The (Im)partial Church : Episode 20 | Moving Forward
March 27, 2023
That's a wrap for season two, as we reflect on what we've learned. We also hear from a church that is taking the next steps to create a hospitable environment in which all God's people thrive. It may sound like a tall order, but we know that God can provide us with abundant love and resources. If this conversation inspires further questions feel free to reach out to us at theimpartialchurch@lhm.org.
The (Im)partial Church
Episode 02-10-20
Rev. Dr. Gerard Bolling: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to The (Im)partial Church. How's it going?
Professor Janine Bolling: It's going great. How are you?
Gerard: I am doing really well. Actually, this is sort of a sad day because this is the final episode of our Impartial Church season.
Janine: Yes it is. Yes it is. We've done a lot this season—if we look back at where we've been.
Gerard: We've been a lot of places and we've done a lot of things. I mean, we started in the research; we looked at the Beyond Diversity survey. We had conversations about that and what was important to people, according to some qualitative and quantitative research there. We heard from subject-matter experts. That was a lot of fun being able to hear their perspectives and the way that they're on the ground with these issues, and how these issues have taken shape and form from their professional opinions. Then we also took an honest look at ourselves, I call that truth time or red table time, when you're at the red table with yourself to look at what you've done or what you haven't done: a sin of commission or a sin of omission, and try to look for some continuous improvement options as well.
Janine: Yeah. I think that we've also learned about what to do with conviction and how that might feel from King David, if you remember when we did that story. We also talked about why racial disparities are challenging, but why it's also really important that we keep on pressing on.
Gerard: Keep on keeping on. Yeah, but no, it's important to keep on keeping on. We also talked to some people who are actually doing the work, which is nice, when you can take it to a practical level and see what people are doing on the ground. And how it doesn't always just look like serving the "unfortunate," but also it's intentional. It's an intentional building and gathering around. What does it look like to be a community of people gathered in this work together and to look at this multiracial community and say, "I'm a part of this," and make it by directional. Instead of just making it all about you or how good you look serving at a place or how good it makes you feel. All that in 10 episodes. That was a lot to unpack, but guess what we're going to do a little bit more today. So, settle in for the final episode of the Impartial Church.
Gerard: Hey y'all! I'm Gerard.
Janine: I'm Janine.
Gerard: I'm the big brother.
Janine: But I'm the older sister and we're brother and sister in Christ.
Gerard: We grew up in Brooklyn, New York.
Janine: I'm still living in Brooklyn, but I serve in the Bronx.
Gerard: I'm a professor at Concordia University in Texas and a pastor at a congregation in St. Louis.
Janine: It's been said Sunday morning is the most segregated time in America.
Gerard: Issues with race and culture still plague our communities and our churches.
Janine: But what can we do about it? Should we see color?
Gerard: Or be colorblind?
Janine: What's our responsibility in bringing about unity in our neighborhoods and in our church pews?
Gerard: It's a delicate topic, but one we must tackle with grace.
Janine: Pull up your chair to the table as we bring Jesus to the center of this conversation of—
Gerard: The Impartial Church.
Gerard: We've covered a lot of ground here. We've done a lot of really, really good work. Work is something that comes up as a term in even therapy sessions. In a therapy session, and this is kind of what this has been a little bit for all of us. You point out the problems; you reflect on why they exist or why you didn't know they exist but still realize they exist. And then you uncover some potential fears around it and uncover some ways that you can improve towards the future, and you get some tools to do that as well. We are still in this response portion of the season, so now it's time to do the work.
But before we begin, we have to tackle one misconception. It's important to understand that we have advantages and disadvantages when we're dealing with a scarcity mentality. And how people who grow up with parents with limited resources are compared to people who grow up with parents with lots of resources. I think this important to name and talk about especially in the communities that you and I work in, Janine, because we work in communities like this.
That in vulnerable communities, it's not just all about how we can make those people in those communities know, "Oh, we are able to help you." It's sort of the idea behind when helping hurts, that book. This is our way of helping you and this is our way of doing good and being do-gooders. You need so much. Instead of thinking of it that way and thinking of it as one direction—of us coming to you and making your life better. Instead, we think that the relationship that God asks us and calls us to have with people who are different than us, and that continuous over-time connection, is us realizing that we have a God of infinite resources. And our relationship with people who are not like us is going to change our disposition over time when it comes to unpacking that and discussing that. Because sometimes we think it's all about us and what we can do and how good we are, but it's supposed to be bi-directional. Does that make sense?
Janine: Bi-directional. How is that bi-directional?
Gerard: Well, it's not just like being able to give something. Take, for example, Christmas. If you adopt from an angel tree at another church that's maybe disadvantaged, if you adopt a family or if you adopt a child from that angel tree, you shouldn't be like, "Oh, look how great I am for adopting them and look what I bought for them. Look how good it is." And all those different things and then feeling like that's all that relationship was. Instead, maybe you should say to yourself, "Is there a way that I can drop this off to the family so that I can have a conversation with them and see what makes them tick? Maybe they'll invite me to dinner. I'll get to have dinner at their house and see how that feels and build this sort of rapport and relationship with them. If both my family and their family are in Christ, then we're family, in general." You get to explore what that looks like and you get to have friends that don't look and walk and talk and act and have as much as you. You get to kind of mix it up with the people that you interact with.
The scarcity mentality that we have, it has some real disadvantages. We have to look to the Scriptures for counsel on this and see what God says about it. Philippians 2 famously says, "Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit. Nothing but in humility, count others as more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look, not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Having this mind amongst yourselves, which is in Christ Jesus." We see this happening in the Acts as well, where we're supposed to lay everything at the disciples' feet or the apostle's feet. We're not supposed to count the things that we have as "Oh. This is mine. This is what I have to do with it. This is what I can get out of it." I've got to kind of have this scarcity mentality, hoarder mentality, but instead we're looking at the people around us and looking and seeing how we can help.
Janine: Absolutely. I think that it's really important to understand where that scarcity mentality comes from. Because if we serve and we understand that God has infinite resources and He's a God of generosity, that's part of His nature, then when we think about scarcity, we think of that as being opposite to God. When He's asking us not to look at our own interests but also look into the interests of others, it feels counter cultural because it is. When we are given instructions on an airplane, right? They say put on your own masks before you secure the mask of someone else. And that's our own interest; that's saving our life so that's a little bit different. However, if you put on your own mask and you continue to look around as people are struggling with their masks, then you have a problem. Then it's a scarcity mindset. Where I'm going to concentrate on putting on my own mask, keeping it glued to my head, keep tightening the strings, and keep looking around to see if maybe I can take another mask in case this one breaks—that's when we get into that "I've got to gather a much as I can to myself so that no one takes it from me." And that ownership piece is where we get into the struggle with generosity, and understanding generosity how Give gives it. So, if everything is His and we're just simply giving it back, much like the example that we see in Genesis with Cain and Abel. Then that means that when we're parting ways with it, we're really returning it to its rightful Owner.
So, when we give our time, we're just giving the rightful Owner, which is God who created our world, the time back. And so when we think about what that means for racial reconciliation and we're asked to look at other people's interests, other struggles that are happening that are maybe more forefront, whether it be in the news or in the community that we work or live in, because there's so much time built up of the majority, whoever that majority is, and sometimes it's racial and sometimes it's not. Giving up that space as the majority to give that microphone to someone else, to give that space for someone else, to give that platform to someone else is counter cultural, but it's exactly what we're called to do from our generous God.
Gerard: Absolutely. Absolutely. I think that it's one of these things where I love that you said we're giving back to Him that what He's already given to us. We have to remember it didn't belong to us in the first place—that it was lent to us by God. Every single thing that we see or touch belongs to Him. I think we have a hard time remembering that. In 1 John, it also shows us that we're able to love generously because of what God did first, just in that same sentiment. 1 John 4:7-21, that's one of your favorite texts in the whole Bible, isn't it, Janine?
Janine: It is. It is. It really is. Because it says all the things that I need to constantly be reminded of. Let's read it.
1 John 4, starting at verse 7. "Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love. In this, the love of God was made manifest among us that God sent His only Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God abides in us and His love is perfected in us."
Then the writer goes on in verse 13. "By this, we know that we abide in Him as He is in us because He has given us His Spirit and we have seen and testified that the Father has sent His Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe that the love of God has for us. God is love and whoever abides in love abides in God and God abides in Him. By this is love perfected within us so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment because as He is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because He first loved us. If anyone says, 'I love God,' and hates his brother, he's a liar. For he who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, who he has not seen. This commandment we have from Him, whoever loves God must also love his brother."
When we look at this big, long passage, obviously the word that gets repeated over and over again is love. How that love is played out is really more important. We're not looking at the what here, we're looking at the how. When we think about it and when we listen and when we understand what God is doing, it's His work over and over again. God does it first so that we can do it next and do it again and do it again and do it again and do it again. When we think about that commandment that John ends with, "whoever loves God must also love his brother," if you're a person who identifies as Christian, you're a baptized child of God and you're holding hate in your heart for somebody else, you're out of line. Honestly, you're out of line. Whoever says that they love God cannot be in opposition with somebody else who's on this earth, who's their brother or sister in Christ.
Gerard: I think that that's the hardest thing to swallow is that if we say we love God, then we also are called to love one another. We've talked about this on this podcast before: it's easy to love people we like; the people that we do not like so much, it's so difficult to love those people. It's so difficult to come from a position of how can I connect with you? How can I take care of you? How can I still put you above myself and put you in a place where I actually am trying and striving, even though it might be difficult to love you? Then also just people who look different than you too and you're trying to work the work, as I call it, work the work in your community and beyond and do that day-to-day work inside of your congregation that you belong to. There are two congregants at Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Indianapolis named Jaquia and Adam, who are consciously working on a team to do this work in their own setting where they are. We'll hear from them right now.
Jaquia Stacy. I'm Jaquia Stacy. I'm a member of Holy Cross Lutheran and church here in Indianapolis, Indiana. I've been a member for about six years.
Adam Eichelberger: My name is Adam Eichelberger. I've been a member of the LCMS since birth. My mother was LCMS for her whole life. My dad came to the LCMS after marrying her. We were raised LCMS. I've been a member of Holy Cross here since 2017, after 20 some years away from it, from the 90s onward and having been members of various other LCMS churches throughout the Midwest and the East Coast and all over the place because dad was an officer in the Navy. In the last several months here, we've been working on our diversity committee there to basically say, "Hey, what does the local community look like? Why are we not representative of that current local community? What areas do we represent? What areas don't we represent? What can we do to be a more welcoming place to all people so that we are putting really the cross of Christ ahead of all things and looking to how do we build relationships and bridges with everyone?" As our pastor likes to say, "Building bridges over building walls."
Jaquia: I feel that definitely we're looking at building a multi-ethnic, multi-racial congregation and building relationships within our community so that we can go out and spread the word of Jesus Christ. That's been something really good that we've started laying the foundation for. Definitely not an easy walk, but definitely a walk that our diversity committee is championing.
Gerard: Absolutely. I think that the work of building a community that is multi-ethnic is multi-faceted. So, you have to have a group of people that's willing to sit around at the table who are different than one another, who are able to just talk about this and what it is and what it means and what it does not mean, to sharpen focus. There's an old term that I remember from our teacher at St. John's Lutheran in New York, when we were little. She said, "An unsharpened pencil still writes, but just not as well." I'll never forget that. You want to be able to make those sharp turns and curves and do things with precision when it comes to this type of work. I'm really proud of them for doing this, for meeting regularly about this.
Janine: Absolutely. I think that when they're looking to talk through what Adam was really saying—I think he was quoting his past and when he said building bridges over building walls—that's really hard to do, structurally, and then just literally for people in their lives. So often we want our spiritual place to be our place of solace, our place of refuge. We think about the problems of the world and bringing them into the church and it's like, "You know what? Let's keep politics out of it. Let's keep all that stuff just where it's at. I come to church to listen, to read, to hear, to love. I don't want to deal with all the mess," but the thing about the mess is, is those are the people who are in church. I really like the idea of building a bridge over building a wall. Because the wall is going to stop that conversation in the tracks and then the bridge is something that you can walk through together. And if you need to leave somebody on the bridge, so be it. You know what I mean?
Gerard: Uh-huh. Let's hear more from Jaquia and Adam about this.
Jaquia: I think that the church is a perfect place because here we have Jesus, we have Christ. And we are supposed to model our behavior like Him and be Christlike in treating other people right. What better place would it be than to start here in showing the grace and the love that Jesus gives to all of us? We should definitely be in the conversation and making sure that people know that this is something that Christ calls us to do to be a part of, as far as building diversity and I want to say righting wrongs. I know it's a big step whenever we get to the reconciliation part, but just being in the conversation, and the church should be, because that's who we are; it's part of us.
Adam: It really goes back to that first Great Commission: "Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations." There is no way to get around all nations and all peoples. All is all. If we're looking at our local missionary here and we're saying we're not reaching all people here; then we need to say, well, who are we not reaching and start intentionally targeting who we're not reaching."
Gerard: Many people on our podcast, including Jaquia and Adam, have said that the church is the perfect place to have this type of conversation simply because the church is a place of radical inclusivity just by nature of who Jesus is and what He represented and what He did and how His sacrifice on the cross—it covers all of our sins—and He encourages us to follow Him. But then at the same time, you get many different groups of people who converge in one space when it comes to the church. If we're building that revelation picture of the church, we have to have this sort of cacophony of voices that are all together as we worship and praise God, whatever that looks like, on this side of heaven. Let's hear more about this from Jaquia and Adam.
Jaquia: We had the two pastors come in, Pastor John Nunez and Gregory Manning, to talk about racist relations. That was right after George Floyd happened. At that point, I think it's pretty fair to say we didn't know where we stood as a church, what we were going to say, what we were not going to say. We brought them in for education purposes. Then from that point we looked at doing a study and we found Gerard and Janine's podcast, The (Im)partial Church. The things that we really, really liked about The Impartial Church because the conversation is such a hard conversation to have. It was a hard conversation to start at that time because of the things that were going on within the world. The podcast, Janine and Gerard, they just made it easy to talk about those subjects.
Adam: I really liked the food episode, believe it or not, because the one where they were talking about food as a gateway to culture there and talking about—I think that one was about how microaggressions can be expressed—but how the food helped really level set people and get people a bit calmer and more into embracing somebody else's culture. That resonated with me, because I've always grown up with the idea of the church potluck. Honestly, food is a wonderful way of exporting someone's culture and acting as a cultural ambassador.
Jaquia: When we look around our community, we're pretty fortunate. In Lawrence we are, this part of Indianapolis, is the most diverse part of the city. You have just about everything in the place that our church sits in. We have racial diversity; we have economic diversity; we have age diversity; we have everything. It's impossible to believe that every person in this community has a church. We have an opportunity to bring people here to us so they can get to know Jesus, and then we can also look like the Kingdom. We've definitely been laying that foundational groundwork on how to make that happen. Definitely slow, definitely intentional in what we're doing, but hopefully it'll happen.
Gerard: I'm really glad that our podcast could serve as a helpful thing for both of these speakers and leaders. I think that particularly the food episode when we were talking through those concepts is just a good way to think of the diversity of the church and the diversity of God's kingdom and a really healthy way to approach it. I really appreciate that perspective. I've had a lot of fun on our podcast too, Janine. I appreciate how we get to have fun talking about issues that are close to our heart as well.
Janine: Yes. I think what I liked about the food analogy—obviously, I love food—we both love food, Many people love food. With it you have that stick-to-itiveness to your brain of having that little connection point as to what it represented. I really like that they were able to take away how the microaggressions are mixed in with that. Because when we have a story or when we have a memory or when we have something that reminds us of something else, it brings it to our mind in that moment. Now when I think of curry and roti, I'm going to think about diversity, which is going to help me in getting that practice out in my daily life.
One of the things that we talked about a little earlier in the podcast was partnering. When we looked back at Bethlehem, some of the things they were doing were partnering with people. Well, people were partnering with Bethlehem who want to do the work but don't have anywhere to do it. What Jaquia just spoke about here is the community of Lawrence. The community has all this different levels of diversity, but we see our church doesn't. One of the things to do here might be to look into those organizations or those businesses or those community plug-ins that have that experience of everyone being here and then look to why. Sometimes it's very simple such as we all go to this grocery store, because it has the biggest parking lot, and that's why you go there. What is the reason? How can that be translated to something that edifies the kingdom of God? When we think about being intentional in what we're doing, it also means intentionally learning from others in our community who have done it before us.
Adam: Pretty much always has to go back to the cross. It always has to be prayer centered. That's because I spent a lot of time in the Pentagon, in Washington D.C. there. Spent a lot of time working in and around government. I saw, over a decade or more, odd alignments starting to pop up where people were starting to really let Democrat or Republican, or whatever else their ideology was, start to really affect how they were behaving as a Christian. Instead of having their Christianity affect how they behave as a party member. That's something I've been trying to fight against for the last several years here and say, "I'm not a follower of the elephant or the donkey. I follow the Lamb."
Gerard: Say that again. Those were words. I'm not a follower of the elephant or the donkey. I'm a follower of the Lamb. Copy. Paste. That's what I'm doing. It was a beautiful thing to hear that. I think that that that breaks us down to our elementary level of who are we in our most pure form of our identities. We're followers of Christ. What does that mean? It's simultaneously very simple. It's all His work to us. But it's also very complicated because all of His work is so, so deep, and it could take multiple lifetimes to sort through it. What it means is creating spaces like this where we get to talk about things that are uncomfortable, but also in a place that's safe, because we all have that same identity. It's kind of like family, right, Janine? When we're together as a family, the conversations are different; they're deeper; there's more trust and vulnerability in the room than if you're just around some stranger. That's how it should feel when you're in the kingdom of God together.
Janine: Yes. Family business, it should always feel like that. Those should be the group of people that you return to see what you're going to do differently next time. It doesn't mean that you're going to get it perfect every time. But it does mean that you have people to reflect with who are engaged in this work with you. Adam and Jaquia, they've truly knocked this out of the park. Run that episode back again several times. I feel like there's just so many quotables in there from both of them.
When we think about really what they're saying is they're at the beginning of a journey. And they started there because of an event that happened. This happens so often, and we get criticized for our attention being on the news. Something happened, it was a big event. At the time they said it was the George Floyd murder. Because of that, they were able to connect with new people. They had new problems, but they also thought of new solutions. So many times we think of the problems and how it's bad to be focused on the problem. But really what God is calling us to do is to think about how I, how God can be a part of the solution.
When we get minds like Jaquia or Adam or the saints over at Holy Cross or Bethlehem or somewhere else around the world at your congregation, we think about what the solutions we have in front of us are. When the world sees a problem, we have to see how to bring God into the solution. That builds our rapport; that builds our community; and that builds diversity of thought among those who may not know a Christian. That's something that you're bringing there, too. I really love the work that they're doing and certainly encourage them to keep on keeping on.
Gerard: Yeah. I mean this is something that we need multiple congregations to do. I think sometimes it can become encouraging to hear ministries like mine or this ministry that we've heard about today at Holy Cross or the ministry you're a part of, Janine, in New York with the high school, Our Savior Lutheran, that are doing these things and making these sort of moves. We're like, "Wow, they're doing such great stuff." Just keep up on that or receive a newsletter about it and be done with it and say, "Well, at least someone in this group is doing the work." It takes all of us. It takes engagement from every congregation. There can never be enough people doing the work of God in a place at the same time. There's never going to be overcrowding when it comes to that. This is going to take a lot of people sitting around the table and having conversations like these.
Certainly, listening to this podcast is the first step for many of those places, or it's a step along the way or along the journey of places and people that have already started this conversation. There's a few key things that we can do to continue to engage in this. We have to make sure to do those things. What would you say, Janine, are some things that are important to keep on engaging in this type of conversation? What can we do?
Janine: I would definitely say talk to the other congregations in your near community, in your region, who are doing these things. Fellowship with one another is really important. If you're within Lutheran Church, that could be at the district level, at the circuit level. There's got to be other people who are doing what you're doing or maybe who might be struggling through what you're struggling through. If you're the first, then invite others to do it with you and to work through any kind of missteps you might make together.
Gerard: Amen. Amen. You've got to work the work with other people, essentially, which is important. I think also just sharing resources and then talking about those resources is important. If you see a YouTube video that really hits for you or something comes up in your daily devotionals, not being like, I'm just going to keep this to myself and not say anything about it to my five closest friends, but instead saying, "How can we start a discussion or a dialogue about this?"—even if they're not yet a part of your church community. That would be another important way to do this. To engage around the table with family and friends I think is an important thing to do too, even family members that may not be ready for this type of conversation, to start the wheels turning in their brains, by listening to you sort of process it.
Janine: I would say if you're at the beginning of your journey, I would disagree and say, you need to go where there's momentum. You need to go where there's momentum. If you feel like you can't create it, I don't think it's about pulling teeth from people who don't want to have the conversation. I think it looks more like attending a reconciliation event so you know you're going to meet like-minded people. If it can't be in person, one of the positive takeaways from COVID has been that it can be virtual. Another thing would be reading Scripture, looking to what God says about his multi-ethnic church. A lot of us do Bible study either on our own with other people, devotionals. Talk to God, ask God what you don't know, and really work through what that looks like in walking and talking with Him on a daily basis about those things. Because there are plenty of examples in the Bible we've talked about a lot on this podcast, but there's many more. There's other literature from the church that you can read, too.
We have this as a rule on our trains here in New York. If you see something, say something. What that means is if you see a bag, go tell somebody. If you see something that looks suspicious, go tell somebody. If you see something that is out of line, it's out of alignment with what it means to live out your identity in Christ, whether it's you, whether it's one of your people in your five closest friends, whether it's a stranger, be that person that calls it out. Don't be that bystander who looks down at their phone and does something else and waits for the minute to pass. Be the person who says something.
Gerard: Yeah. Yeah. Amen. I think the other thing too is it goes in the old saying of "If you have one finger pointed towards somebody else, you have at least three to four that are pointing back at you." At times, it requires you to reflect on your own behavior and look at what you have done or what you haven't done. That's a really important thing to this conversation, especially because it encourages us to be introspective again and to think about "What ways can I change or improve, or what things can I do, or what ways can I open up my world?" Be open to shifting your paradigm like we had talked about before on a previous episode, and also creating space for minorities in different ways to speak and to have influence and to also have power in different situations. Encourage your organizations or your churches to look to minorities for some of these issues and try to put them in positions of influence and power, if it's necessary or if it's appropriate, especially where qualification is there as well.
Janine: Yes. Yes. Yes. I love it. I love it. I think that the final thing to remember here is really that our identity is in Christ and that we continue to construct meaning for what that means from His Word, and then how it lives out in the world. We're always going to be in a brand-new culture each day that we wake up. We have our history with us; we have the past; we have our present moment; our future is secured. How we move about between those three spaces of past, present, and future is our life. When you look at a tombstone, you see the beginning year and you see the ending year. What we are really worried about right now is the dash in between those years and what that looks like for us, what that looks like for the people that God puts in our life, and what it looks like for the people who need to know who He is, which is everyone. Either you're reminded of it or you're introduced to it.
We're not going to be able to do that without one another. We're not going to be able to do that without our own reflection, and we're not going to be able to do that without responding. I'm excited to hear about what everyone's going to be doing. I've had a lot of fun doing this podcast this season with you, Gerard, but also in talking through and getting in all of our different guests. That's been really fun. I'm excited to see where all of this stuff goes.
Gerard: We had so many good conversations this season. It's been great to unpack. Excited to see where all of this goes and what God does with the information out in His mission field and out in the places that He's already in, that we don't even know about. It was great to have each and every one of you along for the journey. Listen back to these episodes and to season one, too, of The (Im)partial Church.