#1: Where the Gospel Meets Racial Reconciliation

#1: Where the Gospel Meets Racial Reconciliation

Note: The Love Thy Neighborhood podcast is made for the ear, and not the eye. We would encourage you to listen to the audio for the full emotional emphasis of this episode. The following transcription may contain errors. Please refer to the audio before quoting any content from this episode. 

KEVIN JONES: You want me to tell you a funny story? Here’s the story, the story is this – I have an uncle whose best friend was white growing up. They used to steal together. Both of them were thieves. My uncle would always go into the store first, very dark, complected guy, and he would distract everybody while his white friend stole everything. 

JESSE EUBANKS: He was just decoy.

KEVIN JONES: He was the decoy! He was the black decoy, man. So it’s just like that. Who can get away with that? No one can get away with that except people who know they’re being watched and somebody who knows they won’t be watched. You gotta know the game. You gotta know the game. 

JESSE EUBANKS: What game? What game are you talking about?

KEVIN JONES: I’m talking about knowing how your skin color is perceived by society. Racial biases. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Biases? Like discrimination? But that’s like stuff from the Civil Rights Movement. You don’t think we’re a post-racial nation today? 

KEVIN JONES: No way.  Do you think racism doesn’t exist today? What about the fact that if I wear sweatpants and Jordans into a store, the level of service I receive goes down dramatically. But if I wear khakis and a polo shirt, it’s like oh yeah, we can give this dude some good service now. And it always happens that way. At least for me. I can’t make this stuff up, man. It’s like the real deal.

JESSE EUBANKS: This is the Love Thy Neighborhood podcast. I’m Jesse Eubanks

KEVIN JONES: And I’m Kevin Jones. Each episode we hear stories of social justice and Christian community.

JESSE EUBANKS: Today’s episode – where the gospel meets race and racial reconciliation. We’re going to hear stories from one local church in Louisville, Kentucky and how this topic of racial reconciliation has turned this church upside down.

KEVIN JONES: And for our stories today, we are focusing largely on diversity between black people and white people. All ethnic groups are important, but we do want to note that the context of this story is between these two groups. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Welcome to our corner of the urban universe.

ARCHIVE CLIP: I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. (applause)

JESSE EUBANKS: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. An iconic figure for civil rights and racial unity. That speech is probably nothing new to you. 

KEVIN JONES: And this idea of racial reconciliation is not new either. Reconciliation is God’s idea, not ours. The book of Revelation chapter 7 says, “A great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.” A culturally and racially unified worship service.

JESSE EUBANKS: What’s interesting is Dr. King also had something to say about our church’s worship services.

ARCHIVE CLIP: I think it is one of the tragedies of our nation, one of the shameful tragedies that eleven o’clock on Sunday morning is one of the most segregated hours, if not the most segregated hours in Christian America.

JESSE EUBANKS: Church on Sunday. The place that’s supposed to be about love and acceptance and unity. This place where ultimately, according to Revelation 7, we will all be worshiping together. Is the place we see the most segregation. 

KEVIN JONES: Here’s a recent study from Lifeway Research –  8t out of10 protestant churches in America have one dominant ethnicity in their congregation. 

JESSE EUBANKS: So we see this future given to us in Revelation where all races come together and worship, and we see our current situation in our churches where there isn’t much diversity, and there’s this gap. Dr.r King’s words are still true more than 50 years later. Which begs the question – how are we going to cross this gap? If God is going to bring racial reconciliation to all peoples, shouldn’t we live like we believe that? Shouldn’t our churches and our lives reflect our God, whose very nature is about reconciling? Well Sojourn Community Church in Louisville, Kentucky believes that in order to see this reality in the future, we need to work towards it now. 

MIKE COSPER: This is like the elephant in the room. For our whole culture. For evangelicalism as a movement

JESSE EUBANKS: That’s Mike Cosper. Avid blogger, pop culture guru and also one of the pastors at Sojourn. And our story starts when Cosper, who is white, pushed the limit with a sermon he titled, “Jesus, Race and the Wall of Hostility.” It was an entire sermon on the history of racism in the American church, and the divisions he believed God is calling us to tear down. It was an unforeseen catalyst that forever changed the people at Sojourn. But before we get into that, it’s important to note the history of this mostly white, baptist church. Because it plays an important role in their dealings with race.

MIKE COSPER: We started off in the Highlands, which is sort of upper middle class, white neighborhood. Most of our founding members were middle class or upper middle class. And we met in that neighborhood because it was the hub of cultural creatives.

JESSE EUBANKS: Sojourn started small. Just a Bible study with all white members. Then the church started to grow. Which meant they needed a building to meet in. So they bought a space in a neighborhood called Germantown.

MIKE COSPER: Moving to Germantown in 2006/2007 happened because that’s where we could afford space. But it kind of matched some things that were happening demographically anyway in that a lot of young, cultural creatives were moving into Germantown. Again, it was a mostly white neighborhood, mostly white people moving in, but upper middle class moving into a lower middle class neighborhood.

JESSE EUBANKS: There was this whole city renewal initiative in Germantown. Folks started buying and renovating houses. Sojourn joined in on this beautification process.

MIKE COSPER: And then the 2007/08 economic crash happened and all that just stopped. And the neighborhood sort of took back its character of being a lower middle class, blue collar, impoverished neighborhood. So it feels like the first big transition for us was the transition to getting used to a neighborhood where poverty was a reality, was a day to day reality. So just getting adjusted to that was rattling. And then fast-forward, 2012 or 13 we moved into the cathedral space.

JESSE EUBANKS: The cathedral space. That’s Saint Vincent’s Cathedral. In a neighborhood called Shelby Park. Now – you want to remember Shelby Park because it’s going to keep showing up in our stories and future episodes. And here’s why: The west end of Louisville, it’s mostly low-income and mostly African American. The east end of Louisville? It’s mostly white, middle class and upper middle class. But there’s this one area where these two worlds converge. And that is Shelby Park. And here suddenly, Sojourn found themselves in the middle. 

And for this story in particular, it’s important to know that it’s right next door to the Germantown neighborhood. And while Germantown is mostly white, Shelby Park is half African American. 54% to be exact. And these two neighborhoods are literally divided by a railroad track, Germantown on one side of the tracks and shelby park on the other. And throughout history folks from one side of the tracks do not cross over to the other side. It’s like a visible racial divide. The phrase “the other side of the tracks” is not a metaphor for these folks. It’s reality. But then Sojourn did something you’re not supposed to do. When they bought that cathedral, they crossed the tracks. This was their first step toward racial reconciliation. And they assumed location alone would begin to diversify their congregation. Except now, all their white members were coming into this mostly black neighborhood once a week. And it just felt odd. 

CASEY HAMM: This is Casey Hamm.

RACHEL HAMM: And I’m Rachel Hamm. I’m Casey’s wife. 

CASEY HAMM: We are in Louisville, Kentucky.

RACHEL HAMM: We go to Sojourn Community Church. Are you gonna describe us before you get to our interview?

JESSE EUBANKS: Of course we will. Casey is a Sojourn member who’s racially mixed – white mom, black dad. He has a very dark complexion though, so he identifies as African American. And his wife Rachel is white. And they live in the Shelby Park neighborhood.

CASEY HAMM: I’m in a neighborhood that’s at least 50% black and I might see 5 black people in a service. Y’know, what gives there? What’s the purpose of moving into this neighborhood? Is it because this is a really nice, old, cool building? Or are we really trying to reach this neighborhood?

RACHEL HAMM: When I came to Sojourn there were several minorities here, and their experience was they just felt alone, felt like people didn’t understand, that their church that they love, their church family that they love, that in many ways this is a relationship that is stronger than even blood family. It still felt like a place where they felt “other.”

JESSE EUBANKS: Here’s Mike Cosper again.

MIKE COSPER: We recognized early on, there’s a lot about our culture that’s gonna have to change. A lot of our congregation are white, upper middle class hipsters. And so we just recognized this is not a hospitable environment for most African Americans and certainly not in Louisville.

RACHEL HAMM: There’s some gospel tunes and gospel music. What if we did some of those?

JESSE EUBANKS: Casey’s wife Rachel was part of the music team at Sojourn. And Sojourn is well-known for their music style.

RACHEL HAMM: And it was just met with, well there’s reasons why we can’t do that because we don’t have the musicians who know how to play that style, and it’ll sound really hokey or fake if we try to do that. Or it was met with, like what’s the value? It’s only five or six members of our congregation. We love them, we care for them, but we have hundreds of people. It was obvious that throughout the body, throughout the whole church body there was generally a total unawareness of how big of an issue this was. And that it wasn’t just about our church body, but that it was about our culture as a whole.

JESSE EUBANKS: That unawareness came to an end about two years later. Because now, Cosper is about to preach his sermon, the one that I mentioned earlier – “Jesus, Race and the Wall of Hostility.” It was fall of 2014. Sojourn was preaching through the book of Ephesians, and they came to Ephesians chapter 2, which says, “For Christ himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility.”

MIKE COSPER: As soon as we knew we were doing an Ephesians series, we knew we’d come to this passage. And we had to figure out, okay what are we gonna do with it? How do we want to approach it? Y’know, that Ephesians 2 passage is famous for being a passage for these kinds of conversations around race because it’s, y’know, Christ tore down the wall of hostility.

JESSE EUBANKS: As a writer and blogger, Cosper had been sharing his thoughts on the recent happenings in Ferguson, Missouri — the shooting of Michael Brown by a white police officer and the riots that followed. 

MIKE COSPER: I had been writing on race a good bit, and so the pastors asked me, “Hey, would you take this passage? Take this week?” Knowing that it was a tough subject and that I at least had a certain fluency in how to talk about the questions or how to speak specifically to white people about these things.

JESSE EUBANKS: But having fluency doesn’t make the words easy to say. Or to hear. Here’s a clip from that sermon.

COSPER SERMON CLIP:  Nick Kristof in the New York Times wrote a fascinating editorial called “Are We All a Little Bit Racist?” And he includes African Americans in this. And what he shows is that studies show this broad tendency to make prejudicial judgments about people with black skin. And what he points to, and this is so crucial for us to hear it, is that most of this bias is implicit. It’s not conscious. And here’s the thing, racism isn’t just politically incorrect. It’s sin. And sin is dynamic and deceptive. Racism deceives us and we think we’ve conquered it, but it persists in our hearts and it persists in our culture.

MIKE COSPER: My goal was to get white members of our congregation to acknowledge there’s still a problem here. It didn’t end with the end of slavery. It didn’t end with the Civil Rights Movement. 

JESSE EUBANKS: But hold on, hold on. But there is equal opportunity for blacks in America. 

KEVIN JONES: There is not equal opportunity for blacks in America.

JESSE EUBANKS: Hold on, hold on. In fact, because of Affirmative Action and things like that, it now establishes legally that people of color cannot be discriminated against, that being black can actually work to your advantage in some cases.

KEVIN JONES: Yeah, so that’s to the advantage of a few. It’s not a systemic advantage at all. For example, the 9th Street Divide in Louisville. So one way you go downtown, everything is all hunky-dorey, nice buildings, nice restaurants, everything is clean, kept neat. Boom, you cross 9th Street, 10th on down? Family Dollars on every other corner, liquor stores on every other corner. And that is simply the 9th Street Divide. You tell me — what’s the predominant race that lives beyond 9th Street?

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, it’s mostly African American.

KEVIN JONES: Yeah. And this is just in the city of Louisville. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Here’s Cosper again.

COSPER SERMON CLIP: We quote pastors and theologians and treat ‘em like they’re heroes, and people in our pews and people in our neighborhoods think to themselves, “That guy might’ve owned one of my ancestors.” That’s privilege. It’s never having to hear quotes from people who subjugated your relatives. And the refusal to acknowledge its existence is itself a way of wounding a whole community. 

MIKE COSPER: The Southern Baptist Convention is a convention that exists because of wanting to stay with white slaveholders.

KEVIN JONES: Sojourn Community Church is a church that is part of the Southern Baptist Convention. The Southern Baptist Convention, by and large, was run by men who were pro-slavery. These guys said we want to possess people.

JESSE EUBANKS: And it was not until the last 15 years that the denomination apologized for that, publicly recognized that it was a sin, and has since done some very heavy lifting to try to reconcile those things. But the history of our church is white folks wanted to subjugate black folks. 

MIKE COSPER: And so you have this incredibly dark history and legacy, and it shadows a lot of what we do and it shadows a lot of the reality of how it is. And yeah, it’s way more fun to preach platitudes and sing some happy songs on a Sunday morning than to go ‘Hey, this is a big deal, and people are still hurting over this and being hurt by this now.’

JESSE EUBANKS: It was a bold step toward racial reconciliation. And Sojourn has four services on Sunday. So Cosper, he had to say this message four times. But what Cosper and the other pastors didn’t realize was the aftermath and trajectory their church would now take because of this Sunday.

MIKE COSPER: One of the things that happened afterwards was there was a significant amount of pushback. I got a lot of pushback for my comments.

JESSE EUBANKS: Angry white folks. Angry black folks. And a small glimmer of hope. We’ll be right back.

COMMERCIAL

JESSE EUBANKS: You’re listening to the Love Thy Neighborhood podcast. I’m Jesse Eubanks.

KEVIN JONES: And I’m Kevin Jones. Pastor Mike Cosper has just preached a landmark sermon at Sojourn Community Church about why racism still exists in the church today. And his sermon stirred a lot of reaction.

JESSE EUBANKS: He got face to face comments and many emails. The first comment he received was…

MIKE COSPER: By 11 a.m. that day. Somebody went to the first service that day, went home, and sent me a dozen links, just lots of these very hardcore, right wing kind of things, saying racism doesn’t exist in America today.

JESSE EUBANKS: And this guy wasn’t the only one who had an opinion. There were many white people who were very upset.

MIKE COSPER: I remember after one service there were these gals, sort of confronted me, white gals, born and raised in the suburbs, and just vitriolic, just angry over the content of the message. Y’know and essentially arguing, ‘Hey, you didn’t preach the text. You brought too much politics or too much philosophy or this, that, and the other, we need to talk about Jesus.’ 

JESSE EUBANKS: And not just white people. Even the handful of black people in the church were upset too.

MIKE COSPER: There were African Americans who were angry that we were talking about this. They came to church, and essentially they said, “We deal with this all day long, all day every day. I came to church to hear about Jesus and be encouraged. I don’t want to sit through that.” I have another friend who is a police officer who came and was actually encouraging about the whole conversation and shared some interesting stories from inside the police department. He said that as he was walking in, y’know, one of his friends who’s also a police officer was walking out and said, “You don’t wanna go in there today. You don’t wanna listen to this.” I mean I went home, couldn’t sleep that night. I was just rattled by it. And then the next day I think I finally got to sleep at around one in the morning and then I think I slept until 1 or 2 in the afternoon the next day. Just, just exhausted from the whole experience because of the sense of resistance in the room, the very obvious sense that you are saying things that people don’t want to hear. This sermon made me more aware that even amongst my friends, even amongst people who I’ve lived life with and lived in community with for a long time, the problem runs deeper than we know.

JESSE EUBANKS: In the midst of all the backlash, Cosper says there were a few encouraging responses.

MIKE COSPER: There were three women in particular, African American women who attended that day, who just went out of their way to say thank you and just to share their own experience in the church and, y’know, and this tension for them, for all three of them. They were saying, “Look I was hovering on the edge of this community trying to understand do I have a place here or not? Because here’s this aspect of my life and it hurts, and I want to be in a church where people share that pain and where I’m welcome to feel that pain and talk about it.”

CASEY HAMM: For me it was kinda like shocking.

JESSE EUBANKS: That’s Casey and Rachel Hamm again. Remember, Casey is black and Rachel is white, and they’re both members at Sojourn. And they were there that day, listening to Cosper’s sermon.

CASEY HAMM: So I was already feeling kinda on edge, kinda singled out like, ‘Oh, it feels like everybody’s looking at me.’ I’m one of seven black people in this service right now. I know that everybody’s immediately thinking, oh what’s he thinking? What’s Casey’s reaction? That entire hour and fifteen minutes or whatever was very tense.

JESSE EUBANKS: And the tension didn’t leave when they left the service. Casey and Rachel were engaged at the time, and Rachel’s parents just happened, out of all Sundays, to be visiting that day. And like all good Southern Baptist folks, they went out to lunch after church. Casey felt very uncomfortable, and he was hoping no one would bring up the sermon. But it wasn’t the type of sermon that you just forget two hours later. So of course, it got brought up. And Casey’s mother-in-law asked him a question.

CASEY HAMM: And her mom asked the question of, well Casey have you ever been pulled over by the cops? Have you ever been anything like this? So just kinda that dynamic of her parents being sincerely interested but also unaware. And then just the general atmosphere of everything was very, it was very uncomfortable for me, but that whole day was already uncomfortable already. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Rachel says she doesn’t remember feeling uncomfortable. She was glad the issue of race was finally being talked about.

RACHEL HAMM: I was really grateful for my parents to get to hear that. And I was really grateful to get to hear some of Casey’s perspective as well.

JESSE EUBANKS: Now the people of Sojourn were very aware of this issue of race. So, was hearing that sermon enough to create diversity and bring the church closer to what we see in Revelation 7?

Well, what actually began to happen is not uncommon. You’ve probably experienced this yourself. When you are around someone of a different race and suddenly you lose your social ability. You don’t know what to say to this person. You’re afraid you might say the wrong thing and offend them. You feel flustered and unprepared. 

RACHEL HAMM: The handful of minority people at Sojourn, many of them then became the subject of lots of questions from different people. Is this really your experience? Or even just people suddenly felt uncomfortable around them.

CASEY HAMM: Where suddenly you can almost feel it and see it on people’s faces. Oh, I want to say something or do something or whatever, but I don’t know what to say. I don’t want to offend you, but I don’t want to make you think that I’m not thinking about it, but I don’t know what to do so I’m not gonna say anything, but all that I’m thinking is right on my face. And, “Hi, how’re you doing today?”

JESSE EUBANKS: In an effort to ease some of this tension, Sojourn began hosting what they called “race talks.” Anyone was welcome. They got together, broke up into smaller groups, making sure each group had at least one minority member and one church leader. And they opened it up for questions, concerns, problems, really anything was welcomed to be voiced in these groups. A lot of what was voiced was that people were skeptical or fearful of change.

RACHEL HAMM: There were several folks who just expressed like, I get it that this is a good thing, but why us? Why does it have to be us? I like things the way they are. I like our music.

CASEY HAMM: I approached a few of the elders that I had relationships with and said, hey I’m kinda struggling through these things. Y’know what, how can ya help me? Can we talk about this, and y’know what can you do for me, kinda thing.

JESSE EUBANKS: Casey put together a survey for Sojourn’s elders. He asked his minority friends in the church to share their experiences and interactions they had with people in the church. The results were actually very disheartening. And the testimonies had one theme in common – minorities were getting hurt because the church just didn’t know how to love them.

RACHEL HAMM: The elders had no idea that the membership was so ill-equipped to love and care for their minority brothers and sisters.

JESSE EUBANKS: One of those people was Ashley Jackson. In summer of 2015, Ashley came to Louisville to serve with Love Thy Neighborhood. Now, Love Thy Neighborhood, we offer social justice internships supported by Christian community for young adults. And Ashley, she’s African American and as part of her internship, she attended Sojourn.

ASHLEY JACKSON: I did not like it at all. Honestly hated it, like if I’m to be honest, I hated it. The worship was just so different, and I don’t even know how to explain it, it’s just so different and just was not what I was used to. And the pastors being white, yeah that was very different. In a congregation of mainly white people, I didn’t feel accepted. The congregation, they don’t reach out much. At least what I’ve experienced, I could be wrong. Like we have the time of greeting each other, like that was the most I’ve ever talked to anyone in that church was just the greeting. Other than that, no one ever really came to me and asked me, Who are you? What’s your name? And no one tried to get to know me. I believed that was because I was black.

JESSE EUBANKS: But instead of feeling uncomfortable and just leaving, Ashley decided to push through. She completed her summer with Love Thy Neighborhood and Sojourn and returned to college to finish her senior year. But then after graduating, she decided to come back to Louisville, this time to serve for a year with Love Thy Neighborhood. And this meant she would again be attending the white church with the weird music. So here, a year later, was it any different? Had Sojourn become more welcoming to minorities? Well, yes. And no. Ashley remembers a day that was both comforting and discouraging. It was July 2016. Right after the shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. If you remember, they were two African American men both shot and killed by white police officers.

ASHLEY JACKSON: That was hard. That was very hard. And I was again just thinking about my family, thinking about my brothers, thinking about my nephew. My brothers, they’re 28, and they’ve been stopped by police. And it’s scary because anything could happen to them. And then I have two nephews that are under 1, and it’s like what are they going to experience? I’m scared, honestly, for their lives, honestly, because I don’t know what’s gonna happen in the future. I don’t know if this is gonna get better or if this is gonna get worse.

JESSE EUBANKS: That evening, Sojourn had a special service of lament to mourn the loss of these two men’s lives. And to mourn the effects that racism has on our communities.

ASHLEY JACKSON: I think one of my roommates said that I should go. So I was just like, ok, I’ll go and just see how this happens.

JESSE EUBANKS: During the service the issue of race was brought up again from the pulpit, this time from white pastor Daniel Montgomery.

ASHLEY JACKSON: Hearing him say there is racism and segregation in the church was very comforting to know that he realizes it, and he knows that it’s happening.

JESSE EUBANKS: The lament service ended up being comforting to Ashley. That is, until she started to leave.

ASHLEY JACKSON: As I was walking out, there was a lady that came up to me and said, “Do you see those police officers over there? You should give them a hug.” And then she walked off. And I was like, what? Like, why? Why? I am also suffering. Why would you say, tell me to hug those police officers?

JESSE EUBANKS: And just to clarify, Ashley isn’t saying she thinks all police officers are racist and undeserving of her respect. That’s not what this moment was about. This moment was shocking to Ashley because this woman, whom she had never met, made this statement without knowing or considering Ashley’s own pain during this time. 

ASHLEY JACKSON: I don’t know why she said that. I don’t know why she came up to me and said that. I was again kind of angry at that point because you hear Pastor Daniel talking about this and talking about how there is racism and segregation in the church and saying that we need to comfort our minority brothers and sisters, and then she comes up to me and says that. She didn’t hear. She did not hear. I wanted to say to her, I need a hug right now because I’m struggling right now. That was honestly one of the hardest moments at Sojourn for me.

JESSE EUBANKS: Ashley still attends Sojourn. She says she’s encouraged by how the leadership wants to see racial diversity and reconciliation. She just hopes it will trickle down to the rest of the congregation. And racism is still something Ashley is working through. Both racism towards her and her own racism towards others.

ASHLEY JACKSON: It’s so easy. It’s so easy to do it. To judge white people and to blame them for everything that’s happening. It’s so easy to do that. It’s so easy to be angry at them. My skin, something that I can’t control, is causing me so much hurt and pain and so much… Something I can’t control is influencing so much of my life and my family’s life, and it’s like, we didn’t ask for this, y’know. It’s hard. It’s hard. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Hold on. Can we pause for a second? Kevin, as best you can, can you take a second and try to help folks that are white attempt to see some of this through the eyes of a minority?

KEVIN JONES: I mean I think the issue is there’s no responsibility other than from an African American to do something about that. When I hear a white Christian brother or sister say, “You go hug them right now,” it’s simply, yeah, y’all kinda messed up. So since your people, your black family messed up, go make this police officer feel better. So I think the frustration with blacks in the church is that you jump to the same reaction that unsaved people do. And I see no difference between you, who I’m sitting next to at church, and the person I work next to, in the cubicle next to me, who’s an atheist. 

JESSE EUBANKS: And the conclusion is, because of the color of your skin, I can make a lot of assumptions about you. That you are someone who engages in criminal activity, that you’re someone that comes from a broken family, that you are not educated. And when I put all those things together, your place at the table is significantly less than mine. Remember what Rachel Hamm said earlier?

RACHEL HAMM: The membership was so ill equipped to love and care for their minority brothers and sisters.

JESSE EUBANKS: In order to work toward the reality of Revelation 7, Sojourn needed to be equipped. Who could equip them? Who could help them understand the minority experience and bring about a healthy change for this community? Coming up next:

JAMAAL WILLIAMS: My name is Jamaal Williams. I’m the first black pastor of Sojourn Community Church.

JESSE EUBANKS: Stay with us. 

COMMERCIAL

KEVIN JONES: Welcome back to the Love Thy Neighborhood podcast. Today’s story – where the Gospel meets racial reconciliation.

JESSE EUBANKS: We’ve been following Sojourn Community Church as they seek to move towards the racial reconciliation God describes in Revelation 7. They have talked about it from the pulpit, listened to their minority members, and realized they are not equipped for many of the issues that arise around race. And in answer to many years of prayer, Jamaal Williams was installed as Sojourn’s first African American lead pastor in 2016.

JAMAAL WILLIAMS: Really man, I love the black church. I love the traditional, old-school black church. I enjoy the organ; I enjoy the music, so that’s actually my first preference of music and things like that, but in order to come here, I had to give that up.

JESSE EUBANKS: Before coming to Sojourn, Jamaal was the pastor of another local church, Forest Baptist, a historically black congregation. And he loved Forest. It’s a thriving church. While he pastored there, Forest was seeing tremendous growth. So why would he leave and come to Sojourn, who so far doesn’t have a great track record with their own racial problems?

JAMAAL WILLIAMS: Sojourn is a very influential white church. Second sending church in the convention that they’re in, in terms of sending out missionaries on the mission field, over 40 mission families. Very influential throughout the country, has a network of churches that are namely mono-ethnic. And I thought the influence that I could have in a white pulpit week-in and week-out, helping to tear down caricatures of black life, helping to expose them to more resources, helping to unite and build up other churches, I thought that this was the best route to go.

JESSE EUBANKS: But he second-guessed himself right after he was officially brought on board.

JAMAAL WILLIAMS: My first official day on staff I was actually in the hospital. Because I got sick right after I was installed. And doctors couldn’t figure out what was going on, had extreme pain and was on my back for two weeks. So that was just the thing where you’re just like, “Alright Lord, did I miss something? Am I in your will? What in the world is going on?” 

JESSE EUBANKS: But Jamaal trusted the vision, and after those two weeks, he finally got well and was able to really start diving in and doing life with the leaders and people at Sojourn. And one of the things he wanted to show them about having relationships and doing life across racial divides is that people are different from you. Like way different. Like sometimes, they just don’t get it.

JAMAAL WILLIAMS: A lot of times in African American tradition, you just give people nicknames. So one thing, it was just a running joke at Forest, is I had this make-believe family, Nuk-Nuk and Bae-Bae, that I would preach to in our church.  

SERMON CLIP: And we find ourselves at home one evening a week, burnt out and tired because Nuk-Nuk and Bae-Bae want us to run some errand that they could run for themselves.

JAMAAL WILLIAMS: And I remember one sermon here at Sojourn, I said that, and everybody was just like, “Nuk-Nuk?” I saw a couple people look around like, “Is that a name?” And I just was like, ok, excuse me y’all, this is actually what I’m saying and everybody’s like, “Oh, ok. I’m with you.”

JESSE EUBANKS: He also wanted to demonstrate that differences don’t have to be dividing walls. It’s ok to just be different from one another. To show this, Pastor Jamaal and Pastor Daniel Montgomery decided to preach a sermon together. Here’s a clip:

DANIEL MONTGOMERY: We do it by grace. Every day. Moment by moment, right? Because if you haven’t noticed, there’s some differences between Pastor Jamaal and myself.

JAMAAL WILLIAMS: Just a few. I grew up listening to Tupac, Biggie and Jay-Z.

DANIEL MONTGOMERY: I grew up listening to Def Leppard, Guns N’ Roses and Red Hot Chili Peppers.

JAMAAL WILLIAMS: And two of the three of those people I have no idea who it is so… I’m a second generational preacher.

DANIEL MONTGOMERY: I grew up fatherless.

JAMAAL WILLIAMS: I am a deep internal processor. 

DANIEL MONTGOMERY: I am not. I’m a verbal processor.

JAMAAL WILLIAMS: And here’s the big one. I’m black.

DANIEL MONTGOMERY: And I’m not. 

JESSE EUBANKS: One of the things I heard when we were reporting on this is that there was a meeting among the elders of this church, and they drew a line in the sand, and they said racial reconciliation is something we are not gonna change our minds on. That God is concerned with reconciling himself to us, but that also, because we are his children, that we are concerned with reconciling ourselves to one another. And one of the things that is so fantastic in this and I’m so encouraged by – You have people on both sides that are willing to lay down preferences.  

KEVIN JONES: I think what’s most encouraging is when members began to leave Sojourn. I mean, that was just part of it, right? Folks pulled out when Jamaal was named as pastor. The leaders didn’t say, we need to abandon this mission. We’re gonna keep fighting and keep dealing with this. And again, that’s not easy for a lot of people to do. 

JESSE EUBANKS: So the question is – has this been worth it? Mike Cosper receiving countless emails and criticisms and losing sleep after his sermon. Casey Hamm having an awkward lunch with his in-laws and constantly feeling uncomfortable. Ashley Jackson feeling unwelcome and getting angry by being told to hug a police officer. Jamaal Williams giving up his position at his black church to help equip Sojourn. Has any of this made any difference?

JAMAAL WILLIAMS: Two weeks in to me preaching here, there’s a guy who goes here, he brought his grandmother, who was a known racist in her family. And he said that he was afraid when he saw that I was preaching because he knew, had conversations about race with her in the past, as well as when he saw what I was preaching. I was preaching on justice. And he said he just breathed like a large gulp because he said, man this is not gonna turn out good. But he then told me that his grandmother, just by one sermon hearing me preach, he could see God at work in her heart. And he said she’s not perfect, but she’s super aware, and how that’s all she talks about now is Sojourn and their new pastor who’s black, and that rarely does he talk to her without her asking him about me. And this is a woman that’s a Christian, who had animosity and bitterness and a wrong perspective of the image of God for all these years, and God tore it down. And I’m willing to bet there’s at least 50 people like that in our congregation. And I think it’s well worth the move and the investment. Reconciliation is at the heart of God, and multi-ethnic worship is at the heart of God from the very beginning.

CASEY HAMM: And I hope that as this vision continues and as the vision is pushed by the leaders that the members in the congregation continue to grow and learn. And taking it a step further than, “I went out and walked around the neighborhood on a prayer walk today,”  to, “I walked around on a prayer walk, I met Joe, I went back to Joe’s house, I asked him if he wanted to go out to lunch, I asked Joe what his experience has been in this neighborhood, and now Joe and I are friends.”

RACHEL HAMM: It’s important because of our neighborhood, yes. It’s important because of the demographic of our church. We have people who are unreconciled in the body of Christ. Y’know, Sunday is the most segregated day of the week, right? But mostly it’s important and firstly it’s important because of the Gospel because it is a Gospel issue. The Gospel is reconciliation. And if we are gonna preach the Gospel and believe the Gospel, then we need to be a part of this.

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JESSE EUBANKS: If you would like to grow in awareness and how you can take part in racial reconciliation, we have a resource page with blog articles, sermons, books and more. Visit our website, lovethyneighborhood.org/podcast. A special thank you to our interviewees for this episode — Mike Cosper, Casey and Rachel Hamm, Ashley Jackson, and Jamaal Williams. Listen, check out Mike Cosper’s brand new podcast, Cultivated. You can go to harbormedia.com. They are doing a phenomenal job exploring the intersection of faith and work. If you want to hear more sermons from Pastor Jamaal Williams, you can check those out by going to sojournchurch.com.

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KEVIN JONES: Our senior producer and host is Jesse Eubanks.

JESSE EUBANKS: Our co-host is the Dr. Kevin Jones.

KEVIN JONES: And our producer, technical director and editor is Rachel Szabo.

JESSE EUBANKS: Music for today’s episode comes from Lee Rosevere and Wooden Axle.

KEVIN JONES: Apply for your social justice internship supported by Christian community by visiting lovethyneighborhood.org. Serve for a summer or a year. Grow in your faith and life skills.

JESSE EUBANKS: Which of these was a neighbor to the man in need? The one who showed mercy. Jesus tells us, ‘Go, and do likewise.’