Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1107: Learning from the Race Conversations in 2020: Dr. Efrem Smith

Episode Date: August 31, 2023

Pastor Efrem Smith is an internationally recognized leader who uses motivational speaking and preaching to equip people for a life of transformation. He consults on issues of multi-ethnicity, leadership, and community development. Efrem is the former president and CEO of World Impact: an urban mission, church planting and leadership-development organization. He’s the author of several books, including his latest, “Killing Us Softly.” Efrem is a graduate of Saint John’s University and Luther Theological Seminary, and received an honorary doctor of ministry degree from Ashland Theological Seminary, and most recently earned his Doctor of Ministry degree in Church Leadership and Reconciliation Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary. Efrem's latest book is The Post-Black and Post-White Church: Becoming the Beloved Community in a Multi-Ethnic World. In this podcast conversation, we talk about how 2020 opened up many important race conversations and how the church dealt with--and continues to deal with (or not deal with)--those important conversations.  

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Just go to theologyintheraw.com, theologyintheraw.com, and sign up for the newsletter, and you'll automatically be entered to win one of 10 free copies of my latest book. Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. My guest today is the one and only Dr. Ephraim Smith. Ephraim is a pastor, author, speaker, thought leader, an all-around amazing guy, and I just absolutely enjoyed getting to know him more. I've only known of Ephraim from a distance. We've only had minimal interaction before this. And I was really excited when he agreed to come on Theology in Raw. And I was just

really so impressed with his humility, his wisdom, his ability to navigate really tough conversations, in this case, surrounding race and multi-ethnicity in the church. And so that's where we go in this podcast. So please welcome to the show, the one and only Dr. Ephraim Smith. All right, friends, this is one of those podcast conversations where there's been a very little agenda, no script, no outline, no like, here are the 16 questions I'm going to ask you from to address. So this is actually, well, the first time you've been on the podcast, did we cross paths in Sacramento a while back? Yeah.

You know, I know that for sure where we were together was the Four Square Church had a regional conference a few years ago. And I spoke there and you spoke there too. And not only were we both general session speakers, but you did this all day seminar on human sexuality. And it was really the first time I was introduced to your books, your theology around sexuality, especially how we missionally engage the LGBTQ plus community. And I was blown away by it. So you probably didn't remember me being there, but I remember you. I remember meeting you. Yeah. So that must've been the event.

Cause I remember meeting you in passing. Um, and I couldn't figure out where, cause I knew I was in Sacramento a couple of years ago, but I, I, that was at a different church. So yeah, that must've been the four square meeting that that was, I mean, it's probably like five or six years ago. It feels like two decades ago. Yeah, because of COVID, it seems like. I know. Well, it's, I mean, I've known about you from a distance for a while now. So it is an absolute honor to have you on the podcast.

So as we said offline, just briefly, I'm like, bro, you have such a wide variety of expertise and experience and books and so on. So what do you want to talk about, bro? The hour is yours. I would love to banter around about whatever it is you're passionate about right now. Well, you know, when you're a product of both the African-American church and the evangelical church, Church and the Evangelical Church, folks like me are probably still recovering from what 2020 did for the conversation, the momentum around reconciliation and the multi-ethnic church. I mean, so I'm the co-lead pastor of Midtown Church, which is a large, multi-campus, multi-ethnic church

that the main campus is in the heart of Sacramento. Two years ago, we were a campus of a large, multi-campus church in our denomination called Bayside Church. And unfortunately, the impact of 2020, I would say on one hand in a missional way, but on the other hand, in a polarizing way, we had to go on our own. And that journey of Midtown Church going from being a campus of Bayside Church, being the only urban, multi-ethnic campus of Bayside, where all the other campuses, there was some diversity, but for the most part, all the other campuses of Bayside are in conservative, predominantly white, second to third ring suburb kind of settings. And so when 2020 hit, and especially when George Floyd, who died on the block I grew up on in Minneapolis. Are you serious? Wow. So he died on the block that I rode my bike around with training wheels as a little kid. He died on the block where I raked leaves and shoveled snow to make money as a kid. The store he came out of, I can't tell you how many Hostess apple pies and Twinkies and comic books I bought out of that store growing up as a kid. So I'm probably still in some ways recovering from grieving of realizing in 2020, the American church, especially the evangelical church,

wasn't as far along as I thought it was when it came to race, diversity, how to engage a mission field that's ever increasingly diverse, yet deeply divided still. And instead of the church being a force of reconciliation and bridge building and good news, the church actually in many ways was just following along with the broader polarization of the United States of America. During that time, a church that really wanted to be more diverse ended up going through a painful season where it's one urban center city, multicultural, second largest campus. We had to come to a prayerful, missional, mutual decision that it was best for the Midtown campus to become Midtown Covenant Church. So we went from a campus, the second largest church in our denomination,

to the largest multicultural urban church. And right now, we're on this beautiful journey where I'm the co-pastor with the founding pastor, Bob Ballion, who's Armenian. Did I say that right? Because there's one that's theologian. Armenian. Armenian. Armenian, not Armenian. Armenian is a theology. I'm actually a quarter Armenian. I don't look it. He's half Armenian. Okay.

And then we just brought on Susie Gomez, who is Korean. And the three of us are the co-lead pastors of this multi-ethnic church. So on one hand, it's been a painful season. And on the other hand, I feel like I'm living in this beautiful season of being the co-lead pastor of a large multi-ethnic church. And we have a leadership model that's very different than most churches where you got a guy who's half Armenian, who's the founding pastor and grew up kind of in a predominantly Black friendship setting. And you have me, that there's no question about my ethnicity. And then you have Susie who's with us and the

three of us are striving to figure out how to serve and lead together. And so out of pain and tough times, I'm in this beautiful testimony and we're hoping in some way we can change the face of the church in America. I love it. I love, I want to go back to 2020, but we can at least acknowledge that beautiful things can arise out of calamity and catastrophe. I know that's a Christian cliche, and I almost don't like saying it because we just say it so much, you know, but it seems like you're kind of living that, you know, in really beautiful ways. It's probably been a beauty from ashes season for me.

I mean, and again, you know, you're hearing my side of the story. So I always want to say when you're saying something, you should say, know, you're hearing my side of the story. So I always want to say when you're saying something, you should say, well, you're hearing my side of the story. My heart for reconciliation is so strong that, you know, I still desire a deeper reconciliation between Midtown and Bayside. I mean, there are pastors at Bayside Church I still talk to that I've had lunch with that we sit down and talk. And we're in the same metropolitan area, so it would be a shame for there not to be a deeper reconciling experience. But I know 2020 was painful for a lot of churches and a lot of pastors. I mean, some pastors quit after 2020, 2021. And what I learned is it is difficult for a church that begins homogeneous a very distinctive socio-political environment to years later get on the journey of becoming a multi-ethnic reconciling church.

It is better to plant a multi-ethnic reconciling church to start that way. And it's not just, I mean, if you tried to take an African-American traditional church in Harlem or in Detroit and say, we're going to make it multi-ethnic now, that would not be the easiest journey. So it's not just a white-dominated problem. It's any ethnicity that dominates a congregation to move it towards a multi-ethnic congregation. That's going to be very, very challenging is what I hear. It's because the predominantly white evangelical church is so influential in America. If the evangelical church coughs, the entire church goes, are we sick? I mean, it has that kind of, now, you know, I think that there's some problems with that.

But let's just name it for what it is. I mean, if a large African-American church is trying to become multi-ethnic, I don't know if it hits the cover of a religious magazine. I don't know if it hits the religious newswire. But man, years ago when Willow Creek announced, we're multi-ethnic now, it's like it went worldwide. I want to go, let's go back to 2020. Like what, what would you, how would you healthy, but because that conversation was so politicized, when some churches wanted to push into it, there was a lot of fear from maybe typical more white-dominated people in the congregation saying, we're going woke now, social justice. I heard that that's a bad thing and Marxist and all these things. And things were just what could have been pushing into something really healthy and biblical was kind of interpreted through these weird political polarized lenses. Is that a fair, I'm going to pass it over to you.

That's kind of. That's fair. And I just think in 2020, first of all, if it had only been an issue of racial trauma, the church may have been able to navigate it better. of some police and COVID and a very polarizing, you know, presidential election year. I just think you had this, you know, this triune storm socially that just made it hard. And I think what we realize is that there's still a way in which the journey of race in the United States has led to a degree. I don't want to be too generalizing here, but there's a different way in which people of color or marginalized communities seek to be shepherded and served and walked with than predominantly white, suburban, upper middle class, upper class believers. And so what I experienced, and in some ways I felt bad for Bayside because the majority of the campuses were in conservative, predominantly white, upper middle class, upper class communities.

Placer County, very conservative. Orange County, conservative. conservative. And so we were the one campus in the heart of the city of Sacramento, in the heart of a very multicultural mission field. So when there were some people in the evangelical church saying, we should not say Black Lives Matter, because that is like, it's a liberal, progressive, Marxist term. Have you went on the website of Black Lives Matter? My argument is, if we draw a line in the sand and make an enemy of the Black Lives Matter movement in any way, it affects our evangelism and our missional momentum because we're in the heart of it. The protests were happening right outside of our church. And so how could we make, how could we say things or pass a policy? It was just going to impact the missional credibility. And I just learned through that experience that different conversations were happening in center city churches and urban churches and African-American churches and

multi-ethnic churches. I mean, even in Asian-American churches, when the word went out that Asians were responsible for COVID, That impacted Asian American churches in different ways than it impacted predominantly white suburban evangelical churches. And the churches didn't have the patience to sit in lament and sit in understanding long enough. So on one hand, there were some people that just wanted to just get through 2020 as fast as possible. When are we getting back in the building? When can we take off these masks?

So in my opinion, many suburban, predominantly white churches were like, when can we get back in the building? When are we going to start having church again? Why are you listening to that Democrat governor? If you don't defy the governor and be the church and stop acting like the world, we're going to go find another church. And there was a church here in Sacramento area that was basically saying, it wasn't Bayside, but they were basically saying, if you don't defy the governor and get back in church and take those masks off, you don't have courage. You're not walking with God. And some people fell into that. For us, we were having different conversations at Midtown

because there were people we knew that were actually in ICU, that were actually dying. Because in the city, it's dense. And so if you are in an under-resourced community where people are living in the projects and somebody gets COVID and you say, oh, just quarantine. gets COVID and you say, oh, just quarantine. If five people are living in the project, in the same place, in the inner city, I mean, you live in the suburbs, you could just say, you go in the basement for the next 10 days. Go in your guest room, the guest house out back. You can quarantine. You go in the casita. You go upstairs. In the inner city, in many cases, if one person gets COVID, the entire family's getting COVID, period. And they still got to eat. Yeah. And missing one paycheck. How many jobs do blue collar middle class people have where you can just work from home on Zoom?

Right. Yeah. Yeah. blue collar middle-class people have where you can just work from home on Zoom. If you're collecting the garbage, you still got to go to work. And so I learned that there were different conversations going on in urban churches and multi-ethnic churches and Asian churches and African-American American churches than there were. And 2020 just didn't allow us the space to slow down. And it worked the other way too. We had to have more accelerated conversations on race at Midtown Church just because of what was happening right outside of our door. And so, and let me just admit too, George Floyd died on the block where I was born and raised. So how that impacted me as a pastor, I even had to process, how do I shepherd people well, while I'm also carrying the pain? While I'm also carrying the pain, George Floyd died on the block that I grew up on. And at the time, the police chief of Minneapolis was someone I grew up with.

He was at the time, the police chief of Minneapolis at the time was African-American. I knew him, too. So so I felt for him because I grew up with him and I knew that he wanted to police well. I knew that he wanted to lead a different model of policing in Minneapolis. And yet this happened. And so, again, that's part of the pain of 2020 and 2021. But again, it's hard to complain. some way to model what a growing, healthy, multi-ethnic, evangelical, justice-oriented, disciple-making church looks like. Yeah, yeah. If you can put all those things together.

I want to respond to something and to make sure I understand you correctly, because it really is a fascinating point that I think white evangelicals who are eager to understand kind of some of the complexity, you know, I think it'd be good for us to kind of reflect on this. Like, it seems like the rush to get back inside church buildings was something that more middle-class, upper middle-class, suburban kind of people, you know, that was their main concern, right? Give me this to get back to the church building. Whereas 2020 opened up these really, really important conversations.

And for maybe more urban churches, you're like, hey, we need to, there's some really extremely important ecclesiological questions being opened up here. And just having this kind of one-track beeline, get back to church services in the suburbs, is a little bit like, hold the phone here. There's more important conversations that need to be happening here that even some of the rhetoric of don't say anything positive about BLM or whatever, that's just stifling these really important conversations. Is that, am I hearing you, is that kind of at least part of your concern? Yes. The church is still, for the most part, racially segregated in the United States of America. So one of the issues we had, even though

we say, hey, we're brothers and sisters with all people who claim Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior everywhere across the United States, there's still an issue of proximity. So when you're not proximate to the people that were actually in ICU, if you weren't proximate to the people that were dying, if you weren't proximate to the people that were dying, if you weren't proximate to the people who had relatives that passed away, you thought of what was going on differently. If you weren't proximate to the places where unarmed African Americans were dying, where mothers were crying in the street, if you weren't proximate to that, if you didn't go home next door to that,

it was easier just to take your cues from cable news, to take your cues from how it was being interpreted on YouTube and vice versa. I mean, it would be easy if you weren't proximate to people that were in law enforcement just to only think about law enforcement in one way in 2020. Now, we were fortunate that in 2020, the police chief at the time, Daniel Hahn, who was the first African American police chief of Sacramento, was a part of our church. We were able to have conversations. He invited me and a group of urban pastors, predominantly African-American, to come to the police academy and experience how they were trying to train officers in new ways. Here's the kicker. My son-in-law- I was going to bring this up.

My son-in-law. I was going to bring this up. So my oldest daughter's husband is white and a police officer. So when there were some people in 2020 saying, Ephraim Smith is anti-police, Ephraim Smith is anti-white, because I was saying Black Lives do matter. When I was talking about trying to give a biblical theology of sin so that people could understand systemic sin, social sin, because I don't think the best place to start the conversation is saying white supremacy, you know what I mean? Or the best place to start is not always to go systemic racism. Maybe the best place to start is not always to go systemic racism. Maybe the best place to start is saying in the Bible, there are at least three dimensions to sin. Sin is in the soul.

Sin is in society. Babylon, Medo-Persian Empire, the Roman Empire, divided Israel. Sin is in society. Tower of Babel. Sin is in Satan. If we can take some time to unpack biblically what sin in society looks like, then maybe we can have a better, robust, biblical, Christ-centered conversation about the race dilemma. Yeah, I fully agree. I think we should start with, I might just be, I couldn't what you just said, but like the idea of structural societal sin is a biblical category. Let's start there and then maybe ask some tougher questions. Okay, what does that look like today? How deep is systemic sin in

existence today versus personal responsibility? Those can be kind of maybe more complex conversations that we can dive into, but let's come into those conversations not shutting the conversation down from the beginning when people hear structural sin and they immediately think that's a non-Christian thing. Quite the opposite. That is very much a biblical category. And the Bible has such a deep well of resources for us to think through the relationship between individual sin and personal responsibility and structural sin. Or as Luther even said, the world, the flesh, and the devil. You've got these three dynamics that work together. Yeah, that's what I wished for in 2020. What I was hoping

would happen within evangelical churches to say, this is an opportunity, like, let's preach through Esther. Let's preach through Daniel. Instead of getting into the, are you woke? Are you a race theorist? I wish we could have... Once we were on our own, what we did at Midtown is we, we did a whole sermon series on the book of Daniel. And then we asked questions like this, without just talking about politics from a Democrat Republican standpoint, I asked questions in the sermon, like when Daniel prayed, when it was said that you could only pray basically to Nebuchadnezzar, that was a public policy issue. And Daniel was resisting a public policy that went against his faith in Yahweh. Now we can talk about the civil rights movement. Now we can talk about

nonviolent protesting and resistance. Let's talk about Esther first. When Mordecai encouraged Esther to confront the king, she was confronting the king over a public policy that was going to be detrimental to her people. So let's talk about structural systemic sin biblically. Let's talk about examples biblically where policies were passed by a government structure that were detrimental to the people of God and how the people of God non-violently resisted. I just think that, unfortunately, there was a segment of evangelicalism that just prepared, equipped, positioned to have that kind of conversation. So it was easier just to say, let's make a statement. I'll say something before I preach this Sunday, and now let's move on and have a marriage retreat. It'll

just be virtual. Let's move on now. And let's just talk. Can we just talk about the gospel? Black Lives Matter. Can we talk about the gospel now? And unfortunately, I know many African Americans that left evangelical churches that were trying to become multi-ethnic because of that approach. I mean, Corey Edwards does a way better job than me of talking about this right now, of just the exodus. You know, Jamar Tisby talks about it. I mean, the whole leave out loud, leave loud movement, and the whole exodus of African Americans from evangelical, predominantly white churches that really desire to be more multi-ethnic and more diverse. I was literally just talking to, I don't know if you know, Amin Hudson and I've talked to Tyler Burns about this and several others. I feel like, yeah. Well, I mean, Lecrae's been at the center

of that too and KB and some other guys and stuff. Yeah, this is a deep interest of mine because these are guys who are still very, as Amin said, I'm still reformed in my theology. My theology hasn't changed since I was part of this kind of like John Piper, John MacArthur-ish.

I mean, maybe I shifted a little bit. I don't want to put words in his mouth. But here we have brothers and sisters that are deeply committed to Christian orthodoxy and the gospel and are making incredible inroads with the kingdom of God in the spaces where the majority church just can't do. And for us not to be like that, that's a limb that's been severed. And we don't realize that we're bleeding out in my anecdotal opinion. Part of my grieving is I still, I can't deny, I am a product of the African American church and I'm a product of evangelicalism. On one hand, I'm shaped by, back in Minneapolis, Redeemer Missionary Baptist Church. I'm shaped by Macedonia Baptist Church. I'm shaped by my upbringing in the black church. I'm also shaped by

multi-ethnic evangelical churches. I don't think I'm going to say something I haven't said before, is that I grew up under the shadow of Minneapolis Billy Graham, not North Carolina Billy Graham. Was that different Billy Graham? I think so. Because at one time, the headquarters of the Billy Graham, not North Carolina, Billy Graham. Was that different Billy Graham? I think so. Because at one time the headquarters of the Billy Graham Evangelical Association was downtown Minneapolis. I did not know that. And then eventually it went to North Carolina. And I just don't know.

I just think. Those are two different social locations for sure. Yes. I've been to both places and they're very different, both in America. Yeah. So, you know, and I grew up under African Americans who were bridging the black church and evangelicalism. I'm very, I would think I'm a contemporary. I'm a peer to like people like Brian Larritz.

Yeah. We grew up in different settings but like so for me I see kind of as my spiritual fathers and mothers in reconciliation as John Perkins V. Hill, Tony Evans, Cheryl Sanders, Brenda Salter McNeil. I came up influenced deeply by African Americans who could go preach in the African American church, understood Black liberation theology, Black church ecclesiology, but also had platform audience with evangelicalism. And so I'm very much, I'm Black church, and then I'm also pietist. So, you know, for me, I'm in the evangelical covenant denomination, which is egalitarian. We just elected our first woman president a year ago. I'm familiar with, but I didn't grow up like in Reformed theology. I'm from Minneapolis.

I don't even know what I'm supposed to say. I mean, it's like I knew John Piper, but I also was good friends with Greg Boyd. Man, I was in Minneapolis, man. The Piper-Boyd debates, man. Man, I was in Minneapolis, man. The Piper-Boyd debates, man. That was like going to watch, I don't know, Ali Frazier in Boston. Watch the Green Bay Packers versus the Minnesota State.

I've talked to Greg quite a bit about that. That's fascinating. I'm very much with you. Piper has been one of the most, in my Christian journey, one of the most influential voices in my life. So has Greg Boyd in many ways, too. And I'm like, I want to go to both y'all's churches for probably very different reasons. This episode is sponsored by Athletic Greens, now called AG1. So I've been taking AG1 consistently for about a year now, and I can truly feel the difference. Packed with 75 high-quality vitamins, minerals, and whole food source ingredients, AG1 is a comprehensive nutrition blast to the body.

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So if you want to take ownership of your health, try AG1 and get a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs. I use these all the time when I travel. So with your first purchase, you get a one-year supply of vitamin D, five free AG1 travel packs. If you just go to drinkag1.com forward slash T-I-T-R to take advantage of this offer. That's drinkag1.com forward slash T-I-T-R. Check it out. Did you know that Theology in the Raw has merch? We have shirts, hats, hoodies, crewnecks, and other cool products. I've never mentioned this before because up until now, Theology in the Raw has only sold merch at our Exiles in Babylon conference. But now, we just now opened up an online store, so we're having a flash sale on all of our merch while supplies last. You can go to the store link below in the show notes, or you can go to theologyintheraw.com

and click on the merch tab. There is free shipping on all the orders and the sale ends September 7th. And if you ordered at least two items, you will get a free Think Deeply, Love Widely tote bag while supplies last. Our stock is limited. So if you want any Theology in the Raw merch, you need to order it very soon before it runs out. So again, click on the link in the show notes below, or you can go to theologyintheraw.com and click on the merch tab. Ephraim, I want to come back to something because I want to, and maybe this maybe might spice things up a little bit. I always like to try to maybe represent some, what about this? What about that perspectives going back to, you know, referencing Daniel and Esther, them recognizing structural kind of oppression, sin, whatever. Um, what would you say to somebody that says,

yeah, exactly. That was the whole COVID, uh, draconian, you know, laws and regulations, that was Babylon rearing its evil head. And you have these elites at the top, like Gavin, that aren't even following their own rules. They're all whining and dining while the poor and people on the lower rung of the social ladder, as you said, who can't just sit home and Skype to work, you know, like they're actually, you know, businesses, blue collar businesses being destroyed. And turns out there's all kinds of, you know, weird stuff going on behind the scenes with big pharma and Fauci and all the elites at the top. What would you say to somebody who said, in a sense has taken every single thing you're saying, but rather than focusing on maybe racial structural injustice,

they're focusing on kind of the, yeah, the other side of the thing, kind of COVID heavy-handed policies. I think they would have a legitimate argument. You know, I know small business owners of color in Sacramento that during COVID, they were like, hey, why is it in 2008? You know, there was a bailout, you know, for big financial institutions, uh, during the financial crash. Uh, and in this moment, where's, where's the bailout for barbershops for beauty salon or not just, not just Target and Walmart. Yeah. are actually trying to participate in a positive cash flow system, turn the dollar over in their own community and did not feel like the state of California, the United States government was there for them when they needed it the most. And it didn't help here in California to see the picture of the governor of California,

you know, at a, you know, swank, fancy restaurant with no mask. And so I think that the issue here is people only seeing scripture from their cultural, individual, racial their own situation and experience and say, man, what I feel like I'm experiencing right now, I feel a little bit like Esther. I feel a little bit like Daniel. I don't want the lion's den part, but it's another thing. den part, but it's another thing. The best example for me was I was so in tuned with what was happening to African-Americans in 2020 that I to Asian Americans. I needed Marcella Pels, who is a Hmong woman on our staff, to go. I was walking in Target and people were avoiding me. People were asking me if I was from China. And so I had to not only experience scripture for me, I had to be willing to be in solidarity with what scripture meant in the moment for Marcella, what it meant for Raymond Chang. I think that's what's going to cause a more reconciling

experience within the church, is when we're able to be in solidarity with the other. When we're able to live out Matthew 25. Matthew 25, to me, is not about, oh, I feel so bad for the hungry and the thirsty and the sick and the naked and the person in prison. Oh, man, where should I write my check? Should I write it? Which parachurch should I write my check to? Oh, man. It's like, no, what does it mean to be in solidarity with, to see?

Another image is what Paul was trying to do between Philemon and Onesimus. Right. to do between Philemon and Onesimus. Pull them out of the economic socialized structure of slavery, the have and the have not, and pull them into solidarity and brotherhood. Receive him back, not as your slave, but as your brother. With the Black Lives Matter, you said something really interesting. I want to come back to that just briefly. When you had Christians who would kind of look at the website, look at what they stand for, and their reaction is nothing but negative, or maybe All Lives Matter, or just kind of not quite maybe get some of the cultural moments that have given rise to something like BLM, but also you brought up an interesting point that just from a missional perspective, if you, when you talk about race, it's, it's, if it's simply opposing CRT or opposing BLM from a missional perspective,

that's just extremely problematic for urban churches. Um, could somebody, I'm trying, I'm trying to figure out, okay, this is a genuine question. Can you pastor me through this, Dr. Smith? I remember people asking me, what do you think about BLM? And when it comes to racial conversations, I'm like, you know what, I'm going to listen for a few years and I'm not going to give up. Black lives absolutely do matter. And I'm not going to give up. I don't know. You know, black lives absolutely do matter. There's, I see very legitimate reasons why something, an organization like BLM would

be created. You know, then people say, what do you think about their beliefs? And I go on the website. I'm like, there's actually more stuff here that actually kind of resonate with. I was expecting to see, but there are certainly things that just run contrary to the gospel and Christian worldview. Can somebody read that and say, yeah, there's several things I disagree with here. There's maybe things with the organization that I'm like, I can't get on board with,

and yet still step back and be extremely sensitive to the missional impact that maybe publicly critiquing something like BLM might have? Or can you put this tension that you can already feel in my bones or hear me feel in my bones? What does that look like for somebody to be able to acknowledge? I'm not 100% on board. I'm not with the movement and yet still be a Christian, have a holistically Christian response to BLM and how that fits into the larger racial conversation. I hope I'm making sense. I'm, but I know the movement still does. Okay. That's fair.

Yeah. So I think the movement and that movement looks different. I mean, let's go back to the, real briefly, the civil rights movement. When I talk to evangelicals about Black Lives Matter, I try to go, look, the civil rights movement, it's easy to look back now and romanticize it, but do you know evangelicals weren't all that giddy about the civil rights movement at the time? And even the more moderate, rights movement at the time. And even the more moderate progressive pastors were still writing letters to Martin Luther King while he was in jail saying, you know, you should slow down. You know, you're moving too fast. Hey, you should-

Letter from a Birmingham jail, man. The first few lines, the first few paragraphs. And so the civil rights movement was more complex, more diverse. The civil rights movement was made up of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the NAACP, the Urban League, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, CORE, and later the Black Panther. If you were to make the totality of the civil rights movement, the Black Panthers, you would be wrong. And I feel like that's what people were trying to do with the Black Lives Matter movement. They were trying to make one component of the Black Lives Matter movement and make it the entire movement. Matter of fact, even to say the women who created Black Lives Matter, the organization, to consider them the

founders of what is at the core or the essence of the movement behind Black Lives Matter would not be accurate. Because I can say there is no Black Lives Matter movement without the civil rights movement. There's no way to, well, not no way. The response to the death of Trayvon Martin should not be separated from the response to the death of Emmett Till that kicked off the civil rights. That's really helpful. So just for my audience, it's really important fundamentally to make a distinction between BLM as a broader movement and BLM as an organization? Now, there are some people that would definitely disagree with me on that. So what I'm saying, let me say it this way. Black Lives Matter, the organization, was one part,

one piece of Black Lives Matter, the larger movement. That's one. Two, the reason I was not willing to draw a line in the sand and make an enemy out of Black Lives Matter, the organization, even though there are things on the website that are antithetical to my theology, I want missional credibility. I want missional credibility. I want missional connection with people that consider themselves part of Black Lives Matter, the church. And this is a mistake that both the African-American church and the evangelical church has made in the past. Here's my example, hip hop. So this year we're celebrating the 50th anniversary of hip hop. I remember when African-American pastors were throwing hip hop CDs down on the street and stepping on them and crushing them. I remember guys going out to black churches talking about how hip hop's of the devil.

And again, there are certain songs in hip hop and certain lyrics that are antithetical to scripture. No question. But when you demonize hip hop culture, you are throwing away and demonizing a generation of young people that find identity. That's why one of my books years ago was the Hip Hop Church, where I was trying to, Phil Jackson and I, who wrote it together, we were trying to compel the evangelical church and the African American church to not make an enemy out of hip hop culture, but to see it as a mission field, to actually see it as a culture and not just NWA, not just two live crew, you know, all hip hop, two live crew to make all of hip hop, little Kim and to go, no hip hop culture is also public enemy. It's, it's, it's also queen Latifah. It was, it's, it's complex. It's a culture. It's fashion. It's slang. And so I think that in some ways, we missed a moment in 2020 and 2021 to engage Black Lives Matter, not as the website with language that is ethical to scripture, but like there are real young people, 13 year olds, 17 year olds, 30 year olds that are hurting, that are in the street, that are crying out, that need to be heard, but also need to know that the gospel is liberating. The gospel is redemptive. The gospel reforms. If you want reform,

if you want justice, if you want liberation, you should check out Jesus. But if you see Jesus as the people that hate you, as the people that want to shut you down, as the people that don't want any hashtag connected to what is going on in your soul. We are crippling our evangelistic missional opportunity. That's so good. That's so good. Honestly, I mean, I feel like my experience with the LGBTQ conversation has similar parallels in terms of what I would consider the social impact that certain concerns or one-sided concerns that the church has. If people are like, Target's selling stuff to trans kids, let's boycott Target. I'm like, okay, how are you also walking with probably the dozens of LGBTQ, same-sex attracted people in your church? Oh, you don't know them? Why is that? Why would they be scared

to say, hey, I'm attracted to the same sex? Statistically, you've got a lot more people in your church that are wrestling. And I know because I'm the one that gets the emails. If I had a nickel for every email I get from somebody that says, here's my story, I couldn't tell a single soul at my church because no one would want to walk with me. I'd probably just be isolated, pushed to the margins, and then just kind of walk away from the church. So I have to keep this really real struggle in my life an absolute secret. So how, let's, okay, boycott target, I can see some, okay, some concerns there. I'm not disagreeing with those concerns, but the missional impact of when the only time you speak up about sexuality is to boycott this thing and impact that that has. Not an exact parallel, but I see as I've, you know, since, well, for the last decade, really kind of like try to open my eyes a little more with the race conversation.

I'm like, there's, yeah, there's just. And it always, yeah. I mean, no, no question. You know, we, we are so fortunate at Midtown. We are not perfect on this issue of human sexuality at all because we're a multicultural, multi-ethnic church. That's going to present its own unique challenges to the sexuality conversation. You know what? It's interesting because so far, I'm not saying this is going to change because down the road, I might have to call you and go, help me with this. But so far, we have this thing every once in a while called deep dives, where outside of Sunday on a Tuesday night, we have some of our pastoral staff on a panel, on a stage, and we either announce the topic we're going to talk about, women in ministry, human sexuality, systemic sin and race. Or sometimes we just

gather and say, you can ask us whatever question you want. Submit your questions. Somebody's scrolling through, they put them on the screen, we answer them. And when we've got on the human sexuality topic, multiple times, and I know this is not the experience of every church, the sentiment has been, we feel the love of God here. We feel love from our pastors here. You don't have to change your theological position on human sexuality for me, because I know God loves me. I know you love me, Pastor Ephraim. I know Pastor Bob and Pastor Susie loves me. I know you love me, Pastor Ephraim. I know Pastor Bob and Pastor Susie loves me. I experience love. Now, again, in our denomination, it's been a debate and it's

been tense for the last four or five years. And we had a church that voluntarily left our denomination this year over the issue of human sexuality. We had a church that was voted out at our annual meeting. It was painful, painful. For us at Midtown, we have felt that we can simultaneously say the Bible is authoritative, the Bible is central. We still believe in the biblical framework as best we understand it around marriage and human sexuality. And yet, at minimum, shouldn't the church take the same position that Jesus took with the woman caught in adultery? Like at minimum.

Now, I think there's more of the church community. I really do. I think there's more. But I'm going, there's a large segment of the African-American church and the evangelical, well, I shouldn't say large. That's too judgmental. There's a segment of the evangelical church and the African-American church

that's not even willing to do what Jesus did and stand between the rock throwers and the LGBTQ community. And I'm going, the least we can do is stand between the rock throwers and LGBTQ plus people. Yeah, this, I mean, again, there's so many parallels. You even think like every June, the church gets so up in arms over Pride Month and what it stands for and it's shoved in our faces and all these things. And again, I genuinely hear and receive those concerns. But let's take a broader look at what even the Pride movement is standing for.

movement is standing for. One of the things they want to see is a reduction in gay teenagers killing themselves, especially when they grew up in religious spaces. Can we be concerned about that? How about the off the chart rate of, again, gay teens typically growing up in conservative environments that are kicked out of their house and wandered the streets homeless and fall into all kinds of other things? Can we join arms and say, yeah, we actually agree that that's something that is deeply concerning, that I can hold true to the gospel. I can hold true to a traditional sexual ethic and also say it grieves my heart to see teenagers wander into streets for whatever reason, for whatever reason. So even there, I mean, again, it goes back to like, okay, you read the website of BLM. There's several things like these are antithetical to the gospel. Is there other things maybe in that, even in the

organization where you could say, yeah, but on this, this, and this, addressing racism wherever it exists is a moral good that we can both say, you know what? We can both be really passionate about that, even if we don't see eye to eye and maybe some other things. But this kind of wholesale kind of rejection of something because you find some things you don't agree with, I think that that's... It just reflects going back full circle to where you began, just this kind of polarization that is clearly widespread across the country we live in, but has also seeped its way into our pews, which is that latter part's what I'm most discouraged about. Yeah, I mean, I tend not to fully equate the LGBTQ issues with the race issues,

but where there is similarities is, what is the missiology around how we're going to engage human sexuality, LGBTQ? I wish we would engage it the way Paul went to Athens. Paul could have went to Athens. And at first it says, I think that's Acts 16, I think, where when he first goes there and it says he's grieved. He's angry when he sees all the and all the craziness. But he moves from his emotion to engagement. And he actually uses the very principles and ideas of these idolatrous movements and principles to present the gospel. There's a reason why we call Sunday morning Easter, not because Easter is biblical. The foundation of that is hijacking something in pagan culture to present the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Easter is not this biblical term to represent Jesus's resurrection,

but it was a festival, as best I know, that was utilized to present the good news of Jesus through it. And we would be better if we could take some of the influential cultural movements and dynamics of our day and figure out through the language and through those movements how to be missionaries and how to present good news in a way that's palatable in those movements. That's good. And just to clarify, yeah, I don't, and I don't want to give the impression that I'm making a correlation between race and sexual orientation. I think there's as many differences as there are similarities. So yeah, I'm not trying to make that correlation. It was just like more of the missional approach, the missional impact of how we hold on to and proclaim our beliefs.

I think that's where there's, I see some. Oh, yeah. I totally felt what you were saying because I thought the way in which you engaged that, it made total sense around what we were talking about. So I definitely understood. That was more me clarifying. You're talking to a... I don't know why I feel this need to re-clarify myself. And it's because of 2020. I mean, one of the experiences I had in 2020 is people took parts of my dissertation from Fuller and just took clips of it and then accused me of things. So there were meetings with people.

When you're writing, you wrote a dissertation, so sometimes you're writing about streams of theology that you don't fully agree with, but you're showing that you're versed in it to make another point. So I would talk about Black liberation theology, or I would talk different versions of more progressive theology. And people, instead of taking the entirety of my dissertation, they would take a part of it and say, see, Ephraim's a critical race theorist. See, Ephraim's a socialist. See, Ephraim puts social justice over the gospel, even though the gospel is social. Ephraim, I could keep going, man. Brother,

it's so, so good to finally connect. It's an honor to have you on Theology in the Raw. And let's stay in touch. Let's continue this conversation somewhere else, maybe offline or so. I would love it. I would love it. Man, thanks for having me on, bro. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.