrated – although there are a few good efforts here and there, especially in the middle and west of the state.
Freedom of association or people have the right to self-segregate. Church is one of the last places they’re allowed to do so.
Just like a Pennsylvanian town had its Irish, Italian and Polish churches so it is with this. Not a problem in itself.
There’s legit cultural pride like what Catholic national parishes have and then there’s what the Orthodox call phyletism where you confuse your culture with God and/or the church.
That some pastors are perhaps unintentionally (the ones who started out trying to have 100% integrated congregations) filling a void for the interracial is good too.
Yes, white liberalism turns off a lot of black Christians (the good people of the COGIC church literally right behind my own church don’t believe in gay weddings any more than we do) and such white interactions are often patronising (things invented by whites or upper classes specifically to appeal to non-whites or blue-collar folk usually don’t) which is why all the ‘diversity’ talk is just another sign that, although the trappings have changed from the golf club to granola, Episcopalianism is still one of the world’s whitest churches.
King’s integrationist message was meant to benefit all but really helped upper-class blacks like him join white society if they wanted to. It didn’t change things for the better for most blacks (as skyrocketing black illegitimacy and gangsta rap show).
I think the main thing is does the leadership support the notion of an integrated church, and are they willing to manage the frustration and challenges that come with it. I’ve seen both evangelical churches and liberal churches manage it successfully.
I had a liberal, prosperous, born and bred Episcopal family that always took the Sunday off when I brought in a Jazz band to back up those Sundays we’d use LEVAS. I have bi-racial couples who believe in the liberality of the Episcopal church. But unless a church is proactive, people prefer people who look like them. Hybels is proactive, and good for him.
test