My daddy used to drive a Deuce and a Quarter

What kind of car does your pastor drive?

The most recent "Fantastic Voyage", Tom Joyner's week-long "party with a purpose" fundraiser for historically black colleges and universities aboard a Royal Caribbean ship, featured a seminar titled, "Changing Face of the Black Church". The panelists were Dr. Bobby Jones, the noted gospel music impresario, Christopher "Play" Martin of Kid 'N' Play fame, political pundit Roland Martin and his wife Reverend Jacquie Hood Martin. The facilitator was Soledad O'Brien of CNN. ThisYouTube clip features an excerpt from the seminar. There are some provocative things said, especially from Roland Martin who says that he'll "cuss a pastor out" for asking for his W-2."

For me though, the most compelling thing shared was the observation from O'Brien, who said that she had crisscrossed the country interviewing pastors and that people were driving cars "like investment bankers I know on Wall Street." She wondered out loud if the cars driven by the leaders of congregations represented a contradiction to the image of Jesus Christ. I don't think this is hard one. Let your mind trip for a moment. Can you imagine the Son of God rolling up to your church in a Lexus, Mercedes, or that old standby, a Cadillac? Wearing a $1000 suit with crocodile shoes? No, I didn't think so. Now Martin thinks that the cars are a reflection of a pastor's motivation. I would not go that far, but I have heard from many a brother, on the corner and from 'round the way, brothers who do their dead level best to avoid church at all costs. Many of them, noting the local preachers' fine cars and clothes, feel that many pastors have "pimp tendencies" and can't be about the Lord's business for tending to his own. What do you think? Or better still, what kind of car does your pastor drive?

Who's gonna tell it?

In New Haven, there have been eleven murders since the beginning of the year. The police have made no arrests. Not one. The silence surrounding these deaths called to mind an Old Testament story.

Moses has died and Joshua is now the leader of the people of Israel. He has the task of taking them into Canaan, the land of promise. It is a fearsome assignment, for the land was to be taken by force, there would no doubt be resistance. Despite the challenges, Joshua and the people forge ahead, taking the Lord at His word, that He would make a way for them. And He does so in miraculous fashion, creating a dry path through the Jordan River so that they can cross over. He enables them to tear down the walls of Jericho through the power of their collective roar. With these demonstrations of God's power and human nature being what it is, it is not wholly surprising that Israel took for granted the small city of Ai. Having defeated the people of Jericho, the few in Ai would pose little trouble. No need to "shock and awe", just a few troops would do. When Ai turned the tables and sent Israel's would-be conquerors running for their lives, Joshua was beside himself. Now that they had been defeated and embarrassed by so small a foe, what would happen to them when the big boys in the 'hood heard about it? The Lord's response: Israel, there is sin in the camp; this is why you have been defeated.

I know I run the risk of over spiritualizing the story, but I would say to all of the brothers and sisters in the 'hood who are being victimized by those among us who have no problem gunning people down, there is sin in the camp, and it must be dealt with. Pastors, we must create enough community within our congregations that it will flow out into our neighborhoods. If those in possession of the truth about the perpetrators of wanton violence do not feel safe then we must work to make them safe, for if they are not safe, we are not safe. Especially if folks are getting shot at 8:30 on a Monday evening.

Don't get it twisted. Somebody's got to snitch.

Snitching in black and white

A comment posted in response to William Kaempffer's May 7^th report on the formation of a new intelligence gathering unit within the New Haven police department strongly suggested that crime is forever in our city, and that the citizens of the "'hood" would never part their lips to help bring criminals to justice. The commentator implies that perpetrators are known, but will never be snitched or squealed on. That may or may not be true, but I do know that there are circumstances when folks in the hood appreciate a snitch: when the villain or suspected ne'er-do-well is white.

I lived in Chicago, and then Evanston, the suburb immediately to the north of the Second City for over twenty years. I lived there in July of 1999 when white supremacist Benjamin Smith gunned down Ricky Byrdsong, the former head basketball coach of Northwestern University as he jogged with his children. His shooting hit close to home, for I had just met Byrdsong a few weeks before his death. We ran into each other while we were each chaperoning our kids at a local carnival in Skokie. We talked about parenting and church, and the possibility of his joining a local Christian men's group that I had formed, so the news of his murder was a shock. The nature of his murder, shot because of the color of his skin, cut close to the bone for me also because my feelings were still raw, a year after the 1998 lynching of James Byrd and the subsequent trial and guilty verdict of the three white men accused of the heinous crime. Byrd and Byrdsong, along with the other victims of Smith's three day rampage, were targets simply because of the color of their skin or their ethnicity. Never did "there but for the grace of God" seem so real to me.

So visceral was my sense of vulnerability and anger that I wrote a pointed letter to the editor of one of Evanston's local papers that placed the responsible for these crimes at the feet of the white community that spawned people like Smith. I reasoned that I did not live in the tony community where Smith grew up. Because of that reality chances are that I would not have worshipped at his community church, or shopped at the same supermarket, or played in the same local parks. No, I could do nothing to counter the twisted mindset that made it okay for Smith to kill people like me. No, the people for that particular assignment looked like Smith. They went to school with him, played with him, maybe even worshiped with him. It was these people who needed to step up and snitch and squeal and deal with the aberrant element in their midst.

Why would the same not be true in the black community? Yes, the police need to be on their job, but chances are, when the murder victim is black, the murderer is, also. And somebody knows something or someone mixed up in it. If the white community that hatched a Benjamin Smith needed to buck up and take significant responsibility for his attitudes and subsequent actions so, too, must the black community in New Haven must face into the harsh reality that there are brothers and sisters in our midst who must be held to account for the evil that they do. Something has got to give. Somebody's got to snitch.