Beyond Racial Gridlock: A Webinar with Dr. George Yancey

If you feel anything like I do, there is both a sense of grief at our current moment of racial volatility, and also a sense of hope that the Lord is powerfully at work. I do believe He is calling His Church to engage in hard conversations that would enable us to lead as agents of racial reconciliation and transformation in the world. But perhaps the loudest voices are not always the truest voices in our day? Perhaps God is turning up the volume on lesser known, true voices?

While on vacation in July, I read a book by Dr. George Yancey called, Beyond Racial Gridlock, which spoke powerfully to this grief and hope.You can read it here. I was so impressed by Yancey's insights that I sought out a meeting with him in Texas where he lives. My wife and I just happened to be in Denton visiting our oldest son for his 21st birthday, and Yancey has lived in Denton since he became professor of Sociology at the University of North Texas in 1999. He has now moved on to teach at Baylor University, but has remained in Denton because of a love for their community and The Village Church where  he and his wife are committed members. Despite COVID restrictions, I was delighted that Yancey agreed to grab a coffee and have a chat. Here is how he summarized his approach to racial reconciliation. 

About a Gospel Approach to Racial Reconciliation 

Much of the church has taken one of two approaches to racial issues we face in America. One is to sit on our hands and wait for things to blow over, dismissing or ignoring legitimate concerns being put forth, at times lacking compassion for our fellow man, or providing counter arguments that miss the heart of the matter. The other approach desires action, but with little Gospel foundation, this group pursues the media and "woke" crowd narrative of condemnation and guilt which also misses the mark.

Both of these approaches are secular in nature. Both of these approaches are divisive and will lead to further division in our country and the church because both of these approaches lack grace and fail to take into account man's sinful nature. Neither approach will ultimately bring about the needed change of reconciliation in our country or our churches.

Yancey challenges the church to a third way to approach these issues at hand that is rooted in the gospel. Christ is the ultimate reconciler. The church is His reconciling agent. Dr. Yancey calls the church to embrace its Christ given role in this matter showing the way forward through the tensions of our day that only the gospel can provide.

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 After hearing him unpack his theory of mutual responsibility as it had worked out in his multiracial marriage, as well as his church, I asked Dr. Yancey to teach a seminar for our church and the churches we work with. He graciously agreed, and I am persuaded that this webinar will be a game changer for our churches and communities at this time. 

So, I am pleased to invite you to  join us to hear from George Yancey (PhD, University of Texas) teaching on a Gospel Approach to Racial Reconciliation on Tuesday, September 22nd from 4:15 - 6:30 pm PDT via Zoom. I hope you will join us. You can sign up for the webinar here.

About George Yancey

After graduating West Texas State University with a B. S. in Economics, Dr. Yancey attended the University of Texas at Austin and received his doctorate in Sociology in 1995. He first began to study interracial romance but then was fortunate enough to work with Michael Emerson on a half-million dollar grant to study multiracial churches. A few years ago Professor Yancey began to study academic bias and now has also conducted research on anti-Christian attitudes in the United States. That resulted in some of his latest writings. In 1999 he began teaching at the University of North Texas. Then in 2019 he started working for Baylor University with a joint appointment in Sociology and Institute of Religious Studies, focusing on race relations and anti-Christian attitudes in the United States. Concerning racial issues, Dr. Yancey has developed a Christian model for race relations that can take us beyond colorblindness and anti-racism.

A Guarded Heart or a Hard Heart? a quick self-test on emotional health during emotionally charged times

                     

                Above all else guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.  Proverbs 4:23

                                                                                                                                                                      

If you have a beating heart, chances are your heart has taken a beating these last three months. In this age of outrage, divisiveness and social media trolling, we've all taken emotional hits from friends, family, church or work colleagues. Perhaps we've lashed out in retaliation and given as good as we've got?  Many relationships have been strained or even severed in these polarizing times. Cancel culture seems to be winning. Because of this, most of us feel emotionally raw, or worse, numb. Our emotional health is at severe risk during these emotionally charged days. 

I sat with a friend and mentor last night who had received particularly stinging critique from both ends of the political spectrum as he had tried to respond as a Christian leader to the COVID-19 crisis and the protests following the brutal death of George Floyd. From my point of view he had done so with great courage, empathy and wisdom but his critics didn't see it that way. While he spoke about a feeling of fatigue from the relentless waves of criticism, he was remarkably buoyant. In fact, while I had received less severe criticism than he, my heart was more raw than his. Perhaps it's because he had learned to guard his heart?  

I find the above Proverb so helpful in this regard. It compares the heart to a well that is fed by an under-ground spring. This is a metaphor that Jesus spoke of twice in the Gospel of John when he talked about the Holy Spirit. "If anyone believes in me it will be like a spring of living water welling up from his heart to eternal life." (John 4:14) John's commentary on this statement was that Jesus was referring to the Holy Spirit who would be given when Jesus ascended to the Father.  (John 7:39)

While the spring of the Holy Spirit is what imparts life to the heart of a believer, it is the believer who must take care of the well into which the spring flows. We must guard our hearts above all else, not allowing anyone to throw trash down the well so that the pure water gets bitter. Guarding our hearts is like putting a grill  or a grate over the top of a well. The difference between a guarded heart and a hard heart, for me, is that a hard heart has got an iron-clad lid over the well. Nothing can get chucked in, but neither can anyone draw any life out of it. A guarded heart doesn't allow any trash in, but allows life to be drawn out of it, and because it is guarded, the water is pure, not bitter. 

The Apostle Paul wrote in his letter to the Philippians, "I pray that your love may abound in all knowledge and discernment." (Phil 4:11) That is as good a description of a guarded heart as I've heard: to love with discernment. In essence, I want to try and help us to discern whether we have unguarded hearts, hard hearts or guarded hearts. The more common terms for these heart postures may be co-dependence, independence and inter-dependence.

A. How do I know if I have an unguarded heart?  (Co-dependence)

• I experience massive joy from people's encouragement and massive despair from their criticism. 
• I will give of myself willingly but feel resentful if it is not met with praise or gratitude.
• I allow people's opinions of me, either positive or negative, to be the core shaper of my identity. 
• I apologize just to keep the peace even if I don't think I've done anything wrong. The main thing is that we can maintain our relationship.
• I am extremely vulnerable with my emotions to anyone who will listen.

 

B. How do I know if my heart has become hard? (Independence)

• I view encouragement with suspicion and am very defensive if people critique me. 
• I will only give of myself if there is something in it for me.
• I simply don't care what anyone says or thinks about me. God's opinion is the only one that matters.
• I never apologize or forgive.  That is a sign of weakness. If you wrong me you're dead to me.
• I will never be vulnerable with my emotions in case people judge me or take advantage of me

C. How do I know if I am guarding my heart in healthy ways? (Inter-dependence)

• I am able to receive encouragement with sobriety and criticism without plunging into despair
• I have found a way to give of myself without being overly dependent on gratitude or praise
• I am attentive to the ways in which people experience me, but I am shaped most profoundly by what God says about me.
• I am willing to say sorry if I have wronged people. If I cannot see that I have sinned but that you feel sinned against, I am still able to own the fact that I have hurt you. I will be slow to reconcile if there is not true repentance and forgiveness in a relationship. 
• I will be vulnerable with my emotions to trustworthy people who can help me to be more healthy.

More than ever now, we need the well of our hearts to be filled with  the Spirit so that thirsty people can draw on the life of God in this wilderness season. But for this to happen we need to guard our hearts, engaging in healthy inter-dependence rather than unhealthy co-dependence or independence. 

Which heart are you? 

 

My First Black Friend: a tribute to Lizzie Mohame

 The first time I met Lizzie Hadebe, she had a tattered old canvas backpack slung over her shoulder with the words, "For me to live is Christ and to die is gain," scrawled across the top in thick black letters. I was 17, fresh out of high school, full of missionary zeal and youthful naivete'. She was in her late 20's, already engaged to her future husband, and she seemed like a wise old soul to me. My first impressions were that she was both uncompromising and motherly.  First impressions can often be misleading, but on this occasion they were spot on. She quickly became the moral and spiritual rudder of our team as only a mother can, and she and I developed an unlikely yet easy friendship. We were part of the first multi-ethnic band of musicians and actors to travel around Apartheid South Africa with an organization called Youth for Christ, using the arts to speak out about racial reconciliation.

Lizzie was black. She grew up in Soweto, the epicenter of political unrest in our nation and the home of Nelson Mandela. It was 1990, the year  Mandela was released as a political  prisoner and hero of the struggle against Apartheid. It would be 4 years before Apartheid would finally be abolished, but the cracks in the establishment were beginning to show and the nation was a boiling cauldron of fear and anger. Our team was based in Soweto, and spent most days teaching classes in schools, because teachers in Soweto had a 'revolution before education' policy, so students were simply not being taught. We felt that if we could help students pass their English and Mathematics exams during school hours, then we could speak to them about Jesus and reconciliation after hours. It worked pretty well, but our team was overwhelmed and intimidated. Every one except Lizzie, that is. Lizzie was in her element. She was born to teach kids and completely unfazed by the protest marches, derelict classrooms and general volatility of our situation.  

Traveling and living together as actors and singers creates its own natural bond. But our friendship was cemented as Lizzie told stories about growing up as a black South African in Soweto. I'd been so ignorant about how the laws of our country had robbed the majority of the nation of family, wealth, health, education, and ultimately, dignity. I would listen in stunned silence, my ignorance melting and my indignation mounting. How did I not know this was going on? What kind of propaganda had kept me living in such blissful denial of the harsh realities of Apartheid? It was a cataclysmic time for my young mind. Lizzie's gift to me though, was her complete lack of bitterness. She was matter-of-fact about the harshness of her life, yet so lacking in self-pity. She refused to rub salt in my white wounds. Her relentless grace towards me accelerated both my healing from white pride and prejudice, and also my desire to be active in the dismantling of Apartheid.

Also, Lizzie was not a one-cause woman. As important as it was for her to see racial justice and reconciliation,  what hurt her more deeply, even more than racism, was the rejection she suffered from her family when she converted to Christianity. Her father was a priest in the Zionist Christian Church, a toxic blend of ancestor worship, animal sacrifice and Christianity, and had ostracized her when she refused to have a goat sacrificed for her 21st birthday. She bore these scars deeply, but still took me to visit him one day in an attempt to rebuild bridges. Lizzie lived as a reconciler between race, gender, class and family fracture, because she understood that she had been reconciled to Jesus, and drew from Him as her life source.

This past Sunday, we held a forum on race at our church. Although racial fracture has been front-and-center in our nation recently, we didn't have the forum just because it was a relevant socio-political thing to do. We had it  because we believe that racial reconciliation is central to the Gospel. In Galatians 2, when Paul opposed Peter to his face for refusing to eat with the Gentiles, he said, "You are not living in line with the gospel." Of course the evening of lament, empathy and education connected to the racial turmoil of our times, but we believe that it has always been at the heart of the gospel for the Church to live as a reconciled community. If Christ has truly destroyed the dividing wall of hostility between people of different cultures, it remains for us to walk towards one another through the rubble of our history. The gospel can heal us of racial pride, prejudice, passivity and pain. But we need to realize that for minorities, being healed of the pain of racism is often a '70x7' work of grace, because their experience of racism is often recent and repeated. To say, "Just get over it," is a tremendous display of ignorance of the raw depth of ethnic minority's pain. 

One of the panelists at our forum, when asked about a solution to racial fracture in the Church, answered, "The greatest need is to develop real friendships across cultures." I couldn't agree more. I have been challenged and changed more through real friendship than any Facebook debate or expert panel.  But this requires that we overcome our passivity and preference for people who are just like us. It can be ankle-breaking work to walk towards one another through the rubble of our hurts and histories. But the rewards are so rich.

The church I led in Johannesburg helped Lizzie and her husband, Humphrey Mohame, to plant a church in their home town of Orlando, Soweto in 2007. Sadly and shockingly, I received the news in June this year that Lizzie had passed away quite suddenly after a brief illness. As I sat in our race forum on Sunday night, I felt a debt of gratitude to my first black friend, for her brutal honesty and relentless grace towards me. Lizzie never had a Facebook account or sat on an expert panel, but her friendship towards me in some way echoed through to our forum together in Brea, California, 25 years later. 

In her death, Lizzie has left a priceless legacy and has gained her truest Friend.