Hope for the Church
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Lately I’ve been thinking about the Church.
First Baptist Decatur, of course, but the big-C Church, its mission and the ways it has historically missed this mark of that mission. From the crusades, to the colonization of the Americas, the theologians whose work enabled slavery and later, segregation, and today’s modern day politicization of all sorts of harm against our LGBTQ siblings . . . these are things we are not proud of, but are our history nonetheless.
It can be tough to grapple with these as we sit and enjoy one another on a Sunday morning, or I go about my weekly ministry with the other pastors on staff. How can the same institution that has been such a source of community and comfort to me, also have been responsible for cruelty and harm?
I’ve been reading through the book of Acts with the youth group and have been so compelled by the story of the early church, especially by Peter and Paul who were so flawed in their own ways, yet managed to get the early Church started with God’s guidance.
The two major themes I keep coming back to in the book are these:
The radical inclusivity of the early Church was ground breaking. Men and women. Slaves and free. Jewish and Gentile. The mixing of all of these demographics would be noteworthy today, but in that time it was truly unheard of, so much so that it threatened local governments.
Anyone can change. Paul is the example that first comes to mind. He was brutally zealous in his persecution of Christians, but God changed his heart and his mind. And, in accordance with the theme of inclusivity, God softened a lot of hearts and minds to accept Paul among their ranks after what he had done to their community.
But even more than Paul, I’ve been thinking about Peter. Peter was with Jesus since the beginning. He was in Jesus’ inner circle. He participated in the miracles, the healings, the teaching. And even he had to continue to learn and grow and adapt through the start of the early Church. He had to listen to the Holy Spirit for guidance. He had to learn to accept others and to think outside the box of his prior experience and cultural conditioning. Even Peter!
I don’t feel compelled to defend the Church for the harm we’ve done in the past. As a woman in ministry, I’ve been on the receiving end of some of that harm myself. But I do believe that the Church is worth investing in. We can be better and do better. The book of Acts is a reminder of this, as is history.
While we the Church have a dark legacy, we also know that even as slaveholders warped the Bible to serve their own purposes, slaves and abolitionists also held onto the liberating God who delivered the Israelites out of slavery. Even as Hitler waged genocide, Bonhoeffer and other Christians sought to protect and hide their Jewish brothers and sisters.
I still love the Church because, at the end of the day, I know that it can be a healing source of love and inspiration. But in order to do that, we must be like Peter, willing to learn and grow, and follow the Spirit’s leading, even out of our comfort zones.
- Kelsey Lewis Vincent
Rev. Kelsey Lewis Vincent
Pastor for Youth & Families