Join a conversation with Pastor Pete Armstrong to hear about important considerations for Christian congregations in their diversity and inclusion journeys.
Episode 35. Diversity in Congregations: CRT, Fear, Sin, and Curiosity.
Penny: The Diversity Inclusion for All podcast offers on-ramp learning content on a range of topics related to diversity, equity and inclusion. While our project is targeted to a general audience, some of our content is particularly designed for a Christian audience.
This episode “Diversity in Congregations” could be helpful particularly for Christian worshiping communities looking to jumpstart conversation and reflection on diversity and inclusion.
Pete: The church needs to be a place of of diversity, the church needs to be a place that reflects its neighborhood. You know, theologically you're thinking about what it means to be a disciple of Jesus today. And we really, really prayed and tried to be thoughtful and intentional about having the church reflect the neighborhood. And I really in that I saw…I saw the future of the church, hopefully in our own time, in our own way, but the the eternal future of the church as well.
Penny: Welcome to the diversity and inclusion for all project supported by Calvin University and the Calvin Institute for Christian Worship. Together, we'll listen to key perspectives, build our knowledge, inform our thinking and get a little better equipped to engage our world.
Welcome everyone to another episode of the Diversity and Inclusion for All podcast. Today, I have, as a guest Pete Armstrong. He's the pastor of Park Lane Church. It's a Christian Reformed Church in North America, and he's here to share with us some of his insights and stories related to diversity and inclusion, and how learning about diversity and inclusion can be so powerful and helpful for us as we do different kinds of things, including how we read the Bible, how we do ministry and plan worship, and how we just walk in a Christian life.
Pete: Yeah, thanks, Penny, and thanks for having me on the podcast today. A little bit of my story. I spent a lot of my formative years as a youth in a community that was mostly Hispanic in central Washington state. I grew up amongst a lot of farmers and farm workers, and most of the parents of my friends had come from Mexico in the seventies and eighties to work the fields. And so I've always been surrounded with a diversity of people made in God's image, and I don't have a lot of regrets in my life. But one of them is that I never learned Spanish as like a 7,8, 9, 10 year old. And then I went, eventually went off to Calvin College and learned a lot in the classroom about diversity and belonging and inclusion, and really started to reflect on that academically.
And then a few years after that, when I was 30, my wife and I moved to New York City and planted a church there, which was a huge, huge learning experience, particularly in the area of diversity and inclusion. The church that we planted, it was on the Lower East side of Manhattan and along the Bowery, and we really, really prayed and tried to be thoughtful and intentional about having the church reflect the neighborhood, which the Bowery was really a a border between a couple of neighborhoods. And by God's grace, eventually, you know, at one point I looked up, you know, maybe five or six years into the church and realized that it was about 40% Asian-American, 30% Anglo, 20% Hispanic and 10% African-American, which wasn't far off from the community that that we were in. And I really in that I saw… I saw the future of the church, hopefully in our own time, in our own way, but the the eternal future of the church as well.
After about seven years in New York, I came here, God called us to Portland. And for the last five years, I've been serving in the most diverse zip code in the state of Oregon and which is certainly less diverse than a place like New York City or a place like Queens New York.
Penny: It really seems amazing that you are able to plant a church in New York and have the congregation really reflect the diversity in the neighborhood. It seems like this is actually a challenge for a lot of churches today where they want to be more diverse or they want to reflect maybe the neighborhood or a target community, but they have maybe some challenges in… I won't say recruiting or attracting or inviting those people to really become involved and feel a sense of belonging. Do you have any tips or strategies that you think? You know, this seemed to work for us in the past and might be helpful for other congregations interested in making their congregation much more diverse?
Pete: hm. Yeah, it's a great question, and there are certainly challenges in in the midst of that. I mean, there the core that we started from. I mean, I used to tease them all because while it was while it was diverse, we had African-Americans, Hispanics, and Asians and my wife and I who both identify as Anglo,… On our core group, you know, my wife and I were like the only ones that didn't go to an Ivy League school. I mean, practically. But, you know, and I would tease them about that. You know, “your undereducated pastor.”
I have a connection to a hip hop artist is pretty big in the underground world. Immortal technique. And I was talking with him about planting the church when I first arrived. And he said, you know, he predicted that it's going to be a lot more difficult to get economic diversity, you know, because I feel like in a place like New York, people are used to that melting pot. I mean, the people that grew up there are certainly used to it. And then people that move, I think you either get used to it and appreciate it and see the value of it, or you…you quickly get out and just say, no, this is not…because people are so challenged by it and it's so different than other places.
The church needs to be a place of of diversity. The church needs to be a place that reflects its neighborhood. And I do think it's it's a distinct advantage to start from scratch. And I think we had that going for us. We also, you know, we had people up front that reflected the congregation and what we what we wanted to see. I was really conscious about that. It was something that my … the people that were training me and mentoring me drilled into our heads being very intentional in the way that we planned worship. We told the story of where these songs came from and, yeah, just drew people in like that. And I, you know, I don't know if it was the kind of channels we were planting in or how we got the word out to people. But, yeah, God did draw a diversity of backgrounds to our church, and I was really thankful for that. And it's one of the things that I really, really miss about doing ministry in that context.
Penny: So it seems like one of the strategies that you employ that was successful was actually having the diversity be very apparent in the faces that are up front, in the music that you that you chose for worship. But still one of the challenges is that you had a certain kind of diversity, maybe racial, social, social-ethnic diversity. And yet there are other kinds of diversity that might have been missing. And that's something that I think we don't often think about is there are lots of different ways to define diversity. And we have to kind of carefully choose and target the kinds of diversity that we want to see and have in our congregations.
Pete: Yeah.
Penny: One of the things that we are doing in this podcast is we're trying to think about how diversity and inclusion learning--learning about different topics and expanding how we understand diversity and inclusion--how that can help us do ministry and Christian walk and related things better. So I'm kind of wondering, I know that you listened to a few of our episodes already. Can you just give me a heads up of a couple of the episodes that you did listen to so we can kind of have an idea: Oh, he listened to those ones.
Pete: Yeah. So I listened to the distinctly Christian one, even though, you know, I know that's targeted more for Christian educators, but listened to that one. And I listened to the one on CRT. I listened to the one on Black Lives Matter. I listened to the one on the Capitol riot and I listened to the one on MLK and Malcolm X.
Penny: Awesome. So, in case people are new to our podcast, there are over right now as of December 2021, there are over 30 episodes on a range of topics. Some of them are focused a little more specifically on race in America. Some are focused more on understanding Islam and Muslim Christian engagement and interfaith movements. And then there's a few that are focused specifically for Christian educators, and this episode is focused more specifically for people who are Christians and maybe in Christian ministry. And so we're really thankful to have Pete Armstrong with us today.
So I'm wondering if you could help our audience kind of, from your perspective, understand how learning more about diversity and inclusion and learning about cultural others inform our worship practices and our Christian walk.
Pete: I'll speak a little bit about the critical race theory episode, because I thought that was really well done.
I've experienced just as a pastor. Questions and concerns. I had a I had a longtime member of my congregation just a couple of weeks ago, you know, have a conversation with me about just her fears around that and her concern that critical race theory is being taught in my son's elementary school. And just having to sort of talk her through about that because, as you know, the current media landscape can be very, very fear-inducing. And depending on where we get our news and where we get our sources and what sources we trust, we can get some unhelpful information and we can be misled.
So I thought that, yeah, that podcast episode was really good, really helpful in defining it and kind of in giving historical context, in explaining it so that believers in Jesus can get an honest assessment of of of where it is and what what it really brought up from me was a couple of things. I would say the importance of curiosity. I think a lot of times we hear things and we make snap judgments about them and we categorize them in our minds. We… We put them into the narrative. You know, that's how we approach our world. I don't know. I think about that a lot. That was something that, you know, my pre-marriage counselor 15 years ago really drilled into my wife and I is just approaching any sort of conflict with curiosity. So thinking about that in regards to the critical race theory conversation, as Christians think, you know, just approaching it in curiosity.
The second thing I would say is just that reminder that if we are. ..Iif we are God's people, if we are the capital C-church. Are we not a people of humility? And if people have repentance, we're people that confess our sins every week and we are also, you know, within the reformed family of churches, you know, we have some doctrines that we have stood on for 500 years. One of those doctrines, one of the first ones that people always think about is total depravity.
Now, total depravity and critical race theory, that would be an interesting podcast, right? That would be an interesting conversation, though those two things together, because if we are reformed believers who confess that the world is really, really broken and that every aspect of life is tainted by the sins that we commit, the sins that we participate in, the sins that many of us benefit from, would not critical race theory be something that would fit into our reformed worldview. Our blind spots around it have more to do with, you know, the American religion of individuality and individualism. You know, they don't have to do with the gospel of sin, salvation and service. They don't have to do with with the good news of God coming into this very broken world that that sin affects all, all of these parts. And so that that's what the podcast brought up for me sort of, you know, theologically or thinking about what it means to be a disciple of Jesus today.
In my church, for 62 years, we've been confessing our sins every week, and I think the time that I've been here, both myself and my associate pastor, we we make that confession not only individualistic, an individual, that's important. But it's also important to name the corporate sin and the corporate brokenness that's that's in our world.
Penny: I love the way you kind of put those two things together, the idea that…. Well, I guess the main distinction you're making is that there is sort of individual brokenness or sin. But there's also sort of things in the world that are broken that aren't necessarily specifically an individual, and that's a similar thing that critical race theory is saying. There are individual acts of racism. A person can say something or do something that is racist. But there's also structures. There's also organizations or things or laws that exist that are also racist. And so in some ways, it's sort of it's “both and,” right? And to see it theologically, like you just put it, that there's individual sin and then there's sort of the brokenness in our world and that we can kind of confess both as part of our healing and process and kind of our kingdom work, right?
Pete: Yeah. And that and then, you know, to kind of where we are at in the liturgy, well, when we confess we receive the assurance of God's grace, right? The reminder of God's promises that we have been forgiven. We have been set free to go and live as God's people, a people that are concerned with extending God's shalom in the world, which is about his love, his justice, his kingdom, coming in all its power. And then what do we do? We hear the law again, and many times, you know, the law for us is not just the reading of the Ten Commandments, but many times we read something like Micah 6:8 or what Jesus said is the summary of the law. But to do justice, to love mercy, to walk humbly with with our God. That is… the spirit in sending us out in the world, and I did, you know, I think in the in conversations about CRT and conversations about racism, there's a lot of fear in the white community. There's a lot of fear about change and about what this all means, and I also think there is a lot of guilt. And a lot of it is legitimate guilt, and there's good, good people, I think about people in my church, who you are. ..I'm thinking in particular of one couple that I deeply, deeply admire. They are salt of the Earth. Give you the shirt off their back. Baby Boomers who have given so much of their life to Christ and his church. And when I organize with along with the young African-American leader in my church, you know, we organized a march last year, you know, a prayer march for justice. That's what we call it: a prayer march for justice through the heart of our community. And we drew churches together. We drew people together. We drew a lot of the millennials who are kind of done with church. We drew them back to, you know, to church and to this conversation. And it was it was a beautiful thing.
It was really a beautiful thing. And this couple that I'm thinking of. Their eyes were really opened. And they said we just really didn't know that a lot of this things were happening, we didn't know about about it until George Floyd happened, we didn't. And on the one hand, you know, it's easy to to judge that and criticize that and say, you should have known you should have been listening. You should …you should not have dismissed this when you were young in the sixties and seventies. But I don't think that's I don't think that's as helpful as saying, we're glad that your eyes are being opened now. We're glad that, you know, that you are not dismissing the cries of the oppressed. We are… We are glad that you're seeing a fuller picture of the scriptures. And it's certainly been really, really interesting times that we are living in in 2020, 2021, as we step into 2022, in this in the racial reconciliation conversation.
Penny: I feel like really maybe since George Floyd, George Floyd, but certainly the last maybe five years or so, we really cannot ignore race in America and the issues of racism. And regardless of what we may or may not have done before, I feel like we're really called now, if we're going to live in our society today, if we're going to engage well across the lines of difference which crisscross our country and our churches and our societies and communities, we have to be in a position to humbly and sincerely learn. And with that curiosity that we talked about, that curiosity to learn more about diversity and inclusion and the issues that are really characterizing our society today.
If you enjoyed this episode, please check out the episode “Diversity in Worship,” where Pastor Pete and I talk about ways to integrate and explore diversity in Christian worship.
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