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Tag: civil rights

Forced on a Journey

June 24, 2015 /

empty roadway

Dear Friends,

Over the last few months, I have been on a spiritual journey producing a struggle in my own faith.

I, like you, watched the media reports of rioting in Ferguson, Missouri following the shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer.

I listened to the reports of Eric Garner being choked to death while being arrested by officers of the NYPD.

I attempted to comprehend what could have happened for Freddie Gray to suffer injuries leading to his death in the back of a Baltimore police van.

Over and over again I watched the video of Walter Scott being shot in the back as he ran away from a North Charleston, SC police officer

I was stunned by the images from a Texas pool party of an out of control police officer rapidly escalating an already tense situation.

I wanted to see each incident as unique. I wanted to say that this is not what law enforcement is like. And I don’t think it is, but I cannot deny that these events have happened and our nation reels because of them.

I wanted to process and look at each of these events in isolation from the other. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t do it because I saw and read the responses to the events from colleagues and church leaders. Men and women who have much more experience than I. Individuals far smarter than me. I saw these people standing in solidarity with the African American community as they demanded justice. The presence of these men and women, whom I greatly respected, standing on a different side of the debate gave me great pause. I began to question if I was not in fact wrong.

So I started to listen to myself. What I heard myself saying sounded an awful lot like the words of my white predecessors who spoke against the civil rights movement of the past and any efforts to change the status quo.

I knew then that I was wrong. But I did not know how or understand why. This realization was when my journey began.

Many of us are quick to quote Martin Luther King Jr. but would we have been so quick to quote him and stand beside him if we had lived through our nation seemingly being torn apart by the civil rights movement? What about today, as we watch our nation appears to be taking a journey down this path again?

I have been on a spiritual journey these past few months and in the next several posts I want to take you on that journey with me. I have many questions and very few answers.

Let’s walk together,
Pastor Stephen

Dying on Field

May 27, 2014 /

Dear Friends,

Last week I opened the topic of our citizenship as people of God’s Kingdom. Today I continue these thoughts.

Missionary Graves

Wesleyan Missionary Graveyard in Sierra Leone

Missions has change a lot in the past hundred plus years. There was a time when missionaries boarded ships to head to distant lands knowing they would probably never return to the land of their birth. The symbol of this commitment was what they choose to pack their stuff in. Not a suit case or steamer trunk but a coffin. The pioneers walked away from the privilege and position of their home countries to unite with peoples across the oceans. This is the kind of commitment Paul is speaking of the profound mystery of Christ and the church (read last week’s Milk Can).

Today it is rare for a missionary to die “on field.” Terms and length of commitments have gotten shorter and shorter. Missionaries enjoy phone calls, e-mail, and even the ability to Skype with family. Today one can be a missionary without ever leaving and cleaving to a new people. While this has opened missionary work to many who would never have gone, it can dilute the true depth of Christ’s call onto the life of everyone who calls themselves a Christian. As the German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer says in his book The Cost of Discipleship, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”

One does not have to go to foreign lands to follow Christ. For many, a generation ago, the call to leave and cleave meant joining those in the Civil Rights Movement. They marched alongside their African American neighbors and boarded Freedom Buses to lay down their lives to battle injustice.

Today many are being called to identify with and carry the burden of the immigrant in our own nation. Simultaneously giving up and using their position, power and prestige to care for their neighbor. More on the work of our own denomination can be found here: http://www.wesleyan.org/1045/faq-on-immigrants-and-immigration-questions-and-answers

Bonhoeffer would also say being a Christian is about “. . . courageously and actively doing God’s will.” Many times I have prayed those words at the end of The Lord’s Prayer, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” What if God intends to answer that prayer through you and I? What is God’s will courageously and actively calling you to?

Blessings,
Pastor Stephen

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