two years ago, I have experienced a strong sense of calling to people in normal, predominantly white, moderate churches. I call my idea the Common Peace Community. The goal is to look at the world through the eyes of the poor and ask why.
Church in Yellowknife. Before coming to the church he and his wife June spent two years at Trout Rock, a tiny fishing village, translating the Bible in to the Dogrib language. Although I didn’t think much about it at the time, their example suggested to me that Christianity was about living sacrificially for the sake of the poor.
moved a thousand miles South to Edmonton, Alberta in 1963, the civil rights movement was reaching a tumultuous climax. In Canada, Martin Luther King Jr. was a hero and white Southerners were dismissed as racist bigots. To my young mind, the spirituality of the civil rights movement looked like the closest thing to genuine Christianity I had ever witnessed. By comparison, the bland moralism of the Baptist churches I attended seemed tepid and uninspiring.
Nancy, in 1977. We both graduated with Master of Divinity degrees. During the 1980s, I pastored churches in Canada and Wyoming before returning to the Seminary in 1989 to work on a doctorate in church history and theology. A LITTLE BACKGROUND ABOUT ME
relatively progressive missions and world religions professor at Southern between 1898 and 1954. Carver wanted Southern Baptists to cooperate with other Baptists and to cooperate with other denominations on the mission field. This made him a controversial, occasionally scandalous figure. By the end of his career he was writing long, complicated books that avoided subjects that might get him in trouble. Carver had been effectively silenced. THE SAD CASE OF W.O. CARVER
had changed very little during my ten year absence. After two years, a fundamentalist faction had taken over the board of trustees and the entire church history faculty was gone. The formerly moderate R. Albert Mohler had reinvented himself as the voice of Southern Baptist conservatism. A crop of conservative professors was hired, then fired for not being conservative enough. Eventually, Dr. Mohler had his faculty singing out of the same hymnal. A CHANGING OF THE GUARD AT SOUTHERN SEMINARY
church in which authoritarian pastors echo the fears and passions of the people they serve. Those who can’t march in lock step are forced out of the parade. Many of us find this kind of enforced conformity distasteful but we aren’t sure what to offer as an alternative. THE HOMOGENEOUS CHURCH
1998. Nancy had lived in the town of 5,000 as a child and was crowned Little Miss Tulia in 1959. Now, after a vivid dream, Nancy felt a strong desire to return to her roots. I had spent the past 20 years as pastor of Baptist and Methodist churches. Nancy was a school teacher. Lydia was a college freshman. Adam and Amos were Jr. and Sr. high school students. A TURNING POINT
of police officers from across the Texas Panhandle descended on the poor end of Tulia, arresting dozens of black residents at gun point. Startled defendants, their hair unbrushed, were paraded before television cameras in their underwear. The headline in the local paper read, “Tulia’s streets cleared of garbage.” The forty-six defendants were called “scumbags” and “a cancer on the community.”
black community . We learned that most people close to the sting operation believed the undercover officer was lying and that innocent people were being framed. Our concern deepened when we discovered that the officer had been fired from every police job he had . In fact, he had been arrested in the middle of the Tulia operation because a sheriff in a nearby county had filed theft charges against him. TROUBLING DISCOVERIES
lost one or both parents to the drug sting. Nancy and I ended up taking three of these children into our home because there was no one to care for them.
and a handful of supporters from the white community would gather in the Bean’s living room to pray, sing, and plot strategy. We called ourselves the Friends of Justice.
attorneys and advocacy groups. After four years of struggle, the undercover agent was exposed as a liar with a history of racist behavior. Three months later, thirteen inmates were released from prison in a dramatic ceremony at the Swisher County courthouse. By the end of that summer, Governor Rick Perry had issued blanket pardons.
I were virtually excommunicated from the churches of Tulia. One congregation wouldn’t allow us to join because we were considered too controversial. Even when it became obvious to everyone that the sting we were opposing was deeply flawed and racially motivated, most church people continued to stand behind the sheriff and his undercover officer. Those who refused to conform were excommunicated from polite society.
pastoral ministry when our fight for justice in Tulia was over. I found, however, that I was now regarded as a radical nonconformist—hardly the kind of person you want preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. Our earlier experience at Southern Seminary helped prepare us for these disturbing revelations. In the meantime, our notoriety had caught the attention of a family in Church Point, Louisiana who were being accused of running a major narcotics operation.
assisting six young men in Jena, Louisiana who faced attempted murder charges after a series of racially charged incidents culminated in a school fight. Friends of Justice employs a narrative strategy. We tell stories that put the pertinent facts of a case into perspective while giving young defendants a face, a faith, a family and a future.
made the perception gap between white and minority Americans painfully obvious. Most of the churches in which I feel most comfortable are light years removed from the issues poor people frequently encounter.
designed with churches in the “messy middle” in mind. I feel a special calling to work with Christians who know about as much about the issues affecting poor people as I did when we started Friends of Justice in 1999. The goal isn’t to create a homogeneous church where everyone adopts the same opinions and social attitudes. The goal is to look at the world through the eyes of the poor and ask why.
in an in-depth study series called JustFaith. This weekly study runs the entire length of the school year. It is a logical next step for those who wish to make a deeper commitment.
make the monthly Common Peace Community gatherings a program of Broadway Baptist Church. 2. I am requesting that the Missions Committee consider adopting JustFaith as a program of Broadway Baptist Church beginning in the fall of 2014.
THEM TO CHURCH The members of messy middle churches are all over the ideological board. For instance, a single person might be conservative on economic issues, theologically moderate and progressive on many social issues.
middle churches is to fall silent on issues that might divide us. In the process, we lose our prophetic voice. We have nothing to say on the great issues of the day.
all you knew about the world was what you learned from attending messy middle worship services, you would never suspect that issues like immigration reform, mass incarceration, abortion, pornography, gun violence, the wealth gap, the shrinking of the middle class, or the environmental crisis existed in the wider world.
PUBLIC ROLE OF THE CHURCH 87% of religious progressives believe that religion is a private matter best kept out of public debates. By contrast, 82% of religious conservatives believe that if everyone had a personal relationship with God, social problems would disappear.
are conservative on social issues but moderate-to- liberal on economic issues. If our cross-cultural conversation ignores money issues, it isn’t a real conversation. The perception gap reflected in this graph is likely much greater in Texas.
Our churches have become places of retreat, bastions of intellectual and spiritual timidity. Sundays are times to convince ourselves that what we believe is true even though it seems to have little bearing on the other six days of life in the big bad world.
. . Our inability to address pressing issues has consequences. Between high school and turning 30, 43% of once-active Millennials drop out of regular church attendance—that amounts to eight million twentysomethings who have, for various reasons, given up on church or Christianity.
“We want churches that emphasize an allegiance to the kingdom of God over an allegiance to a single political party or a single nation . . . You can’t hand us a latte and then go about business as usual and expect us to stick around. We’re not leaving the church because we don’t find the cool factor there; we’re leaving the church because we don’t find Jesus there.”
The Jesus story includes what Jesus taught, the stories he told, the prophetic acts he performed, the Old Testament texts he emphasized in his preaching, and what the Bible says about him.
THEME THAT WOULD GUIDE HIS MINISTRY He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’ And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’
MATTHEW Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’
disciples and said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Luke 6:21-21
Gospels, no one could get to Jesus without wading through a throng of poor, sick, hungry and desperate people. We must look at the world through the eyes of the poor because it is the only way to encounter the living Christ.
the giving and the poor do all the taking, create dependency. When we are dealing with issues that impact the poor, affluence is ignorance. We have much to offer those in need; but they have much to teach us. IGNORANT BY VIRTUE OF AFFLUENCE NOT BUT PATRON CLIENT INFORMED BY POVERTY
make the monthly Common Peace Community gatherings a program of Broadway Baptist Church. 2. I am requesting that the Missions Committee consider adopting JustFaith as a program of Broadway Baptist Church beginning in the fall of 2014.