![]() ![]() So here is what I see has happened over the past five years. I fail often, but am hopefully failing less frequently than I used to. That is a pretty white thing to do, I’m finding out. I soon took my eyes off the people most hurt by racism, and started focusing once again on me. However, these few times I worked up the courage to speak, I was not prepared for how to deal with the backlash from white congregation members that often ensued. I like to think of the handful of times where I did speak up in conversations with other white people and sometimes even in worship. It isn’t like I didn’t do anything, but that isn’t the point. In listening to the people of color closest to me, I heard one consistently clear message: when we white church leaders are silent or indirect about racism and racial injustice, we allow our churches to feel increasingly unsafe for the people hurt the most by racism. It was only later that I began to ask myself how this “gentle” approach affected people I knew who are actually hurt by racism? So I started having conversations. This seemed like a very loving way to try to “restore that person gently” (Galatians 6:1). The intent was to correct these congregants while trying not to offend them. What I did was tolerate some congregants’ racist ideas by neither addressing them directly… or, when we did bring it up, doing so very indirectly. That may have been the intent, but it was not the effect. In listening to the people of color closest to me, I heard one consistently clear message ![]() In my mind, I convinced myself that I could both address the racism while simultaneously “loving everyone” in my congregation. ![]() I recognized the racism, but sometimes tried to strike a kind of “balance”. Stewarding a multiethnic church has become even more complex during these racially-conscious and highly-political times as 76 percent of white Christians voted for Donald Trump, while most Christians of color did not.* Donald Trump’s rhetoric gave legitimacy to racism for many whites, including many white evangelical Christians. ![]() Creating an atmosphere where people of differing races and cultures can worship together is complicated, to put it gently. The past five years have been difficult in churches in America, particularly multiethnic ones which are majority-white. I’m offering them here in the hope that if you need to, you might learn from them too. I am a white male leader at a multiethnic, majority-white church, and I’m learning from my mistakes. I am still developing the muscle-tone at midlife to have conversations with people of color where I mostly just listen, the way God listens to me. I am hoping that someone reading this will learn from my failures. ![]()
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