Ambassadors for the Upside-down Kingdom
From its founding, TPC has wanted to be a church that embraces the multiethnic future of the Kingdom of God. We recognize that the nations are here in Cary, and so we are leaning into loving our neighbors and reaching the nations with the good news of the gospel. We want to “lean into now, being who we will be then”, as in Rev 7 as the people from every nation, tribe, and tongue worshiping the lamb as one blood washed, reconciled people.
Christianity Today recently published an article, “The Multiethnic Church Movement Hasn’t Lived up to Its Promise.” This article traces the multi ethnic church movement, its beautiful Biblical aspirations and ways it falls short. Korie Little Edwards discusses multi ethnic churches that have fizzled over time. Among ones that failed, a common thread was seeking to be a mult-racial church without ever directly addressing how Scripture speaks to race. By not speaking directly about race, the church culture then assumes majority culture and leaves minority members feeling alienated, disenfranchised, misunderstood, eventually choosing to leave the church.
We recognize that God has done beautiful things in Trinity Park’s 10 years of existence. By God’s grace, we are a multi-ethnic church. We also know that we have work to do to truly become cross-cultural. We want our lives, relationships, work, and worship as a church to truly intertwine and we want our personal orbits not to be exclusively populated only by those just like us. We want to learn to love our multi-ethnic neighbors. As a microcosm of the blood washed nations worshiping before the Lamb (Rev 7), we want to demonstrate to a watching world the love and unity Jesus prayed so that all may know that Jesus is Lord.
In this desire, we created the Grace, Race, and Reconciliation Team, which plans to continue our conversations around this work. After a brief hiatus, we’ll soon recommence meeting to have more gospel-centered conversation around reconciliation. We plan to continue our partnership with one of our neighbor churches, Mt Zion in Cary as an opportunity to lean in, learn, build relationships, and love our neighbors together. Pastor Willie Harris recently taught us about praying the great prayers of Scripture and led us in prayer. We’ve prayed with Mt Zion in one of their prayer meetings and they have joined our conversations about the gospel and race.
We want to continue to explore bridging gaps between the nations in our own congregation. Members in our church have shared with elders that as ethnic minorities, they feel invisible. We want to address that. Andy Ew has been working hard to land practical opportunities where we can love our neighbors through acts of service. Tom and Lisa Seelinger recently led us in prayer for the Islamic world. We look forward to more opportunities like these.
As the old gospel song goes, “It’s me, it’s me O Lord, standing in the need of prayer.” As always but in ways we keenly feel right now, we are in need of prayer. I am thankful for this opportunity to publicly live as an ambassador for an upside-down kingdom, to identify publicly with the name of Jesus, not as self-promotion but in love and service, and to pray for what Jesus prayed in the upper room in John 17:22-23 … that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.
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Clay Shelor is an elder at Trinity Park. He lives with his family in Cary.
If you are interested in learning more about the Grace, Race, and Reconciliation team, you can contact Clay here. You can learn more about how we’re leaning into loving our neighbors in our cultural statement.