City Life Starter

In 1988, I was in law school, and Pat Robertson ran for President. My church, made up mostly of college students and young professionals, were avid supporters and young and idealistic enough to imagine the possibility of a true Evangelical, baptized-in-the-Holy Spirit, President in the Oval Office. Robertson’s campaign encouraged us to attend our local party caucuses to ensure a pro-life platform was adopted.

I was living on campus at the University of Houston, so my political district was not exactly the bastion of conservatism. In fact, there were only two people in the Caucasus, myself and a black lady from my church. While we were putting together the platform for our district I asked her, “Do you think discrimination against black people still occurs?”

I remember the puzzled look on her face as she answered, “Of course it does.” She loved Jesus more than any political agenda, and if she had a political agenda it was the same as mine, and she was telling me discrimination was still a problem. Even though it was outside my personal experience, I believed her.

At around the same time, I became very good friends with a guy named Dennis. Dennis played football at the University of Houston. We went to church together, and when I was in law school and he was playing football for the Cougars we would get up a 6 am and pray together on campus. Dennis is black.

We were talking one day and Dennis told me he had been stopped by the police in Bellaire for DWB. “DWB?,” I asked. “Yeah. Driving while black,” he answered. I had never been stopped for DWB, it was outside my experience. DWB happens when you are a black person driving in an upscale neighborhood and the police stop you, not because you are speeding or driving recklessly but because, well, you are black. They usually ask where you live, and what you are doing in Bellaire or River Oaks, and run your license to see if there are any outstanding warrants. DWB is not actually a crime, so the police have to let you go at the end of the stop.

But for the fact that I had a brother and sister in the Lord who are black and who shared their experiences with me, I still might believe racism and discrimination was a thing of the past. We are all prisoners of our own experiences or lack of them. I could not believe their experiences were mere subjective misinterpretations driven by a political agenda because I knew they loved Jesus more than a political agenda. As a result, their experience becomes part of my worldview.

After law school, I became a civil rights attorney, representing individuals who had been discriminated against by their employers. It then became my job to convince white juries of something that was completely outside of their experience, that is, that discrimination in employment against black employees still occurred.

City Life Church is the most diverse church I have ever seen. Our diversity works because we all love Jesus more than we do our individual cultures and political agendas. As a result, when we share our experiences with one another we can trust those experiences are honest and by seeking to understand we bring our own worldviews into conformity with reality.

It also means that when we need to, we can sacrifice our own cultural preferences for the sake of our mission of making disciples because it doesn’t threaten who we are. It doesn’t threaten who were are because first and foremost we are citizens of the kingdom of God.