The Power of Reconciliation in City/Community Transformation -
Without Reconciliation There Will Not Be Any City Transformation!
Guests: Dolphus Weary & Lee Paris

Teleconference Transcript - 10/16/08

Jarvis welcomed early callers as they joined the call. Chuck Singletary from Birmingham, AL opened the call with prayer.

Announcements:

• MAC Annual Report summary – Connecting Generations for Transformation, focus on reaching younger generations. It was one of the strongest conferences we’ve had, with some powerful presentations and good breakout times. There is a press release available at
•  One thing that was discussed was that many local churches do not have an emergency preparedness response plan. The Christian Emergency Network is working on that. Arizona and Mississippi are working on a pilot program. So…
  Special CEN conference call: Thursday, October 23 8am . The church is often the first to respond, but it could be more effective if coordinated. Use this phone # 1-712-432-0232. When prompted, enter code 1052436*
• Regional CIRs – some are being planned. If you are interested in planning one, contact us at info@cityreaching.com .
• Next Call: November 20th Christian Volunteering with guest There is a website matching needs with volunteer opportunities.

Glenn Barth:  We congratulate our guests on the 15th anniversary of Mission Mississippi. It has been at center of one of the most important movements, encouraging and demonstrating unity in the body of Christ across racial and denominational lines. Jarvis Ward served with this ministry in its early years. It has been on the heart of both Dolphus Weary and Lee Paris, our special guests today. After Hurricane Katrina I had a chance to work in Mission Mississippi office for two months. Dolphus has devoted his entire life to community development and Mission Mississippi.. He became the Executive Director in 1998, and was named President in 2005. He is a deeply spiritual man who serves on the board of World Vision and a couple of other major non-profit boards. What has impressed me is how earnestly and stedfastly he has exercised leadership with white Christian leaders and black Christian leaders to find ways to work together. While I was down there we visited with many black and white leaders in Mississippi to help rebuild communities together. While I was there, Lee Paris and his wife had me stay in an apartment adjacent to their home. Lee is a business leader in Mississippi who has committed his life to helping black and white Christians serve together. He has served with National Center for Fathering out of Kansas City, working to help develop healthy families. Lee is a die-hard Old Miss alum, a key businessman in the Jackson, MS area, mobilizing people in the marketplace.

Dolphus: We are pleased to be here .

Jarvis:  Would you briefly share how God called you to this ministry.
Dolphus: I thought Lee would start out because I came later. All my life I have lived in Mississippi, and have seen the difference between black and white communities. I thought no one was doing anything about closing that gap. When I became a Christian I saw it even closer. I was busy working at Mendenhall Ministries, traveling with Dr. Perkins, seeking how to close the gap between black and white Christians. When I joined the Mission Mississippi board in 1995, my wife and I had spent 27 years in Mendenhall Ministries and felt our time there was coming to a close. I remember sharing that with my friend, Lee. He was Chairman of the Board of Mission Mississippi. We had developed a friendship, so when I got ready to leave Mendenhall, I told Lee. That’s when he and I began to talk about the possibility of me coming and living out that passion of Christians living together through Mission Mississippi. 

Lee: My path was different from Dolphus. He was intentionally involved in racial recon,ciliation. My entry was unintentional in my mind, intentional to the Lord. I was involved with Christian Businessmen's Committee. We had speakers come in. Pat Morley, a great Chritian leader, was a friend of mine. The Lord put it on his heart to lead an evangelical outreach here in Jackson, and he brought his friend, Tom Skinner, since passed away, a n African American evangelist who grew up in Harlem, and did a great work for the kingdom. As we brought Tom and Pat together to explore what we wanted to do here, we observed their relationship as black and white, so we decided on something evangelical in nature but emphasizing the love of Christ across racial barriers. We planned a one time conference that would end all the problems of the years. But we came to realize we could not accomplish it all during a 2-day conference. So we planned another unity conference, and before I knew it, I was involved in a long-term effort. I questioned whether the Lord knew what he was doing, but he told me to be quiet and keep at it.

Dolphus: One of the things that attracted me to Mission Mississippi was guys like Lee and others. They made a 20-year commjitment. They understood the depth of the problem. Many think you can solve the problem quickly. This problem is so deep in the Body of Christ, it will take a long term commitment.
Lee: So in 5 years we can retire?

Glenn: I think we’ll need to re-up after 15 years. Reid Carpenter said they might give up if God didn’t do it in 15 years. I think sometimes we under-value the power of unity that is visually seen. I know your theme has been “grace is greater than race.” I think sometimes people think they can push on toward a goal of reaching their city without dealing with the brokenness uin their city.
Many people would like to think that racial reconciliation is important but should not slow down efforts for reaching cities or communities. What do you say to that in light of Mission Mississippi’s history?
Dolphus: One of the core things, we are evangelistic in nature. Evangelism needs to take place. If you are talking about reaching a city … who is going to reach a city? Sometimes a group of white churches says they are going to reach the city. Sometimes it’s a group of black churches. The city is multi-racial. Wouldn’t it be great if we could show the city that this precious grace affects our racial attitudes? If the gospel is so great - it saved us, prepared us for heaven - is it strong enough to break down deep racial attitudes? They will see that the gospel has more effectiveness when we take it together.

Glenn: When we think of Jesus' prayer in John 17, he said it would be visible, like Paul’s work in the early church, especially Antioch, where multi-ethnic groups came together in a church.
Dolphus: We don’t have the Church of Jackson. We don’t have the Church of Santa Rosa. We have the churches of Jackson, churchU of Santa Rosa. We need to understand that periodically God wants to see those churches come together as one. Denominations are one division, and the other is racial, and that’s been a major part of our effort.

Glenn: Describe some of the things you have done. 
Lee: We try to find as many excuses as we can to bring people together from different racial lines. We try to do things on-going. Our main focus has been times of prayer each Tuesday and Thursday morning, alternating black and white churches each week, bringing people to places they haevn’t been before. Some across Mississippi meet weekly, some monthly. In addition we do fun times like picnics and "2&2 restaurant night," encouraging participating restaurants to give 22% discounts to black and white people dining together. We have a Governor’s Luncheon and Prayer Breakfast. We have times when we get together to talk about hard issues. They can’t have a relationship unless they meet, get together to have fun or pray together. The power is in relationships. Dolphus is probably not going to become a white guy and I won’t become a black guy here in earth, but we csan serve Christ together more effectively.
Dolphus: The board said they wanted me to take Mission Mississippi. state-wide. One of the things was the Governor's Prayer Luncheon. I asked both candidates competing if they would start a governor's prayer luncheon. We wanted Mission Mississippi. to control every aspect of the program, not the governor, so we could bring leadership together across the whole state. We also wanted to have a state-wide tour, coming together of black and white. I wanted to call this “Race Doesn’t Matter in the Body of Christ Tour.” The white community said “go for it” but the black community said race does matter. We did a tour and called it “Grace is Greater than Race.” Let’s come together around the fact that Christ is central in our lives.
Glenn: I saw that as a powerful – you invited me to speak at one of your events.

Jarvis: Part of the topic title says "without reconciliation there will not be city transformation."  Lee, Dolphus, is that statement accurate? If so, why?
Lee: I think of the song Onward Christian Soldiers going off to war.  It means to fight a battle. The battle is transformation. Mission Mississippi has narrowed its focus from the beginning. Our calluing is to bring the body together under the lordship of Jesus Christ. Once together, they can fight battles from a – z. We have to be on the same page to fight together.
Dolphus: Fom a historical point of view, we have had a number of churches move out of the city. Once out, they say “let’s go back into the city and do some work.” The problem is they try to go in without having a conversation with the churches in the city. That's a roadblock. They wonder why aren’t these churches in the city working with us? It’s not just a bunch of whites, or Baptists, or Presbyterians, making a decision, but the Body of Christ making a decision. Race always comes up. If we keep ignoring it, nothing happens. Mission Mississippi says let’s deal with it. Now let’s plan transformation together because we have a relationship.

Jarvis:  How can folks learn more about the Mission Mississippi?   www.MissionMississippi.org

Question & Answer

_______, Indianapolis, IN: This is the first time we have been on this call, but I agree with the brother that you have to have a relationship before you can try to do something in our communities. Here in Indy six pastors come together in fellowship and relationship and now are working together in our community.
Dolphus: One thing we have learned in our 15-year history is that relationship building is not necessarily a core value for most Christians. Many will run from it. When we talk about Mission Mississippi DNA – our relationship building is relationship driven. People want to get out and do before developing a relationship.
Jarvis: Are you two available to go and speak in palces outside of Mississippi?
Dolphus: Yes, we are going through changes that may allow that to happen more and more. When I first came on the Board, they told me they didn’t want me going out of the state. They wanted me to work here. But now we are becoming more available.

_____, Thomasville, GA: We are in the heart of the deep south, and have formed a corporation called Community Transformation, Inc. in 2000 with a number of pastors. There are about 15 on our board. About 5 are black. We have a hard time getting black pastors to be involved. I’m interested in relationships; that’s how we got it started. I’m an attorney, the only non-pastor on the board, but most of the pastors we have are those that I had a relationship with. But there’s a deep barrier. Give me some practical suggestions as to what you’ve seen work. How do you get through to the pastors of black churches to make them feel like it’s a "We" thing and not an "US" thing.
Dolphus:  Focus beyond to relationship without a particular agenda. Most of the time we approach people with an agenda. We want them to come to a meeting to get ready to do something. How important will it be if I go to visit with an African American pastor just to pray with him, get to know what he is facing in the community. Most of the time we don’t want to do that. Second, we need to spend more time in the community where we want the action to take place. It’s easy to set up a meeting in a hotel. Instead, set up the meeting in the black church. Third, we’ve learned that letters won’t do it. Even the first phone call may not do it. But when we started visiting one-on-one, that helped things along. When you start talking about coming together to do something, there was a lot of skepticism. There are many trying to get pastors together to do something. Usually it’s about voting together or fighting an issue. We need to get pastors together for relatipnship building.
____ Thomasville, GA:  The main thing we do is get together to pray every week. Now we’re planning a marketplace meeting, We’ll get the Mayor, who is black, and the School Superintendent, who is black, but we’ve had trouble getting the pastors. They will come to a program, but don’t stay with the program. I have some great African American pastors who are active, but it’s hard to get more. They tell me they had trouble getting people to come to their stuff.
Jarvis: Let me encourage you to be in touch off-line, maybe set up a time to get more detail from Neddie. His phone is 601 353-6477 There are resources available.

_____________Austin: I’m a missionary here from Nigeria, been here 9 years. It’s not that easy. I’ve called pastors, black and white. One pastor asked about the racial issue and the meeting broke up. Everyone walked out. What do you do first? You call people to a meeting – they don’t have time for prayer.
Lee: I thought you were describing my dating life. Sometimes you ask the first daste out, and they say no, and the second one says no, but you keep asking. I think it’s a matter of prayer and persistence. Knock on doors and attempt to build a relationship. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. Reconciliation will not happen untilt here is relationship. Not everyone will respond.
Dolphus: One of the things that helped us was to creawe Mission Mississippi as a broad-based umbrella. When we asked people to come together it was not as black or white, Methodist or Baptist.
Lee: As you start a reconciliation effort, it is so important to have people from all parts of the body to come together. If you can have a black and white co-chair and have the committee as close as possible to half and half, so neither sees the other as being the leader. Keep the balance from the beginning.

__________Indy pastor: There are brothers. I’m on my way to a meeting. Here our Indy group is called Unity – united neighborhood.  We are 3 black, 3 white pastors from different denominationss.  We meet once a month, and are looking for ways to change our community. We have to seek until we find them. We are brothers in Christ. It’s bigger than any one church.

Jarvis: I’ve been in cities with city-wide efforts where racial reconciliation came up. There was an interesting response from some solid evangelicals, “You can’t stop sharing the gospel to do racial reconciliation. Once you've done a good faith effort, you’ve got to move on.” What do you say to that?
Dolphus: I think one of the things we try to communicate is that we believe the church’s job, and every Christian’s responsibility is to be evangelists, reaching out to the lost. Every church, every believer needs to do that. But we have discovered in our history that the church has ignored this racial barrier for so long. They say we have now opened the door. We can go to each other’s churches. But moving on without dealing with the issue – you need to make it a higher priority. Denominations are starting to confess this. Every church needs to keep in focus the work they need to do. Mission Mississippi has a number of things we push- DNA # 1 is we are evangelistic, but race hinders.  2. We don’t’ apologize for hard issues, and we talk about them.  3. We are issue based. Most people want to shut down and not talk about it. We try to create venues where people can talk about it, talk and listen. 4. We believe everything must be driven by relationship. 5. All we do must be locally owned.

Jarvis: Some reconciliation efforts are started by marketplace, some through pastors groups. Mission Mississippi has brought both together. Why is it important that the marketplace be engatged and bring pastors together?
Lee: It is vital to get the church AND the laypeople and leaders thereof. Most places if it’s just marketplace and you leave out the church, it will be less Christ-centered. If just church based, it becomes a church thing and plays out as so many efforts do. To avoid that, it’s vital from the beginning not to make this a church led effort or a marketplace effort, but bring them together, so they can respect each other and work together from the beginning. Where one or the other has tried to do it alone, it’s played out.

Jarvis: If it didn’t work, do they start over?
Dolphus: Marketplace people know better how to work together than pastors. Pastors have not necessarily learned together. When both are together in the room, they move forward more strongly.

Ed Buonoccorsi, Santa Rosa; I have a question on 22% discount.
Lee:  Yes, restaurants like it. We usually do it on a Tuesday night. Busienss is a little slower that ngiht. It brings people who may not have been there before. We have about a dozen resdtaurants who participate.  We publicize the list, and it works out well.

Jarvis: Remember the special conference call on emergency preparedness and response and how churches can collaborate in a community. Thursday, Oct 23, 10 A.m. Central time. Same number as this call.
We want to thank Dolphus and Lee for being with us on this call.
Dolphus: Please feel free to contact us. We are available if we can help in any way. We didn’t even talk about the divisions politically. We are trying to get Christians to see that in both the Democratic and Republican party, there are Christians. That’s a tough issue. We try to keep away from being one side or the other. We try to help people love each other in spite of political differences. 

Contact us at Mission Mississippi at 601-353-6477 or www.missionMississippi.org

Glenn: Thanks for being with us today. It’s always timely to talk about this issue, and it’s so important to city transformation.

Glenn closed in prayer.