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A friend and I took a short trip to Chicago this past week to be part of a think-tank with SCUPE, a urban ministry group that puts on the bi-annual Urban Congress. During the sessions, we worked with many other urban-Christians to get an on-the-ground feel for three broad issues: leadership and church development, networking, and diversity. I was part of the diversity work group and was charged with digesting some brainstorming on “opportunities” in the area of diversity along with another urban worker. When I looked at the hundred or so ideas written on sticky notes on our board I was a little shocked. These were some of the brightest and most experienced people in urban ministry from around the country, but of all the “opportunities”, very ideas were anything concrete. Sure, everyone thought there was opportunity in this area, but more like the opportunity of a vast unsettled fronteir than a well-built industrial economy. Only a few bold pioneers have even broken into that country, and most of us were still standing, looking at that far horizon. When I came back to the whole diversity workgroup, my conclusion was confirmed. While we all agreed that the church, organizations religious and secular, and our society as a whole confesses a commitment to diversity, like so many other commitments, we’re not doing much to live it out. We all say it’s important. But where do we go from here? If there is anything really encouaging, it is this: we seem to have reached a deeper honesty with ourselves. We admit this isn’t as easy as starting programs and signing policy statements. In fact, truth be told, justice for all people regardless of race, gender, geography or economic status remains a far away promised land. And with that admission, leaving our illusions of simple solutions behind, we have finally approached the starting line. Diversity is important. Why? Because it is the context for revelation. God for some reason, thought that we must be different from him and different from each other in order to understand him and ourselves. Fundamentally, we could not know God without diversity. Perhaps, it is only in the process of finding unity in our differences that can empower us to know God at all. He is, after all, a community of three who are different but still One — Father, Son, and Spirit. Then solidarity becomes a quest for God, and division, prejudice, and persecution all hide His glory.
Original content by: http://blog.thetruthtree.com/?p=4.
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Scott Bartchy is a radical. He believes in a subversive system that embraces those on the fringes of our society and seeks to establish a new way of life that goes against the status quo.