Heaven Won’t Look Like Your Sunday Morning
So I led worship at this conference this weekend.
The conference was in Memphis TN.
One of the most racially divided cities in America.
As I walked out on stage before the first set I saw white, black, asian, hispanic, and many other races.
When I walked off stage I no longer saw any race.
I’ll be the first one to admit I was nervous how these different cultures would come together and go after it. Well. That worry lasted all of about one measure. They ALL went after it together when rock and roll happened and then when hip hop happened.
It’s only been a little over 2 years since I left Sandals Church but I’ve already forgotten what that looks like.
And at the end of the entire event…
I couldn’t help but ask myself why our churches are not more racially diverse?
The easy answer is we like to hang with our own.
I get it.
But I want the hard answer…
Because what I saw this weekend…
Well, heaven is going to look A LOT more like this weekend and A LOT less like what you experience on a Sunday morning.
Chew and spit on that ragamuffins…
Los
RAIN IT DOWN
Truth.
As a long-time (before you were born?) Memphian, it thrills me to see this! Looking at the pix you were tweeting, I saw diversity, excitement, passion and engagement. Maybe this will be the generation who will get it. I hope so.
I had hoped to see more of it covered in the local media – Memphis is so full of positive energy right now.
Thanks for bringing it to Memphis!
Memphis rules.
I love that town
Amen & amen!!!
First thing I noticed when my wife and I moved to AZ from NC was the fact that there were non-white people in the church…no joke. I remember thinking, “this is what heaven will be like, only better.”
It’s a trip
I’ve been chewing on this thought all weekend. I long to see our churches look more like heaven. As I prepare to plant a church,I’m continually perplexed about how to start a multi-ethnic church in the Memphis area. I want to see multiple races (not just blacks and whites) worshipping together on Sundays and reaching our city for Christ as they share in gospel community. Any thoughts about how that might happen?
I think you have to be intentional starting from the top down.
Leadership has to reflect it.
word!
Never! My church it already looks like heaven except for all the cool stuff in revelation! Probably should find another church if it bothers you so much!
People might flock together to be with their own kind, but it’s up to us as Christians to reach out to others who are not like us. Racially or otherwise.
Amen
Word.
One of the things I really love about my church is that it is so multicultural. As well as people of european background there is heaps of people of african and asian background.
That’s awesome Joanna! There are lots of churches leading the way. What church do you attend?
There might even be *gasp* foreigners in heaven!
There is but one race, the human race. There is but one people, God’s people created in His image to do good works which He prepared in advance for us.
Where we err is reaching out to people to invite them to our churches so they can become like us. Breaking down so-called cultural barriers isn’t what we should be about. Introducing people to the loving God who meets them where they are, is.
And we are actually the foreigners! Lol
I don’t know if I’ve reaaallly pictured what worship in heaven will look like since I was a kid. I’ve imagined what it would feel like…
My outdated memory would have to include the ginormo 7 ft tall white robed angels in a big round arena singing songs with the word “glory” in every chorus. And embarassingly enough….come to think of it…all the angels in my imagination were white. How messed up does that make me?
But there were also lions roaming around every now and then that you could pet. So that’s good.
Good post to chew on indeed!
Now that is rad
I am totally looking forward to petting a lion with out the fear of losing a limb!
Come to Cairo. We have 50 nationalities worshiping together from every continent except Antarctica. Many of them speak English as their second or third language, and yet they really know how to worship. If you think that unity among all those nations and cultures would be hard enough, they also represent 50 different denominational backgrounds. It’s an ongoing miracle that church happens every week, and it’s a beautiful thing.
You know you’re always welcome…
Name the time. I’m there.
Wow! I would love to see that church sometime! Got a website?
Yup Becky, http://www.maadichurch.com
Would love to see you there. I have a friend, Mark Tedder, who led worship at Beijing for a couple of years and who has also visited us here in Cairo. It was really nice to compare notes as to how church works in countries with no freedom of religion. The amazing thing is that it does. God cannot be legislated out.
So, I live in a small southern community. I hate to say it, not all of God’s church’s are like where you played in Memphis. In my community, you can easily see the divide. Blacks have their church’s, White’s go to theirs and so on. I know we are ALL children of God but as we have no doubt shown in history, we don’t always act like it. It is a shame that we all don’t love each other like we say we should. I pray that one day we practice what we preach. LOVE THY NEIGHBOR!!
I think it will have to start with church leadership.
Second that.
true dat.
truthfully – if heaven was a lot like my sunday morning – I wouldn’t wanna go. I have recently seen the “real hearts” of some of those sunday morning regulars…
ICK. EWWW. UGH.
I can’t wait to run down that narrow road and see for self that it’s crowded with Africans, orphans, the hungry and oppressed… wait, where are all the Americans???
Probably building a big addition on to a gigantinormous church campus somewhere…
Daaaaaaaaaang.
And that is not ALWAYS a bad thing but I see where you are going.
Unfortunately we live in a world that has created it’s own sets of rules and traditions, whether social or religious, that have created barriers. We have succumbed to man’s desires instead of pursuing after God’s.
Tradition.
Break us of our need for te familiar
Amen
Good words Rick
I know at least three church’s in Charlotte that totally get it…Steele Creek Church, Transformation Church and The Gathering. Others are trying….but history and hurt are hard things to overcome…I think it can with leadership but it has to be very intentional. My big old baptist church is trying hard to serve our community in very practical ways and it is starting to work…
That is great Bob. What are some of those practical ways
I, too, am looking forward to planting a multi-ethnic church. Too many people hide behind “just show the love of God and they will come”. I agree that we need to be intentional about it.
Let’s not just sit back and wait for the walls to come down on their own.
Let’s get it!
Also…if we truly like to hang with our own, race should have nothing to do with it…so why does it?
I’ve definitely been in predominantly white churches my whole life, and I crave the multicultural worship experiences. Yes, Heaven indeed.
yup.
I was at the Rising, and it was truly a site to see, and experience. Byran Loritts truly brought it home with his talk, The Gospel Horizontal.
I love Memphis. I have never been to church there so I can’t speak to the demographics going on Sunday morning (though they are probably typical), but I have hit every joint on Beale Street before and it was fully integrated. More than ever, people are listening to the same music (Jay-Z is probably right to call himself the new Sinatra), eating the same food (I’ll take Cajun or soul food over just about anything), and responding to the styles of teaching (does anyone not like listening to Andy Stanley or T.D. Jakes?).
My point is that as the church, we are running out of excuses to remain segregated. We can’t pretend we prefer the all-white choir music, then crank up Beyonce as we’re leaving the all-white church parking lot. We rode the cultural differences excuses long after the cultural differences evaporated.
I agree that the solution is leadership. The demographic of your congregation will probably mirror the demographic of your staff.
Well said. I see these “cultural barriers” being broken down everyday. Especially within the confines of musical choices. I keep praying that the church would be what God intended, and it does start with leadership. After about 3 years, the church starts to mirror it’s leader, and it’s really hard to change without significant repercussions after that happens. Crank that Beyonce!
How i long to be in a racially diverse church. Something that has bugged me for a very long time for the exact reason you mentioned, heaven will be color blind.
Coming from a suburbs kid I think one of the biggest things I see is region. There are not a whole lot of african americans that live in St. Charles County (suburb of STL). I think this is one of the main reasons why, but I will say that the church that I grew up in and still attend when I am not playing drums is not racially diverse at all, and here is why…we have all white people on staff.
I think this is the biggest reason, when a church staff is all white who will you attract?
Amen!
I am in Midland, TX and about a year ago we went bi-lingual, Spanish and English. It has been an amazing process and to see how how this is radically changing people’s lives is awesome.
Great stuff.
I don’t have the answer for this, but I just have to say that it gives me so much joy and excitement to see people worshipping together like this!
Some of the separation hinges on liking different worship styles and different theologies/denominations.
Even still, I look forward to heaven where we aren’t. Even able to see the differences.
Totally.
Don’t have an answer, but keep praying “on earth as it is in heaven”.
Los,
This is something that hits near and dear to my heart. Growing up in Georgia it was simple, you either went to a white church or a black church. I went to an old school southern black baptist church. As I always say, “the program was just a suggestion”. Many a Sunday we would get to church around 11 and not be done until 3 or 4.
Now as a child of the northpoint children (athenschurch), my biggest fear is becoming a “white church”. For the first year or two, I was the only regular african american that attended services. We now have several minority families that attend, but it is still fairly light.
I love the input that you get from having different cultures. And in my heart, I know that heaven is going to be a smorgasboard of cultures, languages, dialects, and backgrounds.
“Congregational diversity” people.
If you have a town with 50/50 racial mix, shouldn’t your places of worship reflect this? We have to do a better job of making it easy to worship together. And in doing that, we will make it easier for those that don’t know Jesus to come in the door when there are faces that look like theres.
Just my $.02
SK
Stevie. I agree. I do.
Again. Worship has become a personal preference of style.
Thats about as backwards a definition as crack is a recreational drug.
GREAT thoughts.
I fear because it is so difficult, it will not become important
I’m fortunate to go to a church where I can say that heaven will look like what I see Sunday morning.
I agree with you here. Heaven’s not going to be a single race. And to that end… I also believe that sin is partly to blame for why we like to hang with our own. With heaven being sin-free, it won’t matter that my heavenly neighbor is black, yellow, red, blue or green. (yes… I just insinuated that I might be neighbors with cookie monster and Oscar the grouch)
I know that my church is predominantly white. We do have representatives from the African American community as well as the Hispanic community. But we’re talking like one or two families each.
We’re trying to be more ethnically aware and our mission opportunities are helping us with that. We’ve got mission branches in Eastern Europe as well as Africa and our youth director just spent the last two years working as a translator for ELCA delegations in El Salvador. We’re bring culture to our white suburban comfort zone.
I wish we were able to do more. I wish it didn’t make us uncomfortable. I can’t wait for heaven!
I am white and would love to hear more Hip Hop, R&B, Reggae and other genre’s in church. I can worship to Lecrae just as much as Steve Fee. I guess it is my 14 years of DJing Hip Hop that fuels that…
So jealous of you this weekend hangin with Lecrae…
I think a lot of it starts in the local community. Diverse community = diverse churches. I belong to a church that has a very diverse group of worshipers. In fact, our Cambodian ministry is so big they have their own service on Sunday afternoon.
Nothing intentional was done beyond making sure that when new people walk through that door, regardless of what they look like, they are made to feel as welcome as possible. So welcome that it wouldn’t matter who was sitting next to them in the service. They would just want to worship there because they were made to feel like it was home.
We have a half Dutch, half Chinese guy who used to be a full time evangelist for 20 years as our head pastor. I think it is that experience of being in hundreds of different churches in multiple countries that has allowed our pastor to be able to reach so many different people. And our church reflects that. We have Hispanic, Black, Asian, White, Indian and so many other cultures represented in our church and when we get together and do outreach, we are all there working together. I honestly think it works though because our pastor is fully behind it. He doesn’t see color, he sees people who need Christ. And that is the key. And he is always trying to teach us as a congregation that.
Have you ever heard of Shaun King at http://www.shauninthecity.com? He started The Courageous Church in urban Atlanta in January 2009, and one of his goals for the church is to have a very racially and ethnically diverse congregation.
i love that you wrote about this because i have a little something to say.
when i was probably 11 years old…about 10 years ago…my pastor felt like God was directing him to expand the doors of our church to more than just the white people that were there every sunday morning. yes, we were doing outreach in the community but those people were not actually in our sunday morning services every sunday. so it began. i don’t really remember it very well but…
somehow people of other races started pouring in…and the regulars started pouring out.
the board conspired to see him out. all the deacons desperately wanted their “white” church back. but God is good. and He won that battle.
the next few years were amazing. we had a man in the sound booth who translated the message as he was preaching into Spanish for the Hispanics attending through headsets. our church grew so much that we had to build a new building. its a beautiful thing.
a spanish church grew out of our church and is doing well. and my pastor won the martin luther king jr. award from our city when this all began.
my church is about 75% black. with a few other races thrown in. and i look around and the white folks are the minority. i love it.
i explained my church to my minorities and race diversity class at college and everyone was shocked. a racially integrated church in the South? yep, its the way Jesus wanted it.
that’s so true. Fresno (CA) is a real melting pot of cultures but even then, we are pretty separated. I went to a bday party Saturday of an Indian family and got a taste of being on the other end of this conversation.
One of the coolest church experiences I’ve had was visiting an international church in Beijing. (http://www.bicf.org/) People from over 70 nations worshiping together. Because of Chinese gov. restrictions, you had to have a foreign passport to get in…it was incredible to freely worship with all these people from around the world, yet tragic that the Chinese people all around could not be a part.
I can’t wait to worship in heaven with all of my brothers and sisters!
The kingdom of God knows no color or races or ethnicity, just the name of Jesus!
The church we now attend in State College, PA is a non-denominational “Black” church. But there are a lot of white people too (including us), as well as some other nationalities. We feel tremendously at home there.
Um, I just read Revelation and somehow John could distinguish between every tribe, nation, people and language. Doesn’t that mean we will retain some kind of identity that defines us here? Just askin’.
God will distinguish ever tribe and tongue, but we are all worshiping together. When we purposely choose to segregate ourselves, we lose the opportunity to learn from other cultures and other ways of doing things. Is the church supposed to be one orchestra of separate instruments or separate bands, playing in separate concert halls. I can’t wait to play in the orchestra as soon as possible.
yo you got some serious comments on this post! I eyes fell apart at like #44…seriously, as a person of color (black) it is insulting to hear the comment “i don’t see color”. that translates into “i don’t see race” when this race/ethnicity is what God created me to be. We should celebrate our diversity, not overlook it, ignore it or force it into a dominate culture. the deepest work of sharing multiethnic faith community is found in the work of reconciliation.
Check us out at http://www.thenewculture.org
And we are starting a new church in columbus, ohio intentionally third culture (multiethnic). http://www.peopleofthedream.com
peace,
Amen! That is such a burden that God has placed on my heart. The racial divide that we see on Sunday morning across this country must make Jesus cringe. I pray that God will continue to use men like you and me to bridge this gap. Thanks bro!