The Forty-Day Journey of Promise

Day Eighteen: More Than Just Sunday Meetings

Note: Welcome to The Journey, our forty-day blog series from MLK Day through the end of Black History Month. We’re learning life lessons from the legacy of African American Christianity. The series is based upon material from my book Beyond the Suffering. To learn more about Beyond the Suffering, including downloading a free chapter, click here.

Everybody’s Heart in Tune

How did newly converted African American slaves grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ? How did they connect to one another in the Body of Christ?

A preacher we know only as the “Preacher from a God-fearing Plantation” offers us a glimpse.

“Meetings back there meant more than they do now. Then everybody’s heart was in tune, and when they called on God they made heaven ring. It was more than just Sunday meeting and then no more godliness for a week. They would steal off to the fields and in the thickets and there, with heads together around a kettle to deaden the sound, they called on God out of heavy hearts.”

The Old Ship of Zion

Another African American Christian described it like this.

“We used to steal off to de woods and have church, like de Spirit moved us—sing and pray to our own liking and soul satisfaction—and we sure did have good meetings, honey—baptize in de river, like God said. . . . We were quiet enough so the white folks didn’t know we were there, and what a glorious time we did have in the Lord.”

“The church was a ‘Noah’s Ark’ that shielded one’s life from the rain. It was the ‘old ship of Zion’ fully capable of sailing the seas of life.”

Life Lessons for Today

Because we all too easily abandon meeting together, we have much to learn from the high priority that African American believers placed upon communal worship and fellowship. One Black Church History scholar summarizes it well:

“Their needs for guidance and comfort were immense. The awesome importance of this spiritual and emotional support can be seen by the fact that the time to engage in worship was taken from the already too-brief free times away from field work. Work time already ran from sun-up to sundown. Time for worship was taken from the brief period left for the personal needs of sanitation, sleep, food, and child rearing. This spiritual nurture must have been highly treasured indeed to motivate the sacrifice of such limited and precious free time.”

Join the Conversation (Post a Comment for a Chance to Receive a Copy of Beyond the Suffering)

1. “Meetings back there meant more than they do now. Then everybody’s heart was in tune, and when they called on God they made heaven ring.” In what ways does your worship experience already mirror theirs?

2. What could make this statement truer in your worship experience today?

Review of Glory Road: The Journeys of 10 African-Americans into Reformed Christianity

Book Details

• Title: Glory Road: The Journey of 10 African-Americans into Reformed Christianity

• Author: Anthony J. Carter, Editor

• Publisher: Crossway Books (July, 2009)

• Category: African-American, Reformed Theology, Church History

Reviewed By: Bob Kellemen, Ph.D., LCPC, Author of Soul Physicians, Spiritual Friends, Beyond the Suffering, Sacred Friendships, and God’s Healing for Life’s Losses. Find all of Bob’s book reviews, blogs, books, and free resources at www.rpmministries.org.

Recommended: Life-changing accounts of God’s providential leading in bringing African American leaders to the truths of salvation.

Review: Personal Stories of African American Spiritual Journeys

Glory Road author and editor, Anthony J. Carter, is an organizing member of the Council of Reforming Churches, and has previously authored On Being Black and Reformed and Experiencing the Truth. Carter has assembled a team of ten leading African American pastors and professors and asked one poignant question. “How did you come to embrace Reformed theology?”

Glory Road uses their personal accounts to trace their conversion to Christianity, their introduction to and embrace of Reformed theology, and the effect of such theology on their lives and ministries. In addition to the book’s editor, Carter, Glory Road includes contributions from such notable African American Christian leaders as Reddit Andrews III, Thabiti Anyabwile, Anthony B. Bradley, Ken Jones, Michael Leach, Lance Lewis, Louis C. Love Jr., Eric C. Redmond, and Roger Skepple.

Glimpses of God’s Glory

It is fitting that this book should be published in the year we remember John Calvin’s five hundredth birthday. The authors are glad to consider themselves “the grateful beneficiaries of the Christ-centered, biblically-grounded theology he labored so diligently to teach and preach” (p. 12). In entitling the book as they did, their desire is that “when reading our stories, you will get a glimpse of God’s glory and would be moved to come and share the road” (p. 13).

In an era when many relish bragging that their faith is “not your father’s Protestantism,” Carter and his co-authors return to the faith practiced not only by Calvin, Luther, and Edwards, but also by African American forebears such as Lemeul Haynes, who was often known as “the Black Puritan.” Thus Glory Road is not just for African Americans, just as Reformation theology transcends ethnicity and race.

Liberating Theology

Readers may be anticipating a dull, dead, dry theology tome (which true theology never is anyway). The ten accounts in Glory Road are anything but lifeless. Each African American co-author tells his story without any sugar coating. We read of rebellion against God in their youth, of water-down, irrelevant theology in liberal churches during their upbringing, and of amazing conversion narratives. We also read the at-times conflicting battle to embrace a theology that some of their ancestors and peers found less-than-liberating.

So what led them to the rejection of other theologies and the embrace of Reformed theology? While the road was unique for each of these ten men, the path had some common markers. The most common was a lifelong pursuit of real answers for real problems. Reddit Andrews’ experience is representative. “Though I regularly read the Scriptures, I was drowning in questions for which I had no answers” (p. 28). It was their fervent search for changeless truth in changing times that attracted these deep thinkers and honest seekers to the Reformed faith. Their faith commitment resulted in what Anthony Bradley describes as “applying the Scriptures to our real, day-to-day encounters with the brokenness in this world” (p. 49).

Reading Glory Road I was repeatedly struck with each writer’s profound trust in and commitment to God’s Word. Whether it was popular or not in their church environment, each pastor, each professor, took risk after risk to teach the sound doctrines of grace. They clearly convey that truth—absolute truth—is not the exclusive domain of any one race.

Truth for Life

They also communicate that such truth results in life—real life. As Eric Redmond portrays it in his life: “I had learned the inherent truth of the gospel that united all of life, the cross, and the resurrection: God wants me to glorify him by enjoying him forever in every area of my life” (p. 147). “For me, Reformed theology is not about theories to be disputed in the blogosphere. It is about a theology to be lived out in the real world” (p. 154).

As a student of African American church history (see Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction, Kellemen and Edwards), my only disappointment with this otherwise powerful book is what seems to me to be an overemphasis on the “newness” of Reformed thinking among African Americans. The aforementioned Lemuel Haynes, along with Oluadah Equiano, Daniel Alexander Payne, and many other African Americans from Black Church history, professed and lived a similar faith. Linking more often to this historic legacy would, I believe, produce an even more influential argument. It would communicate that then and now Reformed theology is not just by and for “a bunch of dead white guys.”

Still, these ten authors consistently echo the passion of the aging John Newton. “I am a great sinner, but I have a great Savior.” As Carter notes in his Afterword, all of his co-authors have at least three things in common: they are black, they are Reformed, but foremost they are Christians. Glory Road tells the riveting narrative of their heritage that transcends their ethnicity. As Carter puts it, “We understand that we have as much in common with Martin Luther as we do with Martin Luther King Jr.” (p. 174).

Glory Road shows the source of emancipation from the slavery of sin—Christ’s gospel of grace. It shares life-changing accounts of God’s providential leading in bringing African American leaders to the truths of salvation. And it encourages all who read its message to commit to the same foundation.

Glory Road

The Journey: Forty Days of Promise

Learning Life Lessons from the Legacy of African American Christianity

Do you long to grow in your ability to relate across cultures?

Do you long for church community that’s truly a taste of eternity (Rev. 7:9-10) where we’ll worship together forever in unity and diversity?

Then join the journey! 

Join the Journey

Join me on a forty-day intercultural journey of promise.

I’ll be blogging during the forty days from Martin Luther King Day on January 18, 2010, to the end of Black History Month on February 28, 2009.

Our focus will be: The Journey: Forty Days of Promise—Learning Life Lessons from the Legacy of African American Christianity.

I know, technically, that’s forty-two days. February 27 and 28 will be days of reflection on the previous forty-day journey.

The Big Idea

Each day we’ll enjoy a stirring narrative from the heroes and heroines of Black Church history.

Then we’ll ponder applications of this remarkable legacy to all of our lives today—regardless of our ethnicity, nationality, race, or cultural background.

Every post will include discussion questions so that in your family and your church you can ponder the implications for your lives and ministries.

Bonus for Joining the Journey

As an added bonus, I’ll select five people who commented the most during these 40 (42) days to receive an e-copy of the entire Forty Day Adventure.

Your Head Start on Our Journey of Promise

The Journey is your appetizer. If you’d like the full course meal, go here to learn about, read a sample chapter from, and purchase your autographed copy of Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction.

Join the Conversation

1. What does the Church today need to do to reflect the multi-ethnic diversity commanded (Col. 3:10) and illustrated (Rev. 7:9-10) in Scripture?

2. What are some of the reasons that Sunday morning remains the most segregated hour in America?   

Beyond the Suffering

Book Review Of:

Where Are All the Brothers?: Straight Answers to Men’s Questions About the Church

Book Details

• Title: Where Are All the Brothers?: Straight Answers to Men’s Questions About the Church

• Author: Eric C. Redmond.

• Publisher: Crossway Books (June, 2008)

• Category: Church, Men’s Ministry, African American Christianity, Reformed Theology

Reviewed By: Bob Kellemen, Ph.D., LCPC, Author of Soul Physicians, Spiritual Friends, Beyond the Suffering, Sacred Friendships, and God’s Healing for Life’s Losses. See all Bob’s Reviews at: www.rpmministries.org.

Recommended: A practical and powerful defense of the relevance of theology in the Church for everyday life.

Review: In Defense of Christ and His Church

Author Eric C. Redmond is a leading light in the movement of African American Christians back to Reformed theology. In Where Are All the Brothers?, Pastor Redmond writes with a burning passion for revitalization in the African American church. For Redmond, such revival begins with theology. While that word (theology) may terrify some, Pastor Redmond realizes and explains how relevant theology is to everyday life.

In fact, Where Are All the Brothers? is “theology in disguise.” It is a practical manual written with wit and wisdom in particular for the black male who has a litany of reasons for being unchurched.

Chapter by chapter in bite-size chunks, Redmond helps men to digest biblical and practical answers to questions they have about the value of Christianity and the Church. He challenges men to give him ten minutes for nine days. His prayer is that his male readers will be transformed by truth, and in turn African American churches will experience a reformation as an army of African American men march back into leadership in church and society.

In many ways, Pastor Redmond writes like the great African American pastors of the past—Rev. Richard Allen, Bishop Daniel Alexander Payne, Pastor Peter Randolph, Pastor Lemeul Haynes, Pastor Jupiter Hammon, and so many other stalwarts of the faith. He also writes like his current colleagues Pastor Thabiti M. Anyabwile and Pastor Anthony Carter. They each share in common the courage of their conviction that God’s truth sets men free.

Instead of making excuses or side-stepping critical issues, Redmond converses with his readers about their reasons for not going to church. Chapter after chapter, Redmond disabuses men of lies about Christ, Christianity, and the Church.

*Chapter One: Addressing hypocrites in the church.

*Chapter Two: Explaining the inspiration of Scripture.

*Chapter Three: Interacting about the role of men and women in the church.

*Chapter Four: Exploring the preacher’s calling.

*Chapter Five: Contrasting what Islam claims to offer Black men and what Christ offers all men.

*Chapter Six: Discussing the church and money.

*Chapter Seven: Defending organized religion.

*Chapter Eight: Honoring the Deity of the Lord Jesus Christ.

*Chapter Nine: Outlining eight marks of a healthy church.

On each topic, the author speaks truthfully on matters church-goers and skeptics alike talk about in private, at the barber shop, or hair salon. Redmond provides a forum to have a public discussion that rests on the truth of Scripture.

The intent of the book is threefold. First, the book is intended to be evangelistic. Redmond designs it as a tool that explains the Gospel and the Church as the bearer of the Gospel message.

Second, the book is intended to be apologetic. For the maturing Christian reader, Where Are All the Brothers? provides knowledge to answer skeptics’ most significant questions about Christ and the practices of local churches.

Third, the book intends to be reformational. The content will deepen maturing believers in basic, overlooked truths about the faith.

What we have here is the ability to communicate. Redmond goes directly to the heart of the matter with a straight-forward, candid approach that includes a flavorful mix of biblical and seminal wisdom presented in a conversational tone. Pastor Eric Redmond has penned an “ecclesiology for everyday life”: a practical defense of the relevance of the church—especially for the black male who has his doubts.

However, this book is not only for the black brother. It is for all brothers and sisters. And it is not only for those who are not attending church. It will strengthen the faith and resolve of church members also. Where Are All the Brothers? is enticing, educating, equipping, and empowering reading for all believers.