What You Don’t Know Can Hurt Us All

It was President Jimmy Carter who quipped that the first thing a church has to do when it decides it is going to help the poor, is to find a poor person to help. It’s true. Many of this country’s churches are isolated from the poor. Comfortably and safely tucked away in suburbia, having an encounter with real poverty is not a daily exercise. And to be honest, many church folks are not all that interested in facing poverty on a daily basis.

Many churches, likewise, have been largely insulated from the racial conflict of this summer. Suburbia, oddly in the 21st century, can be very segregated. Thus, it’s hard to be a part of understanding and involving yourself in racial reconciliation when you don’t know anyone who is a person of color.

And if a predominately white congregation makes it a mission to “find a black person to help,”…