Segregated Churches

I am sitting here in my house doing what you are never supposed to do- use the computer in a thunderstorm. But I love storms and this one is just brillant. I watched the lightning all the way home from work today and now I'm listening to the thunder roar and rain putter. It's great. I'm justifying my writing this in the storm because it's making for a very "creative" ambience here in the house. Hopefully the lightning won't creatively find a way to shock my typing fingers.

I wanted to mention a conversation I had last weekend with a fellow co-worker named Barbara. I spend last weekend in Brevard, North Carolina at our department's prefield training which we do once a year at Ridge Haven Conference Center. Barbara had never been to prefield before and I had never really had much interaction with her before this. But her room ended up being connected to ours, and she would come over most nights and talk to us single staff girls who were rooming together. One of the first things you notice about Barbara is that she is black. I don't think I'm supposed to say that out loud. But it's true. That's the first thing I notice, and I would be willing to bet that most others in our normal circles would notice the same. We had a delightful conversation about churches in America and the struggle of segregation that most congregations have. I think that in general churches try to reach out to others different from them. In my church's case that usually means reaching out to Chinese (we have a huge population that work near our church) and other internationals. But even in Atlanta where there are probably an even amount of white and black people, my church is almost exclusively white. All of my friends (all of whom are white pretty much) go to other churches like mine. This greatly confuses me. In the south I realize that we have more issues with blending races and treating each other with respect. However, I think this is a statewide issue. I know that most blacks and whites prefer to worship in different ways, which helps to explain the segregation. But how can we as brothers and sisters in Christ get to know each other's passions and needs if we can't often come together as a common body of Christ? I left the conversation wanting to DO something. I asked Barbara what can be done. She said at this point just to pray-that we can understand each other, that I can get to know other blacks in my community, and that we would seek to know one another as human beings and friends.