Over my years of ministry I have been blessed to live as a minority in Gary, IN, in Honolulu, and now in Aurora, IL where the minorities make up the majority (41% latino, 11 % black). I am also a miniority in the Fox Valley Christian Ministers Alliance. I have enjoyed the varied fellowship and worshipped for several years with a Lao congregation in South Bend, IN and as a minority Sunday School teacher in the Korean CRC in Honolulu. Having been a minority in all these environments has made me aware of how entitled we majority feels and acts, and even more so, how minority representatives of the majority are treated by the majority minority.
In visiting briefly with one of the members of the ethnic conference earlier this month, he affirmed that the leadership of the denomination has not in his experience attended the ethnic conference as one of the participants. I would like to suggest that all of our denominational executives attend an entire ethnic conference as a minimum for their leadership training. That they not serve as presenters, or consultants, but minority attenders. It is a wonderful way to get to know new and inexperienced folk becoming members of the CRC. One comment I heard, actually from a white minister coming into our denomination is that the leadership of the church made him feel like a second class citizen.
It is time we took our shoes off as we join the new faces and colors coming into our churches.
Posted in: Increasing Diversity - Bottom Up or Top Down?
Over my years of ministry I have been blessed to live as a minority in Gary, IN, in Honolulu, and now in Aurora, IL where the minorities make up the majority (41% latino, 11 % black). I am also a miniority in the Fox Valley Christian Ministers Alliance. I have enjoyed the varied fellowship and worshipped for several years with a Lao congregation in South Bend, IN and as a minority Sunday School teacher in the Korean CRC in Honolulu. Having been a minority in all these environments has made me aware of how entitled we majority feels and acts, and even more so, how minority representatives of the majority are treated by the majority minority.
In visiting briefly with one of the members of the ethnic conference earlier this month, he affirmed that the leadership of the denomination has not in his experience attended the ethnic conference as one of the participants. I would like to suggest that all of our denominational executives attend an entire ethnic conference as a minimum for their leadership training. That they not serve as presenters, or consultants, but minority attenders. It is a wonderful way to get to know new and inexperienced folk becoming members of the CRC. One comment I heard, actually from a white minister coming into our denomination is that the leadership of the church made him feel like a second class citizen.
It is time we took our shoes off as we join the new faces and colors coming into our churches.