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Tag Archives: slavery

10 Top Reasons Racism Continues in the Church Today

I’m excited to participate in Movement Day 2015 in New York City this coming Thursday to participate on a panel around a frank discussion on bridging barriers of race, culture, and class. In preparation, I thought I would get on paper my top 10 reasons of why racism continues in the church today. Here they are: Failure to capture Scripture’s vision of the church as a multi-racial community that transcends racial, cultural, economic and gender barriers. The gospel is the power of God that bridges the infinite gap between humanity and God as well as the “dividing wall” between races, cultures, ethnicities, social classes, and genders. Measuring success primarily by numbers. We want to grow our churches. We want it to happen quickly. The problem is that bridging racial barriers is slow and will rarely produce “big” numbers. Superficial discipleship. We focus on getting people “over the line” into salvation and connected. We don’t. Read more.

CHRISTMAS AND GOD’S HEART FOR THE POOR

God calls us to serve the poor and marginalized, the people the world discards. We do so because we need them for our own spiritual lives as much as they need us. The prisoner, the mentally ill, the elderly, the “illegal” immigrant, the oppressed, the orphan, the homeless, the severely disabled, etc. – keep us grounded and honest, reminding us of what is important in life. I recorded this 4 minute video for the Nines Conference sponsored by Leadership Network around this topic. At EHS we felt it was particularly appropriate to share this at Christmas. So take a look. And remember, the roots of gift giving at Christmas is St. Nicholas, the former bishop of Myra, who took the churches gold and gave it to poor families. He did so in hope that they would not sell their daughters into slavery in order to put food on the table!