- Good morning, don't let
me stop you from eating,
but we gotta get the show going here,
so please keep eating,
and we will move on with our program.
It's good to see everybody.
It's good to meet you
in our yearly kind of gathering.
It's good to see friends.
My wife said, "Okay Tim,
"tomorrow's the day you
you make some lunch dates.
"It's the only time you see people,
"and then you make a
lunch date," so anyway.
So if I come to you for
a lunch date, you know.
Okay, it's our yearly get together.
It's great to see everybody.
This is always a wonderful thing.
The weather cooperated.
Our speaker was on the
last flight last night,
and if you know anything,
(audience applauding)
about our airport, that's always iffy,
but Dr. Rah made it so that's great.
So, I just wanna say welcome,
and we have the worship team from Radius.
They're gonna come up and
lead us in the beginning,
so thank you.
(some clapping)
Is everybody here, I hope. (chuckles)
(audience applauding)
(dishes clinking)
- Amen, amen, good morning everyone.
- Good morning.
(some applauding)
- It's quite early, amen,
but we are so thankful to be here.
We are the Radius Church praise team,
and we're gonna sing a
couple selections for you,
and we invite you to sing along.
You may get comfortable,
and you can also continue eating.
Don't feel any pressure to wait.
But we just want to worship together,
and bring in the spirit of the Lord, amen?
- [Audience] Amen.
(dishes clinking)
(pleasant slow keyboard music)
- You'll find the lyrics in your program,
so you can join in right with us.
("Lift Every Voice and
Sing" by R. and J. Johnson)
♪ Lift every voice and sing ♪
♪ Till Earth and Heaven ring ♪
♪ Ring with the harmonies ♪
♪ Of Li - berty ♪
♪ Let our rejoicing rise ♪
♪ High as The list'ning skies ♪
♪ Let it resound ♪
♪ Loud as the rol - ling sea ♪
- Sing a song.
♪ Sing a song ♪
♪ Full of the faith that the dark past ♪
♪ Has taught us ♪
♪ Sing a song ♪
♪ Full of The hope that the present ♪
♪ Has brought Us ♪
♪ Facing the rising sun ♪
♪ Of our new day begun ♪
♪ Let us march on ♪
♪ 'Til victory ♪
♪ Is won ♪
- Stony the road.
♪ Stony the road we trod ♪
♪ Bitter the chast'ning rod ♪
♪ Felt in the days when hope ♪
♪ Unborn ♪
♪ Had died ♪
♪ Yet with a steady beat ♪
♪ Have not our weary feet ♪
♪ Come to the place ♪
♪ On which our fa - thers sighed ♪
- All right, we have come!
- Yeah.
♪ We have Come ♪
♪ Over a way that with tears ♪
♪ Has been wa - tered ♪
♪ treading our path through the blood ♪
♪ Of the slaugh - tered ♪
♪ Out from The gloomy past ♪
♪ Till now we stand at last ♪
♪ Where the white gleam ♪
♪ of our bright star ♪
♪ Is cast ♪
- God of our weary.
♪ God of our weary years ♪
♪ God of our silent tears ♪
♪ Thou who has brought us thus ♪
♪ Far on ♪
♪ The way ♪
♪ Thou who has by thy might ♪
♪ Lead us into the light ♪
♪ Keep us forever ♪
♪ In the path ♪
♪ We pray ♪
- Hey!
(drum beats rolling)
♪ Lest our feet ♪
♪ Stray from the places ♪
♪ Our God, where we met Thee ♪
♪ Least our hearts ♪
♪ Drunk with the wine of the world ♪
♪ We forget thee ♪
♪ Shadowed beneath thy hand ♪
♪ May we forever stand ♪
♪ True to our God ♪
♪ True to our native land ♪
- Shadowed beneath.
♪ Shadowed beneath thy hand ♪
♪ May we forever stand ♪
♪ True to our God ♪
♪ True to our na - tive land ♪
- True to our God.
♪ True to our God ♪
♪ True to our na - tive land ♪
(drums and cymbals emphasizing)
(audience applauding)
- Hallelujah!
- Yes Lord!
Hallelujah!
Yes Lord!
(all applauding)
- Bless the name of the Lord
and your name alone.
- Hallelujah!
- Just for all you've done,
and how we have overcome, amen.
- Yes Lord!
- Bless the blood of the Lamb,
Amen?
- Thank the Lord.
- Bless your name.
(some clapping)
- We shall overcome.
(gentle piano music)
("Overcome" by Tye Tribbet)
- Praise Jesus.
Praise Him.
- Oh the joy.
- Thank you Jesus, thank you Jesus.
- Let's sing about Jesus.
Praise Him right now.
(gentle keyboard music)
♪ Seated above ♪
♪ Enthroned in the ♪
♪ Father's love ♪
♪ Destined to die ♪
♪ Poured out for ♪
♪ All mankind ♪
♪ God's only Son ♪
♪ Perfect and ♪
♪ Spotless one ♪
♪ He never sinned ♪
♪ But suffered as if ♪
♪ He did ♪
♪ All autho - ri - ty ♪
- Yes!
♪ Every vic - to - ry ♪
♪ Is Yours ♪
- Yes Lord, yes!
(someone clapping)
♪ All autho - ri - ty ♪
♪ Every vic - to - ry ♪
♪ Is Yours ♪
♪ Sa - vior ♪
♪ Savior ♪
♪ Worthy of honor ♪
♪ And glo - ry ♪
♪ Worthy of all ♪
♪ Our pra - aise ♪
♪ You overcame ♪
- Yeah!
(clapping)
♪ His name is ♪
♪ Jesus ♪
♪ Awesome in power ♪
♪ Fore - ver ♪
♪ Awesome and great is ♪
♪ Your na - ame ♪
♪ You overcame ♪
- Whoo!
- Yes.
- Come on, if you overcame
by the blood of Jesus,
Let me hear you now!
- Yes!
Hallelujah, He's a great God.
(people applauding)
Hallelujah, Jesus.
- Power.
♪ Power in hand ♪
♪ Speaking the ♪
♪ Father's plan ♪
♪ You're sendin' us out ♪
♪ Sending us out ♪
♪ Light ♪
♪ Light in this ♪
♪ Broken land ♪
(drums emphasizing)
- Whoo!
♪ All autho - ri - ty ♪
- Hallelujah!
♪ Every vic - to - ry ♪
♪ Is Yours ♪
♪ All autho - ri - ty ♪
♪ Every vic - to - ry ♪
♪ Is Yours ♪
♪ All autho - ri - ty ♪
♪ Every vic - to - ry ♪
♪ Is Yours ♪
♪ All autho - ri - ty ♪
♪ Every vic - to - ry ♪
♪ Is Yours ♪
♪ Sav - io - or ♪
♪ Savior ♪
♪ Worthy of honor ♪
♪ And glo - ry ♪
♪ Worthy of all ♪
♪ Our pra - aise ♪
♪ You overcame ♪
- Whoo!
- Yeah.
♪ His name is ♪
♪ Jesus ♪
♪ Awesome in power ♪
♪ Fore - ver ♪
♪ Awesome and great is ♪
♪ Your na - ame ♪
♪ You overcame ♪
♪ We will overcome ♪
♪ By the blood of the Lamb ♪
♪ And the word of our testimony ♪
♪ Everyone ♪
♪ Over - come ♪
♪ We will overcome ♪
♪ By the blood of the Lamb ♪
♪ And the word of our testimony ♪
♪ Everyone ♪
♪ Over - come ♪
(drums and music swelling)
- We will!
♪ We will overcome ♪
♪ By the blood of the Lamb ♪
♪ And the word of our ♪
♪ Testimony ♪
♪ Everyone ♪
♪ Over - come ♪
♪ We will overcome ♪
♪ By the blood of the Lamb ♪
♪ And the word of our ♪
♪ Testimony ♪
♪ Everyone ♪
♪ Over - come ♪
♪ Everyone ♪
♪ Everyone ♪
♪ Over - come ♪
♪ Everyone ♪
♪ Everyone ♪
♪ Over - come ♪
- Whoo!
♪ Everyone ♪
♪ Everyone ♪
♪ Over - come ♪
♪ Every - o - o - one ♪
♪ Everyone ♪
♪ Over - come ♪
(cymbals ringing)
(peaceful piano music)
(audience applauding and cheering)
- Hallelujah!
- We thank you Lord!
- Whoo!
Hallelujah, Praise Jesus!
(women praising)
(audience applauding)
(dishes clinking)
- How do you like that?
- Whoo!
(audience applauding)
- Yeah.
(clapping)
So we come to the part
of the program that,
as a pastor, I'm never
really comfortable about.
I've always struggled with this idea
of separation of church and state.
This is really a public,
secular kinda gathering,
and yet we have an invocation.
I've said this in the past.
I don't know how we celebrate a birthday
of Dr. Martin Luther King,
who was a Baptist minister,
without somehow
conflating secular and religion together.
I think it's an important
thing that we gather together
and recognize this man,
who, I think, set a whole new
trajectory in our country,
that we still have not accomplished,
so I'm just gonna pray for our breakfast,
and pray for the rest of this program.
I don't mean to offend anyone,
but I just feel like this has to happen
at this certain time.
So, if you would bow your heads,
and if you don't believe in Jesus,
then acknowledge the
god you do believe in,
but I will be praying in the name of
our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Let's bow our heads.
Lord, we thank you for gettin' us together
here this morning.
It's wonderful to see folks
who have hearts aligned
towards this ideal
that Dr. King set forward.
We thank you for the wonderful food.
We thank you for the staff
here at the Grand River Center,
who always serve us so well,
and give us wonderful food to eat.
We thank you for the Radius Worship Team,
who just was awesome this morning, Lord,
as they are every Sunday morning.
We thank you for the Faces of Voices team
that gets this thing together.
We thank you for the Gods of Travel
that got our speaker here
this morning, Lord. (chuckles)
We just thank you that You are so good,
and you cover us with your love.
We pray in Jesus name,
and we all say amen?
- Amen.
- Amen.
So just we like to acknowledge
folks who are here this morning,
and I'd like to just
say, if you're a student,
I don't care what level,
if you're a student, if
you could just stand.
It's great that there are students here.
Fantastic, awesome.
(audience applauding)
Great, awesome, yes.
(clapping)
If you are a public school teacher,
administrator, school board,
however you're, you know,
you work in the food kitchen or whatever,
can you please stand up?
We would love to see that
you are here this morning.
(audience applauding)
Awesome, thank you.
(clapping)
Since we already, I'm sure we had.
I know the college students
have already stood up.
If you are a college
or university president
or administrator, could you please stand?
(audience applauding)
(clapping)
And I just gotta say,
Loras College sent us
78 people this morning,
so Jim, thank you Jim.
- Whoo!
- Wonderful job, thank you.
(audience applauding)
I'm not dissin' any other
organization in town.
Please don't hear it that way.
(some laughing)
Elected officials, if
you're an elected official,
could you please stand,
so we could recognize you?
(audience applauding)
Thanks Ben.
Awesome.
(audience applauding)
So I was rereading the
song we sang this morning:
Stony the road we trod,
bitter the chast'ning rod,
felt in the day that
hope, unborn, had died.
Yet, with a steady beat,
have not our weary feet
come to the place on
which our fathers sighed?
We have come over the way that
with tears has been watered.
We have come treading our path
through the blood of the slaughtered.
Out of the gloomy past
'til now we stand at last,
where the white gleam of our star is cast.
Great sentiments,
and in the 19 years I've
been here in Dubuque,
and I just say, when it
comes to racial things,
we've so far ahead,
but we're not there yet.
And you know, one of the things we do is,
I know the school's had a diverse person
in charge of diversity.
We have Kelly here,
who's in charge of equal
rights in the city,
and we have ways of instituting
that things occur to be right
across all races and genders.
And yet it doesn't, you know,
I just don't believe you
can legislate equality.
I think it's necessary,
but it comes from the heart.
We need to get to know one another.
We need to risk with one another,
'cause that's the only way we're gonna
tear this wall down.
We need to hear each other's voices,
so that we can maybe hear
that some of our embedded
ideals or ideas are just wrong,
and it's not gonna happen,
if we don't hear an alternate voice.
If we only listen to the
voices that agree with us,
we're doomed.
And you know, the other
voice could be wrong,
but we're better for listening.
I think that's what our
speaker last year told us.
So, when we were lookin'
at a list for people
to come and speak this year,
you know, normally, we look
for an African American,
because that's just kinda where we're at.
Soong-Chan Rah came up to me.
He didn't come up to me,
but his name came to me.
I got to see him.
I gotta be careful what I say.
I got to see him about a year ago.
I went into Chicago for a conference,
and he was doing a presentation
on his book, "Prophetic Lament",
and I'd been doing some reading about him,
and there was something he
wrote in one of his books.
Actually his other book,
"The Next Evangelicalism",
talking about how,
as a Korean man,
who has checked all the boxes,
when it comes to academia,
you know, his
ivy league schools.
He's done everything he
can, and yet here he is
floating around an
evangelical church world,
and he's an outsider.
And I was like, "Why is he an outsider?"
He's checked every box
that the dominate culture
says you need to check,
and yet he's an outsider,
and I was like, "Wow."
We need to hear his voice.
So Dr. Rah got in last night.
He is the Professor
of Church Growth and Evangelism
at North Park Theological Seminary.
He's a speaker and an author.
He came from Duke University yesterday.
He spoke in their chapel,
and then there was a luncheon,
so he's been on the road for a while.
He is the Milton B. Engebretson,
Professor of Church Growth and Evangelism
at North Park Theological
Seminary in Chicago,
author of "Prophetic Lament",
a commentary on the book of Lamentations,
"The Next Evangelicalism",
which I already showed,
"Many Colors", which I forgot to bring,
from Moody Publisher,
and then the co-author
of "Return to Justice",
this one as well,
"An Unsettling Truth",
and "Forgive Us".
And he also has a new book out,
which I guess he can mention
when he gets up here.
He received his B.A. in
Political Science and History,
Sociology from Columbia University,
his MDiv from Gordon-Conwell
Theological Seminary,
his THM from Harvard University,
his DMin from Gordon-Conwell
Theological Seminary,
and his THD from Duke University.
Soong-Chan is formerly
the founding Senior Pastor
of Cambridge Community Fellowship Church,
a multi-ethnic, urban
ministry-focused church,
committed to living out the values
of racial reconciliation
and social justice in the urban context.
And I'm just gonna say,
he's really a nice guy.
(some laughing)
- He is.
We had fun talkin' last
night, on the drive in.
So, let's welcome
Soong-Chan Rah, our
speaker for the morning.
(audience applauding)
- Thank you.
Thank you so much for
this very kind invitation.
It took me three flights
to get here last night,
but it's very much worth the trip
to be with you here this morning.
It's a great honor, because one,
anything I get the chance to address,
and for us to talk about
and reflect on the life
and legacy of Dr. King,
that's always a great honor for me,
but particularly for me
as an Asian American.
And as was said earlier that
it's probably not usual for
an Asian American to be a keynote speaker
at a King gathering,
but I think, in some sense,
it might be appropriate.
There's kind of an
appropriateness to that,
because I don't want us to forget
that what Dr. King did
was for all Americans,
and the change,
transformation in our society,
and the changing of
what goes on in the world around us,
did not just affect the
African American community.
The rights that were gained,
were not just for the
African American community.
It was for all Americans, but it was also
a transformation of our nation as a whole,
not just pockets or different
segments of the nation.
And so that's why it's
significant and appropriate
for me as a beneficiary
of the work of Dr. King,
as a personal beneficiary
of the work of Dr. King,
to reflect on his life and legacy that,
as an Asian American,
my family, my narrative
is blessed by that work.
I'll give you a little bit of background,
and maybe tie that into the larger story
of how society,
in American society,
and the ways that King has impacted that,
has actually positively
influenced my life.
I was born in Korea.
I'm actually, hard to tell,
but I'm a fourth generation Baptist.
My great grandfather
was one of the founders of the very first
Baptist church in Korea.
When the missionaries came,
they actually came to
northern parts of Korea,
and the first Baptist church
was actually founded in Pyongyang,
which is currently the
capital of North Korea,
and my great grandfather was one of the
first group of converts
that actually helped
start that first church.
So I'm many more generations Christian
than many of you in this room,
and I go back four generations
through Christian family.
My mom's family actually is Buddhist.
She came from the southern part of Korea.
They met in Seoul,
and they married at a church in Seoul.
My father's family had fled
North Korea during the war,
and had moved to Seoul and become part of
the refugee community
that had moved to Seoul,
and would eventually start many churches.
The largest Baptist church,
the largest Presbyterian
church in Seoul South Korea
were actually founded by
North Korean refugees during the war.
My family came to the United States
in the 1970s,
not too long after the
change in immigration laws
that occurred in 1965,
so we were a beneficiary of
actually the civil rights movement
that changed the immigration laws in 1965.
Now, that's one thing
we should be aware of,
that the immigration laws changed in 1965,
was really a part of the
civil rights movement.
Prior to 1965, there were
very strict restrictions
on who could come into the United States.
Those restriction were actually
based upon racist laws.
There was a racist law that kicked off
all of these restrictions in immigration.
That first law was called
the Chinese Exclusion Act.
Can anybody guess what
that might have done,
some of the students in this room?
What did the Chinese Exclusion Act do?
Yes, it excluded Chinese people.
It was pretty straightforward.
We don't want Chinese people here.
Let's make a law; what should we call it?
Let's call it the Chinese Exclusion Act.
It was one of a first of a series
of blatantly racist laws that said,
"We don't want certain
people in our country,
"so we will write laws that exclude
"and prevent these individuals
"from coming into the country."
So the law in 1965, the change was not,
"Let's open the door and let
anybody and everybody in."
the law, the change was,
"We have these racist laws.
"We're gonna do away
with those racist laws."
The number of immigrants
didn't change that dramatically
from 1965 to 1966.
It went from about 200,000
to maybe about 215,000
and gradually increases from there,
but it wasn't we have
200,000 immigrants one day
and then six million the next day.
That's not happened.
There's actually never been
a moment in American History
where we said, "Let's open the doors
"for anybody and everybody to come in."
That has never happened.
Sorry, it happened one time.
Columbus shows up, and
the Native Americans say,
"Let's let anybody and everybody in."
That's the only time in American History
where we've had a unlimited
immigration policy.
But what we had, from 1965,
was a civil rights movement that said,
"We are not going to discriminate
"based upon race, culture,
"country of origin,
"from people coming into our nation."
And so, from 1965 forward,
we began to see the wave of immigrants
from outside of North America, Europe,
Canada, and Australia,
and my family was part of that,
so immediately, we befitted
from the work of Dr. King,
because the civil rights movement
was also changing the
immigration laws of our country.
So part of that is that, in 1973,
my family came to the United States,
but my family actually fell
upon some difficult times,
some of our own doing,
some were because of
different circumstances.
My father was actually a skilled laborer,
not an unskilled laborer,
like many immigrants
were during that time.
He had skills in terms of artistry,
and he was a graphic artist,
and he worked for a number of companies,
but he really couldn't keep a job, because
there was a lot of racism against him.
They wanted him to do not
the work that he was trained to do,
but other things, and he was frustrated,
so he started his own business
that didn't do too well.
So he, as a immigrant man,
was always being
challenged in his identity,
in his skills, in his capacity,
and eventually that lead to marital strife
in my mom and dad, between my mom and dad.
Financial difficulties meant
my mom had to start going to work.
Eventually lead to my
dad leaving my family,
and my mom raised four
children as a single mom.
We ended up moving to a rough
neighborhood in Baltimore.
That's actually redundant,
(some laughing)
but it was an inner-city
neighborhood in Baltimore,
so it was a neighborhood that was for
government assisted housing.
It was a neighborhood that
had the bars in the windows,
because there was a lot of break-ins.
It was a neighborhood where,
if you walked through it
now, and even back then,
you could see vials of drugs
and needles on the ground.
It was a neighborhood that
was a rough neighborhood,
and I grew up in that neighborhood.
Hard to tell now, with the
ivy league degrees that I got,
but I grew up in a neighborhood
that was filled with drugs
and gangs and violence.
It was gated, but not in that way.
It was gated to keep us in,
(some laughing)
rather than to let people
out, keep people out.
That was the neighborhood I grew up in.
My mom, now as a single parent,
tryin' to raise four kids in the hood,
she worked very, very long hours.
She went to work in a
inner-city Baltimore carry-out.
Some of you know these
kinds of establishments.
It's the kind of place where you have
the plexiglass, bullet-proof front,
and you have the little lazy Susan
that passes the food and
money back and forth,
and my mom worked in that
inner-city carry-out.
She made sandwiches and chicken and fries
for the neighborhood,
and she worked from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.,
working in that neighborhood,
and then she would actually,
from that job, go to a second job,
to a inner-city nursing home,
and she would work from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m.,
in the grave-yard shift, as a nurses aid,
caring for the residents
of that nursing home,
changing their bedpans, being on-call.
Then she would rush home,
and make breakfast for the
kids to send us off to school,
and she would sleep two hours,
and then go back to work
again in that carry-out.
So she worked 20 hours
a day, six days a week,
and she did this for
years and years and years,
so that she could keep
her family together,
so that things wouldn't be difficult.
Even as she worked all those long hours,
her faith was still front and center.
On Sundays, she would assure
that we would be at church.
Even though she was tired
from 20 hours a day job,
she would make sure
that we went to church,
and then when she went
to church, she would be
in the kitchen making food
for the elders and the deacons
and the pastors of that church.
And she worked these long hours,
because she believed
that it was worth while
to work hard for her family.
Now, even with all those long hours,
she still had difficulty
keeping our family together.
Financially, she was not
making enough to pay the rent,
and to try to keep that family together,
so there were moments in
our life, as a family,
that we were on food stamps.
We were on government assistance,
and years later, politicians
would look at her and say,
"Oh, you're a welfare queen.
"Oh, you're a lazy person
"who needs government assistance."
I don't know of anybody who
worked as hard as my mom.
20 hours a day,
120 hours a week,
working as hard as she can
to keep that family together,
and for people to call her a welfare queen
or a government cheat,
because we had to take food
stamps every once in a while.
But here is where I stand,
and my family stands today.
All four of the children are in places
of either education or Christian service.
I teach at a seminary.
My sister works for the State of Maryland,
working with immigrant families
on behalf of the State of Maryland.
My other sister's Dean of Students,
particularly working with
international and immigrant families
at a Christian school.
My third sister, who
has a mental disability,
is a praise leader at a church
with others with mental disabilities,
and this is because of a
mom who worked very hard
to keep her family together.
That's my immigrant story.
That's the context out of which I arise,
but that story I tell you
is because I want you to know
that when Dr. King marched
on behalf of those who were marginalized,
disenfranchised,
when Dr. King spoke
for those who did not have a voice,
when he preached to the powers
and changed our society,
I became a beneficiary
of the work of Dr. King.
I have benefited from
the blood, sweat, tears,
and even the very lives that were lost
during the civil rights movement.
I've had very few occasions to do this,
but on every occasion that
I've had the opportunity,
I've said thank you to the
African American community,
as an Asian American immigrant,
for your sacrifice,
and your efforts,
and your work that gave me
the rights that I have today.
After many years of hard work,
my mom was able
to purchase a home in Howard County,
outside of Baltimore,
and I remember, when we bought that house,
we had like a two month gap in between
when we could actually go
and move into the house.
But every Sunday before church,
we would drive down to that neighborhood,
and drive around that house
and look at that house,
and I saw a woman that had
worked so hard all her life.
I saw the brightness in her eyes.
I saw the confidence, the hope.
I saw the sense of,
"I've done a good thing.
"I've cared for my children,"
and that was a direct result
of the work of Dr. King and
the civil rights movement,
the fact that an Asian American
family could own a home.
I went on to some of the best
schools in the United States.
That was a direct result
of the work of Dr. King and
the civil rights movement,
that I, as an Asian American, could attend
any school that I was able to get into.
That was a direct result
of the civil rights movement.
I owe a debt to the
African American community,
and that's why I stand here
to be able to speak on this
Martin Luther King Day.
I also wanna point out
that Dr. King's work
was not only the work of
the changes of all Americans,
but I also wanna point out that
his work still needs to speak to us today,
because immigration has not stopped.
Immigration continues,
but here's the good
news about immigration.
Immigration is, in many
ways, saving America.
It's not destroying America.
It's saving America.
The work of Dr. King to open the doors,
and to allow, to bring other immigrants
into the United States is saving America.
I'll just give you one angle on this.
The main angle for me is that
it is actually saving
the church in America.
I study church growth patterns.
I study what's happening
in the church in America,
and if you look at many of the reports,
what most people are saying
is that the church in America
is in major, major decline.
In fact, the numbers look like
this on almost every chart.
The decline of the church in America
is significant and very real.
I've seen the numbers.
I've followed the trends.
But there's a counter trend
that's very interesting,
and that counter trend is that
evangelical churches
are not going like this.
They're actually relatively stable.
Their numbers have not declined
in the numbers that other
denominations have declined,
so I began to study
that a little bit more.
Why is it that you're seeing the decline
in some denominations,
but not in other denominations?
And what I found is that the denominations
that are not shrinking and declining
are actually the denominations
that are diverse,
are the denominations that have
a number of immigrant churches.
So, if you look at the
stable denominations
that are either growing
or not shrinking as fast
as other denominations,
and you took out the churches
that are immigrant churches,
ethnic churches,
non-white churches,
their numbers would look just as bad
as the churches that are in decline.
So what we're seeing is
that immigrant churches
are saving the church in America.
The church is actually not in decline.
The face of the church is changing,
and so you'll see the Spanish
speaking store-front church
growing in almost every community.
African American churches growing
in almost every community.
Asian American churches,
English speaking congregations
out of the Asian community,
those are the churches that are growing.
Immigration is not the death
of the church in America.
It is that life of the church in America.
It is the hope of the church in America,
and Dr. King was able to see
a future that saw this diversity,
that saw the different races,
cultures, coming together
to form a stronger America,
not a weaker America,
a greater America, not a lesser America.
And so I stand as a testimony,
a personal testimony,
to the work of Dr. King,
but also for the Christian
church to acknowledge
the changes that have occurred,
the positive changes that have occurred
because of Dr. King's work.
There's a second part to Dr. King's story
that I wanna make sure
we talk about today,
and that is the depth of
Dr. King's spirituality,
and in a world that is broken,
in a society that seems to be
falling apart at the seams,
in a country that is so deeply divided,
many of us don't know
where to turn anymore,
this type of spirituality
is absolutely essential.
Any kind of spirituality
that challenges us
to move beyond ourselves
and to move in grace and
love towards the other,
that's the kind of
spirituality Dr. King embodied.
That's the kind of spirituality
we so desperately need.
It was said earlier,
power of Dr. King was that
he was the voice for the voiceless.
He spoke for those who often times
could not speak for themselves.
He was the voice of the disenfranchised,
and I would argue that many of us,
who are accomplished, who are the leaders,
who are the educators,
who are the business leaders,
the community leaders,
sometimes we get so accomplished,
sometimes we have achieved so much
that we forget that we need to speak
for those who are the very least
of our brothers and sisters.
We need to see Jesus not
only in the powerful.
We need to see Jesus in the very least
of our brothers and sisters.
We need to see the image of God
in the broken, in the lost, in the poor.
Those are the faces in
which we need to see
the image of God.
Reverend Tim, Pastor Tim
talked about a book I
wrote a few years ago.
It's a book on Lament,
and in that book I talk about how
the spiritual practice of Lament
is deeply missing in the American church.
Lament is a practice
you find in the Bible,
in the Old Testament as well
as in the New Testament.
Lament is a practice where you talk about
and you acknowledge the suffering, pain,
and brokenness that you are in.
In fact many of us want
to, when we worship,
we wanna worship good things.
God has done great things,
and 60% of the psalms in the Bible
are about all the good
things God has done,
but 40% of the psalms in the Bible
are actually about the
suffering, the pain,
the brokenness in our lives,
but many of us just want to get
to the jumping up and down with joy.
We forget that sometimes we need to stay
in the suffering and in the pain
and in the miry clay,
in the suffering of pain of others,
and this is where we need to begin
to hear the voice of others
before we begin to speak out.
Listen to the disenfranchised.
Recognize how much the
disenfranchised voices
are key to our lives.
Let me give you an illustration.
Think of the richest
community here in Dubuque.
I'm thinkin' of a very
wealthy community in Chicago,
in the Chicago suburbs.
It's a gated community
in the other direction.
You have to break in to
get into that community.
But you find the largest
and wealthiest looking home
in that community, and
you knock on the door,
and a 16 year old answers the door,
and the 16 year old you ask this question.
You ask, "What do you think
heaven is going to be like?"
and she has an answer.
She says, "Because I live
in this beautiful house
"with many good things,
"heaven is going to be a lot
like what I see right now.
"Here's what heaven's going to be like."
"Here on earth I have a Dell desktop,
"but in heaven I'm getting a Mac computer,
"a iPad and a Mac Air.
"On earth, my parents,
for my 16th birthday,
"bought me a Toyota
Yaris, dinky little car,
"but in heaven I'm getting a Lamborghini.
"On earth I have a tiny
little TV set in my room,
"but in heaven, I'm
going to get an 85 inch,
"plasma screen, 5K ultra,
"with full satellite and surround sound."
To a 16 year old,
(some laughing)
who has so many good things,
heaven is more of the good
things she has on earth.
That's her worldview,
but we're gonna take that same question,
but go to a place
like Haiti after the earthquake,
to go to Lebanon, where
the Syrian refugee camps
have been established,
to go to Darfur Sudan in
the midst of the civil war,
to go to these places where
there is pain and suffering,
and ask the exact same question
to another 16 year old girl.
I guarantee the answers
will be radically different.
That 16 year old in
Darfur sand is gonna say,
"Heaven is nothing like the
world I'm living in right now.
"Heaven is a place where I don't
have to walk six kilometers
"to get water that's not even clean.
"Heaven is a place where
there's actually food,
"and I don't have to scrounge
around and fight for scraps.
"Heaven is a place where
my parents are not dead.
"They haven't been killed
by the bombing raids.
"Heaven is a place where I'm not worried
"about being sexually assaulted
every night of my life.
"Heaven is nothing like
the world I'm living in.
"It's a totally different world."
Now, many of us would look
at those two individuals
and say one's got everything,
and the other's got nothing,
and it is the job of
the one with everything
to dump all of their good things,
to maybe write a check
every once in a while,
to maybe fill a box
with yo-yos and goodies,
and just send it over to
that poor kid over there,
and we think that the person
with everything material good
is the one that has it right,
and the person without the material goods
doesn't know the truth.
When actually, if you think
about what heaven actually is,
it's both and.
It's both the good things on earth,
more of it in heaven,
but it's also nothing like the
world we live in right now,
so if you want the complete picture
of what heaven will be like,
you've got to listen to
both sides of the story.
So our theology, our worldview,
our lives are not complete
without the story of the 16 year old girl
in that refugee camp in Lebanon.
What you know is inadequate,
and you need to hear
the voice of the disenfranchised,
the marginalized, and the broken.
That, again, is the legacy of Dr. King.
We not only hear from the powerful,
we hear from them all the time.
We need to hear the voice of the poor.
We need to hear the voice
of the disenfranchised,
the incarcerated, those who have been left
and pushed aside by society.
Those are the voices we stand for.
That's what Dr. King's
legacy means to me and to us.
For the last three years I've had
the great, great pleasure
and honor of teaching
at Stateville Correctional
Center in Illinois.
It is a maximum security prison.
Most of the prisoners there
are those who have been incarcerated,
because of violent crimes,
or they've been convicted
of violent crimes.
Whether they committed it or not,
sometimes that's inconsequential.
They've been convicted of violent crimes.
I've had the great pleasure of going in
and teaching a class there
pretty much every year.
The first year that I went into that,
I didn't wanna show any weakness.
I'm five foot seven.
I'm too small to go
into a prison by myself,
and to show weakness. (chuckles)
My students
have interesting records
if they're in Stateville.
They're also much taller
than me and larger than me,
and so I didn't wanna show any weakness,
and so I kinda played to my strengths.
What are my strengths?
My strengths are, I'm educated.
I've got my ivy league degrees.
My strengths aren't my stories of weakness
and my stories of struggle,
so I went in there with the power,
the privilege and the position that I had,
and let them know that I had the power
the position and the privilege,
and the class worked pretty well,
using my power and position and privilege.
But it started to wear out a little bit,
and the reason it started
wearing out is that
that semester, I had maybe
the worst four months of my life.
I don't wanna go into details.
I'm not gonna bore you with them,
but everything that
could go wrong in my life
pretty much went wrong with
my life in those four months,
and so after about two months of teaching,
I really couldn't hold it in anymore.
I couldn't be the person
with power, position, and privilege,
'cause I just wasn't feeling that.
And so, about the 10
week mark, I actually,
in front of 15, (chuckles)
15 prisoners, 15 inmates,
I fell apart.
I started not keeping it together.
My weakness started to show,
and I thought, "That's it.
"My class is over.
"I'm not gonna be able
to do this anymore."
But it was a dear brother
from the South side of Chicago,
six foot four, 200 plus pounds,
cut, like, cut,
tattoos all up and down his body.
In fact, if you were to say,
"Okay, who's a South
side Chicago person who,"
you know, kind of a
gangster who's in jail?
Yeah, that's this guy right here.
He comes over to me, and
he whispers in my ear,
"I'm going to get in trouble for this,
"but I think you need this,"
and he hugs me,
and he holds me,
and in that moment,
it's not the ivy league professor
and the convicted prisoner.
It's two men made in the image of God,
one weak, one strong,
and I wasn't the strong one,
and in that moment,
God's presence
was found in a profound way.
That class changed my life.
The next week, one of my other students,
I don't know how he figured this out.
There's no internet access. (chuckles)
He figured out how to
say, learned how to say,
"Brother, I love you," in
Korean, and said that to me.
Another one of my students,
former death row inmate,
who after Illinois did away with that,
it was commuted to a life sentence,
he gave me a painting,
and he said, "I thought of you
as I painted this painting."
Apparently he thinks I'm a black man,
because it was a picture
of an African American man
storming the gates of hell.
That's a painting I have
up in my office right now.
(some laughing)
In those moments,
we speak not for the powerful,
but we speak for the disenfranchised.
We speak for the poor.
We speak for the incarcerated.
We speak for the very least of
our brothers and our sisters,
not because we have the power to do so,
not because we have the
position and privilege to do so,
because our lives are more complete.
Our spirituality gets more profound.
May we take this example of Dr. King.
May we learn from his gift and legacy,
and may we go and do likewise.
Thank you.
(audience applauding)
- How's everybody doin'?
(someone responds)
Awesome.
(dishes quietly clinking)
So first, Dr. Rah, thank you for rippin'
our Operation Christmas Child movement
by dissing yo-yos and goodies in boxes.
I appreciate that. (chuckles)
(some laughing)
(heavily sighing)
It's canceled; we're not doin' it anymore.
No, that's not true.
(some laughing)
That's not true.
(dishes clinking)
This idea, and I know
some of you don't care,
but 40% of Psalms are about brokenness.
Just think about that for a minute.
I don't know about you,
but as an American,
I don't wanna think about brokenness.
I think of brokenness as a failure
instead of a human trait,
so I try to dodge
brokenness as much as I can,
and yet we need to embrace it,
and we need to hear other people
who are experiencing brokenness.
You know, it's almost like we,
it's like when I go to the dentist
I don't wanna feel pain,
and I'm like, "I don't
care what you give me,
"I just don't wanna know what's goin' on,"
and yet, sometimes that's how I live life.
I don't wanna know what's goin' on.
I don't wanna know about pain,
you know, just euthanize.
No, not euthanize.
That wouldn't be a good thing,
but I mean just drug me.
I always wonder if we are,
some of our attitudes about immigration
or others, folks in poverty,
if that's part of the problem.
We just don't wanna hear the stories,
but we can't move forward unless we do.
All right, on your table
there's a lot of stuff
that I wanna bring up to you.
First thing, I'm gonna try
to go by chronological order,
but I'm never sure that
I'm able to do that,
'cause my wife was a math teacher, not me.
The Mountain Top,
it's gonna be Fly By Night productions.
It's January 31st
and then February 1st, 2nd, 7th, and 8th.
This is a gripping reimagination
of Dr. Martin Luther King's last night.
It's written by Katori Hall
and directed by Lenore Howard,
so if that's somethin' that you wanna see,
then consider it.
These should be on your
table, these little flyers,
so hopefully look for it,
or we'll find some way to get it to you.
February 23rd,
this is our 15th Annual
Walk Through Black History
of First Baptist.
We're lookin' at Mahalia Jackson
this year.
(someone loudly applauding)
Thank you, Mahalia.
(some laughing)
Peggy Jackson puts this on every year.
Without her, we wouldn't be doin' it,
so we thank Peggy for the
effort that she does every year,
so that's going on.
Tickets will be available
at some point later on,
not for charge, just for seating.
The Heritage Center over at UD,
they've got two great programs coming up.
Number one, this is on February 18th.
Damien Sneed's "We Shall Overcome",
a celebration of Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
This is something that's
done in song and word,
so that's great to be there.
Consider that one at the
John and Alice Butler Hall.
And they always have great
productions over at UD,
at the Heritage Center,
so it's always worth your time.
The other one that's coming up is
Darryl Van Leer presents
"The Norm of Greatness",
celebrating the life and legacy
of Dr. Martin Luther King,
and there's two options for that one,
either March 16th
or March 17th,
so consider those, if you
wanna continue on the journey.
Now typically we have a
reading list for the year,
but we changed that up,
so we're gonna announce somethin' to you.
Faces of Voices is dreaming
about a civil rights bus tour
that'll happen during Spring Break,
and I know most of you probably already
have your Spring Break booked,
so the dates on this are
March 14th through the 20th,
seven days, six nights,
hotel accommodations,
attractions are paid for.
We're gonna be in Atlanta
visiting the Woolworth,
lunch at the Woolworth and 5th.
We're gonna be at the
Ebeneezer Baptist Church.
We're gonna be at the Legacy Museum
and the National Memorial
for Peace and Justice.
We're gonna be at the Dexter
Avenue Memorial Baptist Church
in Montgomery.
We're gonna tour the
Selma Interpretive Center,
walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge,
the Brown Chapel African
Methodist Episcopal Church.
We're gonna be in Memphis and tour
the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.
We're gonna be at the
National Civil Rights Museum,
still in Memphis,
and then we're gonna be in St. Louis,
and then we'll get back March 20th.
If you are interested,
Marlene here will take your name.
Are you gonna be at the
table here or out there?
How are you gonna do it?
(woman responding)
So we don't have all the
information right now,
but if you're interested,
please see her over there by the wall,
and she'll take your information,
and we'll be back with you on that.
So this is just, you know,
I didn't learn any of this stuff.
I lived through it, but I didn't learn it,
and I was too ignorant to
know what was goin' on.
Now, isn't that kind
of the way history is,
when you live through it?
You just don't know this is significant.
You just live through it.
All these places are wonderful places
where we can learn more about the struggle
of our African American
brothers and sisters,
but it's not just their struggle.
It's our struggle,
everybody's struggle, right?
So let's close,
and again, I thank you for bein' here.
Lord, as some of us are
goin' out to work this day.
We ask that you go with us,
and help us to be voices
for the voiceless.
That could be a scary thing,
but help us to be voices
for the voiceless,
and to be voices for the voiceless,
we need to know
what the voice of the voiceless says.
We have to listen to 'em,
and speak for them in their own voice.
Thank you, amen.
You're dismissed.
Thank you; see you next year.
(audience applauding)
