Breaking out of Your Christian Ghetto

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Sometimes, you find yourself in the middle of a ghetto.

I have a friend who—God bless him—has given most of his life to minister to the inner city poor. Too long ago, he and I would occasionally, late at night, walk the streets of his new neighborhood to talk with people.

As two terminally white, bearded guys over 6′ 4″, we sorta stuck out. Because this was the “ghetto.” And all the stereotypes were in play.

Except they weren’t.

On one particular walk, my friend abruptly pulled up and turned around. When I asked why, he surprised me with his answer. “Down that street is Appalachian territory,” he whispered and motioned. “No one goes in there.”

Different ghetto, different hostility.

Ghetto is a word in transition. In the past, it simply meant a part of a city that was dominated by one ethnic group or one way of living. Harlem in New York City always comes to mind, but one could easily argue that Wall Street is its own ghetto, albeit a wealthy one. In the case of the word ghetto, over time, a poverty aspect crept into the meaning, but it hasn’t always been there.

In Christianity, we have built our own ghettos. We call them denominations. Or we add theological labels such as Reformed, Charismatic, Arminian, or Anabaptist. Because labels. Can’t be a good Christian without ’em, right?

Whatever our slant on our Christian ghettos, the same etymological transition is at work: a slide into poverty.

Except in the Christian case, the poverty is in the diversity of ideas. Or on the exclusionary focuses of the faith. Eventually, everyone within that ghetto winds up poorer theologically and relationally. In most cases, they don’t even see it happening.

I see in the modern American Church an increasing tendency to stop at the end of the sidewalk and say, “No one goes in there.” Whoever or whatever lurks there, we’re too afraid to deal with him/her/it.

One of the most insidious examples of this occurs in certain Christian communities often seen online. You probably know them. Certain individuals within a certain group run certain websites that espouse certain theologies. When one of those individuals writes a book, others within that group write the glowing reviews and recommendations. After a while, you see all the same names recommending each other’s books and sites and dissing every book, site, or individual that comes from outside that certain group.

I believe such incestuous, prejudiced thinking and doing borders on dangerous. It creates its own form of unteachability, an imperviousness to greater growth. People trapped within that ghetto never hear any different ideas. If anything, foreign ideas are rejected out of hand. It becomes scary group-think. And naturally, over time, poverty sets in.

Jesus said that we must become like children to enter the Kingdom. Perhaps a children’s book can teach us something about ghettos.

In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, our kind, gentle, young hero gains admittance to a strange, off-limits ghetto: Willy Wonka’s candy plant. Once inside, Charlie finds the factory’s owner to be absolutely unhinged and perhaps even dangerous. The secluded factory bursts with nonsensical devices a rational person cannot envision. The invitees meet a bizarre tribe that lives in the factory. The tour participants witness things the ordinary person cannot understand and would likely reject for their oddity.

The problem with this and for everyone in the novel: As strange and scary as he and his factory are, Willy Wonka makes the world’s best candy.

Willy Wonka, HomeboyAt the story’s conclusion, Wonka gives his factory to Charlie. And it’s not simply because the boy is the last one standing on the tour but because of Charlie’s humble, gentle, others-centered spirit. Wonka realizes the boy has something he lacks. In the same way, Charlie not only inherits the candy plant, but he also must realize that to continue to make it great, it must retain its weirdness, and he must move beyond being just a destitute, simple boy to embrace some of Wonka’s madness. For the world to become a more wonderful place, both Wonka and Charlie must break out of their ghettos.

Like the Wonka factory, the Christian world has locations within it where too few go and thus never discover a place of genuine, if unusual, excellence. We are impoverished for our trepidation, for our clinging to our own ghetto, for being unwilling to see and explore. Our fear prevents us from becoming all that God would make us.

I think of the foreign-to-the-West thinking of Asian Christian Watchman Nee, who brings a unique Chinese perspective to the Church. Some would warn you not to read him, if only because he doesn’t read like your typical white theologian of any “respectable” bent.

Or Rod Dreher, who writes about ideas that seem liberal but are actually hallmark conservative, and from an Orthodox tradition.

Plenty of other ghetto-breakers exist.

I offer this:

If you’re a Nazarene, read a book by a Pentecostal.

If you’re Reformed, hang out at a few Wesleyan websites—and not just to slam people.

If you’re a Presbyterian, consider what the Medieval mystics wrote about union with Christ.

If you’re a white, American Christian, discover what black, African Christians think about the Faith.

Consider the possibility that everything you know comes solely from your ghetto—and that the Christian world is a much, much bigger place than you realize.

Weird and unfamiliar don’t automatically equal wrong. Sometimes, they form the sidewalk that takes you and me out of our comfortable ghetto to a place filled with utterly foreign wonders.

Sure, quicksand or tigers may lurk down that path, but you’re an adult. Be discerning. Test everything all the time.The presence of threats doesn’t negate what wonders might be discovered. If anything, wonders look threatening to the inexperienced.

Whatever your Christian ghetto might be, break out of it! You’ll be surprised what you might learn about yourself and about the Lord from someone who doesn’t look or think like you.

Laying Down “Us” to Reach “Them”

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If you were to ask me right in this moment what one thing I would really like to see change in the American Church, it would have to be our devotion to the cause of Us vs. Them.

More and more, it sticks in my craw when I am with fellow Christians and the Us. vs. Them talk starts up. Who are Them ?

Political liberals

Homosexuals

Abortion supporters

Jews

Muslims

Immigrants

Other races

Mainline Protestants

The promiscuous

The homeless

The poor

The lost

And so on

That list will look different for different people, but in short, Them are those people who are not Us.

You get into strange conversations with people who always think in terms of Us vs. Them. Try talking with an Evangelical who claims to love Israel yet complains about all the Jews running Hollywood, with its family-unfriendly movies filled with bad language and smutty imagery. A homeless man sleeping outside a churchOr the folks who go on and on about reaching the lost or ministering to the poor, yet who wish the Mexicans would go back where they came from. The disconnect is head-scratching.

I once had lunch with someone who made no pretenses to being a Christian. When I asked her why she liked living where she did, she said it was because the residents were so tolerant of others, not like those rednecks in the Midwest.

Too many American Christians have that same mentality. Its not only irrational, it’s ugly too. And its a large reason why so many people have tuned out the Church here. They know us by the culture war. They know us by whom we oppose. They have no idea of whom we are for. And if they’ve heard that old ’60s-era song “They’ll Know We Are Christians by Our Love,” they wonder inside when it was ever true. (Maybe back in the ’60s. But then, didn’t we all love each other back in the ’60s?)

Look, there’s not a Christian alive who hasn’t heard the parable of the Good Samaritan. Three-year-old kids who still wet their pants from time to time know that story. How come so little of it ever sinks in? The Us passed by. The Them loved. Jesus smashed the stereotype of Us vs. Them to smithereens in that parable.

Many of the greatest novels ever written contain the archetypal story of the hero who does good because he remembers his roots. He never lets himself forget his humble origins, and that remembering helps him change the world for the better.

I think that one thing Jesus Christ would like to impress upon many American Christians is that each of Us was once Them. And that the people who are most effective for the Kingdom of God are those people who never let themselves forget that truth.

The time of forgetting we were once lost is past, folks. It’s time to start laying down Us to reach Them.

Hidden Messages of American Christianity: Classism

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This is the first in a series of posts covering the hidden messages that sneak into American churches’ proclamation of the Gospel. For more background, please refer to this post.

I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.
—John 17:20-23 ESV

Just another class symbolI was talking with friends this weekend about a minor split that occurred in their predominantly upper-middle class church. Several families, unhappy with the idea that the church was looking into broadening their outreach to some less advantaged areas, took their ball and went home. Or should I say that in a more appropriate vernacular: They started another church.

It’s not hard to imagine the reasoning that went on behind that small exodus. That less advantaged area consisted mostly of people who were “not like us.” Heaven forbid if they actually responded to an outreach program and began attending the church. Who really knows how to minister to them? They’re just…different.

Is it so hard to believe that this was not the thinking that led to a new church where reaching out to the different would never be forced on anyone. Ivory towers have a way of staying ivory, don’t they?

Last year my wife and I were looking for a new church. We were also looking for full-time employment. In a fit of overthinking, I latched onto a fast-growing, wealthy church with the hope of not only finding a good church home, but also excellent business prospects who might be willing to hire one of us. The church had a stellar reputation, and was even in the same denomination as a well-known Reformed pastor I admired.

Our hopes sank quickly, though. In nearly every conversation with other people at the church, things went well until we mentioned that we were both looking for a full-time corporate job. When I discussed my current work as a freelance writer, you could almost see the eyes glaze over. After a few weeks, we found ourselves a party of two; the world of the church buzzed on around us, CEOs and corporate players chatting away with gusto, excluding those of us who were less fortunate. Maybe they were put off by my decidedly non-handmade dress shoes. Or perhaps it was the fact we drove a Toyota Corolla and not a Range Rover. No matter the economic impediment, the message was clear: we weren’t on the corporate fast-track and probably never would be. Instead, we became so much furniture to be walked around on the way to the sanctuary.

We don’t like to think of our churches as little demographic ghettoes, yet all too often the hidden message communicated to those who don’t fit the demographic is “You’re not invited to our little shindig.” The classism that results from our unspoken message of conformity overrides Jesus’ prayer that we all be one.

I suspect our friends’ church is in the majority, especially among white, well-off, conservative churches. Similar churches once anchored the respectable parts of town, but time changed their neighborhoods from upper crust to urban (or even suburban) blight. Unable to assimilate into their changed neighborhoods, they either adopted a fortress mentality or fled altogether.

Who’s kidding whom, though? The residents in that altered neighborhood clearly understood that we didn’t want their neighborhood spice sprinkled on our filet mignon. A vague condescension may even have existed in our outreach to them because they knew that we didn’t truly want them to come to our place of worship, especially if it meant our tried and true Sunday program would be modified as a result. Rather, we just wanted to feel good about doing outreach, even if none of them ever walked into our sanctuary.

This isn’t just a problem in megachurches. Sure, they may have a “Pastor of Demographics” whose main job is to ensure bland conformity in the church’s cultural milieu, but the problem goes deeper. For all our talk as American Christians of unity and “being one,” we really don’t want to push that message too hard, lest we be forced to live with the consequences. The tattooed goth who cracked open a Gideon Bible in his hotel room where he’s staying during his vampyre convention—aren’t we all secretly a little glad he’s from out of town and will be visiting our church this weekend only? For all we know, he might even be a Democrat, too.

I’ve been a part of churches that did it right and others that failed miserably. Several years ago, I attended a church where you were likely to see a Mary Kay saleslady sitting behind a hooker wearing a spiked dog collar. And that ultra-clean-cut Mary Kay saleslady was ecstatic that the hooker was there hearing the Gospel rather than out roaming the streets or plying her trade in a dingy hotel room. On the other hand, I’ve known churches that turned men away because they weren’t wearing a suitcoat.

Christian classism isn’t reserved for the people in the seats, either. We might not say it, but don’t we automatically give the ministry esteem to an R.C. Sproul or John Piper over the nameless Holiness pastor who couldn’t afford to go to seminary? And isn’t the luster just a tad brighter on the doctorate degree hanging on the wall of the PCA pastor than the one on the Pentecostal pastor’s?

Today, I’m at a church that spans classes and occupations. This isn’t to say we’re perfect, but somehow it works. (Yes, we’re too white, but rural areas typically skew that way.) Even then, we still have this idea that people who cross the threshold of our church for the first time have to conform to us ASAP or else we don’t know what to do with them. Thinking like a first-time visitor who’s never once darkened a church doorway doesn’t come naturally to us, nor would I say that it does for most American churches. However, this doesn’t excuse us from making them welcome, even if they are not like us.

Jesus keenly chose a Samaritan for His parable. The Lord ate with the wrong kind of people, too. And when His Church was first started, a vision of a sheet full of unclean animals got through the noggin of the hardest-headed disciple.

What class distinction message are we inadvertently sending out to the lost, to the first-time visitor, and even to our own brothers and sisters in Christ? Do we see ourselves as a Church that can only be sullied by the hordes of “those people” who are dying to get into the Kingdom despite our reticence? Or are we willing to be happy in a church that reflects all races, tongues, and economic classes of people?

What is it going to take to make us one?