How was Jackson?
I was planning on writing a book when I got back home from Jackson, Mississippi, but since I lack the time and the funding, I guess I’ll have to settle for a blog post. But I have to warn you, this is not gonna be a baby post – it’s a full-grown mama. So if you’re just surfing the net, clicking through xangas and blogs and whatnot looking for something to catch your attention for a mere 30 seconds or so, simply drag your mouse cursor over to the top right hand corner of this page and the “X” marks the spot. I know only about 5% of the people who visit this website are actually going to read through this whole thing, but that’s okay. This is as much for my own reflection as it is an opportunity for me to share about my experience. For those of you interested in my experiences this spring break, please continue reading and allow me to share with you a glimpse of what I have learned this past week.
I had first heard about the mission trip opportunity at a AACM large group meeting, and then Meson talked to my small group about it. I prayed about the possibility of spending a week in Jackson, and I just felt convicted to go.
Leading up to the trip, I must say that I had gone through the most stressful two weeks of my academic life. The workload was insane, somewhat because I was so far behind in some of my classes and partly because professors simply love placing test after test after test in the weeks leading up to spring break. Six midterms. But I mean, better before the break than after, right?
Soon after most everyone had fled from UT campus Friday afternoon, I decided to go for a walk. With my iPod playing praise music and headphones plugged in and ready to go, I walked aimlessly across the forty acres spanning campus praying, meditating, and preparing my heart and mind for the trip. I’ve gone on missions trips before to Jamaica, Matamoros, and Atlanta, and I must say that I have never really felt “prepared” to leave. But at the same time, I knew God didn’t really expect me to.
Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”
- Isaiah 6:8
Isaiah didn’t ask what he was going to be doing. He didn’t question how God was going to use him. It didn’t matter. He was willing to follow God’s calling, and that’s the important part. As far as expectations were concerned, I only had a few – that God would open my eyes, change my heart, and that I would recapture that deep passion for Him that seemed to be just out of grasp.
Saturday morning finally came, and I met the entire group for the first time. The 9-hour drive was rather painless, except for the fact that my range of motion was reduced to maybe an inch in any direction. Somehow that didn’t deter me from sleeping for all but maybe 20 minutes. The house that we were staying in was pretty nice. It felt like an episode of Real World or something, with me moving in with 20 other housemates.
Since I had slept through the entire car ride, I was wide awake, so I started reading a little book I found in the living room called “The Preacher and the Klansman.” It was a story of John Perkins’ and Tommy Tarrants’ respective lives. John Perkins (who would be speaking to us throughout the week) played a pivotal part in the civil rights movement in Jackson, and Tommy Tarrants was a KKK member who eventually found Christ after being raised to believe that blacks and Jews were all enemies of Christianity. In the end, they meet and actually become good friends. (If any of you are interested in this book, please let me know because I brought back a few copies from Jackson.) Their stories got me thinking about the entire concept of “racial reconciliation’ and what exactly that meant.
The next morning was church time. I was interested to see what church life was like in Mississippi. When we arrived at the Voice of Calgary Fellowship Church, I found out that the church had actually been closed down for a long time because church members refused to “de-segregate” and worship together with people of all races. Also in sight was King Edward’s Hotel, which used to be the best hotel back in the day. Essentially, it was something like the Hilton of its time. The owner shut down the entire hotel because he could not stand the thought of having to accommodate rooms to blacks. The hotel has been closed ever since.
I had heard of stuff like this before, but never to this sort of extreme. Did the church not realize that no matter what color, everyone was worshipping the same God? As
God-fearing “Christians,” wouldn’t they read the bible and see passages such as John 13:34-35?
“A new command I give you; Love on another. As I have loved you, so must you love on another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love on another.”
How could “love” be confused with hatred? How much hatred do you have to possess in order to give up an entire business, equal to millions of dollars in revenue, for the sake of segregation?
I tried to clear my negative thoughts as I entered the church – it wasn’t difficult at all. The church service was my idea of heaven on earth. The scene was exactly what came to my mind whenever I thought about paradise – people of all colors, shapes, and sizes gathered in a single place praising the wonderful God of our lives. Tears came to my eyes as I looked around the room and pictured this first hint of racial reconciliation.
The rest of Sunday was spent like a true “Sabbath” – as a time of rest and preparation for the upcoming week. At night, we watched the movie “Ghosts of Mississippi,” which tells the story of the murder of Medgar Evers, Mississippi’s first field secretary for the NAACP. He was murdered by Byron de la Beckwith, a white supremacist, in 1964, but after two trials ending in a “hung jury,” he was let off the hook until the 1990’s, when he was finally convicted of murder, over 25 years after the murder had taken place.
Watching this movie caused so many emotions to bubble to the surface of my mind. It was depressing to consider the pain and torment that the Evers family had to go through after having to wait over two decades to find justice for the murder. It made my angry to see that Beckwith didn’t even display a trace of remorse after shooting a man in the back in the presence of his family. It was shocking to realize that such things had taken place in the past forty years, which really isn’t that much time at all. It scared me to think that members of the KKK called themselves Christians. In their minds, they were doing “God’s work” and fulfilling His will by fighting against “Satan’s workers.” They believed that their actions were justified by Scripture. How could someone become so misguided in their faith? Couldn’t they see through the lies and the holes in their faith to see that their whole mindset was wrong?
What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, “Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.
- James 2:14-17
It occurred to me that even my faith in God has holes in it similar to those of the KKK. It was easy to interpret the Bible wrongly if one wasn’t careful, especially if society has a say in it. Of course I am not justifying anything the KKK did, but I am simply trying to say that the world they lived in had a large impact on their perspective on life, especially racism. Looking at the big picture, the KKK was talking the talk, just not walking the walk. I tried to think about how many times I failed to do the same.
But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.” Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do. You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that – and shudder.
- James 2:18-19
Faith without actions is useless. It was time to “do the Word” and to “stop playing church” like the pastor had said that morning at church. Instead of worrying about how the members of the KKK could have gotten so mixed up in their beliefs, I realized that I had to worry about myself and fixing my own problems with matching my actions with my faith.
I came to the disgusting conclusion that racism was not just a part of ancient history that I read about in textbooks, but it remains a strong presence even in today’s world. Racism did not end in the 1968 with the passing of the Civil Rights Act – society has come a long way since the civil rights movement, yes, but it still has a lengthy ways to go.
During small group led by Corey, my group discussed some of these topics. I shared with Mark, Benji, Samantha, Rachelle, and Nick Kendall about how there was such a thin line between the idea of “celebrating” our differences and being racist. Cultural pride is good and healthy to some extent, of course, but when one group of people considers themselves superior to others, then the problems arise. We talked about the topic of stereotypes, and I become conscious of my own faults in this area. My inner thoughts brought a sickening feeling to my stomach because I knew stereotypes were nothing more than subtle forms of racism. I thought about our present-day situation, and I wondered whether society is truly integrated now. Are we anywhere close to being racially reconciled? Or do we just accept our differences and live in a state of ignorance, choosing instead to stick to our general stereotypes of each other?
I took a quick look around the room and wondered what things would have been like forty years ago. For one thing, such a sight would not be possible. We had such a unique group of people of different ethnicities, different cultures, different backgrounds, all in a single room in Jackson, Mississippi. A mere forty years ago, that would have been impossible.
We then discussed some of our goals and expectations for the trip. When it came time to pray, I prayed that God would allow me to not see my time in Jackson as a “missions trip” because it was so easy to fall into a “missionary” mindset in which one would fee like they were there to simply use their own talents to help the community. Instead, I prayed that I would see the trip as a “learning experience” so that my heart would truly be open to God’s teaching.
On a side note, that night the “fantabulous five” was formed, also known as “the five people who are always the last to go to sleep” – Koller, Nick Liao, Meson, Rachelle, and me. Basically what happened the entire week is the guys would play VC until some theological question popped up, and then we would talk about it until we all got tired. Oh, and all the while Rachelle would just be at the other corner of the room journaling.
Anyways, back to the story. The next morning at 7:30, all 21 of us trudged across the street and into a small room to hear John Perkins speak to us. We met another group of kids from Westmont College in California. John Perkins walked into the room, and the whole atmosphere changed. I couldn’t believe this guy was 75 years old because he was so lively. He shared with us about evangelism and obedience.
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
- Galations 2:20
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
- Acts 1:8
I learned that God honors obedience. And while it is important to follow God’s calling in our lives, more often than not, evangelism does not entail going out to far-off places to serve and witness. On the contrary, John Perkins marveled at the importance of serving in your home community. If you develop your own community, people will come to you. We are all God’s workers, and it’s time we really learn to act like it. It’s sounded so simple – think of Christ before you think of yourself. The church does not function to meet your needs, but those of Christ’s.
Elizabeth Perkins, John Perkin’s daughter, took us around Jackson for the rest of the day. She knew so much about the history and the different places in Jackson; it was amazing. It made me wonder what I could say about Sugar Land if anyone ever wanted a tour of that wondrous place. Where would I bring them? First Colony Mall? Sigh. Anyways, we visited a medical mall first. It was such a good idea that I couldn’t believe no one else had thought of it. Basically the building used to be used as a shopping mall, but after other malls popped up and people lost interest in it, some guy came up with the brilliant idea of making it into a medical mall. If you go there, you can find help with basically anything having to do with your health. There’s even an emergency room! Sick.
After a huge buffet lunch, we went to Mendenhall, Mississippi, where Elizabeth Perkins grew up. As she brought us around the small community, I tried to imagine having a childhood like hers. Her family was one of the first to try to bring integration to schools. She told us stories like how one of her brothers would be called “little nigger boy” every day in school…by his teacher. She told us how her mother would be pulled over by the police officer every single day of the school year to ask for her driver’s license. They would look for any possible way to incriminate her and throw her in jail. Somehow none of this deterred the family from pushing on towards their goal of desegregation.
How I longed for such faith. I admired John Perkins so much after hearing all that his family had to go through. So much suffering, so much opposition, but nothing could stop his resolve. What an amazing faith…
Medgar Evers’s house was next. The driveway looked a little different than I had remembered from the movie, but I looked behind me and I saw the exact spot where the rifle had been fired by Beckwith – the sight sent chills through my body. I listened to the guide talk about how the Evers’s family had to completely alter their lifestyle because of the danger they faced. They could not live life according to any type of schedule. Every week had to be different. They would alternate days when they would go shop for groceries. Medgar would leave and return home on different routes. The porch light would only be turned on when everyone was safe inside the house. He would get out of his car on the passenger side because it was closer to the back door. I couldn’t even imagine what it would have been like to have to live like that.
We returned home, played some ball, and then it was party time. John Perkin’s youngest son, Wayne, was returning home after five years in prison, and we were going to help welcome him back with a barbecue. It was a great night of fellowship with everyone working with the John Perkins Foundation.
On Tuesday morning, John Perkins spoke to us about rebuilding communities. We had to allow God to use us. He shared about how the greatest sin has come from urban centers because there is not enough cohesion in the community to help kids lead righteous lives. It would be a vicious cycle of destruction unless the community itself was restored. Hearing him speak about this really led me to think about how God could use me in the future. Where would he lead me? What direction was I going? Was he calling me to ministry elsewhere? Or should I focus on my home community?
It was then time to work. We split up into different groups, and I was lucky enough to get put with Wayne. Man, this guy is too awesome. He reminded me of Carl Winslow from Family Matters. He was a hard worker, somewhat soft-spoken, but when he did speak, everyone listened.
So Koller, Johnny, Benji, Abey, Nick Liao, and I spent our morning raking leaves, loading a trailer, and cleaning up a house, to put it simply. After a quick lunch, it started to rain. We were pretty disappointed because we wanted to be put to work, but the rain slowed down a little bit so that we could work. We went with Wayne to clear out a house.
That night after dinner, we found out that John Perkins would be speaking to us at our house because he was leaving the next day to go work somewhere else for the rest of the week. So we all gathered around to hear him speak about leadership.
Every Christian is called to lead. This was something I had never really heard anyone say, but it made sense. God had a calling for each one of his children to help fulfill his purpose in some form or fashion. A leader is someone who turns a vision into a passion. A leader has a passion for God, and in turn, for allowing His will to be done through their lives.
I still had this topic on my mind the next morning when we heard John Perkins speak for the very last time. The talk was somewhat scattered in topic, but the overall message was certainly clear: use your life for God because He is simply amazing. God is eternal – he has no “real” concept of time. Our entire lives are just a single whiff of air in His eyes compared to the endless notion of eternity. The fact that God decides to be a part of our momentary lives at all shows everything you need to know about His love.
I learned that fearing God is the beginning of knowledge. You have to understand and try to conceive how powerful and majestic He really is before anything else truly makes any sense at all.
Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
- James 1:2-4
If you face problems with joy, there’s a good chance you’ll solve them. Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right? We all know God would never throw something at us that He knew we couldn’t handle. The important thing is learning from the experience and changing your life according to it.
John Perkins also shared the importance of using your time wisely and being “impactful” with your life. I looked at Dr. Perkins and I saw an image that I wanted to strive to attain at the end of my life. He told us that when it was time for him to be with the Lord, he would die a happy man, knowing that he had lived his life for God. How awesome would that be? I want to live my life like that. Regardless of any of my weaknesses or any disadvantage I might have compared to others, none of that would matter. In Dr. Perkin’s words, I wouldn’t let those things cause me to minimize myself – my sole goal in life would be to serve God.
We said our goodbyes to John Perkins, and then we put on our work gloves and went to work again. This time the job was basically to completely renovate and reorganize a shed close to his home. We had already emptied all of the shed’s contents the day before, and looking at the giant mound of stuff piled up on the lawn reminded me of a junkyard. We split up into different groups – one group would make a new floor with old doors and boards found out in the yard, another group would measure and saw off chunks of wood, and a final group would organize everything in the shed.
I wish someone had taken before and after pictures. I looked at the final end result after a day’s worth of work, and I couldn’t believe it was the same place. The new floor was remarkably sturdy, all the wood was cut, and everything was organized inside the shed. And all the while we had a great time of fellowship while getting a lot of work done.
That night, after dinner, Corey ordered everyone to put on some shoes and go outside. I thought he was joking at first – it was drizzling and windy. But he insisted that we go out, and we all grudgingly obeyed and filed outside. Corey then had us line up in a single file line, shoulder to shoulder, and then he started the activity. The exercise consisted of statements such as
“if your parents helped you with homework, take a step forward” and
“if you were pulled over by a police officer and you knew your race would not count against you, take a step forward.” I soon realized what the game was about, and as Corey continued with statements concerning race and gender, I found myself near the front of the group.
I finished third in line behind John Briley and John Marlow. After quickly rushing back inside the house, we sat around and shared what we had learned through the activity. I, for one, experienced a reality check. Whenever I had heard the word “discrimination,” I would only think about race and ethnicity. It had never really occurred to me that the gender discrimination in this world was so great. The exercise also revealed to me how many blessings I should be grateful for.
John Sleeba then handed out worksheets for us to fill out as part of a different exercise. This one focused on our individual cultures. It was cool listening to what each person had to share about their own cultures growing up and coming from such different families. We had an awesome time of sharing in our small groups about our different cultures.
The next morning, we watched a video about a man who returned to his hometown in Haiti to restore the community there. Afterwards, I couldn’t help but think about how God could use me and AACM to really change the UT. I wanted to be able to dream and pray for big things to happen on campus. I yearned for that kind of faith.
Everyone then participated in another long day of work. Again, I wish someone had taken pictures because the day ended with drastic results. We cleaned up all of the trash and cleared up an entire area of junk and thorns, just to name a couple of things.
Skipping ahead a few hours to that night, Rebekah shared about all the different types of sins. Private and corporate, individual and group, unrighteous and unjust. We made a table and listed private to individual sins in one corner (gossip, slander, lies, murder), private to group sins in another (Saul vs. Christians, Hitler), corporate to individual in a third (lynching, Pharisees vs. adulterous woman), and corporate to group in the last (KKK, genocide).
Usually when the topic of “sin” is brought of, we discuss the first box. One person wronging another. It’s harder to think about the other types of sin. Rebekah reminded us that Christ died for all sin, not just the individual. By focusing only on those, we ignore 75% of all sin. Why is this? I think it’s because people can “understand” individual sin. We can easily picture one person sinning against another, but when we broaden sin to include the other three categories, it is harder to conceptualize. We like to take credit when things go bad and point fingers when sin is involved. No one wants to take any of the blame for something such as corporate sin.
For instance, if a group makes a sinful decision or commits a sinful act, no one in the group wants to come out and say
“I’m sorry, I represent the group’s sin, please forgive me.” People always think,
“Oh, it’s not really my fault because I myself didn’t make the decision.” As far as corporate sin is concerned, in the real world, the only hope for full reconciliation of corporate sin is the cross. Without Christ being involved, no one would have any motivation at all to admit wrong and try to fix the problem. The world needs Christ.
During small group afterwards, I asked Corey something that had been on my mind for a very long time. Why was Intervarsity at UT split up by race? I had spoken to a couple of the Californians earlier about Intervarsity, and I found myself feeling defensive when it came to the topic of how the fellowships were divided. I could easily see how an outsider could see this practice as a form of racism or discrimination, the highest form of hypocrisy.
Corey responded that it was celebrating our individual differences was essential to racial reconciliation. Many people come into college not really knowing their own cultural identity, and if they just joined a multi-ethnic fellowship right away, they would simply conform to the ways of the majority of the fellowship. Instead of bringing their unique individuality to the table, they would learn to just fit in with everybody else.
So what about churches? Martin Luther King, Jr. once proclaimed,
“Unfortunately, most of the major denominations still practice segregation in local churches, hospitals, schools, and other church institutions. It is appalling that the most segregated hour of Christian America is eleven o'clock on Sunday morning, the same hour when many are standing to sing: "In Christ There Is No East Nor West.” What was the difference between a church and a campus ministry? It was the same resounding question again: what was the difference between celebrating our differences and being discriminatory? Corey responded by saying that one of the goals of Intervarsity is to celebrate our differences so that we may learn to use them and bring them all together to worship God. Basically, splitting up the fellowships by race is a way of preparing people to see the effect and want multi-ethnicity in the church.
The next day kind of blurred by me. While working and packing, I tried to start to pull together everything that my mind and heart had taken in over the span of the week. On the ride back home, I read an article in my binder that I was supposed to have read earlier in the week. It was called “Foot Soldier,” and it was written by Spencer Perkins, John Perkin’s oldest son who had died of a heart attack in 1998. In the article, Spencer wrote about the experiences he and his siblings had of growing up in segregation and their part in leading the fight towards integration. He talked about all the mess that his father had to endure in his fight for equality. One instance that really stuck out was an incident where John Perkins was lured by the police to the Brandon jail to make bail for some people who had been wrongly imprisoned:
…Curry Brown, Joe Paul Buckley (my best friend’s dad) and my father rushed the thirty miles to the jail to make bail. It was an ambush. That night Curry and my father were beaten to within an inch of their lives in the Brandon jail (Joe Paul, who was older and suffered from heart trouble, was only roughed up a little).
By morning our only clue to the events of the previous night had come over the phone in a rhetorical question posed anonymously to my mother in the wee hours of the morning: “Have they hung ’em yet?” All we knew was that Daddy and the other men were somewhere between Mendenhall and Brandon, and we had to find them…
…I can still see vividly what my father looked like in that Brandon jailhouse; I suppose a sixteen-year-old boy would never be ale to erase such a memory. His clothes were torn and bloody. His shirttail was half in, half out as if he had tried to tuck it in when he heard we were coming. His eyes bulged as if they were going to pop out of his head. They were as big as silver dollars. He had a lump on his head about the size of a fist (a few days later, a doctor drained a cup of blood out of it). His face was full of fear – but there was more there, much more. My sister Joanie figured it out as soon as she saw him. It was humiliation.
This is my toughest memory – the humiliation my father suffered. Although it was he, not the rest of us, who had been physically tortured, it might as well have been our whole family. We all felt the pain. An old biblical proverb sums up the situation well: “The fathers eat sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge” (Ezekiel 18:2)…
In the months after, I watched with interest as my father struggled through a crisis in his faith. Frankly, I hoped he would conclude that the gospel and Christianity were for white folks. I hoped he would finally see the light and agree with Malcolm X that black people could not afford to be Christians because it cost them their dignity. I hoped he would decide that we should have nothing more to do with white people.”
Over the next two years I struggled with these issues. I went off to college with many questions unsettled in my head. If Jesus says that the essence of Christianity is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind and to love your neighbor as yourself, then is it possible to love God without loving your neighbor? As far as we could tell, no one in the white community loved us, but most claimed to be Christians. Was it fair to say that they were not followers of Jesus? Did they read the same Bible as we did?...
…As I sat in that church listening to him speak to an all-black audience, I felt disappointed. One side of me wanted some new insight that would justify my anger and bitterness. Got plenty of insight, but it was not what I wanted to hear. What I got was almost too simple. I listened as Daddy acknowledged that he had not been preaching the whole gospel, but that now he was determined more than ever to live the rest of his life preaching and living a gospel that would burn through all the racial, social and economic walls erected to keep people separated – some even in the name of God. He went on to say that a gospel that reconciles people only to God and not to each other cannot be the true gospel of Jesus Christ.
“Before my Brandon jail experience,” he said, “I thought blacks were the only victims of racism. But when I saw the faces of those men in the jail, twisted by the hate of racism, I knew that they were victims too – I just couldn’t hate back.”Wow. I was speechless. My eyes filled with tears as I tried to envision the pain and suffering that the Perkins’ family had to go through. I prayed that God would lead me in seeking after that kind of faith.
What a week. I had prayed that God would allow me to see my spring break experiences not as a mission trip but as a learning experience, and He answered my prayer. He met and exceeded all of my expectations. God had opened my eyes and my heart and revealed to me a side of Him that I had never seen. My God is a God of justice. I returned to campus with something I hadn’t had when I had left a week earlier – a renewed passion for Christ.
So there is my trip in a nutshell. A large nutshell, true, but trust me, I actually tried my best to be concise. I could literally go on forever talking about what I experienced in Jackson, Mississippi. For those of you who prayed for me this past week and gave me financial support, thank you SO MUCH. Your efforts are very much appreciated. For those of you who honestly read through this entire thing, I am very impressed. Hopefully me sharing all this did at least some good in at least one person’s life. But for those of you who didn’t really grasp what exactly I had learned on the trip, here are the Cliffs Notes:
I learned that God is good. I learned that we are all part of a long journey toward racial reconciliation. I learned the importance of celebrating our differences. I learned that racism is not a thing of the past. I learned that faith without actions is useless. I learned that God honors obedience. I learned that God wants to use each one of us. I learned that every Christian is called to lead. I learned that God is good.
