What Does Love in a Multicultural Church Look Like?

April 1, 2014

Personal Note from Rich: This past month, Women's Ministry hosted a conference titled "Make Us One." The conference was about the biblical message of unity - across races, across classes, across genders, across economics and family situations, etc. Our Women's Pastor, Marlene Nathan (who is also my wife), wrote the following. I found her thoughts to be worth sharing with you, so I decided to use Marlene's letter for my monthly newsletter.

Simple and Profound: The Second Greatest Commandment

By Marlene Nathan

A theme ran through this year's women's conference on unity (called "Make Us One") that was both simple and profound. It is a theme that also runs through the Bible and can be summed up by the second greatest commandment: love your neighbor as yourself.

Our guest speaker Christena Cleveland repeated in both of her messages that a key step toward unity in the body of Christ is the willingness to "share brain space" with other people. What she meant was that we must be willing to consider things from the perspective of others - try to imagine what other people think - how things look from their vantage point. This is crucial, especially if we desire unity with brothers and sisters in Christ who are not exactly like us! We must be intentional about "getting into their heads" to understand what they think, what they value, what hurts them and what lifts them up!

Lorie Rees, our Support and Recovery Pastor, put it another way in her message. She said that the key to unity was maturity - that we must grow up - and a critical stage in maturation is the ability to empathize. Babies, toddlers and young children are, for the most part, incapable of empathy because it's always only about them! The only people they think about are themselves and the only person's feelings that matter to them are their own! The process of maturation involves the development of the ability to empathize. As we mature, other people's feelings begin to matter. We don't just know when we are upset; you also notice when someone else is upset. More importantly, we care; we want to understand and be of help.

In my message at the conference, I said a key to unity is being willing to learn new things, specifically about other people. Learning comes in many shapes and sizes. We can learn through experiences. We can learn through listening. We can learn through reading. For me, learning about other people has been a combination of these things. I've had some experiences. I've had to really listen to what others are saying. I've searched out good books that expanded my knowledge and answered my questions.

Learning from the experiences of others reminds me of a line from the novel (and movie) "To Kill A Mockingbird." This story is set in Alabama during the Depression. The main characters are Atticus Finch and his two children. At one point, Atticus, a white lawyer, is trying to explain to his daughter, Scout, why he has chosen to defend a young black man in a trial that has scandalized their small town. He said to her, You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.

This theme of "sharing brain space" and "empathizing" and "walking around in someone else's skin" is really just another way of saying what Jesus said over 2000 years ago: love your neighbor as yourself. How brilliant he was and how simple this commandment is! How should we relate to and treat anyone else on this planet, no matter who they are or what color they are or where they came from? We treat them the way we would want to be treated! Jesus knows we all love ourselves; there isn't anyone we think about more! We all know how we want to be treated - with dignity, respect, sensitivity and kindness. So, that's how we are to treat others. We try to imagine how we would feel if we were in their shoes, and we do what we would want done if we were them. It's not complicated! You don't need an advanced degree in psychology. It's so simple and yet it's so profound.

Vineyard Columbus is not the same church it was 35 years ago! We are made up of lots of different kinds of people from lots of different places and lots of different life experiences. We need the simple yet profound message of Jesus to guide us toward unity. Because once we walk around in other people's skin for a while, share some brain space with them and begin to empathize, we find we have a lot more in common than we ever imagined!