One but Not the Same: God’S Diverse Kingdom Come Through Race, Class, and Gender

By Chris Williamson

America is dreadfully divided over politics, race, gender, and class. Unfortunately, the church isnt much better. Galatians 3:28 states, There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Paul gives us the kingdom paradigm for how Christians can be one without being the same.

Serious learners and people intent on changing the status quo will find sound, biblical perspectives and real life examples to guide them. Readers will discover: How people of different races can come together, moving beyond superficiality
Why women should be empowered to lead in the local church
How Christians can be one without being the same politically
What God says about wealthy and poor Christians empowering each other This book boldly addresses the topics Christians keep avoiding. But get ready. Gods Diverse Kingdom is coming on earth as it is in heaven!

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jan 8, 2010
• ISBN: 9781449700102

Chris Williamson

Chris Williamson lives in Franklin, Tennessee with his wife Dorena and their four children. He is the founder and Senior Pastor of Strong Tower Bible Church, a diverse congregation committed to difference making around the world. Pastor Chris is a passionate leader and outstanding communicator of God’s Word.

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© 2009 Chris Williamson. All rights reserved.

All Scripture references and quotes unless otherwise noted are from the New King James Version of the Holy Scriptures.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by WestBow Press 12/21/09

ISBN: 978-1-4497-0009-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-0010-2 (e)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-0011-9 (hc)

Library Congress of Control Number: 2009942836

Printed in the United States of America

Bloomington, Indiana

Contents

DEDICATION

FOREWORD

By TobyMac

INTRODUCTION:

THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS AT HAND!

CONSIDERATION:

GRASPING THE KINGDOM CONCEPT

SECTION ONE

GOD’S DIVERSE KINGDOM COME THROUGH RACE

1. HIS FIRST SERMON WAS ALMOST HIS LAST

2. THE S WORD

3. IS BLACK BEAUTIFUL?

4. WHITES ONLY! BLACKS ONLY!

5. PETE EAT THE MEAT

SECTION TWO

GOD’S DIVERSE KINGDOM COME THROUGH CLASS

1. THE PERPETUAL POOR

2. THE POLITICS OF THE BLOODS AND THE CRIPS

3. BRIDGING THE DENOMINATIONAL DIVIDE

SECTION THREE

GOD’S DIVERSE KINGDOM COME THROUGH GENDER

1. THE WOMEN IN JESUS’ LIFE

2. DIGNITY WITHOUT COMPROMISE

3. MALE AND FEMALE AND NOTHING ELSE

SECTION FOUR

GOD’S DIVERSE KINGDOM COME THROUGH ONENESS

1. THE ANSWER

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to the memory of Peggy Southard, a woman of God who loved and prayed me into the community of Franklin and the work of planting a multidimensional church. I proudly credit Peggy, who went home to be with Jesus in 2007 after heroically battling cancer, and her husband Stu as the reason for losing my record contract when I arrived in Nashville, Tennessee in 1992! They fervently prayed for a black man to come up the road to Franklin, Tennessee and serve the entire community as a bridge building, gospel preaching change agent. It was their prayers that helped awaken me to God’s plan for my life to plant a church that would reflect the splendor of heaven on earth.

Peggy and Stu exemplified God’s Diverse Kingdom through how they lived and served. So often they put their time and money where their hearts were by investing in people and efforts in our city that fostered the holistic empowerment of the underserved. When an older African American woman in our city needed help learning how to read, it was Peggy who helped her. I watched as the Southard family took in two African American children from the community in a time of great family crisis. Peggy mentored many women of all ages, classes, and races. She poured into my wife Dorena when she had complications birthing our fourth child. As a young pastor, I will never forget how Peggy would encourage me and call my name. I can still hear her voice encouraging me to rest in the grace and power of Jesus.

Peggy’s favorite song was In Christ Alone. I can see her now in heaven with arms stretched to Jesus in triumphant worship surrounded by her brothers and sisters from every tribe, language, people, and nation. The glorious diversity of heaven did not shock Peggy when she arrived there. She lived on earth what she now enjoys in heaven. I was blessed to officiate her home going service in the church she helped pray into existence. The church was full of people from all walks of life. Many different hues and cultures were in attendance to celebrate the privilege of knowing her. When the singing, dancing, preaching, rejoicing, and crying were over, God brought many people into the kingdom that day through saving faith in Jesus Christ. Peggy’s legacy of love will continue to live on through her family, her friends, her pastor, her church, and now this book.

GDK Come,

Pastor Chris

No guilt in life, no fear in death, this is the power of Christ in me. From life’s first cry to final breath, Jesus commands my destiny. No power of hell, no scheme of man can ever pluck me from His hand. ‘Til He returns or calls me home here in the power of Christ I’ll stand!

Lyrics from In Christ Alone written by Stuart Townend and Keith Getty

FOREWORD

By TobyMac

I remember when I first met Chris on the campus of Liberty University in 1987. He reminded me of the rapper LL Cool J because he had his east coast thing going on with his Kangol hat and striped Adidas. Chris came off kind of hardcore, and besides playing basketball, I didn’t think we had much in common. But one day while sitting around with a bunch of students between classes in the Demos Hall, Chris and I discovered we did in fact have something in common. We both loved to rap! With the crowd swelling and our friend Moose on the beat box, Chris and I would kick rhymes to the people’s applause.

At the spur of the moment we decided to put together a rap group called Revelation. Back then Chris was known as D-vine MC and my rap name was DC Talk. We were joined in the group by another black guy named Barry Suave Lyons and a white kid named Todd MC T Peck. Together we made one song and one appearance during halftime at a Liberty basketball game. Little did we know that this multi-racial rap group would be a picture of both of our lives and legacies going forward.

I went on from Revelation to form another group on campus with Kevin Max Smith and Michael Tait and we called it DC Talk. Chris joined up with some brothers and they launched Transformation Crusade, a rap group committed to straight up, inner city evangelism. Eventually DC Talk moved to Nashville and began to tour extensively. God blessed me to live on stage night after night with Kevin and Mike and share about the blessed diversity we enjoyed off stage. We didn’t think about our contrasts until other people started asking us questions about how we got along.

When Chris came to Nashville in 1992 we didn’t get a chance to spend much time together. I later heard that he was working at Christ Community Church in Franklin, Tennessee. A couple of years later, Chris started a multi-racial church in Franklin called Strong Tower Bible Church. We were pulling for each other because this was around the same time I launched Gotee Records. I wanted Gotee Records to reflect God’s rich diversity in every way through the wide range of artists we would go on to sign. In addition, Chris and I were fortunate to labor in a non-profit organization DC Talk founded in 1995 called the ERACE Foundation. ERACE stands for Eliminating Racism And Creating Equality and Chris is one of the board members.

Pastor Chris and I both have hearts to build and experience God’s Diverse Kingdom right here and right now. We’re joined at the hip on that. I’m blessed to be doing it through my family, friends, ministry, and band Diverse City. Pastor Chris is doing it through Strong Tower Bible Church, his speaking, and this book. You will find these pages to be full of biblical truths, balanced perspectives, and powerful challenges to heed. I can assure you that Pastor Chris is living what he so honestly writes about in this book. God has blessed him to talk about painful things in our past and present history without the anger or the empty rhetoric. He is a voice that must be heard and this is a book that must be read. You probably won’t agree with everything Pastor Chris writes, but isn’t that the beauty of diversity? God expects us to be one without having to be the same.

I believe that God is a creative artist and as a body we are more beautiful together than divided. We will never truly be a city on a hill until we are in fact a diverse city. You don’t have to wait to go to heaven before you can experience the beauties of God’s Diverse Kingdom. God wants you to pray for and live in that kingdom right now, but you will only experience this kingdom to the degree that you are willing to lose your life in order to find it (Matthew 10:39). Only in your loss will there be gain. Only in your dying to self will there be a resurrection. Only in your surrender will there be victory. Therefore, I encourage you to jump in with both feet as you keep this in mind: We are once choice from together.

One Love,

TobyMac

INTRODUCTION:

THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS AT HAND!

But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you. Matthew 12:28

The first and only time I heard Evangelist Tom Skinner speak was in 1993 at a Christian Community Development Association conference. I was twenty-five years old and full of enthusiasm. I was fresh on my job with Franklin Community Ministries in Franklin, Tennessee as their pastoral intern for urban ministry. I had never heard of Tom Skinner before but I soon found out why so many people loved and admired this former chaplain of the Washington Redskins. Tom was a one-time gangbanger turned preacher. In the racially charged climate of the 1960’s he was a rare combination of evangelical thought married to radical social activism. Tom Skinner was black, free, and outspoken.

On this day in my hometown of Baltimore, Maryland, Reverend Skinner stood grasping a small, metal lectern that looked like a toothpick in his large hands. I’ll never forget it. His first word to the audience was simply, Kingdom. That’s all he said. After a brief pause, he used his large wingspan to illustrate length and breadth. With everyone paying full attention, he went on to say, Kingdom. It is the King’s dominion. For the next two hours and without a Bible in his hand, Tom Skinner preached one of the most thorough, biblical expositions I had ever heard on any subject. I had never seen anything like this. Not only was I caught up with his flawless homiletics, I was also captured by his content. After the conference ended I went back to Tennessee knowing that I had witnessed something very unusual.

The following year at the age of 52, Tom Skinner went home to be with Jesus after battling leukemia. His wife Barbara continued his work of developing leaders, knocking down walls of discrimination, and raising consciousness. I am blessed to have had the privilege of hearing this unsung, spiritual giant. That initial seed of the kingdom would sit in me dormant until now.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON’S HAND ILLUSTRATION

God has a way of catapulting leaders from the fetters of obscurity and onto the national stage of human progress at precisely the right time. One such person was Booker T. Washington. Booker T. Washington is considered by many to be the first national spokesman for black people in America. Climbing up from the doldrums of slavery to make monumental strides in the field of education, Booker T. Washington was the champion black people desperately needed. He was also the black man that white people faithfully trusted. He merged the black and white worlds even within his own racial make up. He had the ability to communicate to both sides with wisdom and experience. In his landmark speech at the Atlanta Exposition of 1895, Washington was given the task of speaking to thousands of whites and blacks on hand. If he were too accommodating the black masses would despise him. If he were too militant the white power base would reject him, thus shutting down access to relationships necessary for progress.

As he wrote in his autobiography Up From Slavery, Washington encouraged blacks and whites in this speech to work together by casting down their buckets in the sea of one another’s resources. He said, In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress. (p. 107) Booker T. Washington believed blacks and whites didn’t have to live together in order to work together. He didn’t feel there was a reason for blacks and whites to socialize. With his illustration about the hand, Booker T. Washington said what many white people in the south believed but didn’t say. He said what the majority of black people wanted to say but couldn’t say. His message may have been palatable and even necessary on the eve of the 20th century in southern America, but it was not right. Unfortunately, Christianity had lost its voice in this area of social integration because the churches were leading the way in racial division. America would stay legally and socially separated until 1954. This was the year the Supreme Court banned separate but equal segregation in public schools through the landmark Brown vs. the Board of Education case. This ruling paved the way for other legislation to be passed like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. These Acts reinforced the 14th and 15th Amendments to the United States Constitution, and helped move America towards a more equal and integrated society.

What Booker T. Washington missed was that our fingers may be separate but they work together as one unit at all times. Our fingers can’t pick and choose when they want to be together or work together. They have no such choice. When impulses and dictates from the brain channel through electrons in our central nervous system, our five fingers, if we are fortunate to have them all, work together as one. Each finger has a role. The thumb, the pointing finger, the middle finger, the ring finger, and the pinkie finger each has a specific part to play. A hand can function without any one of its fingers, but it doesn’t function as well.

THE HAND ON THE COVER OF THE BOOK

When we look at our hands they have a way of telling a portion of our story. The hand on the cover of this book is symbolic of many things. First, it represents our unity working within our diversity, and our diversity working within our unity. You cannot truly have unity without diversity or diversity without unity. The different colors on the fingertips speak to the racial uniqueness we each have through our Creator, Jesus Christ (Colossians 1:15-16). God has got the whole world in His hands! Red, brown, yellow, black, and white, we are precious in His sight! Through Christ, we are all one but not the same.

Secondly, by looking at the hand on the cover you don’t know if it is a hand belonging to a wealthy person or an impoverished person. We must all bear in mind that we came into the world naked and without anything in our hands. There were no inherited rings on our fingers or dirt under our fingernails from working in the fields. We came out of the womb crying with our empty hands reaching up towards heaven. Our hands should be in the same posture now, reaching up to God. One day, hopefully not soon, we will die with empty hands. Our hands will not carry in them any of the riches or material things we accumulated or lost over our lifetime. Our hands won’t carry the pride of wealth or the shame and stress associated with extreme poverty, sickness, or unemployment. In heaven, our hands won’t beg from other hands any more. But on earth, the hands of the rich and the poor are to mutually empower, protect, and provide for one another until Jesus returns.

Finally, if you take another look at the hand on the cover you will not be able to discern what gender the hand is. Is it a man’s hand or a woman’s hand? Because of how we are trained and conditioned, the first inclination many of us have is to automatically assume the hand on the cover is a man’s hand. It very well could be, but once again in the spirit of diversity, it could be a woman’s hand, too. Everyone looks at things through the lens of their experiences. There are obvious differences between a man and a woman, most of which are physical in nature. But as we will see in this book, Jesus Christ’s personal example and teachings addressed not only the sins of sexism, but racism and classism in addition. There is to be no place for any of these vices in the Diverse Kingdom of God.

AN EVENTFUL SEVEN DAYS

Jesus said, If I cast out demons by the power of God then the kingdom of God has come upon you (Matthew 12:28). God’s Diverse Kingdom is coming upon us and we should desire it more than anything else in the world. I want God’s presence and His power to work in me, through me, and around me. When His kingdom comes, abundant life and joy unspeakable come as a result. There’s never a dull moment in the kingdom. Let me do my best to explain to you how God’s Diverse Kingdom came upon me in the past seven days:

Thursday: At noon I attended a Synago prayer meeting for pastors in our city. Synago is a Greek word meaning come together. Synago creates opportunities for pastors in our city to periodically worship and work together in the power of the