With The Perrys - What is The Black Church?

Episode Date: May 24, 2021

'The Black Church: This Is Our Story. This Is Our Song'. a documentary released by PBS, recently explored the story of the black church. The doc offered insight, facilitated reflection, and provided context for the space that many black Christians call or called home. In this episode of Thirty Minutes with The Perrys, Jackie and Preston are joined by Charlie Dates. The Pastor of the Historic Progressive Baptist Church in the Southside of Chicago to talk more about all things "Black Church" Learn about Charlie Dates "The Black Church" (on PBS)     Subscribe to the Perrys' newsletter: https://withtheperrys.myflodesk.com/zhfus4jx1s Join Preston's discipleship community for men: https://www.patreon.com/PrestonPerry/membership To support the work of the Perrys, donate via PayPal: https://paypal.me/withtheperrys Shop BOLD Apparel: boldapparel.shop Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, Saints and Names. What up with y'all? It's been a long time, but we're here. Yeah, man, I'm excited to be back. I am too. You didn't do your whole little banter, babe, when you're like, hey, St. an-Aid and the whole little thing that you do. Well, I mean, I can say, A. Go get vaccinated, brush your teeth, put your deodor

and all, you know, wear some clean socks, get a washcloth. I know some kinds of saints, they don't got wash claws in their house. You know, they just got big tiles, and they wash with their hands. So you're telling us, saints, they brush their hands. thing. It's basically what you're saying. No, I'm saying. They're not saying, you know, still got dirt on it because you ain't got no friction. And so that's what I'm saying. It's clean, clean yourself.

I always thought it was weird people who wash it with their hands. I just, I thought it was on movies. What happens? Until I start staying at certain folks' house. It's like, hey, I need a washcloth. And they like, huh? The rear end part. How does that happen?

I mean, and then I heard people don't wash their legs. Do you use your hands and then wash your hands? You know, people don't wash their legs? They just let the soap run down and they think that's efficient. How you don't watch? My God, it's dirt there too. How are you to wash your legs? Okay, you know what?

It's befuddling to me too. Let's get into this 30 minutes with the pears because we is. Anywho, today we have a guest. Y'all know usually we just talk to each other, but we just start to think, you know, we ain't that smart. You know, we know what we know, what we don't, we don't. And so why don't we just start bringing in folks that have done the work in areas and spaces where they know things that we want to learn about? And it just made so much sense when you, and you know, introduce this idea of bringing people along because we know some pretty cool people. Yeah, we do.

In the body. And so we have a special guest with us today. I think he's special. I think he's special. We want to welcome to the 30 Minutes with the Parish Stage, Mr. Reverend Dr. Charlie Day. A Reverend Doctor. Ain't that who you are? You're a Reverend and the Doctor.

I have been doing all I can to contain the laughter, the bubbling over of joy in my soul sitting here. watching you two act a fool. I wish y'all could see him. He here looking like hip hop with each other. I don't know how y'all live together doing this every day back and forth. We torture our children. This our marriage is last. Goodness.

It is a joyful thing. Give us some context for you. Who are you? What do you do? What did you study? My name is Charlie Dates. I was born December 18 in Chicago on the far south side to Jackson-Made Dates. And, man, I'm a.

I was about to say something that should not go on record, but I'm a Negro preacher in the most wonderful sense. I hope I pastor the Progressive Baptist Church in Chicago, a historic and iconic church. It's about 102 years old now. I'm the husband of Kirstie Dates, finest frog hair, sugar in my Kool-Aid, Activator, my Jerry Curl. That's my girl. And I'm the father of Charlie Edward Dates II and Claire Lisbeth. I'm a graduate of the University of Illinois, Urbana Champagne,

a double major in speech communication and rhetoric. I hold a master of divinity degree from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and the Ph.D. and historical theology from the same. Talk that talk, sir. Give God all the glory. So he's smart.

That's basically what he's. He edjimicated. He got kids. He married. He preached at a church that's been around a long time. And he's smart. No, this is not even to gas you, Charlie.

You're one of my favorite people. Bro, listen. No, this is real talk. It's real talk. goodness that's why that's why that's why charlie's writing let's go we can go right now yes i am yes you listen no let me tell y'all when y'all read this book too it's not just the content the content is important but you ever read good content but it puts you to sleep all time this is a page turner i am so thrilled um just to be reading this and uh i can't wait for everybody else to get it so i i'm

honored to be here with y'all um pressing i think the world of you and your your ministry but Not just that. I mean, you said something one day on the phone that just really kind of took me. You said, man, I just love the truth. And you weren't even, I don't even think you were trying to say. You were trying to figure out how to convey what was on your heart. And I think that's part of what God is up to you y'all. Yeah.

Y'all love the truth more than you are attracted to the pleasures of the world. Amen. And I want more of that to rub off on me. And so that's one of the reasons why. That's all, man. That's encouraging, man. Well, we have Charlie here because we just wanted to have a conversation about, what we call the black church.

PBS just recently released a documentary about the black church, and I think it stimulated a lot of conversation on social media about it. Within, you know, circles, and even in my seminary context, I'm learning that people don't have much knowledge of the black church. They're thrown off even by the language of the black church. And so I think I just want to open up our conversation, by asking, what is the black church? Yeah, no, so first of all, let me say this.

And I'm not saying it because I'm salty. I'm not. Dr. Henry Lewis Gates asked me to be a part of the documentary, which I thought was very kind. We weren't able to make it work out for several reasons. But once I saw it and I saw the bend of it, the very thing I was pressing him to explore, I see why I made sense I wasn't in it.

Because there is a whole swath of, the black church underrepresented or not represented at all within that documentary. So to answer your question, what is the black church? The black church is the present living legacy of what E. Franklin Fraser called the invisible institution. So when you read Frazier's work on the black church, he does a remarkable job at talking about how so-called slaves, men and women, taking in captivity against their will, which still away from the plantation or to their own corners, sometime to their own campground.

And they would have church. And it was at this church where the preacher would get up and preach far more than what the white slave master preacher was preaching. You can imagine what they were preaching. Slaves obey your masters. God has a plan for you, but it won't manifest in this world. You just need to wait to the sweep by and by. some stuff you even hear today

the slave preacher got up and said no there's more to this book than that and would preach about heaven and God's power to bring about joy on earth like a whole book of Exodus the Psalms the torture of Jesus Christ and they didn't

just hear preaching they sang so I'm waiting one day really for an updated discussion or book on the slave songs So one of them that comes to mind is Deep River. We were just in Cincinnati

for the kids' spring break and we went to the Underground Railroad sits right there on the Ohio River. They're singing Deep River, I can't wait to cross over in the campground. Well, Deep River was symbolic not just of death going on to be with the Lord,

but the Ohio River where they could escape from a slave state to a free state. And campground wasn't merely just a place where they could be free in church. It was a place where they wanted to be free. and life. So the black church is the living legacy of that institution

that believes in liberation and the flourishing of all humanity on the grounds of the gospel. That's dope. Not merely by what we can accomplish on our own, but by God's great power. One thing I've heard people say... Hold on real fast. I just thought so everybody then that says they're a black church today ain't really a black church. Explain.

This is what I'm describing are those who are tethered to that legacy, to that history. So we embody what our forefathers broke away from and the values, the theological values that they espoused. So you have a lot of black people now today, because black people are not monolithic who go to church, but it's not a church that cares about the flourishing, the liberation and the dignity of all humanity on the grounds of gospel it's it's another kind of church with black people at it wow I like that well that's really good the distinction is what I like I wanted to ask one thing I've heard people say is how can you say black church and that be okay yeah yeah if we say white church then that's racist yeah you know

well I think white in America has been normative for so long that the distinctions are frankly not our fault. I do think that there would be, let's just say historically, we probably would not know in America, excuse me, of a black church had there not been the failure of white Christianity to even undergird the hierarchy of racism and slavery. So the distinction, the beauty of the black church is actually a gift to America. It's not a cuss word. It's a blessing. because I think it's the redemption and the salvation of Christianity in America. I firmly believe that the black church

is the kind of hope for America. I don't know if you guys got to see Esau's article that's been printed in the New York Times. And so I'm still a little bit, but he's talking about the black church in our response to Easter. The women who come to the tomb are coming to grieve.

We know how to grieve, but the angel turns them back and says, no, you've got to go back in that world and I would hope because he ain't here. And I think the black church in America can teach us not only how to grieve, but how to go back into the world with the hope of the risen Savior. So it's not bad. It's not bad work. It's a good thing. And when I talk to our non-white evangelical brothers and sisters, I tell them if they can relax a little bit and learn from the black tradition, they can actually help their people to thrive and do better in their churches. to do better. Wow. That's deep. What would you say to the to the black folk who go to seminary and tend to kind of disassociate themselves with the black church when they get a hold to quote

unquote sound teaching? That's the real pandemic. And let me add to that because not even seminary. I remember when I was a new believer and I went to a Pentecostal church. They weren't Pentecostal denot like they weren't in a Pentecostal denomination but the way we functioned was very Pentecostal right but then I was introduced to certain teachers who they did not explicitly say

that the black church is unsound or not orthodox but I feel like the way things were framed it felt as if I had to distance myself from that heritage for me to be a solid teacher does that make sense? Or I've seen

people not disassociated themselves holistically from the black church or the black experience black church experience but just the teaching part so I'm going to keep all to the music and that you know but when it comes to teaching yeah I'm only going to listen to white pastors white pastor yeah so what would you say to the people who man that's a whole thing I'm about I say can't we do two 30 minutes for the parents well the first thing is that having walked those hallways but never having drunk that Kool-lade I can tell you it's real you are introduced to what I call the theological arrogance of the academy particularly of the white academy a kind of ecclesiological um they they just tend to think they know better um dominance and and so the challenge is and this is the problem with even the word evangelical is that in the academy we're often introduced to terms that do not fit black people neatly it's almost like you know you go to a doctor who's only studied one homogenous group of people white people and so you introduce an ethnic body a black body yeah it has the same compartments but it functions

differently like y'all know today a lot of black people are more lactose intolerant than we have ever put on and you're trying to figure out why so many black women are getting pancreatic cancer and black men so if if you go to only a doctor who specializes in one type of person, then they're going to teach you from that perspective. So we go to the academy and we run into terms that do not fit the black experience well. I think evangelical, quite frankly, is one of those. It just doesn't fit us well, and we can talk about that later. But the reason it's that way is because the disposition of the teaching is always corrective

in our institutions. It's never affirmative toward black people. I can't think of one white evangelical institution. Baylor's doing better, and I don't know that they would consider themselves evangelical, that is affirming or has a history of affirming black and brown pastors and churches. It's always corrective. And so because human nature is a type, we like to show off what we learn, we get back to the pews of where we were, and there's a dissonance between what we hear

and what we experienced in school, and we try to correct that. I should say too, though, it's not just in the evangelical academy. It's also our brothers and sisters who go to non-evangelical schools. So they end up bringing back to the church a kind of teaching that also is lost on black people. So they stand up and start preaching and teaching stuff. And the saints are sitting there going, you know, that don't sound like what I've been reading in my Bible. They sound off. And so the challenge I think, and this is the gift that I have,

when we send kids to seminary, we need to do so warning them of what they will learn and warning them not to come back crazy. Wow. I had that. Thankful to God. The other thing that I had was I had a pastor through seminary. So the whole model of seminary is probably changing.

Yeah. So to fly somewhere to relocate your family for three years ago somewhere, it's probably not going to be the case. But if you do that where you're dissociated from your church, you need a pastor who can help contact. sexualize what you're doing. Case in point. I got up preaching one Sunday at our church in Rockford,

the New Zion Baptist Church, Pastor Kewa, Copeland. And I got to talking about the sinner, the woman in Luke 7, you know, and I got to talking about how her name was written with the predicate adjective without the article, our Matelo. So she is synonymous with sin. You know, Luke doesn't give us her name, and I'm just going through doing all of this. And he pulls me very kindly to his office when we're done. People, you know, very gracious.

He's like, man, you do know. that these people know what sin is without all of that that you just went into. That was a gentle rebuke that helped me to understand there is a need for scholarship, but there is no need to show off a kind of teaching that makes you the superior when you're standing in front of men and women who've been reading this book longer than you've been alive. My God. That's a word. I just came and just said, all right, I'm actually the student in the context.

in this context. Yeah. So those are things that I think help us so that when you graduate you're actually mastered by Jesus rather than you carrying a master

of divinity. Wow. I love that. Yeah, that's powerful because I think what it shows is, you know, just because a people group are not showing off

all the theological things that they know, doesn't mean they don't know the things because you learn how to like put them in words in the seminary. Because it's like

just because they're not saying atonement and propitiation and expiation and all that. It doesn't mean that they're ignorant. And I think that's the assumption is that because they haven't co-opted the language that they somehow lack the content that the language explains.

And the lived experience of the black church far greater in many ways bears out the theological truths that the evangelical institution teaches. Who has shown us what sanctification looks like? Yeah. What people group models justification? and adoption and reconciliation.

Absolutely. More than these people. Because even how we come to know God is mainly a lot of ways through our suffering. Oh, my goodness. And what people group have suffered more. And maintained hope. Yeah.

You know, and so when it comes to reconciliation, you know, we've had to forgive it. Oh, my goodness. Forgive. Yes. You know, and so to be a black Christian in America is a tall task. It is, man.

It is. And I think these institutions, don't have black professors too. And sometimes when they do, they are so marginalized. You know, I think of some of the black guys I know who serve in these institutions, man, they're so marginalized. And then sometimes the administration of these institutions look for black men or if they're brave, black women

who are not connected to the indigenous black experience so that they could put people in front of students who merely affirm their predisposed. arrogance toward the black church experience wow and if you so just take it this way if you go to school for four years three four years and you don't have but one black professor implicitly that's going to say to you my people don't know this stuff that ain't true yeah so i you know quite frankly i think any white institution that does not seek to fix that is caught up in the culture of sin and racism and are perpetuating it in real time.

I can't tell how many times I've sat in rooms and go, boo, we've looked for black professors, we can't find them. Bull feathers. We say bull feathers. We are around. I'm gonna use that one day. Bull feathers, mom. Preston, you tell a story about a friend of yours

who went to a particular seminary, you know, who was kind of discouraged from a style of preaching that I think would be important. So I had this friend who I'm not gonna name the seminary, but he has been he uh he he was he was deeply affected um by a moment when he first got up to preach and it was his first time he was excited and you know he came from black church you know and so he got up and he began to speak or whatever and he was interrupted you know and kind of sat down and then afterwards they sat down and talked to him and they basically told him that the way

he preached not necessarily what he said sure but the way he delivered it was um taken away from the weight of the message and it was distracting because it was too emotional because it was too emotional it was too passionate and basically he became the center of attention not the text what would you say to people who have that way of thinking or yeah yeah well i had a similar experience um my second preaching lab narrative preaching i preached And I got graded down by my peers for the same. Wow. So I took it as a badge of honor, strangely.

But that's my ignorance. And my mama in my ear. A few things that come to mind. Number one is the normative response to preaching in these academies have been set by predominantly white evangelicals who think their way of doing church is the way to do it. but it's actually epistemologically inconsistent. The word gospel, evangelical gospel, means good news, which to any other human mind, good news fires off a response and a positive response.

And so when Frank Thomas writes that book, they like to never quit praising them, capturing the recorded message of a journalist investigating the black church. it is it is our response to the good news to have some enthusiastic participation in it. There's something wrong when you can experience the gospel and not have no, not have a response. You should have it be. So listen.

And I felt that. I'm a student of rhetoric. Aristotle gave us these three principles in rhetoric. There is ethos, the credibility of the speaker. there's Lagos the reason or the word by which the speaker does what they do. And then pathos. And Aristotle says, without that trifecta, you cannot be persuasive in your articulation. You need reason.

You need the word. You need reason to connect the logic. You need credibility. But you need pathos. So when Benjamin Franklin goes to here, I think is George Whitfield or so. And he's known not to be a believer. Somebody, a reporter asked Ben and say, hey, we didn't know you were a believer. we thought you. He said, I'm not. He said, I don't believe it. He said, but I believe this guy

believes. There, I, I'm amazed at how many non-black churches I have gone to preach it. And people come, and there's no aggrandizement of my own. They come with tears in their house. Oh, my God. And then it's, they're trying to get out just, oh, I'm thinking of one of me, me and Matt was that. This woman, she grabbed me. I just, I haven't heard preaching like that. since I was and and I say to myself shame on your pastor wow for getting up and lecturing y'all preaching is the proclamation of good news this ain't no recitation of a history book yeah this is the fourth telling and when you do that there is a holy ghost response that takes so it's not

mere emotion in a human sense no this is the joy of the Lord may manifest in our experience I think it's a crime to be unemotive in preaching. I think it's dishonest because it's not true of the product and it's not true of the person who placed the product. My God. I feel that because I think for me, like when I teach the scriptures, I see it not only as like I'm informing you, but I also want to engage your heart.

Yes. You know, and I feel like how you communicate, whether loud or soft, really does determine how somebody receives not only the gospel, but the truth that the gospel is good, which is what you're saying. You know, like, I should be excited about God.

And I think that's the thing that I love most about the black church experience is that you just cannot walk out, not being happy. It's just not a thing. It's like, they're going to preach you happy. And some people have abused it. You know, I'll be the first to say. Some people are really good,

at it. You know, I'm not a shut down artist. I would love to be able to shut it down every week. I do it better at home in the shower than I do, because I'd be like at full blown throttle, you know, in the pulpit, so it don't come out as smooth. But to your point, I think as Evan Crawford wrote this book called The Hum. It's a dated book. But he explores some of the history of it, of that climactic conclusion. It's not just the conclusion, but that the black preacher does. We call it the Art of Intonation or Hooping. oh Lord and then it just kind of gets into the smooth thing I didn't realize this till I read Evans Crawford but my grandmother illustrated it my grandmother didn't know how to read well and it was

that end of the sermon that was kind of the preacher was singing and talking at the same time something about the tonation of it triggered her memory and she was able to ride what the preacher was saying by hearing him sing it talk it at the same time. So through the week, I would hear her rehearsing the preacher's hope. It was sermon memory for her. And I think the way that the way that the black church has done that and is gifted and bequeathed that to us was a gift to people who came out of suffering and limited resources. Because I think a lot of slaves remember the gospel.

through the oral language. Oh, yeah, absolutely. You know, because we couldn't read. But I just think that it's God's wisdom and allowing different people groups to communicate a different way. Because even as a poet, I want to say things that a million pastors

have said a whole bunch of times. But I want to communicate it with a different, with a particular rhythm and a cadence that will make people remember what I said or say a metaphor that communicates the gospel, but in a passionate, you know, in a way that will make people remember. And so I just think not only is it nothing wrong with it,

but I think it's wise. Man, listen, I should give you my sermon for the night so you can poeticize it for me. Make it better. Because that's the truth. We are creatures who like beauty and art. Let me tell you this, though. You might not be a poet, but what you do is an art form.

Preaching is an art form. It's an art, and not everybody can do it. That's why people probably hate on it. That's a word. Now, going a little left, when I consider the civil rights movement in particular, I've always found it interesting that many of the leaders were pastors or, you know, theological in some way. And it can seem as if like the church led many of like the social justice movements back in the day. do you think that the church is still leading the way now or not?

More so not, unfortunately. And I'm trying to figure this out. So I'm writing a book right now, which is well overdue. It's called What Had Justice to Do With Righteousness? And it traces at least at the foreground, a little bit of history. Because you're right. We're going to go to Ebenezer when we're done and, you know, look at a little bit of the King's Center stuff. When you look at the tall voices that led the way, you have Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Or we could even go back to abolition. Although Frederick Douglass was not a pastor, he is very crisp and clean in his Christian convictions. But you got Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman, all of these women who anchor their sense of conviction in the gospel. But particularly in the 50s and the 60s, Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, you know, they named the airport after him in Birmingham. Reverend Ralph Abernathy and so many of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Evie Hill was once like the Vice President of Southern Christian Leadership Conference. This has been my basic argument that they did it not in lieu of the gospel, but they did it because of the gospel. They had a superior moral ground and they knew it that they stood on that made their argument stronger.

That's why Dr. King could stand up in the cusp of world power at the mall of Washington in 1963 and preach until John Kennedy had to say, I felt that in my bones. That's what he said. That's what Kennedy said when he heard him preach on his TV screen in the White House because they had a superior moral ground. And that wasn't man-made human wisdom. It was the gospel of Jesus Christ that they brought to bear upon the conscience of the nation. Today, man, so we were marching in Chicago behind Laquan McDonald's murder, and it's cold. It was like Black Friday a number of years ago. And I'm standing there, and Jesse Jackson is a few paces up in Marshall Hatch and Reverend Eakes and Otis Moss is off to the side and a few others.

And these young guys and girls come by and they start yelling at us. Now we got the larger crowd. They started yelling at us. Go home. Y'all don't belong here. That praying it ain't working this time. You had your time. They were so disrespectful.

But I heard something in what they were saying. Here is a group of young people who were raised without a God conscience. And so they didn't even recognize that the right, the fact that we got the right to buy property wherever we want to in Chicago, post-1972, the fact that we have the right to vote. Yeah. Came from these. church people yeah who we're doing it and there is such a clear rejection so that now black lives matter

seeking to accomplish what it's doing is doing it largely without the church wow and there are other reasons why yeah let me let me ask you this this what you just said sparked the idea or thought do you think for a lot of the people who say you know black lives matter um is of the world or this critical race theory argument do you think that for people who have a problem with a lot of black Christians standing up for social justice, do you think they have a problem with it because they see

a large majority of the world standing up for social justice so when black Christians come alongside that, they seem like we're adopting something in the world that really the church started to begin with? Do you think that's a big part of it? Because now

it seems, I think if this was the 60s and it was primarily church leaders, leaders, leading away. They wouldn't have an argument. When you see Black Lives Matter, you don't necessarily see the church. You see the world.

And it seems like, you know, Christians are trying to adopt. I don't know, though, Preston, because when it was church-led, their parents still rejected it. So when they did have an opportunity to denounce the Confederate flag, when they had an opportunity to stand up against Jim Crow in Alabama,

their four mothers and forefathers went right along with it. I mean, read the tales are haunting about how they had caskets in churches in the South where they buried the Constitution and they buried the Bible because black people were getting the right to vote and stuff like that.

So it doesn't matter if the church leads it or doesn't lead it. It's sin. Oppression and power and the lust for power is sin. And so I don't think some of these people who don't get with it because it's not led by the church would have gotten with it then. No, they're trying to conserve something. It almost feel like low down dirty shames.

old movie. I don't know if y'all know that. Message. They're trying to conserve something. And in order to do that, they have to keep a certain people group on the margin or tell us why. Critical race theory, real quick. Frederick Douglass, I mean, not Frederick Douglass. Thurgood Marshall is essentially a critical race theorist.

He, not in, not with all the baggage that people assign to him today, but all critical race theory is, is a legal, systematic way. It's born out of critical legal studies. systematic way to dismantle oppression. That's what Thurgood Marshall did, traveling from court to court through the South as he and Charles Hamilton, Houston, engineered an idea to desegregate schools.

And so we would not have the civil rights movement apart from critical race theory or critical legal studies. We wouldn't. If anything... Critically thinking through these ideas and how to destroy it. And saying that a system can be wrong. That's really what it is.

The system is broken. And so we therefore need to think of a systematic way to tear down. And in their minds, it was through the law. It was through the courts. So the people who like rally against it and rail against it, who also are quiet about George Floyd and Maude Arbery and Brianna Taylor and a list of others, the people who rail against it do not even see what it has bequeathed to us. And really, we'd have had no need for it if they had stood up and said it.

All people are made in the image and likeness of God. Nobody deserves to be oppressed or marginalized and that there is systemic racism. I'll stop there. God have mercy. We're doing a whole podcast on critical race theory. Yeah, we are. Yeah. Coming up.

What did you say? Yeah. Because, yeah, it's overwhelming. I want to ask this question because I remember one time I taught at, a church down here blueprint church and I was speaking about sexuality yeah and it was during the Q&A time and this guy stood up and he said do you believe that the black church needs to repent of its homophobia which to me was a very interesting question because I do think that many of my experiences with how I saw myself as someone who was tempted with you know same-sex desires and all

of these things, I think a lot of the shame that developed in me was my experience in the black church. And so I guess my question to you is, for those who say that the black church as an institution is homophobic and misogynistic, what is your response? Yeah. I think that like most institutions, the record of the black church is imperfect here. Yeah. No doubt about it. What I find is the other side of the story that I'd like to tell. And that is the church like the one I grew up in did not gay bash. And there were very clearly homosexual men in particular there.

And, you know, gay bashing doesn't mean that a church is not homophobic. Or the absence of it doesn't mean that a church is not homophobic. But there was room made for our understanding as children that these people are, and I quote, different. They were not ostracized, however, so that they had to sit in a certain section or they couldn't be involved in ministry. Now, some ministries, they didn't let people lead who were known to be out like that. So what I saw in the church that I grew up in was more of an embrace of people. But at the same time, I didn't see an affirmation of that lifestyle. So I'm a pastor now, and I I've been serving our church for 10 years.

I was a associate pastor somewhere else for five years at Salem. And a joyful tenure there. And I think of in my time now, I can't call his name. There's a brother who's going to our church. He's a gay guy. He went to college. We went to college the same time. And I called him one day because out of the blue,

I didn't want to, I wanted to know, am I gay bashing? Am I, the way that I'm preaching and the way that I'm leading is how is it making you feel? And man, his response floored me. Now, he's one person. So I'm not saying this is normative for everybody. But he said to me, he said, man, I want to know the truth. He said, that's why I come to this church. Just preach the truth.

He says, and if it offends me, it offends me. But it's going to offend other people too. He said, and he said, pastor, I know some of the places where I'm wrong. Yeah. I was, now I was floored by what he said. Wow. Because I was calling in one sense getting ready to apologize. when he was saying, no, tell me the truth.

Now, the other side to that is, and my record isn't perfect on this either, yeah, man, we have looked at people with homosexual, who are homosexual, and we have been afraid of them. I do think there is a difference between being afraid and affirming.

Yes. I don't think we need to be afraid. I think we need to embrace any and everybody God's sins, but we do not need to affirm the sins of any and everybody God's sin,

including mine. Yeah. Because there's a lot to be said about unredeemed heterosexuality too. Hello. And I got some of that. Call of it.

Call it out. That's good. So yeah, I do. I mean, this is a hard road because the views and the pews have changed, though. Yeah. So when I grew up in the 80s,

it was generally assumed that homosexuality was wrong. The kids who were like young adults in our church now. Man, there ain't nothing wrong with it, preachers. Well, I don't know. I just want to remind you both of the time. I've heard my wife speak on, you know, homosexuality and homosexuality so many times. But the time you invited her to your church.

Oh, my goodness. That was different. It was probably one of the most. Wow. And I told Jackie, you know, one, I respected you so much for allowing her to come in your congregation. You gotta come back to. I want to come back when this panorama is over.

To come in your congregation. And we were so encouraged just how intentional you were with building the black community and being unapologetically black and Christian and solid and loving and well-rounded. So we were just, we were just encouraged. We were so encouraged. But I think at the same time,

I think Jackie, she preached. I think the environment and just the, I don't know, just the vibe was just different. Because I, for one, I cried. I don't ever really. And she broke down crying about the, because I heard this message before, but I never heard it like that.

And one thing that some, so afterwards, I did not understand why I was crying and I was processing it with Heidi died. And Heidi was like, do you think it's because you felt like you were at home? Yes. And that's what it was,

is that I'm rarely in spaces where I feel like I'm talking to people that I know. And so there was a level of safety and vulnerability that I think I had on that stage that I don't have usually. That's beautiful. Man, it's your, it's your pulpit, yo, for real. Come back.

And like, I said the same thing to, I hope y'all have Bethmore on one of these. I just said, Beth Moore about to join our preaching team. You can do the same. That was so, the feedback that I heard from some person, personalities, both well known and not so well known. You know, it's interesting when people hear you preach every week, they try to, they very lightly try to take, that's the best sermon I've ever heard. No, that's the best sermon I guess preacher has ever preached. They like quickly came and cleaned it up.

But I tell you there's power in what God has called y'all to do. Yeah, yeah. And that place felt it. It ricocheted with it. And I think, too, y'all got some authenticity and some credibility. that a lot of us don't have to stand on that. And I think that's how this book is going to hit too. That there is a fair measure of that.

Well, thank you. My pleasure. Reverend Doctor. Thank you for coming through here and, you know, doing your, what you call it, rhetorical, pathos and all that thing. Lord have mercy. Yeah, my ethos, hopefully I got some ethos, log out some pathos. And I'm going to pull some of the books you mentioned

and put them in our show notes so that just people have access. Because you said a lot of big words. I know people are going to be like, he said epistemology. What is epistemology? He ecclesiology. Is the study of learning. It's how we come to know what we know.

Do we know it that we know it? Well, amen. Well, thank y'all saints. All right, brother.