Urban Leadership Foundation
A hub for leadership training in cities and among the world's 1.4 billion slum-dwellers
There appear to be seasons of reconciliation in cities and out of such a time can come a clear path toward taking your city for God. But the seasons of reconciliation must be watered with an ongoing shared theology of brokenness, restitution and reconciliation.
Reconciliation without restitution is merely a word. Reconciliation requires repentance. Biblical repentance involves restitution. If a slave is given his freedom but no land with which to earn his living, he becomes a slave again. Today the equivalent of the land is restoring the capacity to earn a living.
Those who are perceived to be part of the cause of oppression may take the initiative by sitting at their brother's feet long enough so that the brother finally is free enough to speak of the history of the wounds in the collective mind of his people. Reconciliation is on the terms of the people who are or feel wounded. Listen long enough to feel the wounds.
The need for reconciliation between peoples in the city is particularly true in continents where the decay of ancient civilizations has created high levels of social institutionalization of inter-ethnic relational breakdown, as in India with its caste system, or in the United States context, where institutionalization of violence, and increasing re-tribalization mark its cities. Pulling out the thorn of socially mandated barriers opens a wave of response from oppressed peoples. Sometimes the reconciliation requires a symbolic ceremony.
Once a pastor friend was sitting with an elder of a tribe in my country seeking to understand why the people would not turn to God. They realized there was unfinished business from a battle a century ago. At that battle the Pakeha had attacked on Sunday - a violation of the covenant of the two Christian peoples. The Maori had refused to bury the dead, a violation of their tradition. For 100 years it had remained in the minds of this people, preventing a relationship to the living God. The Pakeha elders of the churches and the Maori people came together in a day of reconciliation. They sprinkled holy water on the ground (a good Anglican ceremony, no?) as a sign of cleansing, and asked forgiveness of each other. From that day, this people have been turning to the living God.
We were living as a family in a poor area of Pasadena that was predominantly African-American. I would sit with different leaders and seek to listen to their heartbeat. At some point I realized that they were hurting because they had never been invited to preach in a white church. The pastor of the large white church on the corner a couple of months later arranged a pulpit exchange with a black church. He took 30 of his congregation and went to preach there. Two weeks later the black pastor brought his congregation and preached in the Anglo church. He preached black, he preached his heart, he preached about the barriers. Something was broken in the heavenlies that day. It was symbolic. But it was real. From that point the black and white pastors have been meeting together in Pasadena finding ways to bring reconciliation.
© Viv Grigg
and the Encarnação Alliance Training Commission
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Last updated: 05/15/09.