Posts Tagged: "Race"

NWLife Weekly Conversation—More Like Listening (on Race, Justice, & Equality)

Brian Dolleman - June 7, 2020 - Life With God, Uncategorized, Video

Here is our thirteenth NWLife video podcast featuring our weekly conversation.

Today’s theme: Listening and Learning about Race, Justice, and Equality

Pastor Andy begins with a cold open – no music, no bumper, no entertainment… just speaking the truth simply and plainly.

The invitation is to listen and learn, to pay attention, to open our hearts and minds, to grow and be transformed… to change.

All of today’s music is from the worship collective Common Hymnal. These songs are beautiful and heartbreaking.

At the end of the video, we share resources – including our new Race, Equality, and Justice page with 40 suggestions of books, movies, and social media voices to learn from. http://nwlife.church/justice/

I have personally read and listened to and watched and followed all of these resources (with one exception – The ABC’s of Diversity book). Maybe it’s a little unusual to have recommended films rated for a mature audience on a church website, but I can tell you every one of them have challenged me, educated me, caused empathy and compassion to rise in me, and have helped me to grow. I hope you’ll take a similar journey of growth.

Do you know what I want?

I want justice—oceans of it.

I want fairness—rivers of it.

That’s what I want. That’s all I want.

—Amos 5.24

Celebrate The Victory And Embrace The Burden

Brian Dolleman - January 16, 2017 - Life With God, Uncategorized

My church celebrates MLK Day each year. Yesterday, our friend Tiffany Bluhm spoke in all three services. She’s an immigrant – adopted from an orphanage in Delhi, India and raised by a white family in an all-white community (for the first 10 years of her life). Tiffany and her husband Derek adopted their son Jericho from Uganda in 2013. She’s passionate about the subjects of race, reconciliation, and justice.

In the morning service, while talking about the Martin Luther King holiday, she said:

I hope you don’t just binge-watch HGTV tomorrow on MLK day. Celebrate the victory… and embrace the burden.

After nodding my head and saying amen, I took my bulletin and wrote down a short list of suggestions – other things to… Read More

Sunday Shout-Outs

Brian Dolleman - November 13, 2016 - Guest Posts, Life With God, Uncategorized

Two beautifully challenging pieces to share today—the first one is new, the other is a few years old…

I Want To Help You Understand My Lament by Shannon Dingle.

I’m hurting, friend. I’m hurting deeply. And I’m being told to suck it up and put away my pain and move on. Rather than call those responses insensitive, I want to help you understand my lament, if I can.

My heart is so tender, and I’m praying with each word that they will be received in the matter in which I intend. I know a lot of voices are shouting right now. I hope to be a voice that pulls up a chair to chat over coffee and share my heart.

I occupy a unique space. I’m white, but four of my children aren’t.

I was born here into a family that dates back to the pilgrim days, but four of my children are immigrants from Asia and Africa. I have ancestors who fought under the Confederate flag, but I’ve been targeted online as a “race traitor” for adopting outside of our ethnicity. I easily pass as having no disabilities (though I live with chronic conditions that are invisible yet can be disabiling), but I’m raising children who live with autism and cerebral palsy and HIV and visual impairments, including one who uses a wheelchair. My husband and I are straight and fit into accepted gender norms, but we have dear friends and neighbors who aren’t or don’t. I’m a Christian, but last year a Muslim friend of mine and her son waited at the preschool until we arrived to walk in with me and Zoe because she was afraid to walk in by herself after the Paris terrorism attacks.

And I occupy one common space: I am a woman who, like 1 in 6, has been raped. I am a woman who was sexually harassed in my workspace and whispered about when I filed a grievance against the man in power who objectified me. I am a woman raised by a father who doesn’t “read books by women because they aren’t any good.” (And I’m a writer, so the hurt is doubled there.)

I am grieving. Many are reading this as being a sore loser. But that’s not how I’m feeling. I have… Read More

And What Do We Have Here?

Brian Dolleman - October 25, 2016 - Life With God, Uncategorized

I remember years ago hearing leadership guru John Maxwell talking about “Putting a ’10′ on everyone’s head.” He was encouraging us to see people as valuable, worthy of our time and attention.

Then yesterday, I watched the first episode of the newly released Black Mirror (season 3) on Netflix. Black Mirror is often described as a modern day Twilight Zone – giving us creepy glimpses of how technology might lead us down a wrong path. This new episode features Lacie—who appears to be a nice, but too sugary-sweet, fake, an annoyingly earnest woman who seems to be doing everything she can to climb the social-standing ladder.

Quickly, you notice Lacie giving and receiving star-ratings on her smart phone with every in-person human interaction. At first, you assume it’s an app that everyone is using… like Facebook or Instagram or Twitter. But then you begin to realize it’s the actual person who is receiving a score: 0 to 5 based on observation or interaction.

Then you discover the power of these ratings. The lease is up on Lacie’s apartment – so she is looking for a new place to stay. When she finds the perfect place, it is just beyond her reach financially… but the agent tells her there is a discount for people with a 4.5 rating. She asks Lacie what her rating is. Lacie is a 4.2, which is respectable, but not quite upper level. The agent encourages Lacie to work on increasing her rating.

Lacie is focused. She’s handing out 5-star ratings left-and-right to everyone she encounters – hoping they will return the favor. But not everyone does, and her score still hoovers below the upper level. Then, when her flight is cancelled and she can’t make it to an important event (with a bunch of 4.5′s and higher), Lacie cracks. She swears at the desk clerk at the airport. Security comes and docks her rating a full point as punishment for her behavior.

Her world is spiraling down along with her score… her worth, value, opportunity, and social standing.

For a more complete review of this Black Mirror episode, check out this article from The Verge.

With Halloween right around the corner, I’ve been thinking about all the little characters who will show up on our doorsteps. We open our doors, and survey the group of trick-or-treaters… “And what do we have here?” we ask. “Oh, I see the Hulk. And a scary monster! Is that a police man? And the princess from Frozen… what’s her name?”

We pay attention. We recognize the costumes and affirm the children. “Beautiful. I love it! Wow.” And then we bless them (give them candy).

This kind of attentiveness, or beholding, is powerful.

We are taking the time to see the image they are projecting, the costume they are wearing, and we accept them—as they are. I believe this shouldn’t happen only on October 31. And I believe it shouldn’t only happen with… Read More

Stammering Awkwardly and Boldly on Race and Violence (Holy Spirit, Help!)

Brian Dolleman - July 11, 2016 - Life With God, Uncategorized

The following are my notes from Sunday’s message – which included receiving communion together (with instructions to sit, holding the bread and cup, quiet and still before God—bringing our anger, hurt, sorrow, and fear into God’s presence, asking God to soften our hearts).

* * *

At the heart of the gospel is a table where men and women, young and old, rich and poor, native and foreigner, black and white… share a meal together.

Together as equals… sons and daughters of the King. Family. Kin.

In all our beautiful diversity. Every nation, tongue, tribe. Celebrating together. Sharing and laughing and crying together.

This is what Jesus did and what Jesus is still doing today: bringing people together.

This is a better and more beautiful way—the way of our Savior.

Last Sunday, in my message “When Doves Cry,” I said:

“All that trends toward death and destruction grieves the Holy Spirit.”

And, “All that leans toward life, all that contributes to the flourishing of life, all that brings and blesses life… the Spirit sings over this.”

I had a repeated line in the sermon… ” And God cried.”

I went through a brief history of events in our world that brought death and destruction, giving a date and brief statement of the violent, tragic event—each time ending with the statement, “And God cried.”

This week I needed to add a few more… Read More

We Gotta Pay Attention

Brian Dolleman - July 7, 2016 - Life With God, Uncategorized

It’s hard to pay attention to something (or someone) you’re not close to. Closeness invites attention.

God is the creator of all human beings, with all their differences, their colors, their races, their religions. Be attentive: Every time you draw nearer to your neighbor, you draw nearer to God. Be attentive: Every time you go farther from your neighbor, you go farther from God.

—Saint Dorotheos of Gaza

Wow.

This is particularly convicting in our day because we have become so damn gifted at villainizing the other side. Whether it’s the other political party, the other faith, the other quarterback, the other skin color, the other sexual orientation, the other…

It’s as if we’ve become so hyped-up on detailing all the reasons why the other is our enemy that we completely forgot Jesus’ command to love our enemies. And neighbors. And brothers. Everyone, really. The command is to love.

“Our life is love, and peace, and tenderness;

and bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, and not laying accusations one against another;

but praying one for another, and helping one another up with a tender hand.” —Isaac Pennington

We gotta pay attention.

Tom Berlin said, “Being church means moving from the fortified position of… Read More

Coretta

Brian Dolleman - April 20, 2016 - Life With God, Uncategorized

*from A.J. Swoboda’s book A Glorious Dark

* * *

I think of the Christmas my mom and I flew to Atlanta to visit my dad while he was in treatment. Near the end of our visit, we walked around old downtown Atlanta on a Sunday morning. We entered this old church building that Mom said was famous. It was my very first, however fleeting, experience of being a racial minority—we were the only white people in the whole place. I learned at that point in my life that black people seem to love God way louder and more rhythmically than white people do.

Black people worship with their… Read More

Racism: Why Whites Have Trouble “Getting It”

Brian Dolleman - March 4, 2016 - Life With God

by Greg Boyd

Greg is an internationally recognized theologian, preacher, teacher, apologist, and author. He has been featured in the New York Times and on The Charlie Rose Show, CNN, National Public Radio, the BBC, and numerous other television and radio venues. This article was originally published on the ReKnew website in January, 2007.

* * * *

I’m a member of a special task group on racial reconciliation that consists of a dozen or so pastors from around the Twin Cities. We’ve been meeting periodically for the past year or so in order to strategize how to help the Church of the Twin Cities as a whole move forward in racial reconciliation. The other day we were discussing what we thought was the main obstacle(s) to the Church becoming a reconciled, diverse, community—one that manifests the truth that Jesus died to “tear down the walls of hostility” between people groups (Eph 2:14-15). I shared with the group my conviction, which is that the main obstacle to reconciliation in the Church in America is that the majority of white people don’t “get it.” What’s worse, the majority of what people don’t know that they don’t “get it.”

Worst of all, the majority of white people don’t really know that there’s anything to “get.”

Most white people I know sincerely believe they live in a country that is, for the most part, a land of… Read More

Yes. This Is Still An Issue Today. (Segregation In The Church)

Brian Dolleman - January 19, 2015 - Life With God, Uncategorized

The headline of an article I read last week shocked me. It announced:

Sunday Morning in America Still Segregated – and That’s OK With Worshipers

It was the findings of a study conducted by LifeWay Research – and here’s what they had to say…

Sunday morning remains one of the most segregated hours in American life, with more than 8 in 10 congregations (86%) made up of one predominant racial group. And most worshipers like it that way.

Two-thirds of American churchgoers (67 percent) say their church has done enough to become racially diverse. Less than half think their church should become more diverse.

Researchers also found churchgoers who oppose more diversity do so with gusto. A third (33 percent) strongly disagree… Read More

Expert-Delusion & Ivory Towers

Brian Dolleman - January 2, 2015 - Life With God, Uncategorized

Have you ever seen a large ship – like a cruise ship – use its propulsion jets to turn around in the relatively shallow waters of a port? The force of water blasting through the jets stirs up everything…

And what was once beautiful, crystal-clear, blue ocean water now becomes murky-brown, as if someone had turned water into a fishy-smelling pumpkin spice latte.

That’s what the comment section of YouTube does too. Blasting. Stirring up. Leaving behind murky-brown, fishy-smelling nastiness. People will say things online that they would never say to someone’s face – certainly not to someone they have a relationship with and actually care about.

Christians do this too. Facebook and other streams of social media have become… Read More