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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Smith, Efrem (Efrem D.), date
The post-black and post-white church : becoming the beloved community in a multi-ethnic world / Efrem Smith. — 1st ed.
p. cm. — (Jossey-Bass leadership network series ; 59)
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-118-03658-7 (hardback); 978-1-118-26088-3 (ebk); 978-1-118-23606-2 (ebk); 978-1-118-22232-4 ( ebk)
1. Church and minorities. 2. Social integration—Religious aspects—Christianity. 3. Reconciliation—
Religious aspects—Christianity. 4. Multiculturalism—Religious aspects—Christianity I. Title.
BV639.M56S65 2012
277.3'083089--dc23
2012012452
To the pastors who raised me: Art Erickson, Edward Berry Sr., Keith Johnson, Bart Campolo, and Gerald Joiner
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The demographic changes occurring as we draw closer to the midpoint of the twenty-first century are prompting a mixture of reactions and responses. If the projections are accurate, by the early 2040s the United States will be a nation without a demographic majority. Whites will drop below 50 percent of the population. In the next ten to fifteen years this will happen for those under the age of eighteen years. It is already true for births in the United States. The 2008 election of Barack Obama as the nation's first Black president, after forty-three consecutive White male presidents, demonstrated that attitudes about race were shifting among a new generation of voters. Some declared that we had entered a post-racial era. Many of us had a growing optimism about the possibility for increasing the numbers of congregations that crossed the dividing lines of race, culture, class, gender, and the like. We even called for a movement of such congregations to serve as models of reconciliation for the broader society.
Yet we have discovered that racial divisions still loom large in the nation's life together. The euphoria of the Obama election and the apparent moment of national reconciliation have faded, now replaced for some by anxiety, fear, and anger as the racial demographics in the United States continue to become more and more diverse. I often wonder if our highly charged political discourse is the result of simmering discontent, just below the surface, about what it means to live in a nation where Whites are no longer in the majority. As I write, the outcry at the killing of a hoodie-wearing African-American teen has launched a national conversation about the continued reality of racial profiling in the lives of citizens of color. Also, this season of national discontent has caused some of us to reflect on the state of our movement for diverse congregations that model reconciliation. Have our attempts at developing reconciled congregations produced demographically diverse Sunday celebrations but offered limited attention to racialized lives and institutional structures?
The Post-Black and Post-White Church arrives at a time when the United States is rediscovering that the effects of its history of racial division are still deeply embedded in the psyches of its people and in the systems that sustain and maintain the country's institutions. Efrem Smith's urgent call for a beloved community rings forth as so many multi-ethnic congregations are struggling to live out the demands of an authentic biblically reconciled fellowship. So this book is very timely!
Efrem Smith is uniquely qualified to write this book. I have known Efrem for nearly twenty-five years. He has lived his life in both African-American and White contexts. He is deeply rooted in his own African-American historical and cultural context yet he easily interacts in White communities. Crossing racial and cultural divides in ways that celebrate difference and promote unity has been his life work. This book shares what he has learned from many years of reconciliation work and, in particular, as the founding pastor of Sanctuary Covenant Church—a multi-ethnic congregation I have observed closely since its beginning. Efrem Smith embodies his vision of the church moving toward a post-Black and post-White ethic.
I must admit I was at first a bit troubled by the terms “post-Black” and “post-White” as applied to the church. The idea of leaving a part of our identity behind did not resonate with me. But as I read this book I discovered that this is not what was meant by Smith. In fact, I found much to be encouraged by. First, the book calls for the formation of multi-ethnic congregations. These congregations should be post-Black and post-White in the sense that they are representative of the next step beyond our long history of racially divided churches in the United States. Therefore, post-Black means that multiethnic congregations must hold on to the most important elements and gifts of the African-American church. To be post-White means that multi-ethnic congregations must let go of the socially constructed Whiteness that so permeates the dominant culture of the United States and reclaim remnants of European cultures that were discarded in the U.S. melting pot project. When this process occurs, Smith argues, congregations will become reconciled, multi-ethnic, and missional. Echoing Martin Luther King Jr., his subtitle envisions the role of these churches—Becoming the Beloved Community in a Multi-Ethnic World.
I deeply appreciate the honesty and transparency with which Efrem Smith shares his insights and stories. He writes as a fellow traveler on the journey. He notes his weaknesses and shortcomings as opportunities for all of us to learn how to become stronger leaders. I congratulate Efrem Smith on this fine work that inspires us to envision a more reconciled future and compels us to do the hard work to get closer to becoming the beloved community.
Curtiss Paul DeYoung
Professor of Reconciliation Studies
Bethel University, St. Paul, MN
Let me take you to church for a moment. This is not a typical church in the United States. Rather, the Sanctuary Covenant Church is a multi-ethnic and missional church located in North Minneapolis, Minnesota.
It's the beginning of spring in Minnesota (which means there could still be a chance for a blizzard to come on the scene at any time), and on this particular Sunday morning, an experience of corporate worship is about to begin that has been focused for the past seven weeks on racial reconciliation and unity. The series is called “Community.”
This series is tied to a broader campaign that the church has been focused on all year: Vision for the City. The goal of the campaign was to break down the purpose statement of the church—“To change the face of the church in America by reconciling the people of the city to God and one another”—in a way that would provide applications for increasing its engagement in the community of North Minneapolis and strengthen the church as a multi-ethnic congregation.
All of the sermons this year lift up important elements intended to provide practical ways for living out the church's purpose. The intended immediate outcome is that the church might be more fruitful in terms of transforming the lives of community residents. The hope is that by focusing on reconciliation, the church members and regular attendees will collectively own the core values, purpose, and vision of the church. The Vision for the City campaign includes not only what goes on through the experience of corporate worship on Sunday morning but also an all-church Bible study on racial reconciliation and multi-ethnic fellowship gatherings during the week. The hope is that the gatherings will play a role in the development of multi-ethnic community groups within the church, which are this church's version of small groups ministry (groups of ten to twenty people who meet outside of the Sunday morning worship and focus on spiritual growth and development).
This Sunday morning, the worship leader is an African- American woman who uses music and other forms of creative arts to encourage the congregation to be involved in the experience of worship from the very beginning. This time also sets up the general theme for this particular worship service, and later, the senior pastor delivers a sermon around this theme. She begins with an opening prayer and then leads a time of praise and worship that includes the sounds of hip-hop, soul, rock, and urban gospel. The Praise and Worship Band moves rhythmically, sounding first like Earth, Wind, and Fire, a rhythm and blues music group; then Kirk Franklin, an urban contemporary gospel artist; and then the David Crowder Band, a six-piece modern Christian band. A multi-ethnic group of singers and two hip-hop emcees, also known as rappers, provide the opportunity to worship God through song in various styles. Their placement on the worship team is intended to reach both a multi-ethnic congregation and members of the surrounding community who are lured in by the sound moving through the neighborhood, flyers that are put in barbershops and hair salons, and word of mouth. Although these talented musicians have the ability to play worship songs in a diversity of genres, the sound most often heard is a soulful and urban one. This is why some call the worship leader the “Patti LaBelle of the Sanctuary Covenant Church.” Younger worshippers of the hip-hop generation call her the “Mary J. Blige of worship.” In fact, she spans generations: she can easily go from a 1970s soul singer, to a hip-hop queen, and then to a contemporary Christian music worship leader. She invites people into the worship by calling the congregation to “get your hands in the air; get your hands in the air right now. If you know what's going down, and Christ wears the crown, get your hands in the air right now!”
As powerful a vocalist as this worship leader is, she does more than entertain us. Her charismatic, contagious, and passionate personality is so tied into the anointing that is on her that it invites the congregation into energetic worship. Nevertheless, it's hard not to notice how talented she is. She is contemporary in style but also has the gospel roots of the Black church within her, a quality of no small importance when leading a multi-ethnic congregation of a thousand people in praise and worship. She provides a welcoming smile, shares her joys and pains, makes everyone laugh, and even raps a bit. She brings a kind of vulnerability to her dancing, shouting, and calling us to “come on and give God some praise up in here!”
The worship band features a leader, who is multi-ethnic and has played with such R&B artists as Alexander O'Neil, Janet Jackson, and Paula Abdul. He now uses his music gifts for ministry in the church to reach others who love an urban sound but have yet to know Christ as their Lord and Savior. Most Sundays the worship band consists of a lead guitar, a bass guitar, a drummer, two keyboards, percussion, and occasionally a horn section. This is why I compared the band's sound at times to Earth, Wind, and Fire.
The worship and band leaders work together using their gifts to lead the congregation through their own versions of “Awesome God,” “Breath,” and “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” The diverse praise and worship includes hymns, Black church gospel standards, and contemporary praise and worship, but they become a unified sound through “putting the spice on it.” This means adding a hip-hop, rhythm-and-blues style to the service.
During the time of praise and worship, you probably find that these different genres of worship, blended into an urban sound, have drawn you deeply in. In fact, African-American urban music has a universal sound that has brought people of many cultures and ethnicities together in America. Jazz, the Motown sound, and now hip-hop have influenced and brought people together across races in a way that other music styles have not.
As you look around at the congregation, you notice that about half the worshippers are White in this service, which can be characterized as hip-hop, neosoul, and urban gospel in style. This reality underscores the influence of African-American and urban music and how it has become what I refer to as post-Black music: the music of Black folks originally that has emerged as the music of America and, in fact, the rest of the world. And there is no question that within this experience of worship, the music is being taken in and owned by a multicultural audience, which is presenting this urban worship style as a gift to God. Through this style of praise and worship, the congregation has grown in just over four years into an intergenerational and multi-ethnic community of a thousand people, with a membership of close to four hundred.
The community in this sanctuary is more than multi-ethnic; it is also intergenerational. The children do not go to Sunday school until after the service. And the contemporary and relevant approach draws older young people to the experience of corporate worship.
You may also notice as you look around that not everyone is clapping, dancing, or jumping up and down. Some are simply standing or sitting, but nevertheless taking it all in. This suggests that not everyone at the Sanctuary is here for the praise and worship style. During the meet-and-greet time after the service, you may find some worshippers who admit that the music is not really their personal taste. For them, the atmosphere that models a sneak preview of heaven on earth draws them in and moves to something beyond just a tolerance of this church's praise and worship style.
There is a Spirit-led, organic “something” that takes place at the Sanctuary Covenant Church that is difficult to put words to, but if we are willing to live in this “something,” it will point us on a larger scale to the future of the church in the United States and beyond. Some are drawn to the Sanctuary Sunday after Sunday because of something unique within the multi-ethnic church. There is sense of what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called “the beloved community.” This kind of community, which dares to be post-Black and post-White, is a multi-ethnic and missional church. The people who are drawn to this kind of worship believe that this is the church that God desires. Note that throughout this book, I use post-Black and post-White to refer to an experience that is beyond a racially segregated one. Historically, and even in some cases today, the most visible sign of segregation is Black and White.
The meet-and-greet time following the praise and worship is important because it assists each week in moving people from simply being in a diverse crowd to building an authentic multi-ethnic community. Before the sermon, members of the reconciliation design team present a dramatic spoken-word piece entitled, “Where I'm From.” The piece is presented by a multi-ethnic group of women and men who tell the unique stories of their upbringing, faith journey, and personal take on the world around them. They end by asking in unison, “Where are you from?” They proclaim together that it is possible to live in a Christ-centered and reconciling community that equips and empowers people to advance the kingdom of God and celebrate diversity. By discovering that advancing the kingdom of God and ethnic diversity is biblical, we are able to celebrate various ethnicities, cultures, and languages as members of God's family.
As senior pastor of the Sanctuary, I preach a sermon after the spoken-word piece entitled “Reconciliation and Worship,” which I end with an altar call.1 Many people come up to the altar that day, some for prayer and others to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. As I look at people of all different backgrounds committing to becoming ambassadors of reconciliation and praying in front of the stage in this school auditorium, I'm overwhelmed by this diverse and beautiful picture.
Stay with me for moment, and maybe you can feel what I am. This is the church as it should be: no dividing walls and a glimpse of heaven. I'm awed, speechless, frozen, warm, and for a moment even removed from the fact that I'm the senior pastor. I look up at the larger group of multi-ethnic people and ask myself, How did this happen? followed by, Thank you, Lord, for the opportunity to be a part of this!
After worship, people are now gathered in what is called the Fellowship Café. I'm watching this diverse group of people eating, laughing, chasing after small children, and making plans to connect later in the week. I find myself, as always, feeling blessed to be part of this church.
This praise and worship experience is something special and out of the norm for church in America. The Sanctuary Covenant Church is not the only multi-ethnic church in the United States, but it doesn't represent the majority of churches in America. In fact, the most visible picture of the church in the United States is one divided by race. I grew up for the most part seeing two kinds of churches, the Black church and the White church, and I believed that this was normal. Yet the neighborhood I grew up in and the schools I attended were multi-ethnic, so I did wonder why there were these separate churches. Even at a young age, I yearned to be part of a church that went beyond the church of Black and White. This is why I call the Sanctuary a post-Black, post-White church. It represents something beyond the church segregated by race by bringing people together to provide a sneak preview of heaven.
In fact, in the United States, society has accepted the homogeneous and segregated church as the normal church. I think about this and grieve because I want the norm of the church in America to be one that lives in the tension and victory of the first church in the book of Acts and the picture of heaven that we see in Revelation 7:9: “After these things I looked, and behold a great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb” (Revelation 7:9).2 To become a multi-ethnic church like the Sanctuary Covenant Church within a society that is very much racialized is no easy task. It takes much work to develop an intentionally multi-ethnic board and staff made up of African-Americans, Asian-Americans, and European-Americans.3 The weekly attendance by ethnicity at the time of my departure from the Sanctuary Covenant Church in 2010 to serve as a regional superintendent within the Evangelical Covenant church was about 55 percent European-American, 35 percent African-American, and the rest Latino and Asian. Many who attended Sunday morning worship commented, “This is what church is supposed to look like.”
As I departed this church, a movement had already risen from this relatively young church. The Sanctuary Covenant Church has already participated in supporting the launching of other multi-ethnic and missional churches: Sanctuary Columbus in Columbus, Ohio, led by Richard Johnson; Blue Oaks Covenant Church in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, led by Nicole Bullock; and Urban Jerusalem, a multi-ethnic and hip-hop church led by Stacey Jones, also in North Minneapolis. Serving now in a regional ministry position, I seek to continue in the development of intentionally multi-ethnic and missional churches. But it all began with the planting of a church in Minneapolis.
As an African-American male in my forties, I often wonder how I came to pastor this amazing church full of the signs and wonders of God while also living in the spiritual warfare of the racialized matrix of the United States. The Sanctuary is a unique church in a society that is still trapped in the historic framework of the church in Black and White. It was started to create a movement that would help make the multi-ethnic and missional church the norm for church in this country. A team of Christian sociologists and reconciliation studies leaders has defined a multiracial congregation as one “in which no one racial group accounts for 80 percent or more of the membership.”4 In other words, a multiracial church is one with only 20 percent diversity. You would think that if this is all it takes for a congregation to be called multi-ethnic, that these churches would be common across the country. This is not the case. There has been no increase in the creation of what I call “beloved churches and communities,” which can serve as visible manifestations of a post-Black, post-White church movement. We need them. These types of churches could lead to the realization of the beloved community, a glimpse of the kingdom of God right here and right now. As Curtiss DeYoung and his colleagues say, “The twenty-first century must be the century of the multiracial congregations.”5 My hope is to inspire many to say yes to this call.