The Journey: Forty Days of Promise
Celebrating the Legacy of African American Christianity

Day Twenty-Two: Everybody Could Be a Somebody

Welcome to day twenty-two of our forty-day intercultural journey. From Martin Luther King Day to the end of Black History Month we are focusing on The Journey: Forty Days of Promise—Celebrating the Legacy of African American Christianity.

Day Twenty-Two: Everybody Could Be a Somebody[1]

In the Invisible Institution everybody could be a somebody because they could participate as the Spirit moved them. Four main areas of mutual ministry included mentoring, testifying, exhorting, and preaching/pastoring.

Sharing the Word: Mentoring

In the Invisible Institution, there were numerous levels of ministry through which believers could share the Word with one another. At a mutual lay level, they shared one-to-one spiritual friendships and one-to-one mentoring before, during, and after gatherings.

Older males, often called “watchmen,” and older females, often called “mothers,” “spiritual mothers,” or dispensers of “mother wit,” were important spiritual guides in the Invisible Institution.

Jane Lee, or “Aunt Jane” served as Charlotte Brooks’ spiritual director. Aunt Jane first served the crucial role of witnessing concerning salvation. Brooks had no one to tell her anything about repentance until Aunt Jane talked to her.

“It was dark when I left Aunt Jane; but before I left her house she prayed and sang, and it made me feel glad to hear her pray and sing. It made me think of my old Virginia home and my mother. She sang, ‘Guide me, O thou great Jehovah, Pilgrim through this barren land. . . .’ I finally got religion, and it was Aunt Jane’s praying and singing them old Virginia hymns that helped me so much.”

Sharing the Word: Testifying

Every believer had the opportunity, as led by the Spirit, to testify. In testifying, men and women told the stories of their encounters with God. In narrative fashion, they articulated common spiritual realities, provided proverbial wisdom for life’s journey, shared advice concerning the normal problems of life, offered consolation, and, when necessary, confronted the community.

Aunt Jane testified to and discipled Charlotte Brooks. “She would hold prayer-meeting in my house whenever she would come to see me. . . . She said people must give their hearts to God, to love him and keep his commandments; and we believed what she said.”

Sharing the Word: Exhorting

“Exhorting was the next “level” of speaking ministry. Exhorters ranged from unofficial prayer leaders on the plantation to lay people licensed to deliver short sermons, often traveling from one plantation to another.

James Smith shares about his exhorting ministry.

“Soon after I was converted I commenced holding meetings among the people, and it was not long before my fame began to spread as an exhorter. I was very zealous, so much so that I used to hold meetings all night, especially if there were any concerned about their immortal souls.”

Sharing the Word: Preaching/Pastoring

Of course, none of this suggests that it is Christ’s plan for His Church to be without called-out leaders—pastors, shepherds, soul physicians. The Invisible Institution maintained a remarkable equilibrium between lay and pastoral ministry.

W. E. B. Du Bois submits a compelling portrait of the African American plantation pastor.

“He early appeared on the plantation and found his function as the healer of the sick, the interpreter of the Unknown, the comforter of the sorrowing, the supernatural avenger of wrong, and the one who rudely but picturesquely expressed the longing, disappointment, and resentment of a stolen and oppressed people. Thus, as bard, physician, judge, and priest, within the narrow limits allowed by the slave system, rose the Negro preacher, and under him the first Afro-American institution, the Negro church.”

In sharing the Word, the Invisible Institution modeled for us a host of ways to engage every believer. No one came or left feeling like they were simply a spectator. Everyone came with anticipation, participated with meaning, and left encouraged that God had used them to encourage others.

Learning Together from Our Great Cloud of Witnesses

1. Regarding sharing the Word, to what mentoring, testifying, exhorting, or preaching might God be calling you?

2. What steps could you take to more boldly and effectively share God’s Word?

[1]Excerpted, modified from, and quoted from Kellemen and Edwards, Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction. Purchase your copy at 40% off for only $10.00 at www.rpmministries.org.

Here’s a link to a YouTube version of his empowerng message:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yX_7j32zgNw

It starts twenty seconds in. It’s well worth the wait!

Let’s be clear—there is no “typical” African American church. Just like there is no “typical” white church. Any statement coming from any person of any color that suggests there is one, monolithic, stereotypical style of “doing church” that represents and summarizes all black churches, is quite simply wrong at best, and racist at worst.

So, what has my dander up today? The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, former Senior Pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago (Barack Obama’s home church), launched into a diatribe at the National Press Club on Monday, April 28. Now, lest someone label me “racist” for taking on the Rev. Wright, please realize that even Barack Obama, who until recently tried to give his former pastor the benefit of the doubt, has now expressed outrage at Wright’s recent comments.

My outrage is directed primarily toward one specific claim in Wright’s speech to the National Press Club—that his fiery denunciations of white America and his radical accusations against the American government (which Barack Obama disavows) are par for the course for the typical African American church, and that historically, the African American pulpit has always spewed such vitriolic, hateful, and angry messages.

As just one example of many that counter Wright’s contention, consider Charles Babington’s (of the Associate Press) interview with John Overton of Chapel Hill, NC. Overton noted, “I was the only white person” for about a year at a black church in Beaufort. “I never heard anybody talk like that.”

Rev. Wright claims that disagreements with him are an attack on the black church. Such could be the case only if one viewed Wright as representative of the typical black preacher.

Having studied in detail the historical African American church (please see my book, Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction), having worshipped and preached in scores of African American churches, having trained hundreds of African American pastors, and being friends with scores of faithful African American ministers, I can tell you authoritatively that many pulpits in black churches historically and today have focused on rightly dividing the Word of truth. When they have exhorted America and/or white Americans, it has been in a humble spirit of biblical and prophetic ministry, calling all Americans, including blacks, to salvation in Christ and social justice for all.

But the Rev. Wright is not the only man of color who has recently stereotyped the black church. In an otherwise excellent book (The Decline of African American Theology), the Rev. Thabiti M. Anyabwile declares that the stereotypical black church has moved from biblical faith to cultural captivity (for my full review go to: http://www.rpmbooks.org/labels/Anyabwile.html).

Again, while respecting the Rev. Anyabwile, I respectfully disagree with his stereotyped assessment. Many black pulpits historically and currently highlight the biblical preaching and teaching of the Word.

Honestly, I’m confused what value people think it may bring to offer one-sided, stereotypical, inaccurate views of the black church and the black pulpit. If we are ever to heal racial divides, then we must start with facts and with truth. And the facts are clear—the black church, just like the white church, comes in all shapes, sizes, and colors—many remain faithful to the Lord and to the Word. To say otherwise is, frankly, church racism.