What is my role as a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, male pastor in a world that increasingly values multiculturalism and various ethnicities? God taught me that answer through my multiracial family.
From the beginning of our marriage, my wife and I wanted to adopt. At the time we did not know we were not able to have biological children of our own. For us, adopting was always a first option, along with having our own children. Little did we know that in the journey from infertility to adoption that God would change our marriage, our ministry, and our worldview.
In 2006, my wife and I were presented with the opportunity to adopt a little boy in our church. That particular adoption never materialized. However, we decided we would place our names in for another adoption. During the application process, we were asked preferences: sex, race, age, medical background, etc. We were very open to whichever child God wanted to give us; one question, however, stumped us: What race did we want our child to be? Again, we did not really care, but we also knew the challenges of multiracial adoption. Believing that we should not have a preference and allow God to give us whichever child He had for us, we marked no preference for race. Within a few weeks, our first adopted child was in our home. Her name was Karis, and she was half African American and half Hispanic.
We would later adopt two more wonderful children, both African American: Alethia and Josiah. As a result of our adoptions, God radically changed our lives, ministries, and our pursuit of Jesus. I am glad to say that our families came around rather quickly, despite some initial hesitation, to our multiracial adoptions. What changed most radically was our ministry.
01. Growing Up in a Still-Segregated South
One concern for our multiracial adoption stemmed from our background. I was born in Montgomery, Alabama, and raised in Selma, Alabama. My wife is from South Central Georgia. We grew up where racial division was simply part of the culture. It was embedded in the institutions in which we grew as children. Our families were by no means overt racists. But we were brought up to believe that blacks and whites simply did not socialize together. Neither did black and whites worship together. That was just the way it was.
We also had ministry issues to consider. I had a PhD from a well-known Southern Baptist seminary. The expectation from my home church and family was that I would earn the terminal degree and go off to pastor First Baptist Church of such and such town. When the next, larger church opportunity came expectations dictated that I would then place my name in for consideration. Because I had a PhD, I would have a leg up on the other candidates. When we were in the process of adopting our first child, I had a family member that said to me, “Page, if you adopt a black child, you will never be hired by a First Baptist Church!” Those were the expectations my wife and I lived under. That was just the way it was.
Growing up, the racial separation that I saw troubled me. In Selma, the whites would always memorialize the Civil War-era “Battle of Selma” with an annual reenactment. The African Americans in Selma would also memorialize the March to Montgomery with an annual reenactment. I remember asking my family why we never went to the March reenactment. The answer was simple: whites went to the battle reenactment, and blacks went to the march reenactment. Those were the expectations. That was just the way it was.
02. Changing Our Worldview
By adopting multiracial children, my wife and I realized, a limit would be placed on which churches would accept our new family, and which would reject us for leadership because we defied expectation. At the same time, my wife and I agreed that if those churches did not want to accept our family, then those were the type of churches in which we probably did not want to serve.
Through our adoptions, God opened our eyes to see the divisions that exist in our modern churches because of race and ethnicity. As we started down the journey of a multiracial ministry in church planting, God opened our eyes to see that racial reconciliation really is at the heart of the gospel—something that the church must be about. Being reconciled with our brothers and sisters in Christ across racial lines impacts our pursuit of Christ and our testimony to the world.
As we grew as a family and as church planters, we began to see how ethnic and racial division has been a problem from the very beginning of the church. I can point to many stories from the book of Acts, for example, that illustrate these divisions. The appointment of deacons in Acts 6 was meant to deal with issues of ethnic disharmony, as the Greek widows were not being served by the community of Christ. We see in Acts 10, more than ten years after Pentecost, that even the apostle Peter had to receive a vision from God in order to get him to cross ethnic lines to preach the gospel. I believe that one of the major themes of the books of Luke-Acts is overcoming human-created barriers of ethnicity and race for the gospel. Even one of the apostles did not realize the barriers of ethnic division for the advancement of the kingdom of God!
We often look at the book of Romans as Paul merely explaining salvation. But, when Paul mentions the gospel being for the Jews (in fulfillment of God’s promises) as well as being for the Gentiles, he is referencing a racial and ethnic boundary that must be crossed for the kingdom of God to advance. Paul spends the entire book explaining how salvation works and how believers must overcome human-created boundaries to share the gospel.
03. United We Do Not Stand
Regretfully, the church in the United States has been guilty of creating the same type of divisions and barriers to the gospel of Christ that Paul was working so hard to dismantle. Though the founding documents of our country reference all humans being created equal and having certain inalienable rights, we know these words were not intended to reference the slave population. The church, for the most part, maintained the racial divisions that started with slavery and continued through segregation and the era of Jim Crow. For example, oftentimes whites were seated in the main floor section of the church while African Americans were seated in a balcony section. The African Methodist Episcopal Church (and before that the Free African Society) is one example of denominations that started just after the founding of the country because African Americans were not allowed to have equal access to worship.
During the early years of America’s formation, churches should have been at the forefront of combating slavery, yet they remained apathetic. I understand it is easy for us to anachronistically look back and impose a standard of judgment on those men (and a few women) who were in leadership. At the same time, I believe that very apathy has been passed down through the American institutional church to our churches today. Our society has become so accustomed to having separate worship gatherings that we think nothing of going to racially divided churches on Sunday morning. Growing up in Selma, I remember asking why whites and blacks worshiped in different places. Again, the answer was, “Because that’s just the way it is.” This is why Martin Luther King, Jr., famously said that Sunday morning was one of the most segregated times in America. It still is today.
My wife and I really weren’t conscious of these segregated foundations of our country until we started growing our multiracial family. Yes, we had a general awareness of the history of our segregated nation from high school and college history, but we didn’t realize the depths to which that history ran. Because of our children, and because of what we were learning of the racial past of our country, we felt led by the Lord to start a multiracial church in the heart of New Orleans—and our education really began.
I had been part of churches before as a pastor and church planter. My wife and I were always bothered by the fact that whites and blacks worshipped in different places, and of course this feeling of discontentment grew as we continued adopting our children. For example, one church to which we belonged would buy presents for needy families in the area. Those needy families “just happened” to be primarily African American. Our congregation would bring the families to the church, shower them with gifts, take pictures—and then we would never see them again. This kind of tokenism bothered us because we felt like we were not building true relationships with them—our “helping” them was simply for show, not for building community across racial divisions. My wife and I genuinely wanted to worship with those different from us.
This tokenism was just one issue with our congregation’s practice of “helping.” In addition, we were also doing a great deal of damage by giving gifts away. Instead of empowering the families and seeking true relationships with them, we were just bringing them to our church and taking pictures, perpetuating racial stereotypes and hampering change.
04. Family and Church Awakenings
I have to admit it has not been easy having a multiracial family. We often get stares from people who are trying to understand our family. It seems as though when people see my wife or me alone with one of the children, they assume we married an African American spouse, which explains why we have mixed children.
My wife has especially received stares whenever she is alone with one of our children. People often look at her with some disdain, assuming she sleeps around and therefore has African-American children. On two occasions, African-American ladies have engaged her in conversation at the grocery store and asked whether she was babysitting. One lady even asked her, “How much did they pay you to take these kids?” My wife said, “No one paid us! We love them and took them into our home!”
Because of these experiences, we wanted to raise our children in a church where various races would come together to worship and participate in the mission of Christ. In 2011, we started Mosaic Church in Mid-City New Orleans. Mid-City is one of the most racially and socioeconomically diverse areas in this historic southern metropolis. We felt it was one of the best places to start a racially and socioeconomically diverse church—and it was an area that desperately needed church plants.
As a white pastor, I knew that I needed a core group team that was racially diverse. The Lord sent to us an African American worship leader, an African American assistant pastor, and another white pastor. A few months later we were able to hire a Hispanic pastor as well.
05. Challenges in the Church
Just like we had challenges as a multiracial family, we also had challenges in a multiracial church. Let me state up front that though the vision of our church is to be a diverse church right now, our ultimate vision is to overcome the barriers that keep us from diversity so that we can make disciples of all people. We are not diverse just to be politically correct; rather, we see racial and socioeconomic divisions between people as barriers to the spread of the gospel. We desire to be a church that chooses to overcome those barriers to in order make true Jesus-followers.
At Mosaic, we purposefully have hired a diverse staff. There is power in the incarnational reality of the kingdom of God when, during a church service, I, as a white pastor, sit down and receive the teaching of my brother African-American pastor from the Word—intentionally dismantling white privilege. Or, when I, as the white pastor, step aside to allow our Hispanic pastor to lead in the Lord’s Supper, there is a powerful, embodied example of mutual submission and unity happening as we share pastoral authority in preparing the Table for our church. During one Lord’s Supper, we had our African-American pastor, Hispanic pastor, and myself all officiating together. It was quite a wonderful picture as we prepared the Table and then invited our brothers and sisters in Christ, from various ethnicities, to join us.
Being a diverse church has brought its own challenges, both simple and deep. Simple challenges include things like differing cultural perceptions of time. I come from a white, middle-class family with a military background. When I ask someone to be at a meeting at a certain time, I actually mean for everyone to be there ten minutes prior to the time so we can start the meeting at the exact time I stated. Our current worship leader is from Zimbabwe, where start time is a little more communal—when everyone shows up, that is when the meeting starts! Our African American pastor is from New Orleans, where a given start time means you have at least half an hour to arrive after the meeting time. Some of our greatest (but simple) struggles have been getting everyone to arrive at the same time to start a meeting!
There are other challenges I label as “deep.” I call them “deep” because these challenges are very multifaceted in a diverse church. For example, our African-American pastor, Lance, was deeply disturbed by the Zimmerman acquittal a few years ago. Lance just happened to be preaching around that time and shared his heart from the pulpit about how painful it was for him to see the news. Regardless of the details of who was right or wrong in the events in Florida, as a church we needed to give him the space to lament, and we needed to learn to lament with him (see Romans 12:15). That’s a challenge that we’re still learning to meet as followers of Christ.
Our church has had to learn to allow the narrative from the diverse populations in our church to inform and change our entire church family. I believe this is another unique application of Galatians 6:2 in a diverse church setting. When Paul states that we need to bear each other’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ, I think his command, in a multiracial setting, means that we must go deeper with one another and understand the deep racial pains that many of our brothers and sisters in Christ experience. It means that we need to sometimes slow down and be extra patient with one another, be good listeners, and help bear one another’s burdens.
06. A White Pastor in a Multiracial Church
I feel my role, as a white pastor in a multicultural world, is to speak up so that people who come from my background realize the racism and injustice that still exists in our world. As a pastor, my role is to speak prophetically against such injustices and challenge God’s people to change the world around them.
More specifically, I want to help reverse the systemic racism that has built up over the centuries of our country. My favorite illustration to share concerning systematic racism involves my daughter. I picked her up from school one day in Uptown, New Orleans. On the way home, we passed two schools, one on the left and one on the right of the road we were on. The one of the right was an all-black school, the one on the left was an all-white school. My oldest daughter (when she was seven years old), perceptively asked me, “Daddy, why are all the students over there with light skin and all the students over there with brown skin?” And so began a long and continuing conversation about racism, injustice and the gospel of Christ between my daughter and me. (Editor’s Note: For more about talking to our kids about race and the kingdom of God, read the article “Talking to Our Kids about Race and the Kingdom of God.”)
Though it was too complex of a story to explain to my daughter at her particular age, the segregation in the schools my daughter noticed was not because of recent discrimination. Rather it was from many different factors coming together to create a perfect storm of systemic racism that has kept these students apart—both literally and figuratively. Part of this storm swirls from the reality that schools in New Orleans are still segregated even after four decades of desegregation. Part of this storm originates in the reality that middle- to upper-class families, who are primarily white, are the ones able to afford private education. Part of this storm churns up from the fact various neighborhoods in New Orleans receive more outside funding than other neighborhoods, often based on racial makeup. Another part of this storm originates in families passing on the dysfunctions of poverty, abuse, and neglect to the next generation due to a lack of resources (and even lack of personal responsibility.)
All of these factors create systems into which the next generation is born. We live in systems of racism that, just like a fish in water, we are not aware of—unless we’re the victims of them. Those who benefit from these systems are rarely aware of them. These systems are complicated by the fact various factors flow together to create a racism that continues in various forms and in various communities (African American, Hispanic, Caucasian, and others). As a middle-class, white, male pastor, I feel called to do what I can to help reverse some of the systemic racism that continues in our country and my community.
One of the ways I felt I could help reverse some of the systemic racism was by leading our church to start a nonprofit community development ministry. Just a few months after we started the church, we started the community development ministry. We offer relational connections to families through various ministries, such as a job-training program for felons, a free summer camps for kids, and community, need-based seminars.
As a church, my role as a white, middle-class pastor is to be an equipper. Paul teaches that pastors are to be equippers of the saints to empower them for the work and service. I believe this takes on a unique meaning in a diverse ministry environment. It means that as a white, middle-class pastor, I need to give opportunity to those around me who might not otherwise have such an opportunity. I need to give away my power. Such a mentality really is one of the centerpieces of discipleship. The more we give away the ministry and empower others, the more they can grow in their faith and exercise their gifts. In our church family, we try to identify young, indigenous leaders from our community that come from underrepresented ethnicities so that they can have opportunities that would normally be offered to middle- and upper-class individuals or churches.
07. The Challenge for the Church in Discipleship and Empowerment
I believe that race and ethnicity must come to the forefront of our discussion concerning church and discipleship in America. We must first start by correcting the wrongs perpetuated in our nation and our American churches in the past, and work toward changing the systems and institutions that continue to propagate racism. It’s funny; Jesus’ prayer in John 17 is that his church would be one. The American church really has messed up one of Jesus’s most passionate prayers. Our testimony as a church depends on us getting the issue of unity right.
Why should I work to help undo the wrongs of the past? I often answer this question using an illustration of something that happened at one of my churches several years ago. The former pastor had had a bad relationship with some neighbors that had not been rectified. When I stopped by as the new pastor and introduced myself, the neighbors brought up the issues with the former pastor. Even though I was not the one who had committed the wrongs against that neighbor, as the new pastor who represented the church, I took responsibility and apologized, saying that I hoped we could have better relationships. And I worked to make that hope into a reality.
In the same way, I believe American churches today must work to undo the racism exercised by churches in the past. A part of this call goes back to the warnings of the Old Testament prophets against Israel. Particularly in the Minor Prophets, God condemns the Israelites for not standing up against injustice. Many of the issues the Israelites had back then are the same ones we struggle with now: immigration, unfair business practices, human trafficking, etc. I feel my role as a white, middle-class pastor is to humble myself, correct the systemic injustice as I am able, and empower and disciple those around me to carry the message of the gospel forward.
Many times people object, saying that when you empower one group, you then marginalize another. From the vantage point of these objectors, groups keep competing for the “center,” and when one group reaches the center, another group is forced to the margins. That’s not the way it is in the kingdom of God. When we humble ourselves and seek to place others at the center by empowering them to be disciples for Christ, we really place Jesus at the center. When Jesus is correctly in the center, no group is then marginalized.
The church must rise against its own apathy and blindness to address the injustices of racism that have long plagued our nation. Until we correct the injustices and racism of the past, we will never be blessed in our future. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why the church is failing to evangelize our culture. God cannot bless us when we have not repented of our racist past.
Dr. Page Brooks is pastor of Mosaic Church, a multiracial, multi-campus church in the heart of New Orleans. He is the president of The Restoration Initiative for Culture and Community, a community development ministry of the church. Page also serves assistant professor of theology and culture at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, where he teaches on the ministry-based faculty.