BMCR considers state of the black church
By Cynthia Belt
Centennial-Caroline UMC, Baltimore
The crises facing the black community today are legion. There is the issue of poverty with disproportionate numbers of persons living at or below the poverty line identified as persons of color. There is the atrocity of the prison industrial complex with its focus on incarcerating black males for profit; unemployment, which is in the double digits for black America; housing, education, health care; indeed we could sit here for the next week listing the plagues that impact the black community.
However, our task is to find a way forward, a way through and a way out of these crises. The black church and Black Methodists for Church Renewal are uniquely positioned to address these issues with the prophetic power of the Word of God and the transformational spirit of God.
In the words of Rev. Dr. Gil Caldwell, one of the founders of BMCR, “BMCR exists to represent and reflect the best of the social justice commitment of Methodism as well as that of activism in the Black Church. More than ever there is a great need for Black United Methodism to articulate and express a Scripturebased prophetic ministry in these ‘best of times, worst of times’ moments. We cannot be seduced by the ‘best,’ when the ‘worst’ is so evident: Income inequality, inadequate public school education, mass incarceration, black-on-black violence, signs every day that this is not a ‘post-racial/racist’ time. What we need in this climate is genuine, biblical concern of each other because ‘We Are (or should be) Family.’ It is the task of the church to create the kind of environment where all of God’s children find a welcome.”
Caldwell’s words are words of encouragement and words of challenge as we seek to move from a place of complacency to a place of scripturally based, Godordained action in the world.
Part of our problem, particularly in The United Methodist Church, is our failure to grasp the fact that many people we would evangelize are neither spiritual nor unspiritual – they are simply trying to survive.
We are planning programs to attract mostly the middle class, young people with jobs and futures, and we have disregarded the masses of poor. We can’t preach about heaven if we’re not willing to deal with the day-byday problems of the people.
The key problem we face as a Church, and as a caucus, is not “the ills of the world.” The key problem we face is one of irrelevance.
We are good at programs and pronouncements, but not so good at building the kinds of relationships that help people to survive. We excel at resolutions, but are less successful at forging relationships with people who can’t help us out of our financial binds and who may not even become members of our churches.
We’ve been challenged by our bishop to connect with schools in our neighborhoods, but how many of us have gone into the homes in our neighborhoods to assess the challenges our children face with education even before they leave home?
Somehow our Church and our caucus must answer the call to shift its focus away from programs toward people, away from individualism toward community, away from exclusion toward the inclusion of all of God’s children.
In order to move forward, we have to be willing to take a risk. That is, we must put our faith and trust in God and launch out into the unknown. This might require us to expand our concept of the connection and realize that we might need, as the Rev. Vance Ross says, “to look at those places where churches are doing ministry in the world on behalf of the connection.”
In taking the risk that we are called to take, the church has to be constantly reminded that it is the least and the lost, those who are dispossessed and in despair, the diseased and the disowned that should set our agenda.
Their concern is not religious platitudes or necessarily social transformation – it’s simply to survive. We need agitators in positions of power and we certainly need social transformation – but when we determine that our primary focus will be at the seat of power, we become irrelevant to the world that we are called to serve.
Restoring health in the black church and the black community involves understanding our history as people of the African diaspora, claiming our unique identity as black United Methodists and continuing to tell the story of black people in The United Methodist Church.
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