Throughout the United States, a small but growing number of churches is attempting to bridge traditional racial and cultural barriers. Among these churches is the Atlanta Metropolitan Christian Center in Atlanta, Georgia, which began with the merger of two lower-middle-class congregations, one white and one black. Its pastor is 38-year-old Flynn Johnson, whose own introduction to cross-cultural ministry began with his conversion in 1971.
“While I was under the influence of the Black Panthers, a white man befriended me and shared the gospel,” Flynn recalls. “He was from Alabama and had the worst kind of accent. I was accustomed to intimidating people, but he refused to be put off. He talked to me like I was a brother and led me to Christ.”
Today, Johnson leads a growing church program (approximately 300 members) that combines biblical preaching and teaching with extensive social outreach, including literacy programs, food, clothing, and shelter assistance, a Christian school, and television and radio programming. White members remain a distinct minority, but the church is located in a racially mixed neighborhood and maintains a strong commitment to cross-cultural ministry.
In the following interview, Johnson reflects on the history and philosophy of Atlanta Metropolitan Christian Center and addresses some of the issues facing biracial churches.
What steps did you take to prepare your congregation for its merger with a white church?
Looking back, it seems our preparation wasn’t so much leading us to undertake a merger as it was leading us to do the will of God. For two years we had been meeting in schools, moving three different times. Consequently, our concept of the church gradually was divorced from pews and stained glass windows. We began to see the church as the family of God whose members were related deeply enough that they could minister to one another and the outside community.
During this time, we felt we were being called to be pioneers, to go where others could not go or had refused to go. We agreed to relinquish our own traditions, if necessary, so that we could be the kind of community our neighborhood needed.
How did the merger actually come about?
A casual acquaintance from an interdenominational pastors’ fellowship called one day to say he had to see me right away. We met, and he told me God had made it clear to him that our two churches were to merge. I was moved to hear this proposal from a white pastor, but I wasn’t interested. Our church was growing rapidly, and we were about to make a major property purchase. I told the pastor I would pray about it, but was all the time thinking, “God might have spoken to you, but he hasn’t said a word to me!”
The Sunday before we were to sign on our new property a woman in our congregation came to me and said she’d had a dream of merging with a white congregation. I hadn’t said a word to anyone, so this got my attention; I began to do some serious praying. It became clear to me that our churches were supposed to merge. Both congregations were open to the idea, and after bringing together the leadership and working out the technicalities of administration, it became a reality.
How do whites and blacks in your church understand the gospel differently since they have come together?
The statement “We are one in Christ Jesus” always was defined in the context of our own homogeneous cultures. Now we’ve had to broaden our understanding of the kingdom of God to include each other. And not just each other, but whoever comes through the doors of our church. We see our separation along racial lines as Satan’s number-one tool to destroy the unity of the body of Christ, and we want to be instruments here on Earth to bring about the unity of God’s people.
We’ve also seen firsthand that the gospel really does have the power to transcend cultural barriers. You can preach and worship in your own culture for so long that you begin to wonder if the gospel has validity anywhere else. But when you see the Word of God take root in other cultures, you appreciate in a new way that Jesus is the Lord of all humanity, that the power of God unto salvation reaches all people and races.
What steps, if any, have you taken to protect the cultural integrity of subgroups within your church?
We try to distinguish between kingdom culture and “natural” culture, and we listen carefully to what one has to say to the other. There is a lot in our natural culture that isn’t an issue of sin; it’s just the way we live. But where any aspect of our culture contradicts the Word of God, we need to make changes.
We’re not interested in making everyone black or everyone white. It disturbs me when blacks who leave the black church to find more biblical content in a white church feel they must deny their own culture and become like whites. It’s equally disturbing when whites come into a black congregation and think the way to relate to people is to slap their hand and say, “What’s happenin’, man?” Our acceptance of each other can’t be based on our ability to change dialects.
For the sake of unity, we need to be willing to give up our sacred cows, even while maintaining our individuality.
Can you give an example?
The black church is in touch with its emotions. Historically, it is evangelistic, socially responsible, and entrepreneurial. The white evangelical church is sophisticated theologically and administratively. Together we could demonstrate the power of God to a secular society. As it is, the secular society is laughing at the church and dictating to us what our norms will be.
There is a substantial and influential segment of the church-growth movement that believes homogeneous churches grow best, that the mix of cultures is a stumbling block to evangelism.
I respect the work that men like Ralph Winter and Peter Wagner have done, but on this point we differ. Maybe I’m not in a position to argue as strongly as I might be if I had 7,000 members and 40 percent of them were white. But there is a growing move of God across the country which is bringing together different cultures within the church context. This is particularly true for those of us located in culturally mixed communities: If we accept responsibility for evangelizing our local communities, it’s only natural that our congregations will be culturally diverse.
I believe culturally mixed congregations make a stronger statement to the world about the power of the gospel. And we have found that if the power of God is present, and people get their needs met, then they don’t really care if the context is black, white, or whatever.
There is an enormous amount of Christian preaching in the United States, yet the church remains one of the most highly segregated institutions of society. How do you account for this?
Paul says we become false prophets and false people of God when we preach the truth but don’t do the truth. In the case of racial reconciliation, I don’t believe the gospel has been preached in this country. And in most cases, it certainly hasn’t been practiced.
The body of Christ is being shaken today to the place where we can no longer stand up and proclaim what we’re not willing to practice. Lately I have witnessed tears, meaningful tears, from evangelical leaders who have wept over the problem of racial division. Whether they will act on this recognition remains to be seen; I’m choosing to believe they will.
There are black evangelicals today who say that true integration is not possible within the church, because white evangelicals will never give up their power.
That’s a powerful statement, but it’s a secular statement. If you approach the gospel believing that it doesn’t have the power to change people’s lives, the power to make new persons, then you are speaking from a secular point of view.
These people are speaking out of their experience in the evangelical community.
Then they need another experience. And that’s what we are hoping to provide here. I think it’s true that many white evangelicals are afraid of losing control. But because I’m goal oriented and mission oriented, I choose to believe it will not always be that way.
From my understanding of Scripture, reconciliation is a command from God. We can’t call ourselves the people of God and reject another part of the body of Christ. So if I’m a black evangelical saying I’m not going to reach out to whites because they will never relinquish control, it is sin. And if I’m a white evangelical saying let the black church take care of itself, let them handle the inner city, then this also is sin.
Jesus died for the world, but he prayed for the church. And what he prayed was that we would be one, so that the world would know God had sent him. In my estimation, the world is not going to know who Christ is until his church is reconciled.
In your experience, is there a price to pay for racial reconciliation? If so, who pays what price?
There is a price, and it will be paid by all of us in the church who determine to come together and say, “We are related.” Part of the price for both blacks and whites may be rejection by their own religious culture.
In our own church, it is whites who have had the more radical choice to make. Some of them left after the merger, in part because of g pressure from relatives. Those who remained had to answer the question, “Who is my family?” A few of the whites had to choose between their biological families and the family of God.
In general, I think it is white Christians who pay the biggest price for racial reconciliation. This is particularly true if they accept responsibility for repentance—and restitution.
In what areas do you see a need for repentance?
For starters, there is the sin of slavery, which would not have happened in this country if the white evangelical community had said no. Instead, they not only allowed it, but they supported it by twisting and misinterpreting Scripture.
We also need to repent because we’ve spent millions of dollars and trained thousands of people for overseas missions (including Africa) while neglecting the black church here at home. One of the great miracles in the history of this country is that there even is a black church, because evangelicals have not evangelized the black community.
Jesus says if we’ve offended someone or are ourselves offended, we need to get things straight. In this case, there has been much “going to your brother” by the black community. Perhaps not as much recently. But the civil rights movement was in part an effort by the black church to say to the white church, “We’re offended.” Unfortunately, the evangelical church never got the message.
Jesus says there are heavy penalties for not dealing with our offenses. He doesn’t say there is no excuse for them to come up, but he does say there is no excuse for them to remain. And I think both the black church and the white evangelical church are reaping curses because we’ve allowed our offenses to hang on so long.
Can you give an example?
In the black community, we have become bigoted ourselves. The very thing that offended us has become our offense: we have taken on the racism of the white evangelical community. The tough part is that white evangelicals are reaching out their hands, and blacks are saying, “I don’t believe you.” We’ve cut ourselves off from the help God gives, because we don’t believe God is big enough to touch the hearts of white people.
It challenges me to the core of my being that Christ said I must forgive my brother if I want God’s forgiveness. He doesn’t give us an option. He said if we don’t forgive our brother from our heart, he will turn us over to the tormenters until we’ve paid the full price. That’s a very heavy statement.
What specific steps of restitution do you think are necessary for there to be genuine reconciliation between white evangelicals and the black community?
We need to make it possible for blacks to attend evangelical seminaries in larger numbers. Blacks were received with open arms in liberal seminaries, but they were essentially shut out of evangelical schools. This is one reason the black church hasn’t fared better in the United States.
There also has to be a willingness on the part of white evangelicals to recognize and follow black Christian leadership. I’m not talking about reversing the tables, but we have to raise the visibility of black leaders among the white community.
Money is another issue. I don’t mean doling out guilt offerings to pay for sins, but we need to recognize bona fide ministries that are meeting the needs of the black community as best they can. The question of long-term resources is very important, because disenfranchisement is a terrible thing, and we are not going to change the minds of people overnight.
Restitution also needs to be made to the black family. One of the things taken from black people during slavery was the family structure, which was systematically broken down while immorality was imposed as a way of life. It never fully recovered. We need to support programs that help rebuild and restructure the black family from a biblical standpoint.
Many, if not most, biracial and multiracial churches in this country are associated with the charismatic movement. Do you see any intrinsic connection between the two?
When people try to relate on the basis of doctrine or culture they are usually in deep trouble, because they can always find differences. The “charismatic experience” gives people a shared history, a point of reference that enables them to recognize each other as brothers and sisters in Christ.
I don’t mean that this experience brings some mystical cloud on people that solves all the problems of cross-cultural relationships. We have to work out our relationship with God, and we surely have to work it out with each other. But at the same time, the charismatic experience does open the door for dialogue. People begin thinking about new truths to which they were previously closed, and they may become more willing to go through the process of reconciliation.
What do you see as the future of cross-cultural churches?
They have a fantastic future. Secular society is already becoming culturally and racially mixed, and if we are going to reach people with the gospel, we need to catch up in this area.
Unfortunately, the present generation is far ahead of the church when it comes to crossing cultural barriers. Take television—or the movies. Once you had to look long and hard to find some black folks on the screen, and when you found them they were bowing and scraping. This is no longer the case.
I predict the time will come when secular society will look for cross-cultural churches and will even wonder what’s wrong with churches that are homogeneous. But we need to be willing to give up our old wineskins. Our current systems are stretched beyond their limit, and they’re too raggedy to hold the new wine of the Spirit. It’s time to let go of the past and embrace the new. There are risks involved, but not near the risks of doing nothing. And the rewards are greater than we can comprehend.
Barbara Thompson lives and writes in Atlanta. Her latest book, written with Anderson Spickard, Jr., is Dying for a Drink (Word).
