W hat would I tell white pastors, especially, about racial reconciliation? If we’re going to be leaders, courageous leaders, we have to have a fear of God on our lives, instead of a fear of man. It will take considering time, treasure, talent, and breaking tradition to promote racial reconciliation.
Related: Is racism a discipleship issue? This white, millennial pastor thinks so.
This material was originally recorded as part of the Renovations Project. It has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
Signs and costs of racial reconciliation
Racial reconciliation takes time
It’s going to take some time to develop relationships with other ethnic groups, and it’s going to have to be intentional to make that happen. You have to spend some time with some individuals who don’t look like you. I call that moving from a peripheral tight relationship to moving into proximity with people. I’m learning that when you move into proximity with people, then biases are brought down. Why? Because you really get to know a person.
I had watched an African American pastor online, and he was teaching about moving into proximity. He said, “You can read all the books you want to, but that book is not going to tell you about me.” I got that. Because moving in proximity, you really get to know me, so time is important.
Related: Address racism one step at a time
Racial reconciliation might mean losing treasure
I’m finding out that treasure—money—has a way of controlling a pastor’s decision when God has encouraged them to be part of the change of racial reconciliation. I would encourage pastors to not allow money to dictate what you do. You have to be willing to lose people, and lose money, because God will provide for the ministry that he’s assigned you to. He will; it’s a story in 1 Kings 17. God told Elijah: “Elijah, go to the brook.” Elijah went to the brook. God said, “Elijah, go to Zarephath.” Elijah went to Zarephath. And God fed Elijah, took care of Elijah both times through two unlikely resources. When God instructs us to do something, the resources that he used in the past might not be the resources that he’ll use in the future. When you’re making decisions in the midst of doing this racial reconciliation work, you have to be willing to lose some things, but at the same time, you’ll gain a lot.
The effects of racial reconciliation
Racial reconciliation recognizes all talent
When I refer to talent, I mean, gifting. Within the North American church, just because you are the leader, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you actually have the gifting to lead in certain areas. What I mean by that is we have to recognize within our communities or in our churches those who are gifted and allow them to have a seat at the table. The system or the ideology of racism and systematic structures at times keeps people of color at a certain level. And that person might be gifted to do what you need to do, but you won’t elevate or give that person a place at the table. And that could be the thing that changes your ministry forever. Look at that talent piece and allow the right individuals to sit at the table.
Related: How to create a sense of belonging and invite everyone to contribute their spiritual gifts
Racial reconciliation breaks with tradition
Tradition that’s not of God will make the Word of God have no effect. We have to change our traditions and allow God to change our methodologies. We might say, “We’ve never done it this way before.” And we might have that as a tradition, but God might say, “I know you haven’t done it this way before. That’s why it’s segregation. That’s why it’s division. Because you’ve never done it this way before.” We have to ask God which way he wants us to do it now. Then, we have to courageously break the tradition that’s causing the division or keeping our churches homogenized.
Related: Q&A: How and why our church is committed to being an ally for racial justice
Racial reconciliation embraces diversity
When I was at the Baptist church in Kalamazoo, Michigan, we went to a leadership summit at Willow Creek Community Church near Chicago. And I was all ready. I had my pad, my pencil; I was ready to go. Before I wrote anything, I went into that auditorium—I think at the time Willow Creek had a seating capacity of 10,000—and it was people from all over the world there. It was people from all over the world, different ethnic groups, racial groups, whatever you might want to call it. And the first thing that I wrote on my pad was that the church of Jesus Christ is beautiful because of all the diversity. And that just hit me like a ton of bricks.
Related: Diversity and belonging: A Revelation 7:9 vision for today and the future
Another encounter that I had was with my friend Eliza Cortes Bast. She invited me to a Christian Community Development Association meeting with John Perkins. The first one I went to was in Chicago, Illinois. We walked in there, and it was all of these different ethnic groups sharing, and people with disabilities sharing. And I’m sitting in the audience thinking, “God, this is it. This is it right here. Just the beauty that’s in each and every human being that you placed in them. This is what the body of Christ is supposed to look like.”
Racial reconciliation changes how we read the Bible
I think this is important, very important, when it comes to the racial reconciliation piece and how it looks: I think that we’ve read the Bible out of a lens of just the gospel and people getting saved and things like that. What’s happening in my life right now is that I’m starting to read the Bible out of the lens of racial reconciliation and the work that Jesus Christ actually came to do. In Ephesians, it talks about how Jesus came to break down the walls of separation. I didn’t see the Bible in that light before. He came to break down the walls of separation between Jews and Gentiles, two different ethnic groups. Then it says that Jesus came to abolish the hostility. So I tell people that Jesus was the first abolitionist.
What I am saying is that the Word of God is the authority over our lives, not necessarily a person. I think we have to get to the point where the Word of God becomes the authority over our lives again, and not necessarily our denomination, not necessarily a person, but the Word of God. What does the Word say? Then be a doer of the Word. I think we really need to get back to studying God’s Word and seeing justice and racial reconciliation out of that lens and not just our opinion or what we think.
Related: Justice and reconciliation prayer devotions based on the Lord’s Prayer
Steps toward racial reconciliation
This material was originally recorded as part of the Renovations Project. It has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
Utilize peaceful protests as means of change
The first steps to reconciliation in the church and in their community, I would say, are peaceful protests. I’ve never been a part of a protest before, but this past year, I had an opportunity to participate in two protests—peaceful protests. The first one, I knew that it was happening, but I had totally forgotten about it. As I was driving to our church, for whatever reason, my youth director came to my mind so I called him. He said he was at the protest. I said, “You are? I totally forgot about that.” And God told me to go to the protest, so I did.
I went to the protest and walked with them with my youth guy and the guy who was my drummer. And during that time, God taught me something. First of all, there were predominantly young people, and it was a diverse group. But during that protest, they had their chants and their sayings about “Black Lives Matter” or “No Justice; No Peace.” As I was walking, God was telling me that the young people were voicing what he wanted to be voiced for a long time. It challenged me. During the protest, I was encouraging young people. I didn’t even know half of them, of course, but I was telling them that I was inspired by what they were doing and encouraged them to continue it.
Leverage the passion and vision of young people
I think that young people are the forerunners to change. They are pulling on the older generation, getting us out of our comfort zone and our convenience as believers, and actually getting us out there to make change. When I first started in ministry, I was sitting in a meeting with several pastors in the city, including mine, along with the superintendent of schools. The superintendent was talking to us about mentoring. My pastor said, “While the church is preparing for performances on Sundays, the world is the discipling people.” And that hit me.
When you think about these kids who are out there protesting, you have to ask yourself the question: if they’re not doing it right, whose fault might that be? Maybe it could be the church’s fault because we haven’t discipled them, and they need our discipleship? They need to know how to lean into this work under the influence of the Holy Spirit and not in the flesh. I think that’s our responsibility to disciple them into this work.
In Exodus, it tells how Moses was anointed to be a deliverer of people from oppression, but he handled it the wrong way the first time; he killed an Egyptian. He went away for 40 years, had an encounter with God, and God told him that he handled it wrong before, but this time, when Moses went to Egypt, his presence would be with Moses. Moses had success. I would tell young people to make sure that what you’re doing lines up with the Word of God and that you’re led by the Spirit of the Lord.
It’s important to me to value children and young people; I’ve brought that over into what we’re doing now at Trenches Community Church.
Learn from others and stay the course
In my work of racial reconciliation, a few lessons from my journey continue to guide me. As a church planter, I was very fortunate and blessed to have two leaders over me who taught me about community engagement. Additionally, they taught me about relationships beyond my ethnic identity. My pastor now has taught me about obedience: obeying God and then also submitting to those who have the rule over you.
Both of my pastors, as I was coming up, taught me about intercessory prayer, interceding, keeping God involved in everything that you do. My leaders have always taught from the Word of God, the framework of everything that we did.
In addition, character—being a person of integrity—is something that I have brought along with me. Having that fear of God is not wanting to cause an individual to stumble or to be a vessel that taints or smears who God is. We have enough of that in our society. Integrity was and is important.
Celebrate the differences of who we are
Some of the things that I think that I decided not to bring along with me, was first of all a valuable lesson as it relates to the unity of the church. I went from a non-denominational church to a Baptist church. But while I was in the non-denominational church, for whatever reason, my mindset was that the Baptists can’t do it the way that the non-denominational church does it. And that was in my mind, but when I went over to the Baptist church, they were doing outreach, they were ministering to kids, there was order, there was the presence of God, people were getting saved every Sunday. And the lesson that I learned from that is to never judge a ministry by what’s written on the outside of the building.
So it might say Reformed, Presbyterian, Baptist, and you really don’t know how God is actually moving within that ministry. Don’t judge a book by its cover. This is one of the things that we do very well as believers: we divide ourselves because [we believe] that denomination can’t do it like we do. But that’s the beauty in us doing ministry is that God doesn’t cookie cut us, and we can really learn from one another, if we decide to do that.
That is one thing that I learned: not to prejudge and be prejudiced, but to lean into somebody else’s cultural context. Lean into how other people do things, and you could just learn so much from people if you drop your guard and be willing to learn something new that you haven’t learned before. Don’t bring prejudice into your ministry, especially as it relates to white and Black people; I’ve learned so much from my white brothers and sisters. I would also encourage others and say that you can learn so much from me as an African American male. It’s just the way that God has wired us. He’s wired us differently, and that needs to be celebrated. The difference of who we are needs to be celebrated.
Related: The pathway to reconciliation

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James Harris
James Harris is pastor of Trenches Community Church and has a genuine love for God and people, known for his practical and transparent teaching style. He participated in listening sessions about innovation hosted by the Reformed Church in America.