Observation of Mixed Worship

It was not very long ago that NECC did a special project with a neighboring church called Word of Faith. The purpose behind this project was to reach out to the community. It was an outreach that was coordinated with local churches and the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department. I wanted to take a moment and talk about that event and what it means to me personally.

During one of the sermons that Mike Percifield gave he had mentioned some local community statistics. I was floored by one of them and that was that the community in which North Eastwood Christian Church is a part of has the highest homicide rate in the city. Another was that a very high percentage of unwed mothers was black and centered around our area. Wow! Can you believe that? The highest homicide rate! Homicide as in dead people! After that sermon I began to reflect on a number of things. One of the reasons I was bothered was that before we moved to the community we live now; we were only 2 minutes from this community.

North Eastwood is a traditional type non-denominational church. Because the roots of this church go a ways back it is more traditional than I am comfortable with at times. But, the church uses the NIV translation and we do perform some contemporary worship songs but ever so often you hear hymn and songs from groups like the Gaither’s- not my taste at all but do-able. The people of North Eastwood are wonderful. They truly are a family and have weathered a great deal of problems together over the years. North Eastwood also happens to be my ‘re-birth’ place- a place my wife and I call home.

To describe the community that North Eastwood is in you would have to say it is kind of odd. You see it is not an inner city community, you do not see graffiti and gang symbols around- much. You do see an occasional prostitute or drug dealer walking down the main roads down the street and you do see sometime swarms of people all walking to where ever it is they need to go. But, it is not a scene you would expect to see on a crime show. Our church sits in the middle of two fairly busy streets; Post road and Mitthoeffer. On either side of the church, East and West there are apartment complexes. All in all they aren’t real bad places but what is so strange is that the highest ethnic groups of people in these complexes are black. You know how many black attendees we have? Regularly, never more than two are ever in a service. What in the world? Most of the attendees of our church travel to attend. Both pastors live a minimum of several miles away. None of the elders live in the near vicinity. My family lives about 5.8 miles away. It is an odd thing. The people that attend our church for the most part are people who have a link to it, a home church or a part of the church when it was still young and the area thrived within a different demographic.

The other church is about a mile East away from us, Word of Faith, and they currently meet in a junior high school. This church is predominately of the black community. Word of Faith church is an off-shoot of Creflo Dollar’s ministry which I deem not to be a good thing at all. They stem from a word faith theology and many of the teachings taught by this movement in Christendom are heretical and dangerous. But, in meeting the people you can’t help fall in love with them. You can tell that most of the people there really love the Lord.

So, the mission was to use our large property and that North Eastwood Christian Church and Word of Faith would host a community day where food and games were abundant. We wanted to bring the folks from the community in and to get to know them and hopefully build a relationship with some. We wanted to bring hope to the community through the gospel of Jesus Christ and wanted to make an impact somehow to turn those statistics around.

Prior to the event Word of faith shared in a service with us and we had a praise night at North Eastwood on the night of the event. What I did not like initially was that the other pastor began that thing I hear most black preachers say at one time or another and that is about breaking down the walls of segregation. That unity in the house of God was an important thing. I was taken back and somewhat offended that he would even bring that up. I mean, get real! That is so not for the current times of North Eastwood. What I failed to notice though someone brought to my attention immediately after the service. There were many, many people missing from the service. Many of the older members were gone. Lots of people that would almost never miss church unless they had someone die in their family were gone. This pastor was right! I attend church with a bunch of racists! Ahhh!

But, when we all went to their church to for service I was told that the same thing was true for them. In fact very few people from our congregation attended this service. I was aghast. I was ashamed! My own home church brothers and sister were so rude and so unchristian-like. I really got to see first hand that there really are churches full of non-Christians.

I want to forgo all of that for a time to reflect on why I wanted to bring this up. Immediately after the community event we had a worship celebration. We had a night of singing praises to the Lord. Word of Faith and North Eastwood praise teams joined forces for what I must say was the most enjoyable time I have ever played. We had minimal practice together before hand but it was fantastic! In fact you can hear a few of the songs from that service of the song site. But, what was so amazing was the worship we did together. There was no race. There was no class. There was only family. A unity of children playing and praising at the feet of their Father.

Not much has actually changed since then. Our church leadership and their church leadership still have a good relationship together. I am sure one day we will do things together again. I look forward to that time. But, I do want to encourage you true Christian friend- if you were one of the ‘protesters’ of this event you really need to get right before God. If you are fighting a racist tendency, get accountable to someone and overcome that sin. Then you too can really be blessed by the tremendous worship that we all can share in together.