There is love here. Family. Relationships that span generations. The Black Church in America is, in fact, an intimate portrait of America, with roots deep into centuries of struggle and hardship. The church wears its legacy proudly. It informs our traditions, culture and liturgy. Our greatest strength, however, is also, in many cases, our greatest weakness. We are so invested in our culture, in our tradition, that maintaining those tenets has become, in many cases, the church's entire purpose. The black church in America exists, in large measure, simply to perpetuate itself.
The
black church is not unique in this.
It is, likely, mankind's nature to look for rules and, where none exist, to invent them, complicating the elegance and
simplicity of the Gospel by creating a hierarchy where none
should be. We have, all of us, of all ethnicities, created
our own Sanhedrin. Our own Sadducees. We have re-sewn the temple
veil and reinstated the temple rules, long after Christ suffered
and bled to do away with all of that. “I'm not the most learned
of pastors,” The Reverend Larry L. Broxton, Pastor of Christ
Memorial Baptist Church in Savannah, Georgia, said, “but,
beginning in the rural South at the turn of the 19th century,
black Christians have brought into the church (especially the
southern black Baptist church), old traditions that had either
been taught in error, or have no basis in Scripture whatsoever.”
These traditions are now so deeply rooted within the church,
many ministers and pastors— caught between these traditions and
an education which illuminates the doctrinal error of many of
them— often face a daunting challenge of educating faulty
doctrine out of our churches.
“The pastorate taught me that school is an environment for
learning but the pastorate is not a place to use it
immediately,” Dr. Henry F. Johnson, Interim Pastor of Friendship
Missionary Baptist Church, observed. “Education is important
because knowledge is power, but you must know when to use it and
how to use it. I have found that it is more important to love
the people and establish a relationship in the first couple of
years of the pastorate. During this time you use your education
as you preach, teach, counsel, and exercise you administrative
gifts.”
The best reference for black church culture that I've seen is
Church Administration in the Black Perspective by Floyd Massey,
Jr. and Samuel Berry McKinney. They cover much of this in great
detail, my observations here being a poor man's condensed
version of their wonderful book.
There is absolutely no scientific basis for my observations
here. These are the subjective observations of someone who has
spent 43 years in black churches. Your mileage may vary. These
are traditions we need to take a fresh look at and consider what
is truly worth keeping and what should be done away with.
The good news is, if you are not black, most black churches give
you a kind of waiver on these do's and don'ts. We do not expect
people who are of other cultures to know these things. But black
worshippers who transgress these unwritten rules are considered
barbarians. People who wipe their mouths on their sleeves and
pass gas in crowded rooms. African Americans are simply required
to know these rules, all of them, in great detail, even though
there is fairly little formal training in church etiquette and
protocol available to us. It is part of our oral tradition, a
terribly inefficient means of passing down important details of
our culture, especially the overly complex layers of common
practice the black church, and uniquely the black church,
burdens itself with.
A visitor to our churches might find himself overwhelmed by it
all, or, more likely, would not notice because we simply forgive
their ignorance and don't even bother pointing these things out
to them. But, if we mailed them, say, a pamphlet of do's and
don'ts a week or more before their visit, they might be better
prepared for their visit, much as we'd study a foreign culture
before journeying to that city.
It makes sense for visitors, especially visitors who plan on
participating in leading worship, to consult with someone on the
specific etiquette for the church they are visiting. Paul said,
When I am with the Jews, I become one of them so that I can
bring them to Christ. When I am with those who follow the Jewish
laws, I do the same, even though I am not subject to the law, so
that I can bring them to Christ. When I am with the Gentiles who
do not have the Jewish law, I fit in with them as much as I can.
In this way, I gain their confidence and bring them to Christ.
But I do not discard the law of God; I obey the law of Christ.
When I am with those who are oppressed, I share their oppression
so that I might bring them to Christ. Yes, I try to find common
ground with everyone so that I might bring them to Christ. I do
all this to spread the Good News, and in doing so I enjoy its
blessings. —I Corinthians 9:20-23 NLT
It is obviously our reasonable responsibility to find out ahead
of time what is and what is not an accepted practice.
Most of the difference between pastoring white and black
churches (and I've done both) are matters of culture and education. Black folk don't
read. It's a fact. The sad statistic is that whites read more
than blacks because reading has always been an intrinsic part of
white culture, while blacks have relied on a largely oral
tradition. Black church folk, especially, do not read. They
listen. It's what we have been conditioned to do. We take
orders. We follow instructions issued to us from the pulpit. In
the tradition of the black church, there is a great deal of
jockeying for position. There are a lot of titles, many chiefs
and few Indians. Everybody is Director of Something. Everybody's
a boss. In our culture, it's extremely important to know who is
king of which particular donut shop because, transgressing or
missing this person will result in political retribution against
your agenda or ministry.
Many leaders in the black church are retirees with, frankly, not
much more going on in their lives than being the head of This
Auxiliary or That Board at church. As a result, the politics of
power at church are their main preoccupation, and they bring the
rules of political engagement into God's house where they
clearly do not belong. Many leaders in the black church will
fight and fight dirty to either attain power or retain power.
They will block progress just because an idea or ministry
doesn't speak specifically to them. If they, as individuals, do
not understand or appreciate something (youth ministry is the
best example), the answer is a resounding “no.” It is for this
reason that one church I know, with hundreds of thousands of dollars in the
bank, only has one working PC in the office, and that PC is an
old 600 MHz Celeron running Windows 98. Appeals to upgrade the
one PC in the whole church were routinely denied chiefly because
those in power are older men who do not use PC's and do not
understand why they are important to the efficient operation of
a church.
The older members gravitate towards power because the younger
congregants are, frankly, too self-absorbed to be bothered. The
younger generation is still building families or looking for
spouses or in school or concerned about career and family and,
frankly, leave an inordinate amount of the work to the church
elders. So the weight of blame cannot fall entirely on the
elders, if it weren't for them, many of our churches would be
forced to close their doors. However, this schism has created a
Them Versus Us mentality were the elders distrust the judgment
of the younger generation. And, as a result of being continually
denied, the younger generation, the 30-somethings and
20-somethings, give up and retreat from the political process.
The elders win, yaaay! But the church, a prestigious and
important community hub, limps along with one W98 machine on an
AOL dialup account that goes out over the church's main phone line,
such that when the church secretary is online, callers to the
church receive a busy signal (the trustees voted “no” for
voicemail. Waste of money). Yes, in today's church. As I write these
words.
Ours is a tradition, therefore, of listening rather than
reading. It's how the elders were brought up. It's why we have
no computers, no internet, no web site, no newsletters. It's why
our churches, in large measure, do not publish. Do not
contribute to our culture beyond the pulpit oratory. Ours is not
a culture of literacy but of advocacy. And this mindset, deeply
ingrained in our church elders, is the likely reason why so much
of this layered add-on ritualism endures.
Black folk don't read. Black folk don't study. Many of us can't find books in the Bible. We are quote-ologists, quoting scripture we have heard repeated in the sanctuary for decades. Most of us have absolutely no idea about the origins of these rules and traditions, or why they are so out of line with proper doctrine. Which brings us right to the door of the office of the pastor. In overwhelming measure the pastor has failed to educate the black church as to proper doctrine. In large measure, the black pastor has, sadly, capitulated to the sweeping tide of ignorance, rather than swim upstream of the plantation mindset.
