I was working at Willow Creek Community Church, a megachurch in the Chicago area, when I experienced my first racial awakening described in the previous chapter. At the time, Willow Creek’s seeker-sensitive approach was redefining the ministry philosophy of numerous congregations. So there was a tremendous demand for training, equipping, and practical resources. This led to the founding of a companion organization called the Willow Creek Association, and these two entities partnered to run a steady stream of conferences all year long.
The conferences were a sight to behold. I watched in amazement as thousands of church leaders streamed in from across the country, ready and eager to learn. They toured the facility, interrogated the staff, and took tedious notes during the plenary sessions. It was obvious that Willow Creek was making a major impact on the North American church.
The impact of these conferences wasn’t limited to church leaders who traveled thousands of miles to attend. Willow Creek was also a major source of inspiration and equipping for me, and I credit it with being the place where most of my leadership skills were honed and developed. A huge job perk of working at Willow Creek was being able to attend these conferences, and I rarely missed one.
But as much as the environment of Willow Creek had shaped me and as much as these conferences had built my leadership skills, I was feeling lost. I had experienced the beginnings of a racial awakening, but I was in need of someone to guide me into the next step of the journey. The question “What am I supposed to do?” burned within me, and I was desperate to find answers.
At the time, I was working on the staff of Axis, a young-adult ministry that was dedicated to reaching twenty-somethings. Other members of the staff were wrestling with issues of race and cultural identity as well, so we committed to reading some books and discussing them together. One of the authors who challenged our thinking was Dr. Michael Emerson, at the time a professor at Rice University as well as a leading scholar on race and religion. His book Divided by Faith played a significant role in the racial awakening of Pastor Bill Hybels, who encouraged the entire congregation to read it.
One of the themes that jumped out at me was the hypersegregation of the white American church, a term Emerson and his colleagues coined when researching racial segregation in cities. They measured each city based on a range from zero (complete racial integration) to one (complete racial segregation). If a city measured 0.90 or higher, 90 percent of one group would have to switch neighborhoods to achieve integration; in that case, the city was hypersegregated. A score that high indicated a city’s racial makeup. As Emerson said, “Values this high could usually only be achieved through laws, discriminatory lending and real estate procedures, threats, and other racially unequal practices.”1 It was sad but not surprising to see that a number of cities in America approached the value of 0.90.
I was vaguely familiar with the racial history of our country, so it seemed plausible that certain cities still reflected the effects of unjust laws, procedures, and practices. What I didn’t expect, though, was that this level of racial segregation reached beyond just cities; it was present in the American church as well. Emerson and team applied the same research criteria when studying congregations and discovered that conservative Protestantism exceeded these values of 0.90. This seemed statistically impossible, which led Emerson to suggest, “Even if someone were in control of all conservative Protestantism and had the power and will to consciously assign whites and nonwhites to separate congregations across the nation, obtaining a value of over 0.90 would be a difficult feat. . . . Such segregation values are astonishing.”2
Revelations like this fueled my desire to find a way to break out of the white-centric world I had been in my whole life and to pursue a more multicultural reality. I began to evangelize enthusiastically about this vision within Willow Creek, though many had been passionate about it long before. In the naiveté of youth, I quickly became the annoying, self-righteous white guy. I felt I had finally seen the light, and I was determined to make everyone around me see it.
The tension I felt due to my growing racial awareness continued to intensify, and it was clear to me that something was going to have to change. Fortunately, around that time an intriguing opportunity presented itself, which created the seemingly perfect next step. The Axis ministry had been growing at breakneck speed; in only five years, it had transformed from a small group to a ministry attracting more than 1,200 to its services weekly. One of the exciting outcomes was a buzz about Axis among young adults. It had become the place to be for twenty-somethings, and we were attracting scores of new visitors each week.
This buzz was reaching all the way into the city of Chicago. Willow Creek’s main campus is more than thirty miles from the city limits, and a one-way trip can take as long as ninety minutes with traffic. Nobody on our staff had expected young adults to make that far of a commute, but a small number of urban dwellers were proving us wrong. This provided my supervisor at Willow Creek with a chance to accomplish two goals at the same time: to create a landing spot in the city that kept urban newcomers feeling connected to Axis and to find a way to focus my righteous indignation around diversity. So my job description was rearranged to free up time to launch a new community as an extension of Axis in the city.
I quickly went into action, identifying recruits from the group of city dwellers that were commuting to Axis. I sat down with them one-on-one and pitched the vision for this new community. And I was always sure to emphasize the multicultural piece, as this felt nonnegotiable. I told them all about my own racial epiphany as a white person and encouraged them to seek the same if it hadn’t already happened.
This testimony resonated with a number of people, and a launch team formed shortly after. We named the new ministry Metro 212 (Bill Hybels often used the metaphor of 212 degrees to describe spiritual transformation, as that is the temperature at which liquid water turns to steam). Our vision statement centered on loving God, loving our urban neighbors, and being intentional around the pursuit of cultural diversity.
The launch group spent twelve weeks praying, planning, and preparing, and we could hardly wait. We told all our friends about it and invited every Chicagoan we knew to come to the launch. The energy was palpable, and we looked forward to a move of God.
The grand opening was festive and alive, and we had an amazing turnout: our launch team was made up of ten invested individuals, and through their invitations another seventy-five came. Yet as exciting as the grand opening was, I could hardly conceal my disappointment. My dream for Metro 212 was wrapped up in my dream for cultural diversity, and it was clearly not coming to fruition. This was an all-white group.
I felt guilty for feeling disappointed and was conflicted about how to handle it. I could see the significance of so many new people coming, and I didn’t want to diminish the work of God that was happening. Just as importantly, I wanted to be cautious not to shame people for being white. I loved the core team, and I was sure I would love the newcomers. I knew they mattered deeply to God, and I trusted they were being sincere when they said they shared the vision with me. Despite all of this, I couldn’t shake the disappointment.
I also couldn’t help wondering what I had done wrong in the creation of Metro 212. I had been sincerely asking the question, “What am I supposed to do?” and I had continued to hear how important it was for white people to pursue racial reconciliation and cultural diversity. I had heeded the call, and I had given the new ministry everything I had. Yet, despite my best efforts, I was experiencing little to no success.
This was the first moment in the journey when I began to suspect that I was flying blind. To that point I had been sustained by passion for the cause, conviction about its importance, and confidence that God would lead us to a new multicultural reality. I was starting to feel wobbly, uncertain, and unresolved. I felt like I was approaching a crossroads, but I didn’t know what the alternative directions were.
Looking back, I wish I’d paid closer attention to the signs during that time. I wish I’d reflected on my feelings, questioned my motivations, and examined the early fruit. But by that point I was very invested in the dream, and things were already moving fast with Metro 212, so I didn’t have a lot of time to process. Therefore, I doubled down and pushed even harder toward the vision of cultural diversity.
My next move was to establish a mandate that every gathering have people on stage that represented cultural diversity. While this seemed like an obvious thing to do if we were going to pursue our vision, it immediately created complications. I didn’t have an internal pool of voices to draw from, so I had no choice but to go outside. This alienated a lot of the core folks because they felt they were being penalized for being white. It was also an expensive proposition, as we didn’t have a budget for hiring outside help. Making this happen required a major sacrifice of my personal funds.
My follow-up move was to lean heavily into what I’d heard Hybels refer to as “directional preaching.” He believed that the primary way congregants embrace new ideas is through an encounter with Scripture. So I began preaching/teaching on racial reconciliation on an almost weekly basis at Metro 212, so much so that some of the core folks began to wonder about me. There was a concern that I had reversed the priorities of the gospel with my desire for multiculturalism, and this concern was conveyed back to Willow Creek leadership. But I kept preaching away.
Despite all my best efforts, there was almost no movement on the multicultural front. We continued to grow numerically, passing the two hundred mark in attendance, but none of that mattered to me anymore—even if it did get the attention of others. I was trying to create something different—something new. I believed to the core of my being that I needed to participate in a multicultural faith community, and I thought we were capable of doing it. But at the end of the day, I was simply reproducing what I had learned at Willow Creek.
I became desperate for solutions, yet I was unable to figure out why we couldn’t diversify Metro 212. We were in the heart of the city. We had a vision statement saturated with the language of cultural diversity. We taught about it, prayed about it, and dreamed about it. We were investing financially. I knew something was missing, but I had no idea where to begin an internal audit of my failure to create a multicultural community. I needed help but didn’t know where to turn.
I was starting to fall into a downward spiral when a lifeline was thrown my way—or so it seemed. A leader in the African American community had been watching the growth of Metro 212, and he knew how intensely I was pursuing cultural diversity. He reached out and asked if I would like him to set up a meeting with some pastors in the city who were involved in the ministry of racial reconciliation. It sounded like an exact answer to my prayers, so I enthusiastically accepted his offer.
I was more eager than ever to figure out what I was supposed to do, and I hoped that the meeting would become the defining moment of my multicultural ministry call. I knew it was a privilege to sit down with seasoned pastors who knew the city well, and I had a feeling it was going to be a turning point.
When the meeting finally came, I found myself bubbling with anticipation. These four pastors were not only influential but also effectively reaching populations that I was missing at Metro 212. They gave me the floor to open the meeting, and I poured out my heart about the vision of the ministry. I then told them about the challenges I was facing and the confusion I was dealing with. Then I begged them to help me crack the code.
When I finished talking, I pulled out my notebook and prepared to furiously record their advice on what I should do next.
The Latino pastor responded first: “I appreciate your enthusiasm, and I want to get behind you. But I’m having difficulty interacting with your ideas because so much of what you say sounds paternalistic. Why do you think rich white people need to come save us poor brown people?”
His comments felt like a punch in the gut, and I had to work to catch my breath. To make things worse, I had no idea what paternalistic meant. But I was certain from his tone that it must not be good.
The Asian American pastor responded next: “You keep talking about building a multicultural ministry, yet everything you just said about race was couched in black/white language. What, if anything, do you know about the different Asian histories and cultures? What makes you think you can effectively reach them through your ministry?”
I was still staggering from the previous comment, and I didn’t know how to respond to the new one either. I jotted something down in my notebook about needing to study the histories of different Asian American communities, but I knew that the outcomes of this meeting were going to require more of me than something like that.
The white pastor was the third to respond: “I’ve seen dozens of pastors like you come and go. You think you’re going to change the world, and then you bail as soon as it gets tough. I’ll be shocked if you are still here in five years.” I tried to think of something from his comments to record in my notebook, but all I did was sit there with a dumbfounded expression.
At this point the black pastor tenderly put his hand on my shoulder, and I hoped and prayed he would say something that would provide reprieve from the shock and awe I was experiencing. He and I had met briefly before, as he was one of the few African American professors at the seminary I had attended. He was also a prolific author on racial reconciliation, and I had meticulously studied his books.
He looked me in the eye and said, “Your vision is really noble. I wish more young pastors were thinking like this. But I also think you need to be realistic. With the racial history in Chicago, there is no chance black people are going to attend a church with a white pastor. So why punish yourself like this? I write books on this stuff, but my own children wouldn’t attend a church like that.”
I’m not sure what I had expected to happen when I met with those four pastors. I suppose I had a fantasy that they would each tell me how amazing my vision was and then give me the magic solution for creating cultural diversity. But even if I’d downsized my expectations, nothing could have prepared me for the disappointment that came from that meeting.
One day, in the middle of wrestling with my emotions, I finally experienced a major breakthrough. I was reading through the book of John devotionally when I came upon the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus in chapter three. As a pastor’s kid, I had heard this story over and over, but I’d never felt any personal resonance with it. For one, I had always read the encounter as the story of a highly religious person who didn’t feel religious enough, but that was never my story; I had always resonated with stories like that of the prodigal son, who was always fighting off tendencies toward disobedience. Also, the heart of their conversation centered on the need to be “born again,” and I had an aversion to that phrase. It seemed more like a weapon in the culture wars than a genuine mode of spiritual transformation, so I had screened it out of my vocabulary.
But something about the space and time I was in had positioned me to see this encounter from a new vantage point. I realized that when Nicodemus came to Jesus, he was asking the question I had been asking when I met with those four pastors: “What am I supposed to do?”
According to John’s telling, Nicodemus was an honorable and esteemed man. First, we’re told that he was a Pharisee, which gives us a window into how serious he was about religious devotion. Pharisees were distinguished by their strict observance of the Old Testament law and were often commended for their simple lifestyle, harmonious dealings with others, and respect for their elders. Second, we’re told that he was a member of the Jewish ruling council (John 3:1), which shows us how sociopolitically involved he was; councils existed everywhere Jews lived, but the ruling council in Jerusalem was a supreme court that presided over them all.
So we can see that Nicodemus had a lot of reasons to feel self-confident. Based on just about any human evaluation, he was an established, venerate figure in the community.
Yet something was still missing for Nicodemus, a fact confirmed in his meeting with Jesus. When he looked at Jesus, he witnessed the incarnation of what he longed for. In particular, he observed a level of spiritual depth and connection that went beyond anything he had ever encountered (John 3:2), and he wanted to experience it for himself. So Nicodemus sought Jesus under the cover of night to find out more.
Unlike some of the other Pharisees, who attempted to trap Jesus with manipulative questions, Nicodemus was sincere and effusive when they met. He authentically heaped praises on Jesus and seemed eager to learn from this spiritual master. He left the conversation open for Jesus to respond as he saw fit, though I doubt there was any scenario in which he could have ever predicted what Jesus would say: “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again” (John 3:3).
How discombobulated Nicodemus must have felt when he heard those words! He didn’t perceive himself as a newborn looking for direction but as a seasoned practitioner who had long ago solidified the religious foundation of his life. As a Pharisee, he had a structured routine of the rules, regulations, and religious practices. All that was missing was that last bit of advice, that extra something that would push him over the edge. Using the language that had been rattling around in my heart and mind, Nicodemus was essentially asking, “What am I supposed to do?” He was looking for concrete direction from the guru named Jesus in the hopes that he could ascend to the next level in his religious development.
But when Jesus finally spoke, it was clear that they were having two different conversations. Jesus wasn’t interested in giving Nicodemus a to-do list. Nor was he interested in affirming the religious foundation that Nicodemus believed was already secured and settled. In fact, based on the comprehensive nature of what Jesus said, it’s clear that he was unwilling to acknowledge any part of Nicodemus’s paradigm.
When Jesus told Nicodemus that no one can see the kingdom without a spiritual rebirth, he said something pervasive and far-reaching as well as confrontational, potentially insulting, and even inflammatory. Jesus told Nicodemus that while he may be religiously, socially, and politically accomplished, none of those accomplishments could obscure the fact that he was spiritually blind. Nicodemus was a big shot in his world, but if he wanted to enter into Jesus’ world, he would have to start from the very beginning.
An analysis like this might not rattle the cage of someone who already knows he or she is blind, but it must have been incredibly disorienting for an established figure like Nicodemus. It not only called into question his path moving forward but also created a comprehensive critique of everything he had accomplished up to that moment. Jesus was saying that Nicodemus’s every good deed, every act of service, and every disciplined response to the law had been performed in a state of blindness.
Nicodemus’s confusion had suddenly become easy for me to identify with, as I saw so much of my story in his. He had intended to chart a path forward, but Jesus was calling into question everything Nicodemus had done to get to that point.
I began to consider that I might have done the same thing—confidently plunging toward my vision of success with little regard for whether or not I was seeing clearly. So I reluctantly started retracing my steps, starting with the light-bulb moment about my world being all white and continuing through the launch of Metro 212. I tried to be courageous enough to ask some tough questions:
Dwelling on these questions—and the lack of answers I had to them—made it easy for me to imagine the embarrassment Nicodemus felt. Like him, I had succumbed to overconfidence in the foundation I was operating from. And, like him, I was oblivious to what I didn’t even know. I was blind, but I didn’t know I was blind.
And that’s the most dangerous blindness of all.
As I learned to see myself in the story of Nicodemus, I felt ashamed. I was embarrassed that I had acted so rashly, and I worried that my missteps reflected poorly on me as a person. It took a while to get through that stage (there’s a whole chapter on this later in the book), but when I did, I was able to come back to John 3 and see the rest of that wonderful story. Though the encounter began with a confrontation to Nicodemus’s sight, it didn’t end there. The conversation was about more than Nicodemus’s blindness; it was also about creating a pathway for the transformation of both his soul and his consciousness.
I could feel something shifting inside me during that season, and I kept coming back to the single line that Jesus used to redirect his conversation with Nicodemus as the fodder for change: “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again” (John 3:3).
I reflected on this verse for weeks and months, meditating on its multiple nuances. The first of three words that became transformational for me was simply the word see. One of the leadership axioms that I frequently heard at Willow Creek was, “If you want to get the right answer, you have to first ask the right question.” I knew I had been asking the wrong question when it came to racial reconciliation and cultural identity.
Each step of my journey to that point had been driven by the question “What am I supposed to do?” But now that question made far too many assumptions about the foundation I was launching from. The far better starting point would have simply been “Can I see?” with the obvious answer being no. That would then lead to the true question of transformation, the question that needed to define my journey from that point forward: “Jesus, will you help me to see?”
The second word in this verse that transformed me was kingdom. While kingdom represents numerous layers of theological depth, for the purposes of this journey, I saw it as a synonym for reality. Jesus was showing Nicodemus that he most needed to see that two different realities were colliding. Through his natural eyes, Nicodemus would remain limited as to how much he could see of the world around him. But through eyes that were spiritually reborn by the Spirit, he would see the reality of God in an entirely new fashion.
When I applied this to the realm of race and cultural identity, I could see the same dynamic at play in my life. The kingdom of this world submits to an ordered reality, and if I looked only through my natural eyes, I would be severely limited in how much I could see. But if I allowed my eyes to be spiritually reborn through the Spirit, I could comprehend the full reality of God’s kingdom, which would forever change how I thought and acted.
The third and final term that became transformational was born again. For many reasons I have come to love this phrase, but at the top of the list is that it is an emphatic declaration that transformation is God’s central goal. There’s nothing about it that sounds additive or incremental. Instead it paints the picture of a complete reboot. It describes a comprehensive renewal.
If that weren’t enough, born again also clarifies to whom the realm of transformation belongs: God alone. One of the amazing realities that emerges from this interaction is that nothing was required from Nicodemus other than surrender. When Jesus said that no one could see the kingdom of God unless that person is born again, he didn’t expect Nicodemus to bring sight to his own eyes. Sight is the work of God. And when Jesus said that Nicodemus must be born again, that most clearly was not something Nicodemus could control. Only the Spirit of God has the power to bring new life like that.
Richard Rohr, one of my favorite theologians and authors, has been very helpful to me on this point. He founded the Center for Action and Contemplation, and one of its vision statements emphasizes the same progression of principles that we see in John 3: “We need a contemplative mind in order to do compassionate action.3”
Rohr writes a lot about the spiritual life beginning with a foundation of contemplation, or what he refers to as a “transformed consciousness.” The English word consciousness comes from the Latin root conscire, which means “to be aware with.” Therefore a transformed consciousness involves an awareness of the kingdom of God that comes from a revelation of Jesus Christ.
That’s exactly what Jesus was getting at in his conversation with Nicodemus. There’s a reality that belongs to God alone, and Jesus is the one that ushers us into it. This is a journey he longs to lead us on and a journey we’re invited to participate in. But the price of admission is a full acknowledgment of our utter blindness. Only when we embrace our lack of sight can we authorize Jesus to begin the process of illuminating the truth that we so badly need to see.
The transformational metaphor of blindness-to-sight is used throughout the Bible and is applicable to many arenas of the Christian life. In this book, I’m going to rely heavily on this imagery to describe the cultural identity journey.
It is particularly important for white Americans to approach this subject matter with the right goals in mind. Our goal must be sight. Our goal must be transformation. Our goal must be a renewed consciousness. As such, I urge you to let go of preconceived notions of expertise or understanding that you feel you might be bringing to this.
Instead let’s look to Nicodemus as our model.
Let’s embrace the reality that, like him, we are stumbling toward Jesus in the dark.
Let’s embrace the reality that we don’t know the right questions, much less the right answers.
Let’s embrace the fact that God’s kingdom is at stake and that we need revelation from Jesus Christ in order to see what the kingdom of God is.
Let’s enter this journey with new eyes—eyes like a child.
Let’s pray like the blind man: “Lord, help me to see.”