Taproot Church

World Missions Next Door

Highline Times posted this article on the front page today and it sent me reeling, so I thought I’d share my initial reaction with you.

“Tukwila school diversity leads U.S.”

This article goes on to tell of a New York Times study just released that found the Tukwila school district to be the most racially diverse in the nation. 65 different languages represented, just to give you some idea.

For you out-of-town readers Tukwila is the little municipality right down the hill from us.

Highline School District (our neighborhoods) also got an honorable mention and is the second most diverse district in King County. When I met the Highline District Superintendent a few months ago he told me there is over 30 different language groups represented in our district.

Here’s the quotes that gutted me in the article for good and sent me to my knees in prayer.

Ethelda Burke, Tukwila Superintendent, says “We have a little United Nations in Tukwila.” She added this profound remark, “For teachers and staff it forces us to examine our daily practices and learn about other cultures.”

I just sat back and prayed. “It forces us to examine our daily practices and learn about other cultures!” This statement comes from the lips of a secular educator just trying to teach kids. Then I thought about my “job.” I’m supposed to be a “missional Christian”. That’s the vocabulary I’m blaring every Sunday but has this region ever “forced” me to do anything? Until today, not really. I have my agenda, my vision for a church, my ideas, my plans, and I’m not sure that even once I’ve let the diversity of this region “force” me to ask if that’s what Jesus wants to do.

As a church we live in one of the most, if not the most, ethnically diverse areas in the nation. As a predominantly white, middle-class, congregation have we #1 realized that the world’s mission field is right across the street from us. That every tribe, tongue, and nation surrounds us in our grocery stores, work places, and recreation and #2 has this profound gift of God’s grace “forced us to examine our daily practices and learn about other cultures?”

The first man to take the gospel to Africa was a highly educated, extremely successful, sexually altered Ethiopian who happened to be led to Christ by an impoverished, uneducated, Jewish man. Two extremes of society brought together by the gospel and made brothers forever. Taproot we will meet both these men someday.

This must be our belief and the DNA of our mission to the south end of the Seattle metro. That the gospel is for every tribe, tongue, and nation and that the Holy Spirit is determined to break down walls via grace, mercy, forgiveness, the cross, and the universal reign of King Jesus over every soul created!

We must let our region force us to rethink our daily practices and the gospel must crush our prejudices. Yes I called us prejudiced. The mere fact that this blog post might be read as nothing more then a farce of an over zealous pastor’s imagination screams of our sinful disbelief in the inclusive nature of the gospel and exposes hearts entrenched in a satanic culture of classes, economic status, educational prowess, and tone of skin color.

I myself confess that even as I write this post my logical, rational mind keeps reminding me that this simply is not the way society works. This isn’t the way churches work. We have invisible boundaries, we have unspoken rules that must not be broken. “We” includes the black man who wouldn’t dare step foot into a white church or the white man who secretly mocks the fervor of worship at the local black church, or an educated man who can’t listen to a pastor with only a high school degree or the high school drop out who’s sure that the Phd in theology has robbed the Presbyterian minister of any power in the Holy Spirit, or the poor man who rails against the rich or the wealthy who quietly disdain those on welfare, or on and on it goes. “We” being sinful, deceived humanity, Christian and non-Christian, who continue to proliferate the lie that one type of person reaches that same type of person, you know, that’s just the way it is, right? This my precious Taproot family is a satanic society and the Kingdom of God operates in an entirely different frame of mind. I’m begging Jesus for a Kingdom mind and for Kingdom mission to be fulfilled through us.

I repent and call us as a church to repentance. As one of your pastors I’m asking Jesus for forgiveness for not believing, for not forcing myself to look at my daily practices and thoughts. I’m forcing myself to rethink my daily practices and at the very least try and learn about the diversity of humanity I’m surrounded by. I’m calling and challenging our church to no less. It starts with humble recognition followed by deep repentance and then prayer for guidance in action.

I pray that we would be effective in reaching the world with the gospel and it just so happens that the world is at our doorstep!

Father God, from whom every family, tribe, and tongue derives it’s name, we bow our knees before you and pray that you would crush our disbelief, overcome our prejudices, and send us into our mission field with boldness. We don’t know how this will work Jesus but we know You and you know every soul so in You we trust. We will obey you, we will listen and not doubt that you have placed a white, middle class group of people right smack dab in the middle of the most fertile mission field in the world for a reason. Lord be glorified and use us to touch every soul on this planet beginning right here in the south end of Seattle. In the name above all names, Jesus Christ, Amen.

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