By Curtis May
“Do not be conformed any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2).
Greetings, brethren. I’m addressing you at a very important time. We are now entering a year of transition for this Ministry of Reconciliation, or ORM as we call it. With my recent retirement from active service to Grace Communion International (though I still serve on the Church Board) comes the need to make a few changes in the way this fifteen-year ministry will be administered.
Curtis May is Director of the Office of Reconciliation Ministries (ORM)
in Pasadena, California, and a leader in the struggle for racial tolerance.
He is co-author of the book Mending Broken Relationships, available from
the
ORM website for a suggested donation of $20.We’ve been operating since 1996. Most of you know the story by now. A call came in to our then Pasadena, California church headquarters that four of our Houston churches were having problems over the issue of race, gender, and doctrinal matters. Some of this related to the church’s major transformation of the previous few years. But race was the flashpoint thanks to some strong opinions being noised around about the book The Bell Curve, which insinuated some kind of racial inferiority among certain members of the minority culture.
Headquarters dispatched me and another experienced minister (a Caucasian) to try to settle the issue. Overall the workshops and sermons succeeded very well, even though we were all of us fairly new at how to constructively address the subject. Fortunately – and here enters one of the themes of this message today – God had already planted a member in our Houston Church who was part of The Center for the Healing of Racism.
Ah, Redemption, as the old spirituals put it.
The Center would be of inestimable help the next few years to get this ministry up and running. In other words, a big lesson here is that God sends us Redemptive moments amid our struggles to carry out what he wants us to do in life. You see, he has a Plan for us, for all of us. And these plans are always for our good (Jeremiah 29:11).
First of all, I can say this because I had seen his redemptive power at work in my own life. You see, I was born into segregated Greensboro, Alabama and had vivid memories of Governor Wallace standing in the doorway shouting: “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” I saw on television the dogs and water-hoses turned on civil rights marchers in Birmingham, Alabama. As soon as I finished high school I intended to get out of the South and go to a place where there would be no racism – New York City. Some of you chuckle because you know that in the North at the time, and especially NYC, segregation was more refined. I’d only known black and white in Alabama but in NYC in 1964 I saw Dutch, Poles, Germans, Anglos, Italians and Jews – none of whom were getting along that easily.
Racism was just more diverse and refined up North.
But...the redemptive moment for me came when in 1964 I walked into the doors of the New York Radio Church of God (as it was known at the time) and saw many races all getting together, serving together harmoniously. There were tensions of course from time to time but overall 1500 people of different colors were getting along. There were firm friendships forged with many ethnic groups. Of course meeting my wife, Jannice, in the New York church helped my attitude as well.
That fall when a carload of us black members headed to the major church convention in Big Sandy, Texas we were treated to the Jim Crow harassment that was normal at the time. We had to be served around the back at restaurants and even our church services in Texas had segregated seating for blacks and whites at that 12,000-strong meeting place.
But overall, Redemption won out for me over resentment. Actually these experiences now fit together in God’s beautiful pattern because when people tell me their stories of racism and oppression, I can say “I’ve been there!”
That’s why in 1972 when I was sent as an Associate Pastor to Richmond, Virginia and was almost accosted by an angry landlady coming between me and the young trainee minister I was picking up that day, I could tell that shattered young man, “Ray, it’s not your fault.” The lady had seen me walk up to Ray’s door and went screaming at him, “I thought I told you not to have any drunks, women, gays or others in this complex.”
Ray was devastated but for many black people in the United States this kind of thing is part of their reality. Even now. In the late 1990s I was attending a conference of pastors at a Calvary Chapel service in Orange County. As we headed outside for lunch a car slowed down and a white female shouted out the window the “N” word loudly and clearly. I was the only black present so we all stood there in stunned and embarrassed silence. Then – a moment of Redemption – a white pastor lady immediately told us to hold hands as she led us in a beautiful prayer giving thanks for me and hoping this would not have a lasting negative impact on me. What a Redemptive Moment – how could I be mad at all white people when they were praying for me publically and meaningfully.
I knew by now that God was there for me all along. Sometimes I’d reach my limit. One day I went outside after receiving harassment and stonewalling from many white pastors in our own church who still see no need for racial healing weekends. I was discouraged and felt like giving up. We Christians are called “living sacrifices” but – as one pastor joked – the trouble with living sacrifices is that they want to keep crawling off the altar (Romans 12:1). I walked back to my house after praying and received a call soon after from a friend in Ireland: “Come over. We want you to do a workshop here in Ireland.” Well, that trip led to Ireland, London, Scotland and the Philippines in the name of Jesus Christ’s ministry of reconciliation, a ministry he wants to share with everyone of us (2 Corinthians 5:18-19).
Even my most scary moments as a black minister in these United States have reinforced the lesson that God wants to use all things that come our way for the good (Romans 8:28). While in Monterey Park in LA one day I had counseled a young Hispanic man for church membership. It went fine and I was musing on how wonderful this was when – two police cars pulled up on the front and driver side of my car. One officer got out, pistol pointed at my head.
“Get out of the car!”
“Yes sir.”
“Whose car is this?” That’s an insult because it assumed you stole it.
“Mine.”
”What are you doing here?”
“I’m a pastor and just invited a man to church.”
“Can you prove it?”
“Yes, I have my ministerial certificate right here.” I reached inside my wallet and it wasn’t there!! You can be sure I carry two of them since that time.
“Well, let me show you my Bible.”
With the pistol most dangerously close to my head they let me open my briefcase and grab the Bible. I held it high. They calmed down. They told me that a phone report had said a black man in a blue car (describing my car) had driven up and fired four rounds and I was the suspect. The police then left – no apology, no regrets.
Now this "Starsky and Hutch" moment could be very embittering if I hadn’t begun to make friends with the respected police chief of Pasadena. By this time my own son Brad, had decided to become a police officer. The Redemptive moment came when I was asked to share my bad experiences with the police with a gallery of officers at Pasadena police headquarters. There I was surrounded by white policeman with their guns in holsters listening to me gently lecture them on how they look to others in incidents like this.
Redemption.
Just over three years ago, my wife and I were driving though Arizona on ministerial business when a police car stopped us and an angry copper banged on the passenger side window with a flashlight – a rented car. Another officer had a light shining on us. We were scared because this was night and far away from any one we knew. I told him I was a pastor and my son was a police officer and for a solid 20 minutes he sat there in his car checking out my story. “Well, go ahead,” was all he said. No apology. No regrets. Actually we were just glad to get out of there. And I suppose I now have more empathy for what some Hispanic people feel living in Arizona.
I tell these stories to remind my audiences and myself that the past isn’t over. Things are a lot better in this country but unbelievably ugly and dangerous things still happen. William Faulkner said, “The past isn’t dead; it isn’t even past.”
Well, Redemption moves forward. ORM’s friendship with the Pasadena Chief of Police, Bernard Melekian, takes on a new dimension now that he works with Attorney General Holder in Washington, DC. The Chief will speak at our racial healing conference in Columbus, Ohio in October. He claims to learn a lot from us in our workshops even though he is an excellent speaker. But he says what he’s learned from us he wants to pass on to the Attorney General's office – the art and science of community policing. Mr. Holder, by the way, is an African-American.
You can look up some of those specific items we teach at our workshops on our website ATimeToReconcile.org.
So on it goes. We look forward to ever new opportunities in this ministry because thanks to God’s gift of faith given through Jesus Christ we truly strive to rejoice always, as St. Paul said (Philippians 4:4). The obstacles and frustrations are many but the Redemptive moments are always there.
I leave you on this Black History month thanking you for your support and with the words of the British statesman Edmund Burke ringing in our ears, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.” You in Glendora are some of our best supporters. You are good people. You are doing something. You are part of the solution, involved in a ministry that really belongs to Christ and thus will never end.
Curtis May has headed up the Office of Reconciliation Ministries for 15 years. It has 27 chapters around the world from Southern Ireland to South Africa.