A Call to the Church Body of Elim

By Jason Comerford

Most of us don’t know what it’s like to live in constant fear.

To be sure, we have our moments and our challenges. Perhaps we are worried about our job and possible layoffs. How are we going to pay off that credit card? Or maybe we had a concerning physical exam with the doctor. These are legitimate trials.

But as we watch the protests unfolding in hundreds of cities across the world, it’s becoming clearer that our black brothers and sisters are experiencing our country in a way that white people generally aren’t.

This past year, I’ve been hearing many stories from black friends, both within the Church and without. Over and over, the same theme rises to the surface: helplessness in the face of abuse by authority.

It’s the humiliation of being asked, in your own neighborhood, if you belong there. The chill of anxiety that comes with a traffic stop, wondering if you’ll be just one more statistic. The dismay that comes from knowing that the first time you give your son “the talk,” the topic won’t be “the birds and the bees,” but instead, “how to respectfully respond to the police when they stop you on the street.” The sickening reality of recognizing which of your mixed-race children will “pass for white.”

These are not isolated stories. This is a daily reality for at least 40 million black men and women living in the United States. And recently the Elder Board has been wrestling with the recognition of this painful reality.

Recognizing Grief

Friends of Elim, one of the things we need to recognize is that central to these protests is the voice of grief. This is what it looks like when the struggle of multiple lifetimes of grief and oppression overflow with little hope for justice.

I’m saddened that our response in the American white Church has long been to critique the legitimacy of protesters and their methods, rather than to feel the incalculable grief and pain of our black brothers and sisters.

The Church in America has arrived at a moment of reckoning. Martin Luther King Jr., whom we love to uphold as a beloved civil rights leader, famously lamented that one of his biggest obstacles was not violent bigots such as the KKK, but silent white churches. I fear that this hasn’t changed much in the last 60 years.

Fortunately, even now, there’s still a way forward in all of this.

How Do We Respond?

We have a lot to discuss in the coming months and years. We need to take a hard look at systemic racism—the racism running deep within and shaping our society. It’s outside most of our daily experiences, and so it’s a blind spot for us. We’ll need to take a hard look at our own history at Elim and examine if we’ve played a role in it. If so, we’re going to have to call it sin and repent.

And then we must find a way to act.

The call to the Church is to be salt and light in our world, and we’ve taken up that call with issues such as human trafficking and abortion. We’ve not only preached against these things, but also taken up activist roles to put a stop to these evils. Along with preaching to the heart, wherein lies the ultimate root of these problems, we have sought to change laws, addressing systemic problems with systemic responses.

To fail to do likewise when it comes to the travesty of racism would be an obvious hypocrisy.  We cannot merely “preach the Gospel” at the problem and then fail to pursue actual justice. God has clearly told His people how he feels about religious pretense that fails to do any actual good.

So, here’s where this starts for us.

Education

The first step is education. This is not onlyseeking an understanding of the facts, important as that is, but also listening to the stories of our black brothers and sisters and willingly immersing ourselves in their perspective, entering into their pain. Before we can even begin to discuss heavy and important topics such as systemic racism and the proper response of the Church, we must learn how to listen and weep with those who weep (Romans 12:15).

Let me be clear: this is no small thing we’re being called to. The human heart wants to discount those who are different from us, to explain away their experiences in order to preserve our comfortable and unchallenged view of the world—especially when it involves the history of our own compromise and guilt in the American Church. To attempt to educate ourselves will be an act of spiritual warfare. We will be opposed.

Nevertheless, we must do this.

If we wish to serve our Lord Jesus Christ and be a light to the world around us, then we cannot ignore this calling; if we do, we’ll continue to watch as Christianity in this country slides into something utterly irrelevant to our society.

What’s Next for Elim?

I call upon Elim and its leadership to seek out black voices, read black books, and hear black stories. I’d like to see us hold after-church conversations discussing what we’ve learned, bringing in speakers as we think this through. We can seek recommendations for materials that can help with all this—books, podcasts, and more. We could really make this a part of the life of our church.

Long term, we could see Elim become so reflective of the unity and diversity of Christ that we begin to see a greater diversity in our membership and qualified leadership. The people of God are helped, not hurt, by different perspectives and views within the Body.

Elim: Let’s pray and think seriously about this. Education and understanding are merely a first step toward the more important goal of action. Not everything has to happen right now, but we risk rejecting our calling entirely by pushing off the call of justice to a more “convenient” time. Finding our next pastor is very important, but we do not get to put off the more weighty matters of the law until then.

I believe God has laid this at our feet during such a trying time not to make things harder, but because it is the right time for us to embrace it. Our God is a God who works justice and mercy, forgiveness and reconciliation, love and resurrection. These things really are possible in our world.

What a testimony to His greatness would it be to see such wonderful things worked in our day and in our country?

“With what shall I come before the LORD,
and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” He has told you, O man, what is good;
and what does the LORD require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?

                                                                                    Micah 6:6-8

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