N.C. pastor asks that 'only white people' greet congregation at church doors

[4Squarebaby]

You all might knock racial diversity. Yes, it’s over rated by the liberals who want diversity only in racial characteristics, not in politics or points of view. But, the New Testament is full of references to the various ethnic groups in the region who were becoming Christians, and how the Church was trying to bring them together, Jews, Romans, Greeks, etc. That was a big thrust of the early Church. Previously, Judaism was only for the Jews. Jesus came for all men and women.

Thanks for pointing that out. There’s nothing wrong with trying to integrate the church and it’s not like this pastor committed a crime.

It is often said that Sunday morning at 10:00 AM remains the most segregated time in American life. Although secularly we have elected a Black President in religious life I have yet to see the Black Senior pastor in large numbers draw great percentages of White folks to their churches. At least on TV the TD Jakes’ and Crefelo Dollar’s have not attracted the high percentages of Whites, even with the camera focusing on them during congregation shots that the Rod Parsley’s and Paula White’s attract Black folk.

The racial make up of a local congregation is a selling point. In my wife’s Parrish the community is mostly Black but the Catholics are overwhelmingly Latino. And while African -American themes abound along with an aging African American Priest, not the actual Africans the local Latinos mostly travel over to the next church as her’s stands empty.Seeing as the church serves the community where the last 50%+1 Black High School is the local Bishop probably decided that that specific church is to be aimed at Black people even if most of the Catholic’s are Latino

In my church a lot of Nigerians joined after a large earthquake destroyed their meeting place and while some of the local white folks left because of that many other local minorities moved in to replace them. In the 20 years since the earthquake Chinese have displaced the White folk of the community as our kids can no longer afford to live near us. It is only recently with a Chinese Associate Pastor that the locals looking in and seeing some of their own along with a couple of Filipino families have stayed and the Chinese will be the mainstay of the next generation replacing the senior White folk and the current working church elders which Nigerians dominate.

I think that when we see the congregations major churches following a Black leader with the actual community breakdown of 10% Black, 10% Asian, etc we will have arrived. We are not there yet. To get there some local church boards will make an affirmative effort to speed the process along.

 

[Peter_J]

If you read the article, the pastor had good intentions to bring more racial diversity into his church. He was probably trying to make White folk less intimidated and more welcome. It backfired and he apologized, but it sounds like his intentions were good.

At the risk of sounding cliche, I think this is a “truth-lies-somewhere-in-between” situation. I mean in between the inevitable extremely-harsh assessments, on the one hand, and the equally inevitable extremely-lenient comments on the other hand.