At the end of the day, there are going to be things we will never all universally agree on. But that is no excuse for our not doing the things we can and should be doing together. It’s not an excuse to not feed people. To not clothe people. To not work together to engage poverty and sadness, to not be mothers to the motherless, fathers to the fatherless. “We don’t fellowship with them because they [practice or affirm, or refuse to denounce] [insert your issue here]” is no excuse for not joining hands to do the work we can do, the work we should do, in spite of those differences.
The
disparity between the resources of white
churches and those of black churches here defies belief. If you count
Focus On The Family, The Navigators, New Life Church and the
large Episcopal and Presbyterian churches, and compare their
gross income to that of the (far too many) black churches, here,
the difference would be obscene. Including the mega-ministries,
we’d be looking at a gross resource in hundreds of millions
(Focus, alone, received $124 Million in 2009—Charity Navigator).
If I had to guess about the black church (and I do because most
black churches here hide their books for whatever reason), I’d
have to estimate that combined figure—combined—at under two
million, likely under a million and a half. Likely one *hundred*
times smaller than the combined income of white churches here. A
simple drive around town reveals the shocking difference in
money—hence power and influence—between white and black, with
white churches occupying mammoth, clean, modern campuses, while
most black churches occupy literal shacks—tiny, aging buildings
with crumbing infrastructure.
Now, it’s fun to run around blaming white folk for the situation
of black churches, but there’s no truth in it. The main
advantage white churches might have over black churches is
credit worthiness based on economic demographics. The average
white family earns more than the average black family, and the
white family is, more often than not, giving out of their excess
while the black family is, as often as not, giving sacrificially
out of their need. For many black families, giving to the church
means going without something they actually need, while, for
many white families, giving to the church means scaling back a
family vacation from, say, Disneyworld to Estes Park. This is,
of course, not the case with every white family but this is the
point I’m making: black churches receive less income and do
stupid things with it.
White pastors are, I assume, well paid, but from my observation
these guys are paid in scale with where their church finances
are. The biggest line item on many white churches is the
facility and campus. The biggest line item on most any black
church, here, is the pastor. The pastor’s salary is the church’s
big ticket item, followed by the part-time help and the light
bill and so on. He is their main (and for some, only) full-time
employee. His salary, health benefits and vacation package is
the big number and the main reason most black churches I know of
hide their balance sheet from public scrutiny. A church building
fund presents an additional burden on congregants already
stressed by the recession and trusting God in faith with not
their vacation money but their unemployment check—faithfully
tithing that to the church every week. The effort to upgrade
existing facilities or to purchase a new one is, therefore,
beyond many of our churches because only 50 or so families go
there, maybe only a third of them tithe a full ten percent and,
of those who do, their incomes are, on the aggregate, a lot
lower than white families. For most of our churches, every thin
dime that comes in needs to go, first and foremost, into the
pastor’s pocket and then to feed the existing beast of keeping
the lights on in the tiny, moth-eaten phone booths we call
churches.
The obvious solution is very Korean.
Asian immigrants routinely come here, crowd into a tiny house,
start their own business, work seven days a week and never take
a salary. In many black communities, we dislike these folks and
accuse them of exploiting us, but the truth is, most of us (and
I do not disqualify myself) could not imagine giving up our own
homes and crowding in, working day and night for no money and
going without. But, isn’t that precisely what the original
church, the actual church that Jesus established (as opposed to
whatever we call this mess we do) did? Read Acts Chapter 2: they
gave up everything—everything—to follow Him. To serve one
another, to see to one another’s needs. Socialism? More like
Communism, actually, but it was the Korean immigrant model.
I don’t know about your community, but in mine, the main problem
is not the white folk. It’s us. We won’t work together. We won’t
communicate. We won’t sacrifice together. We have two dozen
building funds when we should cash out every dime of that and
combine it into one. We should build one large campus and share
it among these small groups. Our churches—what we call
churches—are actually small group ministries which could (and,
many actually should) be meeting in homes or these empty
community centers instead of struggling to pay the light bill.
Our pastors could get jobs and put that salary back into the
struggle.
What God keeps saying, to me, anyway, is, here (and maybe there,
too), there really ought to be just one church. The Church At
Colorado Springs. And it can be as diverse as it needs to be.
Together, we could build a campus with real resources and real
opportunity to serve, instead of competing with one another for
who can put the nicest aluminum siding over the old shack. There
are simply too many churches, here. Certainly too many black
churches. It seems, almost every week, some guy announces God
“spoke to him” and told him to set up folding chairs in a
storefront. This is not true. It is provably not true. God may
be speaking to you to go work in ministry, but you need to tarry
a little longer. God is not calling for more churches. God is
calling for better churches.
Any half-wit economist could explain market saturation to you:
anytime a business becomes successful, others jump in and copy
it. There simply aren’t a whole lot of black folk in Southern
Colorado. Why do we need all these churches? We have them for
two main reasons: (1) pastoral ego and (2) us falling out with
one another. Most of this “God called me to a new work” business
is utter nonsense. God called us to work together [1 Corinthians
1:12-13]. It’s the one thing we won’t do. “We don’t fellowship
with them because they [practice or affirm, or refuse to
denounce] [insert your issue here, but more often than not it’s
about gays], and until they come into agreement with us, we
can’t have any fellowship with them.” This is in direct
contravention to Jesus’ teaching, in Luke Chapter 9, that
“…whoever is not against us is for us,” or the personal example
of Christ routinely breaking bread with so-called sinners as
well as religious hypocrites.
The lesson of Christ traveling through Samaria on His way to
Jerusalem [John 4], when no Jew would wish to set foot in a
Samaritan village, is contrary to this ongoing obsession
conservatives have over the acceptance of persons of different
faiths (or even of not faith), of groups who embrace different
doctrines and denominations, and of same-gender loving people,
an issue we’ve allowed to polarize the church’s work. Jews
avoided going to Samaria because they considered any contact
with Samaritans as contamination because of the deep-seated
division that existed between them [2 Kings 17]. The Samaritans,
in blood and religion, were to be avoided because they were
lesser humans, so as Jews traveled between Galilee and Judea
they took the long route to avoid going through Samaria. Today,
we treat homosexuals, most especially, as lesser human beings, a
practice Jesus denounced by personal example—with Samaritans,
with lepers, with people of ill repute. He embraced them all, He
showed them all love..
“We don’t fellowship with them because they [embrace]
[Samaritans], and until they come into agreement with us, we
can’t have any fellowship with them.” This is the foolishness
that paralyzes Christ’s work on earth. We completely polarize
the blood flow within the Body of Christ over social, political
and doctrinal differences. What we need is bypass surgery,
re-routing the blood flow around given obstacles so we keep our
eye on the larger picture. We have Church “A” and Church “B” for
a reason—cultural, focus, and, yes, doctrinal differences. But
just because we are not fluent in Spanish should not stop us
from joining with a Latino church to accomplish a work in that
community. Whatever your position on gays, should that stop you
from partnering with an affirming church to feed homeless
people? Just because that church is affirming, what, does that
mean these guys on the street aren’t hungry? Aren’t cold?
Joining hands with a neighbor you do not agree with does not
signify an endorsement of that neighbor. You’re still you, they
are still them, but if a little girl falls off her bike,
wouldn’t you stop and pick her up? Or would you refuse to help
because your neighbor likes Neil Diamond and you are not a Neil
Diamond-affirming congregation? Why is it that so many of our
churches have no problem partnering with the city government,
which does not claim to know God at all, but refuses to speak to
a church down the street because they affirm Neil Diamond?
Because they speak in tongues (or do not)? Because they have a
woman pastor? Because they’re part of a different district
association?
When Jesus sent His disciples out two by two, He told them to go
find “the man of peace” in the village [Luke 10]. In other
words, go find somebody you can work with. You will note Jesus
didn’t say, “Go find the Christian man of peace.” There were no
Christians because Christ hadn’t died yet. Jesus told His guys
to go find someone they can work with—even a non-believer, even
a Samaritan. Jesus said leave the judging to God [Matthew 7:1].
In terms of working in the community, the bible provides an
unambiguous model in the instruction of Jesus Christ. Go. Help.
Partner with somebody willing to work with you. And get
something done.
Our churches abuse I Corinthians 5
by picking petty nonsense to fuss over and to defend the heresy
of churches not speaking to one another. This is our own
ignorance of God’s word as Paul is talking about incest and
orgies and sex with prostitutes in I Corinthians 5. He is
talking about sexual purity and grievous offenses. Mostly, he is
talking about people who do not know Christ, for if they truly
knew Christ, the Jesus in them would prevail and turn them away
from this behavior. But we routinely engage this teaching as an
excuse to separate from one another over petty doctrinal and
political differences.
At the end of the day, there are going to be things we will
never all universally agree on. But that is no excuse for our
not doing the things we can and should be doing together. It’s
not an excuse to not feed people. To not clothe people. To not
work together to engage poverty and sadness, to not be mothers
to the motherless, fathers to the fatherless. “We don’t
fellowship with them because they [practice or affirm, or refuse
to denounce] [insert your issue here]” is no excuse for not
joining hands to do the work we can do, the work we should do,
in spite of those differences.
And, yet, this is what we do. “We don’t fellowship with them
because they [practice or affirm, or refuse to denounce] [insert
your issue here]” and so we do nothing. Nothing at all. Rather
than partner with some church that doesn’t believe *exactly* the
way you do, you choose to do nothing whatsoever. To help no one.
To feed no one. To clothe or comfort no one. Because your church
can’t afford to do it on your own. But there you are, on your
island, arms folded, smug in your righteousness: the only
apparent holy people in town, too busy pointing fingers to lend
a hand.
“This is My commandment, that you love one
another as I have loved you.” — John 15:12
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as
I have loved you, that you also love one another.” —John
13:34
“And this is His commandment: that we should believe on the name
of His Son Jesus Christ and love one another, as He gave us
commandment.” —1 John 3:23
Our churches will never move to the next level
until God puts an end to the selfishness exhibited, in gross fashion, by these men. God needs to put in place men not only of vision but of humility. Humility enough to stop being led around by the tradition of the Imperial Pastorate and to model their lives and their ministries after the biblical example of God’s Holy Word. In biblical times, in a place as small as Colorado Springs, there never—never—would have been 100 churches. There’d be one—The Church At Colorado Springs. And everybody would have a basketball court, and a swimming pool, and a gym, and a chapel, and a banquet hall, and classrooms and offices. There’d be two thousand people to help carry the load instead of stressing out those faithful few. There’d be actual resources, for us, for the community, to serve, to comfort, to support. We could stop hammering aluminum siding over mold-infested crumbling walls.
Christopher J. Priest
3 July 2011
editor@praisenet.org
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