Our Pastor is trying to integrate our church!

Q: “Our pastor (who probably reads your website) is trying to integrate our church. We’re a white church and have always been white. He’s trying to bring in blacks and Mexicans, and he’s going to divide our church down the middle. I say, they have their own churches, let them go there and let us worship in our church. How do you feel about this? Does it make you proud that people read the kind of things you have on your website and then split their churches over it?” 

A: No, it does not make me proud. It makes me ashamed before the Lord. Ashamed that any human being could worship his or her Creator and deny another human being the right to worship the same Creator under the same roof.   

What’s wrong with this picture? After church, we can all go down to the buffet, and stand in line together. At the buffet bar, a black woman can stand ahead of a white man and pass the ladle to him after she puts food on her plate, and he in turn can pass the ladle to the Mexican, who then passes it to the Asian who passes it to the white person next in line. Then, they all go to tables under the same roof and eat, fellowship with their families and then leave and go to the mall or to Wal-Mart afterwards – where again, all are under the same roof. Monday through Friday, these same whites, blacks, Hispanics and Asians work at the same companies, eat in the same restaurants, go to the same doctors, and take classes at the same colleges, while their children all are in the same classrooms. But, come Sunday, they can’t (make that “won’t”) worship their Creator under the same roof.   

One other comment I hear a lot about is that whites and blacks worship differently and therefore should not worship together. Blacks and whites might also eat differently and buy different types of products. But somehow, the local buffet has figured out how to bridge that gap to suit the appetites of all the customers in the area, and so has Wal-Mart and the other national chain stores. How can they do it and the people of God not be able to figure it out? The only answer I have come up with is that they wanted to and we didn’t.

Copyright Steven L. Davis  www.SteveDavis.org