The Black Church, here in town, is like a great and fearsome battle ship, with state of the art weaponry. Only, this ship never fights any battles. As the war rages, this elite battleship never leaves dock. Never fires a shot. Instead, all we do is polish the brass and put on grand celebrations of what a great and fearsome battleship we are, celebrating each passing year of our mighty vessel taking up space at the dock.

I recently got into an argument

with an older sister at bible study, a dear woman who seems to know every written word in the King James (only) version of the bible. The problem is, she knows the letter of the Word but knows little of the meaning behind it. She knows what the Word says but she doesn't know, and is not interested in learning, what those words actually mean. The archaic language of 17th century England is precious to her, and when queried on what “With one accord” means, she dug in, folding her arms and averting her eyes and repeating, “All I know is it's what the Word says. It's what the Word says.” Yes, but does it mean the believers decided to be on one accord or does it mean the believers submitted themselves to God in prayer and supplication and their unity was a result of that process? Which came first, the chicken or the egg? “I don't know about no chicken,” she said, “The Word is the Word.”

Matthew Henry suggests Luke's use of “With one accord,” in Acts Chapter 2 was not so much a conscious decision on the believers' part as it was a product of the believers' submission to God. Since the ascension, the believers had been praying together on a regular basis (Acts 1:14), and that unity within the Body of Christ was a natural result of that activity. For years now, I and many other ministers in town have been trying to solve the seemingly unsolvable problem of the fractured disarray of the black church here in Colorado Springs. A relatively small city, Colorado Springs is, of course, the headquarters of the massive Focus On The Family mega ministry, and the expansive New Life Church dominates the city's protestant churches.

The black churches here in town have typical memberships of somewhere around 100 to 150. They are underfunded, poorly administrated and are of only marginal political or economic concern to the city at large. There are somewhere around 60 black churches in town, most of them spun out of one core ministry by members who split off to start their own church after becoming dissatisfied by the pastor or church leadership.

The churches here are loosely allied into several district associations. I'm unsure of what actual purpose these districts serve other than to put on grand pageants and annual celebrations congratulating us for, well, being us. The district associations rarely cooperate with one another and are, in large measure, poorly organized and administrated.

A century ago there was one black church in Colorado Springs, St. John's Missionary Baptist Church, the oldest black church in town. Over the years, ministers and congregants have left St. John's to start Trinity Missionary Baptist Church, Friendship Missionary Baptist Church, Greater Tri-Rock Missionary Baptist Church, Divine Spirit Missionary Baptist Church, New Jerusalem Missionary Baptist Church, Antioch Missionary Baptist Church, and other churches around town. New Jerusalem in turn birthed True Spirit Baptist Church and other members left for Cornerstone MBC, New Light Baptist Church and others. In 1963 Friendship MBC members left to organize their own ministry which would become Emmanuel Missionary Baptist Church, the city's leading black church. Trinity MBC's pastor founded New Resurrection MBC when he was fired from Trinity, and a Trinity minister now pastors Perfect Peace MBC. King Solomon Baptist Church recently split, a group of believers leaving to found New City Community Church.

All of this dividing and founding has increased from an occasional oddity into a common occurrence. Church histories typically omit the grittier details of how the church was founded and what drove the congregants to start their own church. While the best face we put on things suggests these churches were glorious new and spontaneous moves of God, the more likely and less recorded scenario is one of disgruntled members ceding from established ministries to go their own way in largely personality-driven departures. The believers then pool around personalities they feel more in agreement with. Over the decades, these sub-tribes have coalesced into hardened arteries within the Body of Christ, with increasingly less emphasis on diversity and tolerance with one another. This has resulted in a common acceptance of church-divorce, either in small measure (individual members leaving) or in larger and more disruptive ways, with members attempting to oust pastors or, failing that, divide the church. It seems every year the bar is being lowered for disgruntled members to bolt or divide or otherwise disrupt the church.

Disruptive and divisive influences are not ever inspired of God. God does not author confusion or inspire division. God does not inspire us to whisper amongst ourselves or conspire against the pastor. God does not inspire fistfights at national conventions or clandestine back-room deals among deacons and trustees to freeze someone in or out. We give God both credit and blame for things He has absolutely no hand in. Things that are borne more out of our own spiritual immaturity, the immaturity of people who have spent a lifetime in church. A lifetime wasted, as our church leadership has ultimately failed to impart any external or infallible or eternal truth to us, or failed to recognize that the truth of God, the Spirit of God, has not in fact taken hold in the lives of those they pastor. Either way, it's a terrible failure of leadership, one that we have neither recognized nor come to terms with.

We seem to have so very much less patience with one another. And, while we give lip service to unity, the truth is, with so many churches and so many activities, members are exhausted and drained, broke and tired of all the running around. Our Sunday morning congregations continue to shrink, and our “city-wide” gatherings summon only handfuls of the faithful. We are competing with one another for the same (and increasingly shrinking) group of Black Christians.

With rare exception, the black churches here in town have no definable objective within the communities they are located in. In fact, for many of these churches, their location happens to be one of opportunity and/or circumstance, with the membership traveling from various parts of town to meet at the church, and then dispersing in like manner, leaving the community, the actual neighborhood the church is located in, wondering what the church actually does and who actually goes there. Far from being a lighthouse in the community, or the friendly church on the corner, the black church is, in large measure, an invasive presence. Loud black people and loud black music invading the quiet and then vanishing, ignoring the lonely, the lost, the hungry, and the needy literally doors away from the church. I've likened one church, one of the larger churches here in town, to a great and fearsome battle ship, with huge guns and cruise missiles and state of the art weaponry. Only, this ship never fights any battles. Never leaves port. As the battle for the hearts and souls of men and women rages, this elite battleship never leaves dock. Never fires a shot. Instead, all we do is polish the brass and swab the deck and put on grand celebrations of what a great and fearsome battleship we are, celebrating each passing year of our mighty vessel taking up space at the dock.

Faith without works is dead (James 2). Christ never died for us to spend our days congratulating ourselves and fighting with one another. God is not the author of confusion (I Corinthians 14), “...but of peace, as in all churches of the saints.”

What conclusions do we then arrive at when we consider there are dozens and dozens of black churches in this one small town, that precious few of them cooperate with or support one another, that they are, in large measure, poorly administrated and poorly focused, ineffectual in the neighborhoods they are located within, existing in large measure only to congratulate themselves every few months for this or that Annual Day? Is this what our Savior had in mind when He was suffering on the cross? If this the measure and worth of His precious blood? This carnival we've got going out here?

Jesus' entire ministry was about risk. He took risks. He didn't save money in banks and he didn't ever, even once, congratulate himself for the X-Anniversary of His ministry. Jesus fed people. Jesus comforted people. Jesus defied the order of the day by ushering in the new age and the new dispensation. There is no scriptural example and no sound basis for the navel=staring self-absorbed circles our black churches run in here in town. Most of our church calendars and annual budgets are, in fact, in direct conflict with the clear example of the scriptures themselves.

As a result, we are not with one accord, and we will not ever find ourselves with one accord until we align ourselves and our ministries with the Word of God. As is, we align our churches with the tradition of our church. A rich tradition to be sure, but even the richest church traditions must align themselves with the obvious theme and example of the scriptures. Luke said Jesus, “Went about doing good.” Every reasonable example we have of church and ministry involves risk and sacrifice, supplication, love and cooperation. This example has become distorted and twisted and lost somewhere along the way, to the point where we think it's perfectly normal to prioritize useless pageantry over outreach and meeting basic human needs.


The Failure of Leadership
I may be about to give up on the Black Church. At least the black church here in Colorado Springs. And I am not the only one. The congregations of churches in town have grown increasingly transient, the crowd flocking to the best show Sunday morning and departing when they are no longer entertained. The civil rights era passion and fervor of our mothers and fathers has largely dimmed to a vague abstraction while we go through the motions of imitating what we've experienced all our lives— without actually experiencing it.

It is nothing new that the true worshippers of most any church are to be found not so much on Sunday but during odd hours during the week. At prayer meeting. At bible study. Your most faithful and most spiritual and dedicated members will tend to show up when the band is not playing. When the choir is not singing. When there is no show, per se, but when the real work of ministry needs to be done.

Meanwhile, conspicuously absent from most of these activities are the church's true shot callers. The various boards and committees empowered by the church's by-laws to control the purse strings and dictate policy, even to the church's pastor. It is my collective experience, in 29 years of ministry, that the people who gravitate towards these positions, who are nominated and elected into these positions, are almost universally the least spiritual people in the church. Paradoxically, these people are also often the least mature people in the church. Sixty year-olds, entrusted with the future of our beloved institution, and whom we assume to be mature based on their advanced age. But they're not. They are deeply insecure, which is why they want position and title in the first pace. Or, fearful that there are fewer days ahead than there are behind, they are feeling vulnerable and helpless in the face of changing times and new and innovative ideas (like computers and the Internet). Feeling threatened, they take power as a matter of self-defense, making it their mission in life to block the natural course of progress in their church because progress, to them, places in peril their entire relevance as human beings. When I meet people like this, deeply wounded and deeply insecure people who are, more often than not, enormous road blocks to the church's progress, I immediately recognize the very personal struggle these people are going through. Though well hidden behind a stony facade, these people are desperately lonely and afraid of the future because the future suggests that the best years of their lives might be behind them.

I'm reasonably confident that none of these people actually realize what they are doing or why. In their minds, they are doing what is right and what is best for the church. Like my beloved friend I mention in part one, they can see only one layer of the very complex motivations that instinctively drive them to impede the church's progress. For the most part, these are people who are only truly alive at church. Church is the only place they feel empowered or respected. The word “no” is their hand grenade, and the deference we are obligated to show these people— coming into meetings on our knees, hat in hand— provides them with the same kind of endorphin rush a shopping spree or new car or casino win might provide us.

In nearly every reasonable application of this theory, I have found that working in black churches usually entails turning a “no” into a “yes.” Before I even ask, the answer is “no.” It is no not because the idea is no good but because I am the one who is asking it. At 42, I am still considered quite young, and among the church leadership there is frequently a great and desperate resentment of the young. A pastor of 52 is also considered quite young and likely a radical out to change things. Many church leaders are vehemently anti-change and anti-progress. They are frozen somewhere in time, in a day when they felt relevant and useful, and they are determined to drag us all back there to their fond yestertime. Or, absent that, to freeze us wherever we are and in whatever state we are in.

These people often have little respect for the pastor. The new trend, here at least, seems to be firing the pastor or chasing the pastor out or making the pastor so miserable he resigns. Pastors are trending towards becoming mere transient caretakers rather than dedicated leaders. Pastors have a great deal of trouble leading because everything they do is monitored and hampered by the shadow cabinet of people who'd have a hard time finding Genesis in the bible, but who hold the keys to the church.

There really should be a minimum aptitude test for church leadership. Short of a full-out catechism, there ought to be some standardized written and verbal test these people have to pass before they're handed the church's checkbook, and reasonable performance standards which include regular attendance at bible study and Sunday school. The pastor must pass a great many checks and balances and personal investigations before he is seated, but the Sanhedrin are voted in based on how long we've seen them hanging around. In many cases, so-called “trustees” are voted in based on their fat bank accounts or their standing in the community.

In direct contravention of the scriptures and in direct contrast to the orderly and progressive self-revelation of God, the black church routinely faces backward, longing for the plantation and the fond yestertimes and showing hostility and ridicule for forward ideas.

I was recently setting up eMail accounts for a local church when a deacon wandered into the office and demanded to know what I was doing on their computer. Then he wanted to know who authorized it and what it was costing the church, a pretty standard reaction to my two-year attempt to get all of the churches here wired up (and there was no charge). When I asked Deacon if he wanted me to set up an eMail account for him, Deacon glared at me like a Doberman through a chain link fence, and scoffed, “I don't need none of that mess.”

The product of this thinking and of these deeply entrenched individuals has been a steady decline of church membership. The church, now a politically toothless parody of the brave institutions who faced down national guard troops and police attack dogs, is at best a shadow of its former self. Having given over control of spiritual resources to unspiritual people, we are now reaping precisely the apostasy we have sown. We are, increasingly, a people who do not really know God in any meaningful way, but are a people who are, “playing church,” as our parents used to call it. Going through the motions, wearing the robes, but we don't really know God.

Truly knowing God, truly being connected to God, causes a kind of fusion between God and man. And any fusion, as we all know, creates power and byproducts. It is impossible to truly know God and be a coward. It is impossible to truly know God and be selfish. It is impossible to truly know God and be unspiritual. It is impossible to truly know God and be hateful or spiteful or petty or mean.

But that, in large measure, is exactly who we, in the black church, are. As I said in an earlier essay, I find it curious that, in my Christian experience, the black Christian community is often the demographic least like Christ. We are so very quick to anger. We are so thin-skinned. A people of toes perpetually stepped on. Of all the people in the world, we seem to forgive each other the least.

And this is a fair indicator and fair indictment of the failed leadership in the black church. Pastors who are either weaklings pushed around by their various “boards,” or who are deeply flawed and deeply scarred, insecure individuals addicted to applause and needing to feed massive egos at their congregants' expense. Preaching a Gospel of Impotence, these ministers are typically those among us with the biggest ego, the thinnest skin, the shortest temper and the least patience.

And so here we are, in 2004, still doing everything with a note pad and a very old calculator. Still bringing the worship service to a dead stop so some completely unspiritual person can dryly read through lists of announcements. We still do everything the plantation way, by oral tradition. We don't read. If church folk in this town actually read anything, I'd have been run out of here years ago. But the fact is, reading is not in our tradition, listening is. Which tends to explain the transient nature of today's congregations, people blown to and fro by every wind or doctrine.


The Wal-Mart Factor
There used to be this great buffet joint most every black churchgoer went to after Sunday services. It was the social hub of black Christians. If you wanted to get any networking done or advance your program, you staked out this joint on Sunday afternoons. Black worshippers, who would routinely complain and have spasms if the worship service ran longer than 90 minutes, would adjourn to this restaurant and spend all day— I am not kidding— all day there. They'd be there for hours. Two at a minimum but often longer than that. I marveled at the hypocrisy of people rushing out of worship to come to this place where they whiled away the hours over fried chicken and apple pie.

You could nearly always tell who the pastors were in this restaurant because many if not most black pastors would, inexplicably, wear their hats inside the restaurant. Expensive and gregarious fedoras, evoking a kind of pimp image. This is something I never fully understood. First of all, hats are kind of out of fashion now except for the gregarious Puffy Gangster types posing as pimps for BET videos. Regardless, all around the room you would see men, overdressed in suits that range from sublime to ridiculous, Stacy Adams shoes and large, gregarious hats. Hats they surely could have left in the car, but chose to wear so, I guess, everybody could see their hat. Never mind how rude and barbaric it is for a man to wear his hat indoors, these guys would take off their coats and leave their hats on.

So, they're wearing a loud suit and a big hat, evoking the universal esthetic of a street pimp. These guys would go to the buffet counter with the hat on. Would sit and eat with their families— with their hats on. It was an astonishing sight, perhaps some southern or western phenomena. But it made these men look ridiculous. And, by extension, it made the black church look ridiculous. And all I could think was, my how ridiculous these white people must think we are.

Black pastors rarely if ever wear the basic clerical collar and black suit of a Catholic priest. Church of God In Christ wears this uniform for special occasions, but Baptists, by and large, range more or less away from clerical garb, favoring loud suits and big hats. I wear the clerical collar. I love wearing it. I love what it means. I love what it represents. I love what it reminds me of. In white culture, a man wearing a clerical collar is respected and admired. In our wretched, backward, ignorant fashion, a man wearing a clerical collar is often snickered at and ridiculed, “Who does HE think he is?” It is so mind-numbingly ignorant. What I like about the collar is not that it make me look important, but that it is simple. It is plain. It is humble. It gets right to the point. It is a simple smock that diverts attention from how fancy your suit and tie are. A pastor friend of mine said he only wears the shirt for special occasions and treats it with a worshipful deference, to which I politely disagree. The clerical shirt is a work shirt. It is designed for everyday use, not to be held in abeyance for special occasions. It is supposed to get dirty, to be used and reused and discarded. What I like about the shirt is it tells people Whose you are. When I am wearing it, nobody has to guess what I am about. I cannot hide or melt into the crowd the way these pastors in the loud suits can. Nobody mistakes me for a pimp, and I can get away with absolutely nothing because, once someone has seen me wearing the clerical shirt, I am become a marked man. They know I am a minister of the Gospel, and my life, my everyday walk, must now reliably support the simple cloth shirt I wear on Sunday.

But we are so painfully ignorant and so terribly unschooled in spiritual matters, our socialization is towards gregarious displays of clothing and jewelry, expensive cars Armour-alled up, and big hats. When I arrive in a simple smock I am snickered at and ridiculed by deeply ignorant and ultimately unspiritual people. People who attempt to undermine the work God is doing in my life by setting confusing and conflicting examples of Christian behavior. And people who, more often than not, hold the keys to the church.

We remain a fractured and marginalized people because who we are and how we conduct ourselves in the Black church is largely out of step with the example of Jesus Christ.

Congregants waiting three and four hours at the buffet gossiping, and pastors eating at their tables while still wearing their loud, gregarious hats, have an obvious disconnect with the Holy Spirit as the Spirit would never inspire such foolishness. In a spiritual whiplash doubtless confusing to the observer, these people dismiss, with fiery rhetoric, most anything progressive while running the aisles hollering and screaming and turning cartwheels for exactly ninety minutes only to then adjourn to the buffet where they behave like pimps and utter heathens, collecting in little cliques gossiping about who's at the next table and what they're wearing and who's sleeping with who.

That this business continues to go on (albeit at other restaurants now) is prima facie evidence of the failure in leadership in the black church. It makes my strongest case for the dissolution of as many as 40 or more of these little churches all over town, as these churches continue to fail to meet the basic standards of effective ministry. Fail to teach. Fail to encourage. Fail to inspire. Our wretchedness— spiritually, socially, politically, economically —is an indictment of our leadership. There's far too much going-through-the-motions church. “Playing” church. Get-it-over-with-already church.

As many as two thirds of the black churches here in town could ideally close their doors and unite to become a single, larger and more effective ministry. That means letting go of old feuds and old wounds and petty differences and recognizing the power and obvious advantages of unity in Christ. Real unity, not just lip service unity. Not just Annual Day unity, but pooling a dozen building funds into one unity. Building Christian Life centers instead of little expensive churches unity.

I have this enduring concept of modeling a network of Christian Life Centers after the vision of Relevant Word Ministries, a holistic ministry embedded in the Hillside community that is evolving traditional worship into a fuller-ranged outreach. Relevant Word strives to meet the spiritual and physical needs of its community— not just its congregation.

To the south, New Jerusalem Missionary Baptist Church has, with economic savvy to back up its spiritual imperative, paid off its property and worked clever deals for new pews and parking lot resurfacing, even thinking to include a basketball court in the process. Inside you'll always find fresh coffee and a free ice cream dispenser. The church is a social hub of the community, open virtually all the time and available to local kids after school and a wide range of programs and church auxiliaries. I'd love to see both Relevant Word and New J (as we call it) equipped with larger and more modern state of the art facilities.

Perhaps five of them, sheepfolds led by New J in the south, Relevant in mid-town, Emmanuel in the west, True Spirit in the east and New City Community Church in the north. With the smaller satellite churches merging with the Christian Life Center in their area. By pooling the resources of dozens of churches, we'd have the economic clout to build these Christian Life Centers. Although smaller churches would lose their individual buildings, what they would gain is the resources of a church ten times their size.

The idea is Good News/Bad News in the sense of the Wal-Mart factor. Wal-Mart is good news in that it's kind of one-stop shopping, but bad news in that it's kind of the kiss of death to small and even medium-sized local businesses. My local Wal-Mart has literally wiped out all commerce around it, chasing K-Mart and Safeway off of the block, along with lots of smaller Mom and Pop shows. Wal-Mart has become, in many ways, a kind of secular Life Center. It is the social hub of the area. If you are looking for anybody, anybody at all who lives in the area, just hang out at Wal-Mart long enough. Wal-Mart is a kind of forced attrition, where we are forced to cooperate with one another and socialize with one another. In Wal-Mart, all vendors are equal, and share the enormous and daunting clout of the retail giant. A network of multi-million dollar Christian Life Centers would certainly order our steps more toward cooperation, but would likely leave those ministries that don't join up out in the cold and starved for resources.

Of course, this idea is a ridiculous one for as many reasons as there are for the existence of so many churches in the first place. The many differences of opinions, approaches, tastes, cliques, hurt feelings and other criteria that brought all of these churches into existence in the first place fuels and sustains the deep divisions among us and makes real unity virtually impossible. I mean, sure, we like each other, we wave to each other in Wal-Mart, but we're hardly going to risk losing our individuality in some grand merging.

The larger problem, however, is an even more obvious one: leadership. Before any discussion of unity could move beyond high concept, the first thing most black Christians will ask is, “Well, who'll be leading it? Who will be in charge?” In many ways, we are far more concerned about who's in charge than we are in who we are or what we are about. The Black Church, throughout America, is, in great measure, personality driven. We follow personalities more than we follow ideas, ideals or even the cross itself. Logic need not apply, as logic suggests the most efficiently run and most productive ministries should ideally take the lead. In that context, the best and most likely candidates to lead such a movement would be instantly disqualified simply because they are, in fact, successful at what they do. They are The Big Guys, and the “little” guys would tend to resent the larger ministries muscling them out of business.

Which is just insane. But the truth is, we as black church folk are motivated more by fear than by faith. I know of several churches who have gone to enormous lengths and great expense just to NOT vote in a certain pastor. We make decisions based on our worst fear more often than we make them on our greatest hope.

So we keep struggling to pay the bills, to raise the building fund, to make the mortgage payments. We continue to pressure the handful of people in our respective congregations and we continue to be a wholly ignorable political demographic because we're not a block of voters but are a deeply divided community that supports each other in only the most marginal ways.
Worrying overmuch about who's in charge is, again, contrary to the example of our Lord (Mark 9), and is further evidence of our increasing distance from a real knowledge of and relationship with God. God could not possibly be at work in our lives and bear fruit like this.

Ephesians 5:
Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children; And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling saviour. But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints; Neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not convenient: but rather giving of thanks. For this ye know, that no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God ...And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. ...See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.

“Followers of God.” This is what we claim to be. This is certainly what we SHOULD be. But, if we were, we would be with that one accord Luke speaks of. We'd be more interested in building God's kingdom than our kingdom. And the blatantly un-Christ like behavior on our part— the gossip and backbiting and resentment and jealousy and all that eye rolling— simply wouldn't happen. We'd be more mature than that. If we were walking in the Spirit we'd learn to love one another.

When you think of Black church people in general terms, which of Paul's statements seems truer of us?

Galatians 5:
Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

Galatians 5:
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections F12 and lusts. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. Let us not be desirous of vain glory, provoking one another, envying one another.

The obvious remedy for this is the cross. For us to become on one accord, truly on one accord, and not just with lip service. And with all due respect to my dear sister from bible study, I maintain that we, as flawed human beings, are incapable of the kind of divine synchronicity observed on the day of Pentecost. Try as we might, we cannot simply decide to cooperate, to be on one accord. That will only happen when we surrender, truly and fully, to the will of the Lord. Once we stop relying on our wisdom or pushing our agendas but turn such matters wholly over to the Lord, once we are in sync with Him, we will, by definition, be with one accord.

And, then, nothing can stop us.


2 Kings tells us this story about the Prophet Elijah fleeing from Queen Jezebel and hiding in a cave. An angel of the Lord appears to him and asks him why he's hiding. Elijah, despondent, tells God, “I'm the only prophet left. I'm the only one left who truly believes in You. Who truly believes this thing. And they're trying to kill me.” Pastor Reynolds, who should have been somewhere laughing it up with his parishioners and scarfing up fried chicken and greens, was instead nibbling on leftover banana bread, huddled in his office, while we all went to party somewhere. In his eyes: exhaustion or despair? Was he thinking, Lord, I'm tired, or was he asking, What am I doing here? King on the mountaintop or Elijah in the cave?

I know that feeling. I know that exhaustion. I know the anger, the frustration, the sheer futility of trying to get people to work together. But if we don't do it, who will? We have some wonderful leaders here, but, taken as a whole, the Black Church here in Ourtown still scores a D Minus because we're so very fractured.

The pastors I've profiled here have, to a man, expressed to me their frustration at our seeming inability to work together. Oh, we take stabs at it, but it's mostly pomp and circumstance. It's dating without commitment. It has no teeth to it. Our “unity” is ineffective.

As I see it, our leadership role should, ideally, be superceded by that of the pastor once he is in place. And then we should either submit to his leadership or fire him. There's no scriptural example of the kind of nagging, browbeating defiance we see in many churches. There's absolutely no scriptural example of the Chairman of Deacons or even of Trustees having contravening authority over the pastor once he is seated. As I understand scripture, these men are ordained to help the ministers, not order them around. The board should either do as the pastor asks or vote him out. But all of this pastoral hog-tying is part and parcel of the dysfunctional spiritual eco-system here.

Men and women of faith need to take the risk, need to risk the wrath of sheep who have taken over the shepherd. Those of us who have long ago parked our spine at the door need to risk it all, bet our entire lives and livelihoods on the perfect will rather than the permissive will. Pastors need to stand up and say This Is What We're Going To Do. And we, as the flock, need to fall in line behind our pastors. We should have the courage to match our convictions.

There is far too much good here for us to be running in circles like this.

Christopher J. Priest
10 January 2004
editor@praisenet.org
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