In 1963, at Western Michigan University, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was asked if integration should be realized and created first in the Christian Church, to which he replied: “The eleven o’clock hour stands as the most segregated time in America.”

Today, this still holds true in many houses of worship, unfortunately, even in the black church. In King’s day, the reasons were obvious, but why is this still the case in 2010?

The black church has long been a beacon for stability, a guidepost for leadership and a footrest for those who have battled in a world entrenched with bigotry and nepotism. However, in the last two decades, America has seen a paradigm shift in regard to her people as a whole and the Christian church in particular.

At a recent dinner party, I spoke with a woman of obvious Asian decent. We listened as she spoke of her work in California and her recent move to Charlotte. I later inquired about her nationality, and she said she was Swedish!

As many of us smiled, she went on to tell how she was adopted at the age of 1 by wonderful Swedish parents who, early in her childhood, settled in California.

Diversity is the new kid on the block. Our children are taught foreign languages; many can order off ethnic menus. The circle of friends our children amass is many times more diverse than the pews they sit in on Sunday morning. Is this a contradiction of values, or is it a signal that the black church needs to act on the change we have preached about for the last 40 years?

In order to grow as a people, and more importantly in order to reach many more people in the welcoming of God’s Kingdom, the black church cannot continue business as usual. America finds herself at a new place. Immigrants have moved from the coastal sectors of our country more inland. This move amounts to a melting pot of cultures, and traditions new to many of us.

Today, there are millions of Americans of mixed race, and that number is growing. There is a shared interest across cultures, and no one person acts any longer as a “spokesperson” for all things ethnic or racial.

The rise in social media and technology invites us to look at a world more similar to ours than different.

As much as I love the format and tradition of the black church (I am a product of it), we must make a shift towards a more inclusive Christian community. I recently went to a church where the hymns were sung by a rock band. I was shocked to see that my son, who grew up in the black church, was in love with the atmosphere!

Although this church had sound theological philosophy, it presented an environment similar to his 11-year-old social network. The audience was more diverse than a US Airways flight leaving JFK on a Monday morning. I spoke with a leader in a major denomination a few weeks ago and was told that the leadership was creating non-denominational models within its theological index to attract the millions they have lost over the last two decades.

As African Americans, we, too, need to come to the crossroads of change. The African American church has already seen the decimating numbers in her pews as more and more African Americans see and live in a more diverse world. America’s diversity is not a negative to the black church; in fact, it is a positive that can energize the gospel.

Imagine the possibilities when a former “African American” church can create a worship community that had no opportunity to worship or share with people unlike themselves. Grasp, if you will, the knowledge that can be gained from diversity of thought and experience.

It is time for the African American church to shift her focus from what has separated us to a dialogue of what unites us.

There is an unspoken revolution from Generation X downward. Conversation around dinner parties and social gatherings cement a desire for change. There is a search for diversity and inclusion in humanity. There lies within the young Christian community a desire for themselves and their children to not live in a world of singular experience in the human perspective, but of plurality.

This last presidential election showed that if people are affixed to a cause, they will work and enjoin to make it come to past. What better cause than Jesus? What better way than inclusion? What better time than now? Who better to do it than the African American church?
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Rev. John Hicks is an ordained minister and president of Synergy Farms International, an organization that facilitates sustenance food education to the poor in underdeveloped countries.
 

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