In 2008 I was given stewardship of an empty church building and the legal charter of a non-existent church that I was to re-establish from scratch.
On my first day of employment I took my toolbox over to the empty building and spent the entire day removing every dedication plaque and name plate from pews, pianos, doors, etc. Even the Communion table, inscribed with the words of Jesus; " Do This In Remembrance Of Me" had a plaque under it that read "In Memory of ____." I felt that this was a necessary step toward establishing a new start.
A few weeks later I started reading old hand-written Governing Board minutes from as far back as 1924. Among those notes I found decisions from the 1970's to erect a barbed wire fence to keep neighborhood kids off of the property, a decision to not support a Billy Graham crusade because it might require them to partner with "modern" churches and a decision to forbid the pastor from performing interracial marriages.
Well, their decisions worked. Their church closed with no kids, no new believers and no people of color. They got what they wanted.
When I discovered these things, I repented.
In fact, I asked everyone that was part of our church at the time to repent with me.
Why would I repent of something that I didn't do?
I wasn't even alive when it happened.
It wasn't my fault.
But it was my responsibility. I was the pastor now.
I know that being responsible for the problem and being responsible for the solution are not the same thing.
Positional repentance is not about taking blame, it's about taking responsibility. It's not about admitting personal guilt, it's about pursuing healing.
Where there is corporate sin there needs to be corporate repentance. Those in authority can and must repent for the sins of the past in order to make room for healing.
Right now, this is what America needs, and the church is still resisting it. The only entity in America that can and should preach repentance, won't model it. We won't practice what we preach. We demand that others repent, but we won't repent of the racism that we know is sin.
And while we resist it, we delay healing.
When we repented of corporate racism, healing began to come immediately in the very form that we had previously outlawed.
Our church began a 10+ year run of having interracial marriages reflected on our staff that continues to this day.
More than 50% of the marriages that I have performed have been interracial couples.
The second largest demographic in our church is the bi-racial children of interracial marriages (~30%).
The church in America needs to catch a vision of what a healed nation would look like.
— by Jim Rudd, posted on this blog with his permission. The original post can be found here. Jim serves as pastor of True Vine Church Community and can be reached through their website or Facebook page.