American Church: It’s Time to Venture Into Deep Water

I had been in Cape Town for two weeks, struggling to find my rhythm. What was I supposed to be doing on this, my third visit? I feel a call to peace and reconciliation that I have been exploring in South Africa by learning about the history of race and caste in Cape Town, observing, listening, etc. And in Durham, I have been co-leading a group at my church that has been reading, learning, and discussing the hard questions about racial injustice and systemic racism in America, in search of a Christ-like response to support the marginalized in our community.

I could keep reading, visiting museums, and meeting with people who do the work of racial healing, but what am I to do with this knowledge? How can I integrate my Cape Town experience with my Durham experience? One rainy Friday night in Manenberg, a coloured township on the outskirts of Cape Town, I got some answers.

Manenberg is one of dozens of townships that sit northeast of the city in the Cape Flats – a flat, scrubby area away from the grandeur of mountains and sea, away from the wealthy and the tourists. On our last trip in February, I visited the Tree of Life Church there. Pete Portal, a young white man from the UK is the pastor. He and his wife Sarah live in the township with the young men and women they minister to – those caught in the snare of gangs, drugs, crime, and domestic abuse that plagues all of Cape Town’s townships. Tree of Life is committed to transforming their lives through Christ, facilitating their rehabilitation, empowering them with practical life skills, and advocating for racial and social justice.

That Friday, Chris and I attended Kingdom Come, Tree of Life’s monthly worship service that brings people together from all over Cape Town to pray for the city. It was an extraordinary experience if for no other reason than we were safely worshipping at night in a poverty-stricken, known-to-be violent township thousands of miles from home. But what made it especially extraordinary to me is that it reinforced to me that the American Church must and can take a leadership role in seeking racial reconciliation for our communities.

The focus of the evening was on the power of prayer – prophetic prayer. Everyone in the room knew that the Holy Spirit was alive and present that night, and could send visions, heal pain, and transform in the moment. The prayers were spontaneous, aloud, and physical. We laid hands on people we did not know and prayed.  All the voices blended in a chorus crying out to the Holy Spirit.

We prayed to bring the Kingdom of God to Cape Town and to Manenberg. For all its beauty, Cape Town is a city in need of continued, dramatic restoration. The leftover divisions created by apartheid are pervasive. Millions live in poor townships and unofficial settlements of metal shacks. Homeless men sleep on the steps outside our apartment. Wine bottles and condoms litter the streets. Tents surround the tennis courts in the scenic Green Point Park. People walk shoeless and dig through trash for food. They stand outside restaurants begging for leftovers. And young men in Manenberg look for belonging in gangs and end up trapped in a life of drugs and crime.

The power of the Holy Spirit became evident when Pete asked people to share how they see God working good in their lives. A Manenberg resident shared that, while praying, she saw a vision of an open door. She quoted Psalm 24:9 “Lift up your heads, you gates; lift them up, you ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in.”  She explained that the Holy Spirit is breaking through the darkness, opening the doors of their hearts, and entering to bring hope to Manenberg.

Then an older white man came forward to say that this was his first time attending the Kingdom Come service. He came because he is looking to step outside the walls and doors behind which he lives. Almost all white Capetonians live in homes fortified by walls and gates, and razor wire or electric fences.  He wants to see all barriers torn down between his community and communities like Manenberg. Pete affirmed that this what Kingdom Come is all about – healing the city by tearing down walls and opening doors to let the Holy Spirit in.

This was evident by the diversity in the room. Among the 50ish people there, it was nearly equally divided between white and people of color.  Some had travelled great distances from suburbs including Muizenberg, Table View, Woodstock, Sea Point on a rainy Friday night to worship together.

The evening gave me a charismatic experience which placed me somewhat outside my comfort zone. But I am certain that the faith of the people, their shared community and their love for each other and God was alive in the room. They believe that the Holy Spirit can create change. In one moving song, “Come Holy Spirit” we sang:   

Come Holy Spirit. Flow living water. Flow within us. Your love is alive; it’s breaking the darkness. It’s bringing the Light to soften the heart of stone. The chorus sung in Xhosa means:  Your love is alive! Your kingdom is alive!

The evening culminated in Pete’s message of what an alive kingdom looks like. Ezekiel 47:1-12 is a passage I did not know and will now never forget. Ezekiel recounts his dream of a man leading him as a river of water flows down from the Temple. It starts ankle deep, and as Ezekiel proceeds, it becomes so deep that he must stand along the bank. The water continues to flow into the Dead Sea and everything the water touches comes alive. The sea becomes fresh and brimming with fish. Fruit trees grow and flourish along the bank.

Pete shared many analogies to our own faith:     

• The further Ezekiel goes, the deeper in the water he goes. I can splash in shallow, ankle-deep water and life will be easy but boring and meaningless. The deeper I go with Jesus, it may get harder, but way more abundant.   
• In the same way that water flowing from the temple brought life to everything it touched, the Holy Spirit flows to dark places and brings a flourishing life.
• We are God’s temples with living water in our hearts. The refreshment the world needs must flow out of each of us and into our communities. Like a river, grace flows to the lowest places.

Like Tree of Life, the American Church and its people must be society’s refreshment; moral leaders that stand for racial reconciliation and bring the Kingdom of God to heal our communities. A committed group of people in my church is seeking how to do this. I offer these thoughts.

We must break down walls

In Durham, NC, most of us don’t live behind literal walls. But like Cape Town, invisible and unconscious walls separate our races and classes. The walls are constructed in our minds and hearts and have been there all our lives. They create an invisible line in the street between our church and the apartments on the other side full of minority families. Our white American churches say that everyone is welcome, but those invisible walls are often barriers to people of color coming to our churches.

We must listen  

Those walls also keep out the truth. Our churches have not acknowledged and lamented our country’s history with racism, their own complicity in supporting it, and the continued remnants of systemic racism that negatively impact life for people of color today. We ignore the fact that it is there. We must stand for the truth and for those harmed by the truth.

We must go deep with the Holy Spirit

Prayer will allow us to discover the truth. It is vital for churches to call upon and listen to the Holy Spirit. We must believe that the Holy Spirit will transform us and our communities; break down walls, open doors and move us to action. And we must do this communally. People and institutions created racism and the systems that support it, and together with God, we must deconstruct it. Yes, this is hard and painful work, but will be life-giving.

We must be in relationship

Tree of Life breaks down walls and opens doors through relationships – doing ministry and life with others, rather than for others. Pete Portal says that churches’ ministries must live in a “habitation culture” rather than a “visitation culture.”    We cannot sufficiently form relationships when we are solely providing clothing for or taking food to the homeless. We must be together with others in community, listening,  believing, and seeking understanding of each other’s life experiences.

I want to explore how a church could or should put this into practice. One pastor in my Durham church is developing a community ministry by walking through the walls in the street to the apartment complex to establish real connections with the minority families there. While it may not result in anyone stepping through the doors of our church on a Sunday morning, this approach effectively expands the walls of the church to include the apartment complex itself.  And it opens doors in the walls our hearts have constructed to make the church larger than we can humanly imagine.

God’s people must be a catalyst for healing. Our society is plagued with injustice, divisions, anger, and paralysis. Tree of Life doesn’t have all the answers, but they journey into deep water with the Holy Spirit.  They fight for the marginalized, and model the way of Christ’s love to bring down walls and open doors. There might be something for the American Church to look at here.

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