Racial Reconciliation in Apex: The Performance (Part 2)

Nathan Stam
Children/Communications Pastor

“What binds Christians together is not common education, common race, common income levels, common politics, common nationality, common accents, common jobs, or anything else of that sort. Christians come together . . . because they have been saved by Jesus Christ. . . . They are a band of natural enemies who love one another for Jesus’s sake.” D.A. Carson

In our last post we established from John Piper's Bloodlines that one of the results of Christ's work on the cross, one of the results of his atonement, was reconciling ethnicities. If that is true, and I believe it is, what does that mean for our local church, particularly here in Apex, North Carolina?

I recently had the opportunity to read Kevin Vanhoozer's work on The Drama of Doctrine and I wanted to share a few of his thoughts with you relating to the local church and racial reconciliation.

Vanhoozer writes that the three dimensions of theology (the study of God) are prosaic, prophetic and phronetic (a little more on these dimensions in the next blog post). In context, Vanhoozer refers to the local church as a "theater of reconciliation." We've all been to the theater, right? It's a place where a story is performed in some form. But what exactly does that mean for us, the body of Christ, living our lives in Apex, Cary, Holly Springs and other places. How can our church be a theater of reconciliation? More specifically, how can we demonstrate or perform (in the language of Vanhoozer) "our understanding of Christ's cross" and the doctrine of atonement? What does the performance look like?

One suggestion is that this demonstration in the local church can come in the form of racial reconciliation, "a band of natural enemies who love one another for Jesus' sake," as Carson writes above.

Emerson and Smith lament the fact that the church, which should be a theater of reconciliation, is actually a theater of "the most segregated hour in America," referring to the 11:00 AM worship service. Think about your local church. Is this an accurate description? While it is true sociologically that in general people tend to group in homogenous units, it is telling that this grouping is sub-Gospel. In other words, it is "less than the truth of the gospel, namely, that we have been made one people "in Christ."

If there is a problem in the local church, which should be a theater of reconciliation, how should we address the issue? We'll take a look at a few possible answers in the next post. Meanwhile, let us know your thoughts!