Dr. Jeff Broadnax has been representing GCI with racial reconciliation initiatives held by the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE). I recently asked Jeff to represent me at a gathering in Montgomery, Alabama. His letter below gives the details of this visit. We have strategically placed his letter in this issue of Update as a good introduction to the similarity training that will be held at each of the Regional Gatherings this summer. Thank you, Jeff, for your instructive and inspirational insights.
I was honored to represent GCI, along with more than sixty leaders and ministry members, on the NAE’s Racial Justice and Reconciliation Collaborative. For two days, we interactively discussed the Christian church’s response to racism, injustice, and social, cultural, and political division in America.
We gathered in Montgomery at the Legacy Sites established by the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI). Fueling our discussions and reflections were messages from NAE President, Dr. Walter Kim, Dr. Bernice King (daughter of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.), Dr. Christina Edmonson, and EJI Founder, Bryan Stevenson. We toured the Legacy Museum, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice (devoted to the victims of racial terror lynchings) and the newly opened Freedom Monument Sculpture Park [pictured above].
I felt like one of the pilgrims in Jerusalem on Pentecost. Peter’s compelling witness about the life and ministry of Jesus went beyond simply reciting teachings received as Jesus’ disciple. Peter’s narrative recounted his freshly baptized and restorative experience of Jesus’ calling, ministry, crucifixion, resurrection, and personalized sending.
Peter unashamedly proclaimed hard truths to all with ears to hear because he understood that it was by hard truths that Jesus enabled his own ears and eyes to be spiritually opened afresh. The garden of Gethsemane, Pilate’s courtyard, the upper room, and the shores of the Sea of Galilee, among others, were key moments with Jesus that shaped Peter’s passionate witness to “strengthen his brothers.”
So convicting and compelling was Peter’s message, that the pilgrims cried out, “Friends, what should we do?” The answer was clear. “Turn to God and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and you will receive the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38 CEV).
Every Jesus-follower’s responsibility is to listen for and hear truth from God, then respond by sharing it. While in Alabama, I saw and heard of the wonders of God “in my own language,” and the Holy Spirit took me deeper into some hard truths regarding racial justice and reconciliation in the Body of Christ.
Christian leaders gathered for the NAE Racial Justice and Reconciliation Collaborative
While sitting in the very same room where enslaved people were chained and examined before being auctioned off, Bryan Stevenson shared his visionary calling from God to confront the darkness of historical, current, and future racial division and injustice with the disinfecting light of truth and reconciliation found in Jesus. He chose Montgomery as the site for these museums because Montgomery represented the heart of racial division in America.
Montgomery was the site where Jefferson Davis was sworn in as the President of the Confederate States of America in 1861, and it was where Alabama governor, George Wallace, proclaimed in his 1963 inaugural address, “I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”
These two days of Christian discussions and experiences of hard racial truths of American history were by no means my first. I have visited over a dozen major sites addressing America’s racial history. However, I can say, this experience was the most personalized.
You see, my paternal grandparents and great grandparents were born and raised in this racialized part of the south in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. With God’s help, they navigated in real time the hard truths I was learning about 160 years later.
Before arriving in Montgomery, I toured other key sites of the civil rights movement in Birmingham. I sat in my car and listened to Dr. King read his letter from that very jail to local Christian pastors calling them to experience a metanoia and join Jesus in the ministry of racial justice, inclusion, and reconciliation. (The Greek word metanoia means to change one’s mind.)
I then visited my great grandparents’ graves in the small, unkept cemetery at the end of a rural dirt road. I wanted to share a time of prayerful lament, thanksgiving, and worship to God for his faithfulness in allowing me to live out the dreams they only saw in their mind’s eye. While kneeling there in the Holy Spirit’s comfort, I was also convicted of some personal divisive darkness needing cleansing in Jesus. That’s how he works.
The Christian church, as ambassadors of reconciliation, must shine God’s disinfecting light of grace and truth into the dark brokenness of sin that hides, resides, and at times gets expressed within human interactions. GCI embraces this mandate and at the Friday sessions of the Regional Gatherings this summer, I will lead a Christ-centered equipping workshop designed by Pastor Miles McPherson, called, The Third Option Similarity Training exploring relational oneness in Jesus.
Once washed and compelled by the reconciling forgiveness in Jesus, I humbly look forward to asking the “What shall we do?” question to those ready to explore the hard truths guiding the ministry and message of reconciliation.
From the editor: To our U.S. readers, may you have a meaningful Juneteeth observance! If your fellowship held a Juneteeth celebration with your neighbors, tell us about it. Send your story to elizabeth.mullins@gci.org.
4 thoughts on “What Shall We Do?”
Jeff, I was moved by your very personal and emotional relating of your experience. It is truly horrendous what, at times, man can do to man. I live in a country, Germany, that has had a very turbulent past. The Nazi era is very much a time that, although over, still impacts the nation‘s culture, arts, politics, etc. As you well said, we need to tell the „hard truths“, and pray for the light of Jesus to expel the darkness and evil.
Thank you, Jeff, for sharing the NAE racial reconciliation initiatives that you gleaned in historic Selma, Alabama. It is difficult to look at. and accept, the truth portrayed by the sculptures of the shameful betrayal of fellow humans in the Freedom Monument Sculpture Park. Thank you for sharing your personal experience at your great-grandparents grave site. I too desire the Holy Spirit’s comfort and the personal cleansing in Jesus, to be freed from any and all my personal divisive darkness.
Looking forward to the East GCI Regional Gathering the weekend of June 28-30 at Grace Communion Cincinnati West!
Thank you Jeff for sharing. Your lament and prayer resonated deeply in me. I grieve for the hurt I have inflicted on others and have experienced personally in spaces that were bereft of Jesus’ brilliance, wisdom and love. May God help us be the light…
Jeff,
I was moved by your very personal and emotional relating of your experience. It is truly horrendous what, at times, man can do to man. I live in a country, Germany, that has had a very turbulent past. The Nazi era is very much a time that, although over, still impacts the nation‘s culture, arts, politics, etc. As you well said, we need to tell the „hard truths“, and pray for the light of Jesus to expel the darkness and evil.
Thank you, Jeff, for sharing the NAE racial reconciliation initiatives that you gleaned in historic Selma, Alabama. It is difficult to look at. and accept, the truth portrayed by the sculptures of the shameful betrayal of fellow humans in the Freedom Monument Sculpture Park. Thank you for sharing your personal experience at your great-grandparents grave site. I too desire the Holy Spirit’s comfort and the personal cleansing in Jesus, to be freed from any and all my personal divisive darkness.
Looking forward to the East GCI Regional Gathering the weekend of June 28-30 at Grace Communion Cincinnati West!
Thank you Jeff for sharing. Your lament and prayer resonated deeply in me. I grieve for the hurt I have inflicted on others and have experienced personally in spaces that were bereft of Jesus’ brilliance, wisdom and love. May God help us be the light…