What Stands in the Way of Ethnic Unity?

This week, Pastor J.D. answers a question in his recent sermon: "What stands in the way of ethnic unity?"

Show Notes:

* First of all, Satan.

* The next several chapters of Ephesians are all about how the demonic powers aligned against the church. Satan hates this kind of unity, especially in the church. So, you can be sure he’s going to oppose it.

* Let me tell you how he might do this to you:

* He’s going to suggest stuff to you this week about it being too hard.

* He’s going to whisper into some of your ears this week that this is all about politics even though I have said literally nothing about that.

* So, be aware who your enemy is in this and resist that Satanic voice

* Second, pride.

* Whenever we talk about this, what makes it difficult is it cuts all of us down at the core of our pride

* Beware where your own personal pride kicks into gear.

* Church unity, Paul says, is built only on humility.

* Third, preference.

* Our cultural preferences are not wrong. We all have them. It’s just sometimes for the sake of unity, we set them aside to help someone else feel more comfortable.

* Vance Pitman: “The way to know you are part of a truly multiethnic church is that you often feel uncomfortable.” Many of us, he says, say we want a multi-cultural church but we really only want a multi-colored one, with a bunch of people with different colored faces all doing things our way.

* People sometimes say to me, “Well, I don’t like it when we do that in worship.” And I want to say, “Well, maybe this whole thing is not about what you like. If you want to be somewhere where it’s all about you, go pay $800 for a night at the RitzCarlton where it will be all, entirely, exclusively about you. But this church is about the glory of Jesus and the urgency of the Great Commission, and so when you come here, that’s what you should expect it to be about.”

* Fourth, naivete.

* One of the things that my friends of color tell me is that many of us in the majority culture don’t think we have a culture. Other people have cultures; ours is the standard against which all others are measured. Or sometimes we refer to other people as having ethnicities.

* I hate to burst your bubble, but white, Caucasian is an ethnicity and has its own cultural perspective. We have our own, particular views of conflict resolution, romance, parenting and child-rearing; money; dress; music; time; respectfulness; family and so many other things.

* Some cultural perspectives are different; some are wrong; and some are right. The least we can do is work hard to understand the cultural perspectives we all bring into this place.

* Fifth, poor listening skills.

For a lot of us, when it comes to discussions like these, our poor

listening skills really begin to display themselves. James in the Bible tells us that we should be “quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger,” and If there were ever a place for us to apply this verse, it is in this area.

* Yes, there’s a place for you to speak. “Be slow to speak” doesn’t mean “never speak,” it just means that you listen far more than you talk.

* So, that raises these questions. When it comes to talking about this stuff:

* Do you seek to understand more than you seek to be understood?

* Here’s the question: What if we had a church where people listened to each other like that--where we gave each other the benefit of the doubt in these situations?

* And before you come back at them with a solution, or a reason why their pain is illegitimate, to at least validate it and sit with them in it. That’s what love is.