wfn.org | Ebony bishops convene summit on black church

["NewsDesk" <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

Nov. 12, 2003 News media contact: Tim Tanton7(615)742-54707Nashville, Tenn. 
E-mail:newsdesk@umcom.org ALL-AA-AF{548}

NOTE: This report is accompanied by photos and a sidebar, UMNS story #549.

By John W. Coleman Jr.*

WASHINGTON (UMNS) - Three hundred African-American United Methodist leaders
discussed common challenges and ideas for strengthening the ministries of
black churches during a first-ever summit Nov. 7-9.

"We are not well in this denomination," said Bishop Felton Edwin May, leader
of the church's Washington Area, in an opening address at Asbury United
Methodist Church. The host bishop called for a renaissance of the black
church. Two days later, he closed the gathering with an impassioned prayer
that departing attendees would use their new insights and convictions in
strategic action. 

Thirteen of the denomination's 24 active and retired African-American
bishops, known collectively as the Ebony Bishops Network, convened the summit
following the United Methodist Council of Bishops' fall meeting in
Washington. At a retreat earlier this year the network had examined the
"seriously fractured state of the black church on all levels, as well as our
diminishing presence and effectiveness in fulfilling the needs of the black
community," according to the invitation letter from the group's chairman,
Bishop Rhymes Moncure of the Nebraska Area.  

"From Oppression to Liberation: Responding to God's Call for the Black
Church" was the theme of the gathering, the first Summit on the State of the
Black Church held by the bishops. 

Participants addressed the black church's role in responding to myriad
problems in the black community, including rampant violence, HIV/AIDS
infection, homelessness, incarceration, teen pregnancy and school dropout
rates. They also wrestled with obstacles to church growth and vitality, the
alarming absence of young people in black congregations, and the difficulties
many black leaders reportedly face in advocating for the concerns of black
people in their denomination. 

Participants included pastors and laity from churches of all sizes, and
leaders from annual conferences and general church agencies. While white
racism was named among the challenges they face, it received scant attention.
The summit's clear focus was on the black church's own shortcomings and its
potential to reclaim its historic role to spiritually and socially support
and uplift the black community.

"The major problem with black people and the black church today is not racism
but 'us-ism' ... and our oppression of each other," said Trudie Kibbe Reed,
program facilitator and keynote speaker for the summit. Reed is president of
Philander-Smith College in Little Rock, Ark., a United Methodist historically
black college. 

"We are out of alignment with God and with each other," she explained. "It
comes from a broken covenant with God and with our ancestors who paved the
way for us ..."

Despite social and economic gains achieved by many African Americans since
the civil rights era, Reed cited consequences of the broken covenant with
God, including infighting in black churches and institutions, failure to pass
on positive aspects of black heritage and culture, and lack of support for
black churches, organizations and businesses. 

She denounced jealousy, misuse of power, materialism and the prevalence of
dehumanizing language and behaviors in the black community as "dysfunctions
... adapted from our oppressors." 

"We must confess and repent of our sins, our broken covenant and
disobedience," Reed said. She called for black churches to "take action to
become transformed people of God."

Subsequent sermons by the Rev. Tyrone Gordon, pastor of St. Luke's
"Community" United Methodist Church in Dallas, and the Rev. Dorothy Watson
Tatem, director of Metropolitan Ministries in the Eastern Pennsylvania Annual
(regional) Conference, stressed God's help as essential to the black church's
prospects for transformation and triumph over its challenges.

"I see the exodus of young people from (our) churches," Gordon said. "It's
not that they're not coming to church. They're just not coming to ours." As
others at the summit, he complained of a widespread lack of vitality in
worship, creativity in doing ministry and sincerity in welcoming non-members
into churches. 

Gordon challenged black churches to learn more about their communities
through research and personal interaction, to reclaim their historic central
role in the life and culture of their communities, and to embrace the future
and the interests of younger generations by being willing to "make changes in
our worship, preaching, music, outreach and evangelism."

In 11 small groups, summit attendees discussed familiar congregational
dysfunctions, including apathy, fear of change, excessive conformity to rules
and traditions, low self-esteem, confusion, power and role conflicts, enmity
between laity and clergy, over-dependence on pastors, lack of youth
empowerment and alienation from surrounding communities. They also heard
success stories about black United Methodist congregations that are
overcoming many of these challenges.

Ideas and recommended solutions included:
7	Increasing the teaching of evangelism, discipleship and church
administration in churches and seminaries.
7	Making more use of visual media and computer technology to attract
young people and to enhance worship and other ministries.
7	Reclaiming a tradition of mentorship and apprenticeship to help
people identify, develop and use their spiritual gifts in service to church
and community.
7	Intentionally building more relationships between congregations and
their communities through shared activities, dialogues and experiences.

"We must be on the edge where our black culture is going, not behind it,"
said Bishop Alfred Johnson of the Greater New Jersey Area. He and his
episcopal colleagues expressed some of their own concerns and promised to
consider and respond to many of the ideas presented. 

The bishops encouraged participants to value and teach the heritage of the
black church, to identify and employ all the resources for ministry available
to them, to study and use the church's Book of Discipline to their advantage,
and to measure vitality not in the survival or size of their congregations
but in the quality of their discipleship and the growth of their ministries. 

Reed and the Ebony Bishops Network plan to develop a study guide for churches
in early 2004 with video excerpts and information from the summit. In the
meantime, nearly a dozen attendees agreed to form a national initiative among
their churches to minister to homeless and displaced people in their
communities.

# # #

*Coleman is the co-director of communications for the Baltimore-Washington
Annual Conference. 

 
 

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United Methodist News Service
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