Our Experience of Redeemer Fellowship, Kansas City: Part 1
In early 2009 we began attending Redeemer Fellowship. We joined a small group and began making friends, something we desperately needed after having moved to Kansas City 9 months earlier, and feeling very isolated while raising our infant daughter hours away from all our family and friends.
Early on we began engaging in conversations about race and justice with other church members. It was an issue that became important to me in my years as a middle school teacher, and only grew when we moved to Kansas City and ended up renting a home 1 block from Troost Ave, the historic racial dividing line that continued to separate the city.
By the summer of 2011 we were co-leading a small, racially diverse group, through the book Divided by Faith. We would go on to start leading a regular small group within the church as well as volunteering on various committees and teams. We were heavily invested in our church community. What at the time felt like a church family, would become a more and more insular group. It was normalized at Redeemer that your entire religious, social, and community life revolved around the church and the people you knew through it. Those outside it were seen as projects — existing for your community service or evangelism. And those who left were never really heard of or from again, a reality that would end up being devastating for us.
The book groups went well, but it certainly was beginning to be seen that the conversation about racial justice, while proclaimed in the church’s core values and given lip service occasionally by pastors or elders, was relegated to a small group of members. This would be made all the more clear in February of 2012 when Trayvon Martin was murdered. Not only did the church not address the event, it was clear that most within the church had no framework with which to make sense of or talk about the event or his murderer’s acquittal.
At the time of Trayvon’s murder, we were in the midst of the adoption process, and would find out a son would be joining our family that summer, only a couple months later. A son who would be born in southern Louisiana, with dark brown skin. We would be raising a Black son in a world that had just come into clearer focus for us as we watched the conversation about the life and value of a young Black teen be debated not just by the country we lived in, but by the people we worshipped beside.
It wouldn’t be until 2014 that we saw any more movement within Redeemer to openly engage with conversations about race. In March there was a lecture and forum on race in Kansas City hosted by the church, and in April and May a group of members would gather to watch the 6 part docu-series, “The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross”. Momentum seemed to be picking up, and I deeply desired to see an ongoing willingness to talk and engage.
The summer of 2014 would be the time that work could have been propelled forward. The world was watching and divided as men were reduced to hashtags: Eric Garner, then John Crawford, and finally Mike Brown all in the span of a month. Ferguson, which is a short 4 hour drive across the state, would erupt into protest. People took to the streets all over the country, including in Kansas City. Just as things were calming down some, the grand jury decided to not indict Darren Wilson in the murder of Mike Brown. With that the country was thrown back into the center ring of having to discuss race, a topic for which most people, particularly white people, were ill prepared to do.
I would attend church every Sunday. I would scour the blog, social media, and member emails for something, anything, about what was happening. There was nothing, absolutely nothing. They had months to at minimum acknowledge the reality of what was happening, to lead congregants in how to think about or process events, to mourn with those who were hurting. They never took even the smallest opportunity to do so.
And then Tamir Rice, a child, was shot and killed in a park by police. The silence continued.
Therefore, at the quarterly member meeting (where they still chose to not say anything even as hundreds of people, myself included, had marched through the streets of Kansas City, only a blocks away from the church building, that same week) when it came time for open mic questions, I decided I had no choice but to say something. To ask what seemed the obvious question: why the silence?
I was sitting beside my dear friend Jumesha, both feeling betrayed. We both had devoted years to this church and its supposed mission, and felt forgotten. Not just forgotten though, but intentionally ignored. I had her read over my comments and question before I got up to the mic. I knew I had to write it out or else I would lose my nerve or ramble on. Here’s what I read, or better yet choked out between sobs, in front of 4–500 people and to the 12 male elders (11 white and 1 Black) on the stage:
When we began attending Redeemer we were thrilled with the passion we saw for this city. We chose to covenant with Redeemer as members in part because of this and the commitment we heard spoken of for racial reconciliation. This is a vital aspect for us for the church we belong to.
As we see our country reeling over the lack of social justice and the devaluing of Black lives, it has been immensely painful to not see any response from the pastors or elders. There has been silence in my inbox, on social media, and from the pulpit.
How do you reconcile the lack of response with the church’s commitment to the city and God’s commitment to justice?
