As I continued my tour of the National Civil Rights Museum, I came across The Negro Motorist Green Book, something created “in 1936 by African-American postal carrier Victor Hugo Green. The travel guide was created to help African-Americans find friendly hotels, restaurants, and other businesses across the country, especially in the segregated South.”[1]

Not only haven’t I ever heard of this resource, I have no idea what it’s like to need it or travel with significant, well-founded fear of how “unfriendly” people might be to me or my family. The discrimination of the Jim Crow era was not part of my experience. As a young man, the closest I came to brushing up against it was learning that the church I was married in, Greenwich Baptist Church in Greenwich, NJ, did not allow blacks to become members until the 1950’s.

The fact that this surprised me in 1986 shows just how much change took place in 30 years as a result of the Civil Rights movement. Yet, we still see significant wounds and fractures in our communities—the fruit of several hundred years of slavery, discrimination, and increased secularization. These wounds and fractures often erupt in ways that surprise, bewilder, and cause us to lose heart.

So what do we do? How do I as a Christian minister and American citizen lead in ways that bring healing? How do you do this? How do churches specifically work toward reconciliation, restoration, and the reversal of the effects of discrimination?

Following the tour, I heard two speakers over two days.  Both gave fresh insights related to the questions above. The first was Léonce Crump Jr., author, international speaker, and the founder and lead pastor of Renovation Church in Atlanta.

He talked about how the church should reflect its community, the 3-5-mile radius that surrounds it. He promoted the term transcultural over diversity as the later has been so politicized. The gospel, he reminded us, transcends culture. Additionally, rather than advocating targeted ministry where a church is built on serving one demographic,[2] Crump said our job in planting or revitalizing churches is to contextualize the gospel so that it’s a true reflection of the races, ethnicities, economics, politics, etc. of a particular community.

When everyone is like us, Crump said, we experience less of God; his full creative genius is not displayed. But, how do we pursue this vision?

To move forward in ways that promote true multi-ethnic churches, Crump organized his thoughts under the following headings:

• Theological—it must be a conviction that God’s heart is for the nations (Gen. 12:3; Psa. 86:9, etc.) and that he deeply desires and is pleased with de-segregated worship—when “people out of every kindred, tongue, tribe, and nation worship at the feet of the Lamb” (Rev. 7:9).
• Philosophical—there is a cost to pursuing the conviction above. Folks might leave the church or you’ll get less money.
• Cultural—the church will need to reflect the diversity they see in their 3-5-mile radius. This might mean a white pastor works with his board on an intelligent succession plan so he can step down and make room or a path for a black or Hispanic pastor. Also, in making these institutional changes, we need to ensure that there is true representation, not just tokenism (e.g. We want the black guy in the picture but we really don’t want to give him authority, or influence how we do things.).

The second speaker was Dr. Greg Thompson, a Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. scholar, and social-change agent.

He talked about “the trauma of white supremacy” and organized his talk under four headings:

• Wounding—Thompson believes we all have been influenced by what he calls “sub-terranean white supremacy,” an assumption that I am somehow superior to other races—an assumption that all institutions around me reinforce.
• Healing—Thompson talked about his father who was a good example of racial harmony, as well as how he, Greg, became a Christian at fifteen. Racial reconciliation was a big theme among evangelicals at that time and, although Greg found this vision exciting, he knew little about “institutional racism” or how America was the longest standing social order supporting racism (even Apartheid lasted only 45 years). In fact, it was a huge learning when one of his African-American friends told him, “We didn’t march through the streets of Birmingham to be friends with you.” What his black friend meant was not that Greg’s friendship was unwelcome, but that the Civil Rights movement was not about friendship; it was about changing systems and institutions.
• Calling—Thompson’s doctoral research only confirmed his friend’s poignant comment about institutional racism—even in churches: As Dr. King once said, “It is appalling that the most segregated hour of Christian America is eleven o’clock on Sunday morning.” Thomson said his life’s work is now to:
  • Meet ignorance with education.
  • Meet extraction with investment. By this he meant social impact investments and here is one of the ones he is involved in.
  • Meet control with renunciation. Thomson believes that whites especially need to make room for other voices to be heard. His thoughts here are similar to Crump’s above under the heading “cultural”.
• Yearning—Thompson, with great humility acknowledging that he does not know all the answers, shared that he deeply desires that we would all heal from our presumption of entitlement, that we would love our neighbor, and that our nation would be healed!

Friends, although Crump and Thompson’s thoughts are provocative, admittedly, much of what they say is theoretical. For this reason, along with whatever wisdom you’ve gleaned above, I commend especially the first two resources below:

• One Thing White Evangelicals Should Understand About Racial Reconciliation by Thabiti Anyabwile (3-minute video)
• “How the Country’s Largest White Presbyterian Church Became Multiethnic” by Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra (10-minute read)
• Children of Fire by Thomas Holt
• Voices in Our Blood by John Meacham

[1] From a display in the museum.

[2] This was a popular approach in the 90’s and advocated in books like Rick Warren’s The Purpose-Driven Church. In my own view, the problem is not so much with making use of targeted ministry, it’s making it the goal and ending up with homogeneous churches that don’t reflect their communities and are content in that.