The Scourge Of Racism
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The Lord and necessity stirring my heart, I write today celebrating the thirty-second year since this Ministry began operations October 1, 1985 and to follow up a post I made back on July 9, 2017 entitled, Laboring To Restore Men under the category, The Cause. In both instances I hope that you will allow the Holy Spirit to stir your own heart to come along side of and financially support the Ministry that has made possible this biblically sound, instructional, thought provoking, challenging and edifying weekly Strong Man Of God Blog as well as all of the resources including my book, The Strong Man Of God: Back To Basics that are available at this critical hour in world history.
If I could sum up the history of Open Door Communication Ministries, Inc. as the organizational parent of Strong Man Ministries and source of all our other activities in a phrase, it would be “faithful and fruitful.” How glad I am that this phrase finds great favor with the God of the Bible and indeed, He gets the glory that the Ministry can be described in this way since He made it possible (Deuteronomy 7:9; Psalm 31:23, 124; John 15:1-8)! Through so much adversity mostly from carnal, religious professed and compromised Christians, God has enabled us to persevere to do His will in faithfully proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the lost while also teaching and warning those in opposition face to face and using many media tools which today incorporates the internet.
Tens of thousands of human souls here in America and many parts of the earth have been reached by this Ministry in thirty-two years. We will not know the full extent of the fruitfulness our God has caused us to have until standing before Him to receive the rewards of service in the Day of Judgment (Romans 14:10-12; 2 Corinthians 5:9-11). All of what has been done to date has been done with very limited human and financial resources--again, to God’s glory! When I look back over the years, I am amazed at all of the expensive media stuff from billboards to national radio broadcasts God has made a way for us to do with little or no money declaring His uncompromised Word.
Following the conventional market driven wisdom of doing non-profit and Christian ministry, we certainly would not be proclaiming God’s uncompromised Word as it is written. Doing so, of course, is the primary reason relative few Christians have stepped up to support us. Market driven non-profit and Christian ministry sees needs or surveys what people’s felt needs are and seeks to create products and services to address them. Having Marketing in my educational and work experience, I initially saw the unmet need in 1985 for Christian media programming targeting black Americans. I set out to meet it through founding this Ministry and raising funds from Christians to make it happen.
However, after six months, it was clear I was running into the same religious brick wall I had been introduced to as a baby Christian that lacked with other things, Kingdom vision among many black American Christians and churches; toleration of the sin of racism among my white brothers that could not fathom helping me help anyone.1 Thirty-two years later, this state of affairs largely remains intact--though I thank God for the exceptions to it that have supported us. Also, in market driven wisdom I have had my share of closed doors among major publishing entities that equally reject authors that they do not believe have content people--Christian women in particular--will buy.
Praise God, rejection has not been the whole story! At the end of that first six months He answered my “why” prayer by plainly making known my calling to me modeled after that of the prophet Ezekiel (Ezekiel 2:1-3:11, 16-21, 33:1-9). Then, I understood, though I never dreamed I would be suffering faithfully with God’s help at this despised task so long. For I am treated as an enemy by many of those I have been sent to serve in the love and mercies of God. My messages are not my own; they originate with the Lord who does not do marketing surveys to determine what may be popular or controversial (avoiding controversy because of God’s Word has never been possible for His faithful servants including the Lord--Luke 6:26; John 7). He cares that the lost hear the Gospel to be saved; those professing to know Him obedient to retain what they have (1 Corinthians 15:1-2)!
Not the lost nor even the baby or weak in faith Christian, but the faithful who appreciate faithfulness and fruitfulness as God does are those that we seek to help support this Ministry in its work! Where are you? Or do you also as so many in line with the world today no longer see the proclamation of what is considered the intangible Word as of utmost importance in the human condition, but only what is tangible in ministering to physical needs? The Lord preached the Gospel and met physical needs, but clearly made the need to be restored to God the priority (Matthew 4:1-4, 12-5:6, 6:25-34; John 6)! We will not fraudulently change or add to our God ordained mission as a first priority to tug at your heart over human physical needs just to get your money.
The mission objectives of Open Door Communication Ministries, Inc. through its varied ministries has remained preaching the Gospel, teaching God’s Word uncompromised, helping willing churches do their work and being faithful representatives of Christ in the world to whatever end He has willed. Please support us because of these Kingdom rooted mission objectives and the still Heaven esteemed values of faithfulness and fruitfulness this Ministry exhibits.2 You can give securely now on our Web Site, https://www.thestrongmanofGod.org/Give.3 Otherwise, send your cash, check or money order made out to Open Door Communication Ministries, Inc. to: P.O. BOX 56704, Portland, OR 97238. Your gift is tax-deductible and a letter receipt will be sent. Thank you.
1 See my two part August 21-28, 2016 blog, Christianity The Religion Of Men, under the category, Instruction and the October 2, 2016 post, Gifted With A Prophet’s Heart, under the category, Call To Repent to learn about some of my early experiences with Christianity as manmade religion.
2 To see a summary of our recent faithfulness and fruitfulness click the Learn More link on the Operational Needs Page.
3 This Ministry does not see or handle your debit or credit card information and uses PayPal as its trusted, exclusive online payment processor.
As a matter of final reflection on being a Christian forty years, I want to glorify God for my many positive experiences as a member of the Body of Christ on earth! For the sake of brevity in this blog format, I will confine myself to the company of the saints, biblical multiculturalism and music as areas of experience in the Body of Christ that have greatly contributed to the joy of my forty year journey thus far. Though I have written much about how religionists and spiritually immature believers weak in willful sin have brought me grief, I rejoice that occasionally in the journey, I have been truly blessed with being in the company of authentic and faithful saints.
These faithful saints were to me exactly what the Bible teaches: filled with faith and the love of God, obedient and true to His Word, unselfish, ready to give, encourage, edify or help, thoughtful, kind, considerate and eager to serve (John 13:34-35; Romans 5:5, 12:9-21, 13:8-10; 1 Corinthians 13:4-6; 2 Thessalonians 1:1-3). They have been an oasis of refreshment to me at strategic moments in my journey; appearing by divine providence at times like a man making his way across the desert who has seen mirages of water and finally comes upon its reality after many days. They shall remain nameless (lest any should be unnecessarily offended), but precious to me--bless them, Lord!
While I have left these saints nameless, I joyfully declare they are from both genders, different ethnicities, races, tribes, languages and cultures! The experience of this reality has been especially enriching for me due to understanding and fully appreciating God’s global, Kingdom cause in the Gospel of His Son, Jesus Christ, as I wrote about recently in the four-part blog, God Of Restoration And Judgment under the category, The Cause with three others! What an absolutely amazing experience to meet a brother or sister in Christ from a place on the other side of the world who as a sinner, has come to Christ in repentance and faith and loves Him with a passion just like me.
As I wrote in another blog, I was prepared for this biblical form of multiculturalism growing up in Seaside on the Monterey Peninsula of California.1 While racism was extant, the forcibly integrated school system was such that many different ethnicities, races, languages and cultures were brought together. From this experience, I learned to appreciate and navigate among those that were from different ethnicities, races and cultures. What a joy to do this when the opportunities have come in the Body of Christ! However, the operative word here is “when” since a major share of grief in my journey has come from among racially bigoted professed Christians.
To this hour, a number of white Southern Baptist pastors here in the Northwest remain cold toward me for insisting that racism no longer be tolerated among their ranks. I made personal appeals, addressed meetings and wrote about how tolerating racism was unbecoming of those professing such high regard for Christ and the Gospel. Even in this 21st century as a continuing link to the days of America’s secular and church sanctioned practice of racism, my word as a black pastor still carried less weight than that of a white one. This led, for example, in one sad case to having others also receive my correspondence sent to an official so my words would be accurately known.
I agree with anyone that would say this sort of thing should not be among professed Christian brothers. However, until racism is dealt with as the sin it is and truly no longer tolerated in the Body of Christ, such actions will continue to be taken by blacks and other minorities that love our white brothers enough not to allow the guilty to reflexively force us into a less than equal place. Instead of being embittered toward me, such men should have godly sorrow and be deeply repentant realizing that a brother in their midst felt compelled to take extraordinary measures to be heard accurately in the multicultural Body of Christ charged to represent Him (Matthew 23:8; 1 John 3:10-15)!
Another important way I sought as the Lord led to build a bridge of multicultural love among Southern Baptist brothers was through an event called “Praisefest.” Out of what is supposed to be our common love for the Lord, we brought worship teams from churches of various cultural groups together to praise Him through the universal language of music. I never heard anything negative about those sweet times in the Lord which is good. Indeed, some of my most joyful experiences of the Body of Christ as His purposeful, multicultural construction have been marvelously through music! Being an appreciator of all kinds of music came from my departed mother as well as through school days experiences in choirs, bands and later in college and seminary, a radio disc jockey (DJ).
From the European Reformation and church hymns that followed along with the spirituals and work songs of my Christian slave forefathers to Black and Southern Gospel and Contemporary Christian Music my soul has been fully blessed “through it all” (the title of an André Crouch classic) by the multicultural music of the saints. As a DJ in Dallas/Fort Worth, how my spirit soared executing multicultural music sets that ministered to listeners and me! I feel so sorry for professed Christians that have never gone beyond their culturally preferred music to enjoy that of brethren from another culture.2 Thank You, Lord, for the foretaste of eternity with You I have enjoyed thus far, in the multicultural company, love and music of Your Body (Ephesians 5:18-20; Colossians 3:12-17)!
1 Read the December 6, 2015 blog, Celebrating God’s Racial Diversity Initiative, Call To Repent.
2 While I fully understand the worldly idea behind radio music formatting, what a lost opportunity to build a bridge of brotherhood in the Body of Christ and give a multicultural
witness Christian music stations have missed following this model that essentially mimics segregated Sunday morning church services. I am available on a professional
consulting basis to assist any Christian music programmer that would like to do a better job of offering a culturally diverse music mix.
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