0024 - The Weight - Jasper Peters - When The Church Fails
Show Notes:
Acknowledging failure is not easy to do in any circumstance. This is specifically true when it comes to discussing the Church’s failure to live up to its call from God to do the work of justice. Reckoning with the failure of Christians to make justice efforts more than mere words may be a hard pill to swallow for some, yet it could also be the most faithful next step on the road to change. Are not confession and repentance essential parts of the Christian life?
Joining us to discuss this is Rev. Jasper Peters who serves as Lead Pastor of Belong Church. Belong is a United Methodist community in Denver, Colorado with an orientation towards the work of justice, a work that has animated Jasper’s life and calling. Jasper leads with an acute recognition of the ways that the Church has not lived up to goals of invitation, embracing, and personal/societal transformation. With the marriage of mercy and justice, Jasper and Belong seek to help people grow in faithfulness to the work of the Kingdom of God.
Chris and Eddie talk to Jasper about the need for the Church to recognize both its failure to do the work of justice and the unique opportunities that exist to repent. Specifically, they talk about the importance of recognizing the true, unromanticized state of our past and present as we press on towards a more faithful future. This conversation is one worth engaging multiple times as we learn from Jasper’s story, wisdom, and vision for the people of the Body of Christ.
The Weight - Afterthoughts:
We've realized that a lot of great conversation actually happens AFTER we say goodbye to our guests and turn the microphones off. So, we decided to turn the mics back on (and a camera) and create a new segment called, Afterthoughts.
This will live on our new YouTube channel and you can find our Afterthoughts on this episode NOW!
Resources
Eddie references a video of Jasper’s where he reflects on why the term “racial reconciliation” is not an accurate representation of the work that the Church needs to take on. Watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH3OyppyaRE
Jasper speaks to the diversity and justice work of Rev. Dr. Stephany Rose Spaulding and her organization Truth and Conciliation. Learn more about their work here:
https://truthandconciliation.org/
Jasper is the Lead Pastor of Belong, a United Methodist congregation in Denver, Colorado devoted to drawing people into the work of the Kingdom of God. Follow them online: https://belongchurch.org/
Follow Belong Church on Social Media:
https://twitter.com/belongdenver
https://www.instagram.com/belongdenver/
https://www.facebook.com/belongdenver
Follow Rev. Jasper Peters on Facebook: https://bit.ly/2EPuVgt
Full Transcript
Chris McAlilly 0:00
I'm Chris McAlilly.
Eddie Rester 0:01
And I'm Eddie Rester. Welcome to The Weight.
Chris McAlilly 0:04
Today we're talking to Jasper Peters, who is pastor in Denver, Colorado of the Belong Church.
Eddie Rester 0:11
He's a church planter of church that is diverse and inclusive and committed to justice. And so we had a great, wide-ranging conversation with him about what that means, about his history, his family's history. We talked a little bit about cancel culture and racial reconciliation in this moment of racial reckoning.
Chris McAlilly 0:34
He talks about his past in corporate America and offers some, I think, interesting perspectives on corporate philanthropy.
Eddie Rester 0:45
This is one of those episodes, I think, that I'm probably gonna have to listen to it multiple times, just to begin to think through all of the dozens of threads that are here for us in this episode.
Chris McAlilly 1:01
I don't have anything else to say. We need to let people listen to it.
Eddie Rester 1:04
But let me, before we let them listen to anything, if you're listening, go ahead, make sure you're subscribed. I would encourage you to follow our social media channels. We've got Twitter and Instagram. Do we have Facebook? I'm not even sure if... we've got Facebook, Cody says. But I also want to thank the people who make all of that happen, because we never really talk about the people behind the scenes. We've got Billy Rainey, Emilie Bramlett, Elise Pope, Rachel Bernheim.
Chris McAlilly 1:26
We've got a whole crew.
Eddie Rester 1:32
We've got a whole crew that make this happen. We want to thank them for that. So if you're out there, share this episode, and when you do thank one of them.
Eddie Rester 1:42
[INTRO] Let's be honest, there are some topics that are too heavy for 20 minutes sermon. There are issues that need conversation, not just explanation.
Chris McAlilly 1:50
We believe that the church is called to engage in a way that honors the weightiness and importance of these topics for how we live faithfully today. We'll cover everything from art to mental health, social injustice to the future of the church.
Eddie Rester 2:01
If it's something that culture talks about, we need to be talking about it, too. [END INTRO]
Eddie Rester 2:07
We're here today with Jasper Peters. Jasper's a pastor out in Denver, Colorado. Jasper, welcome to The Weight today.
Jasper Peters 2:15
Thanks so much. I'm really grateful to be with you.
Eddie Rester 2:18
We're grateful for you as well. We were talking before we started recording about the weather in Denver, and it's a little better than it is here. So we're jealous.
Chris McAlilly 2:27
It's hot and humid in Oxford, Mississippi today.
Eddie Rester 2:30
So you're a pastor out there, but you're also the son of pastors. So tell us a little bit just--we're gonna get to talking about your church, you planted a church--but tell us just a little bit about your story.
Jasper Peters 2:45
Absolutely. You speak rightly. I'm the youngest of eight kids, very sort of big, intertwined Brady Bunch family, and both my parents are pastors. I say honestly and sincerely that my mother is my favorite theologian. In fact, I'm grateful that I have the week off from preaching because she's going to be preaching in my church this week. So she inspires me greatly.
Jasper Peters 3:14
But one of the most interesting things is that she wasn't in ministry when I was born. I can remember when she acknowledged the call to ministry and started her seminary journey. And I was, I think, seven years old when she started studying at Iliff School of Theology. And when I was about eight years old, she pulled me aside, and I'm surprised that I remember this so distinctly, but she pulled me aside and said, "Hey, when you get to seminary, make sure that you have a faith community to root you and ground you, because it's going to challenge you." And I remember thinking, "Mom, I'm eight." Like, "I'm really... This is really not..."
Eddie Rester 3:48
"Seminary's a long way off."
Jasper Peters 3:50
And I had no, like, I had no concept of what I wanted to do, and it definitely wasn't going to be, you know, ministry per se, but I remember thinking in that moment, "Oh Mom, you're so silly," and she has proven to have that sort of that deep wisdom throughout my whole life. And she would say that her journey into ministry was greatly influenced by knowing and being married to my father.
Jasper Peters 4:16
My father went into ministry when he was 19 years old in outside Washington DC, in the suburbs of Virginia, and has been in active ministry since then. His career has included things like being the head of the NAACP in Connecticut where he lived for a time, but especially his work in the civil rights movement and with Dr. King. So here in Denver, in February, historically, you know, his phone doesn't really stop ringing for interviews and quotes and comments and engagement. There's a kiosk, not a kiosk, there's a display in one of the popular shopping centers about Black history and Dr. King and my dad's photos are always prominent there.
Jasper Peters 4:56
And so, growing up, I've always just sort of had this sense that not just ministry, but a deeply theologically rooted ministry and very socially oriented, active ministry have both... both of those things have been a part of my understanding of my faith really from the beginning.
Chris McAlilly 5:20
Have you been in and around Denver for most of your your life and ministry? Can you tell a little bit about that journey from being eight to being a pastor?
Jasper Peters 5:33
I suppose that deserves more than an M dash, a quick jump. Absolutely. So I grew up in the Baptist Church, New Hope Baptist Church was the church my parents pastored together. We were... It's really interesting and ironic here in Denver, because the church that was my home church when I was a child, though I have moved, though many years have passed, though I'm now a part of a different denomination, it's only seven short blocks away from our building now. And so in some ways this, this journey into ministry has been one of sort of departure away from, but also a really important return to.
Jasper Peters 6:17
I did have a sense of maybe wanting to go into ministry but also quickly after my parents' divorce--and if you've had the experience of divorce in a church setting, whether you're in leadership or whether you're just in the church--I think folks have a sense of how dramatic and damaging that can be to everyone involved. After that I, you know, I went into this teenage period of saying, "Well, I don't," you know, "I don't believe in God," I shouted to the heavens. Who I was speaking to, I couldn't tell you, but I did. I looked at my ceiling and said, "I don't believe in God, and I don't want any of this," and, you know, declared myself an atheist. And I had this several-year journey of God showing me what grace looks like, in little but consistent and profound ways, until I was 17.
Jasper Peters 7:04
And I had this profound experience that made clear for me that I didn't have to go into ministry, but I felt an invitation into doing this work, without knowing what it would look like or precisely what the next steps needed to be. In fact, my next steps ended up being sort of interesting, not necessarily at all towards ministry. I did my undergrad, and then I spent some time working for Apple, and then I got recruited to go work for Microsoft, which was an interesting transition.
Eddie Rester 7:32
Going to the enemy.
Jasper Peters 7:34
Correct. Believe it or not, I lost friends over that transition. People took it really, really seriously.
Chris McAlilly 7:40
That's a big rivalry.
Eddie Rester 7:42
Yeah.
Jasper Peters 7:42
It is, right? Like I didn't think friendships would swing on it, but alas. We can find any reason, I think, to be angry with each other. So working with these great big companies, doing corporate social responsibility, philanthropy work on behalf of them, it taught me so much about the way that power and influence really work in the world. And sometimes for, you know, for great, great benefit but also sometimes for the detriment. And that realization, as well as life sort of bending and turning and curling in such a way that it was possible, I ended up quitting my corporate job as a single dad with a mortgage in order to go study about Jesus. And on paper, that looks like a really dumb idea. And yet, and yet, it turned out to be the sort of this really amazing entry into a ministry that I feel is really timely.
Eddie Rester 8:44
Well, let's talk about that. Let's fast forward. You've planted a church, I think it started in 2017. Is that right?
Jasper Peters 8:52
That's correct.
Eddie Rester 8:52
So, tell us a little bit about the church. It's called Belong, there in Denver. Tell us kind of the impetus behind and the idea, maybe some of the values that guide it.
Jasper Peters 9:05
Yeah. Belong is a uniquely United Methodist church plant, because it is not something that I... Planting wasn't something I was really seeking to do or thinking about doing in any sort of short-term. Eight weeks after I graduated seminary, six weeks after my first appointment, my DS called and said, "Hey, what if we were to think about this?" and invited me to think and pray about church planting. And I was honestly committed to saying no, because I didn't feel like I had a call or clarity around it. But that little prompting--and also, let's be honest, the power that a DS phone call holds--it encouraged me to say, "let me think about it and pray about it and see if there's something that I feel like God would have me do in this moment."
Jasper Peters 9:55
And I would love to tell you an amazing, miraculous story about spending time on my knees in my closet and having just sort of the road ahead opened up to me but, in honesty, it was sitting at tables over coffee or beer with friends, with friends from seminary, with friends from different, from a totally different religious traditions. And sitting and saying, like, "here's what hurts so much about not just the world right now, but the church. Where is the church, quite honestly, failing?" And I recognize that some folks might hesitate to start a conversation with, "Where's the church failing?" but our commitment was to say, "where's the church falling short or failing? And is there a way that we can be constructive about that?"
Jasper Peters 10:40
And so it really it came down to three things that were critically important for us. One was that the church be diverse. If we really take seriously this thing that Jesus talked about, this kingdom, this idea of the reign of God, we're all there together. You can see images in the book of Revelation, this great image at the end of the culmination age of the eschaton, where we're all there together worshiping. So why does it... Why is it still the case that Sunday morning is the most segregated out time in our country? Why is it the case that we still have proportionally statistically not nearly enough Black leaders, not enough Black female leaders in churches and positions of authority, right?
Jasper Peters 11:23
So the recognition that we're all called to be together, and yet we either go to Black church or we go to Hispanic or Latinx church, or we might go to an Asian church community, or we might go to regular church, right? So whiteness is both centered and it's invisible. And to me and the folks at the beginning of this project that was a problem. That was a way in which the church was falling short of the glory of God, that way in which the church wasn't living into its potential.
Jasper Peters 11:51
And we also recognized that the church had this amazing opportunity to be inclusive, that we're largely failing. And for us, we decided that the belovedness, the welcome, the welcome-ness, the called-ness of LGBTQIA folks was never going to be called into question. We began with the assumption that we are all beloved children of God, called to follow, to be transformed, and to serve.
Jasper Peters 12:20
And so we thought about diversity, so to speak, but trying to think more practically and realistically about it, thinking about inclusion, but also this idea of justice work and recognizing that so often the church will --honestly not often enough will the church talk about justice. So often the church talks about itself and its own interests. Sometimes the church talks about justice, and very rarely do we actually engage in justice work. What I mean is, if to you all or whoever is listening to this, if someone were to challenge you... If I were to say, "I'm going to hand you a $100 bill, and I would like you to make sure that 10 people have lunch today," the longest part of your journey--if you live anywhere near a city or even in the suburbs--the longest part of your journey would be finding a place to break the hundred. And then you'd really, really quickly find the opportunity to help feed needy people. And then you can feel good about yourself and feel accomplished.
Jasper Peters 13:17
But if I were to challenge you to, say, not for the whole city, not for the whole state, not for everywhere, but if I were to challenge you to change what hunger looks like and how it operates in a two-block radius from your home, for most people, I'm not challenging them for the afternoon. I have given them a challenge that will last a lifetime. Right? And justice work, it's that second sort of thing. The justice work that the church really, I think, has an opportunity to do is not the work that we can commit to on a Saturday and then it's going to be in next Thursday's newsletter, right? Like it's the work that requires this ongoing and persistent commitment to seeing the world transform.
Jasper Peters 13:57
And so being, wanting to be diverse, wanting to be inclusive, wanting to be justice-oriented, we said we want to build a community that we know is imperfect, that we know will still have a lot to figure out. But we want to build a community that takes those things seriously. And that has been the beginning and foundation of the work that we've done since then.
Chris McAlilly 14:17
There's so many different threads I'm interested in exploring.
Eddie Rester 14:21
[LAUGHTER] I know.
Chris McAlilly 14:22
I think that I want to come back to the sense of being called, or being provoked or compelled. I'm also the son and grandson of pastors. And what that meant was a lot of people as I was coming along, you know, looked at me and said, "Oh, you could be a pastor, like your dad," and I really struggled with "Is that coming from God? Is that coming from somewhere else?" There are a couple things in what you said, or I guess three different dimensions that I hear in your story that I wish would maybe kind of talk a little bit more about. One is
Jasper Peters 15:03
Yeah.
Chris McAlilly 15:04
the breakdown kind of within, I guess, the push within corporate America to recognize the need to not only develop a social conscience, but to be actively offering people a chance to be a part of or to associate with a certain brand in socially conscious ways. And the way in which that is both like, you know, it kind of mimics what the church ought to be doing, but also can be, kind of, I don't know, kind of corrupted by power and influence in some ways. I'm fascinated by that part of your story.
Jasper Peters 15:40
Yeah.
Chris McAlilly 15:41
Maybe I'll ask the other questions in a moment, but that I would love for you talk a bit more about that.
Jasper Peters 15:47
Absolutely. As you mentioned this, this scene, I wish I could visually recreate for you, but I'm very new to this role that I took at Microsoft. And I took the role because they said, "instead of selling stuff, we want to give you $100,000 a year to give away to local organizations, to teachers, to people doing cool stuff with our technology, and use that money as a way of building relationship and building trust and helping us to actually kind of make good on this commitment that we've made to do good in the world." And that was really exciting. And as I say that sentence again now, it feels so strange coming out of my mouth, and it feels so disingenuous in a way.
Jasper Peters 16:30
And I'll explain why. A few months into this role, I found myself invited by a nonprofit to come to an event. And it was a Colorado Rockies baseball game, and so I find myself in a suite that--and I've been to suites before but I wasn't aware that they made them like this--like, it was even nicer than I anticipated. And the food was even nicer than I anticipated. And people constantly at our beck and call. And I'm looking around and I'm recognizing, you know, people of note, people who are of notoriety. And then I find myself sitting next to the CEO of this particular very well known nonprofit that will remain nameless. And I asked, I said, you know, "I'm new to this work, and it's so fascinating to me. And I wonder what you think about corporate philanthropy? How do you think about that?"
Jasper Peters 17:17
And he said, he chuckled a little bit. And I could feel this moment where he was trying to decide whether to sort of tell me the truth or give me a line. And I feel he told me the truth in this moment. He said, "Corporate philanthropy doesn't exist. There's no such thing as a corporation just sort of, for its own good for its own willingness, just sort of working to do good in the world. There's always a desire to look out for its own interests and to create future revenue streams." And he says, "As the head of a nonprofit, I've made peace with that. And I understand that, and I recognize that my organization has the opportunity to turn those funds and those resources--wherever they come from, whyever they've come--my organization has the opportunity to turn that into something that we really believe in."
Jasper Peters 17:59
And it took years for me to really unpack this a moment. But what I get now, years later, what I take away from this is, yes, it's amazing when organizations, you know, whether we're talking about big, powerful, influential churches or conferences or out in the world, it's amazing when people are willing to give up their time or the resources and whatever else. And also, I'm always working to ask the simple question "why?"
Jasper Peters 18:27
And not to be cynical, and not to shame anyone, not to dismiss anyone. But I always I think it's important that we ask the why. And the even more important part, I think, is that second part of what he said, which is, "I understand that my organization can take this and turn it into something good." And I was reminded of where in scripture it talks about God taking what the word meant for ill and using it for good. Right. Right.
Jasper Peters 18:53
So the church's role in this particular sense, I think, is to find every opportunity we can to take resources, opportunities--if it's funding, if it's learning about, whatever it is--our goal is to, yes, to take these things but let's be aware of where they're coming from and why. But if we can take them in good conscience, our biggest task is to learn to translate that into actual, practical, factual good for children of God in our communities. And so yeah, I could go on, but it's this really fascinating... it feels like a knife's edge, that it can very easily cut either way. And, yeah.
Eddie Rester 19:33
Well, you can use it or you can be abused by it. I guess that's kind of the the two sides. That you can be owned by what you're seeking to turn to good.
Chris McAlilly 19:42
And I think that this... I'm fascinated by this knife's edge because it really is kind of the heart of a lot of the conversations we've had on The Weight about the relationship between the church and culture. Because you have to have an awareness of the way in which culture and kind of cultural forms and ways of being can be corrupted. And yeah, I mean, you can move away from that and just say "we're not going to go there," and kind of retreat into a kind of monastic style, ascetic spirituality where we're not engaging in the practices of the world.
Chris McAlilly 20:18
But there's also, that's deep, I mean, for followers of John Wesley or followers of mission-minded kind of Christianity. You always have to move back out into the world, and to do so in a way that hopefully will be aware of the power dynamics that are at work, but also seeking ways to restore, redeem those kind of, you know, forms of power. Does that make sense?
Jasper Peters 20:48
To me it does. Absolutely. And there's, to me, I think the quiet part that I wish we would say out loud more often is that when we fail to do that, for all the ways in which the church fails to to go back into the world and offer every ounce of the grace that we've received, and every way that we've done that, can we simply acknowledge we've fallen short? Because if we can be honest about that, without shame, without trying to drag anyone through the mud, but can we call each other in and say, "Hey, you know what? There on the church's watch, some really terrible things have happened. On the church's watch, some really atrocious things have happened. And how can we, in this moment, show up and offer not the solution to every problem--not can we be the heroes of every situation for community--but can we at least offer up the grace and the love and the resources that we've received for the healing of the world?"
Chris McAlilly 21:48
I heard someone say recently, "it's more important to be forgiven than to be successful." And to be forgiven is to be kind of offered grace, offered, frankly offered, salvation, a kind of chance at a restored future. But there's an acknowledgement that that pursuit of success or the acquisitive will of the, you know, of the modern, just the modern individual with the resources of capitalism at their disposal or social media or whatever, that we do. We harm one another.
Chris McAlilly 22:26
And then there's, you know, I guess the church... part of what it means to, you know, to speak the truth in the midst of culture is to confess, to admit failure. I guess another dimension of your kind of calling that I'm really fascinated by is this sense of pain or hurt, you know, that there's... I think for young people, especially, this is important to hear that the place of your sense of calling or invitation might actually be the place where you get pissed off, you know, or the place where you see hurt and pain in the world. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Jasper Peters 23:07
Absolutely. I think there's perhaps a slight generational misunderstanding. And I'm careful when I talk about generations, because as an elder millennial, I recognize there are some ways in which we talk about these generational divides are true and other ways in which they're wildly inaccurate. So having said that, very often, I will hear from some of the older generations and I'll make this delineation: not from older Black folks, because they've seen a different set of experiences and they maybe understand this a little more. But very often, I've heard folks say, "Well, you know, we don't have to be so angry. We just need to be loving." And they create this juxtaposition, right, between "well, we can either be loving, or we can be angry."
Jasper Peters 23:53
And I think that often what's been called anger is actually just a righteous indignation, right. It's a fiery love. It's not just angry for the sake of being angry. I'm, I'll be honest, I'm not angry at Christians who don't share my view of the movement for Black lives. I'm angry at Christians who seem to not understand the basic idea of compassion, right? Like for when we have to explain, when people are hurting, we should at least pay attention and offer a little bit of care and healing.
Jasper Peters 24:27
Right, like, so for me what I have seen motivate the people in my community, in the Belong community, right, who are largely millennials and Gen Zers and then sort of Gen X after that. What I have seen motivate people is a degree to which we are sick and tired and fed up with the ways in which the world seems not to be what we were told it was. We were told, we were told that the world was sort of moving in this trajectory towards more justice and more peace.
Jasper Peters 24:59
And we were launching our initial services, our first worship services in the fall of 2016. And I know that seems like two decades ago for so, so many of us, right? But if you remember this sense of anger, frustration, rage from so many who felt unheard and unseen. And I think the role of the church, if we say that there's no place for that, if we say there's no place for this, then we're completely ignoring the Christ, who wept at brokenness and who also flipped over tables and cursed fig trees when they failed to offer up the fruit that the God promised through them. Right? That'll preach on a different day.
Jasper Peters 25:38
But there's this frustration that, yeah, it can either lead us to a sense of cynicism, and resignation, we can sort of, you know, throw up our hands and say, "Well, I don't care. And I don't care about this, and I don't care about that, and I don't care about the church," and our whatever degree to which compassion has been a part of our lives, it just sort of becomes numb and cold.
Jasper Peters 25:58
Or. In this moment, especially, I think the church has this capacity to say, "yes, let's take the things that are making you angry, and let's let those... let's root ourselves in the love that God offers us. And let's use what would make you angry and instead, let's use that passion to actually move forward and be disciples in a way that begins to transform the world." The things that you are angry about aren't eternal. And they're things that God calls your actual attention and work to, not just your anger.
Eddie Rester 26:06
Let's push, because I know you said a big part of why y'all created the church was for justice work, and as I hear you talk about compassion and really rooting in the places where people are angry... We're in this moment of racial reckoning, racial strife right now. So what does that look like for the church right now? How do we continue--not doing like you said the hundred dollars, give 10 people 10 bucks--but really, how do we focus in right now, hearing the anger and the frustration and the pushback, and really become people who are loving justice and living justice?
Jasper Peters 27:18
Absolutely, I'll say this. One, when we talk about anger, I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge that anger gets to work differently for white people and Black people in most of our society and also in our churches. And there are ways in which I am not conveniently allowed to get angry, because being angry in certain spaces can cost me. It can cost me socially. It can cost me professionally. And it could also cost me my life. And this is something that Black people know and I would be remiss if I didn't name it explicitly for this white audience in this moment.
Jasper Peters 27:54
So that being said, the church has this amazing opportunity to either continue doing what it's done poorly for a really long time or to admit and to confess this thing that's been broken in the American church since the inception of the American church and acknowledge that. Earlier we talked about this confession moment. Since when are Christians afraid of confession? Bree Newsome, the woman who sailed the South Carolina Capitol to pull down the Confederate flag, and I believe we can call that a prophetic move, only five years removed from it, but we can remember how controversial it was, and we can also recognize that what this moment has brought us. Bree Newsome tweeted the other day, challenging white people to complete this sentence: "Because of slavery I have _____."
Jasper Peters 28:55
There's a way in which we can be honest in the church in this moment. And it's not about beating people up. And it's not about beating people down. It's about calling them in and calling them to compassion and love. There's a way in which the church can say, "We have allowed white supremacy to exist, unchallenged and unchecked, in too many of our churches for far too long." These people who are virulent white supremacists, who in their professional lives--and whether they're in law enforcement or whether they're in government or whether they're in the private sector--there are too many people who have had their racist inclinations unchallenged, while they sought to be disciples of Jesus. And that is a failure of the church.
Jasper Peters 29:44
And if we can't admit that, I don't know that there's much that we can do. I don't know that there's a whole lot of ground to move forward. And if we can't admit that, wow, the people who follow after Jesus have had decades and even a couple centuries of opportunity to speak really loudly and clearly about what's happening. But we also recognize that it was uncomfortable and it might cost us something, and it might cost us the size or prevalence of some of the things we've come to value. And too many have been too quiet for too long.
Jasper Peters 30:11
If we can say that, if we can admit that, if we can have that moment of confession in the church, then all of a sudden, we have all of the opportunities in the world to say, "Okay, well, so what can we do?" Because we're not saying white supremacists are not allowed. People who engage in white supremacy are not allowed. We're not saying racists aren't allowed in the church. We're saying that perpetuating racism is no longer a thing that the church will participate in. And we will welcome people who have engaged in racism and we will help them as disciples of Jesus to see it, to repent of it, and to begin to work against the forces of evil, injustice, and oppression.
Jasper Peters 30:47
Sometimes we treat it as though, wow, that's... as though we're high school students. And this must be some sort of like dissertation work, like, "Oh, it's so far beyond us." But in reality, I think if we allow the church to simply be the church and do what the church is supposed to do, while we're also telling the truth about our past, our present, and our future, then we have untold possibilities, untold possibilities for compassion. I'll pause there.
Eddie Rester 31:12
I'm just thinking about a video that you put out back in June that I watched as I was getting ready for this. And it echoed something that, when I was in seminary, Dr. Willie Jennings was one of my professors, and it echoed almost word-for-word what he said about racial reconciliation is not our goal. Because it it requires us to think of a world that never existed, where whites and Blacks existed on an equal playing field. And so you think of it... and he really, for me as a young, white kid from Mississippi listening to that, who had been through, you know, dozen racial reconciliation services at that point probably in my life, it really began to shift the ground for me. And it's still shifting. So help us understand, what's the hope for us, if this racial reconciliation is an unrealistic thing because it's grounded in a truth that never was, what is our leaning forward? What is that for us, after we begin to tell the truth?
Jasper Peters 32:23
Absolutely. So I think you've hit the nail on the head, and I don't want to be simplistic, but I do think that that truth telling is a piece of it. I'll say more. A seminary colleague, Dr. Stephany Rose Spaulding, she's down in the Colorado Springs area, she does work I believe called the Truth and Conciliation project and if I'm incorrect on that, I'll make sure to get the right info for your show notes. But that work to me is so fascinating, because it one, it acknowledges precisely that, what Jennings and so many others have said, which is there's no such thing as reconciliation because there's nowhere for us to return to. We can only move forward into something that better approximates the kingdom of God.
Jasper Peters 33:08
And to me, in order to get there, the truth telling is the most important thing. The way that I've recently said it is this: my whole life, there have been things that--you can imagine two circles, one directly inside of the other. There's then the larger circle, which is all the things that I think are true. And then the smaller circle is all the things that I think are true that I can say in front of, or about white people. What can I say about my experiences? What can I say about the things that I've experienced that will be heard and honored as true and real? And it's... I'll give you an example. In seminary, I had a terrible experience with a financial aid director who threatened to take away some of my scholarships because I complained and asked too many questions, who later admitted that she didn't like helping me because she was intimidated by me. Right. So it came as close as it's sort of can to, like... I know, I'm 6'1, but I'm pretty much a teddy bear, I think.
Jasper Peters 34:12
So in this moment, what I discovered in seminary was, there was not nearly enough room or as much room as I wanted for me to tell that story and have it be heard and understood. And in some spaces, the more I told this, the more I said, like, "Hey, this is really wrong," the more resistance I got, right. So there are certain things that Black people have known and understood to be true for a really long time that white people have, in general, have been unwilling to hear. Police violence against African Americans is not new. It's just getting recorded.
Jasper Peters 34:47
And so the initial invitation for white folks who are wanting in communities who are primarily white, who are wanting to begin to do this work, is please stop being afraid of the truth. Or at the very least, be willing to sit with an idea that is uncomfortable for you, even an idea that you might find distasteful, be willing to sit with it for a while and pray about it for a while. And perhaps if there's a willingness, right, for that smaller circle to get bigger, for the number of things white folks are willing and able to hear about how other people experience the world without dismissing it or belittling it or gaslighting people. The more that we're able to do that... The more that we're able to do that, the better off we will be and then we can get to the conciliation work, this conciliatory work. Then we can get to the constructive and building work.
Eddie Rester 35:41
And doing that, just sitting with and listening and holding, really requires--which we were talking about earlier--a depth of compassion.
Jasper Peters 35:51
Absolutely.
Eddie Rester 35:52
And willingness to love even when we, even when it's hard. I know Chris is sitting here staring at me like
Chris McAlilly 35:59
I'm like, ooh, ooh, ooh, I'm ready to talk. I'm ready to talk. I've got a question!
Chris McAlilly 36:02
I'm interested in exploring... I think one of the things that you said, I mean, there are two different things I'm kind of thinking about. One is just prayer. What does prayer look like for you? I want to come back to that. Before we get to that, I'm interested in, you know, I think that there is a fear that the dismantling or the reckoning with kind of the racial dimensions of American or church culture, that will involve a kind of, I don't know, it's exploring, I guess the differences between kind of the broader cancel culture that very much is alive and well in America. And then what's different between that and kind of the gospel culture that it sounds like you're trying to create in your church that would involve truth telling, conciliatory work, and really kind of a reincorporation of someone who I mean, you know, racists have a place in the church. On the other side of that, of that word, it sounded like... I'm not framing it very clearly. But there's a question in there that I think is worth exploring.
Jasper Peters 37:23
Yeah, absolutely. Right. Like, and I'm mindful that, I think, it was just yesterday that I saw a news that John Ortberg is stepping down from Menlo church because of handling a situation really, really poorly and choosing, I would say, sort of, in a choice between personal discomfort and institutional brokenness, right, they made the wrong choice. And so I think you're right. We have, what's really, really visible, these moments in which someone falls or falls from grace or does something for which they should rightfully be criticized and be held to account, right. Sometimes it's not cancel culture, it's just consequences, right? Like if you do these things, there are certain things that are consequences.
Jasper Peters 38:16
But I think the thing that is not nearly as visible via media, via Twitter, via whatever, is whether or not these folks were simply called out or whether they were called in. Whether they were told "You, something about you is distasteful. And so, be gone with you." Or if there are people who are, who had the capacity to love that person, to invite them to learn what they might not have known and to repent and to commit to being different in the future, acknowledging the impact of their actions and going forward.
Jasper Peters 38:48
I thought I was totally prepared to be to do all of this work, and I have made more mistakes than I can count or would like to recount. And the only reason that I'm still able to do this work is because the people around me had the capacity to call me in and help me to understand the ways in which I can grow, as opposed to simply naming publicly or privately, "hey, you did this thing and it was and it was wrong."
Jasper Peters 39:15
And so there's this way in which the church seems to react--some of the church--react negatively against what you call cancel culture, right, against saying, "hey, this person made this mistake and, it's maybe inappropriate for them to still hold this position or to have this platform" or whatever the case might be. And I think the church pulls away from that, when instead we should say, "Oh, my gosh, absolutely. There's this mistake. And we are in the business of redemption and reconciliation. And this is where we shine." And so we're going to be honest about the things that were broken, and we're going to celebrate even more the things that we see restored over time.
Jasper Peters 39:55
And so to me, again, it's not... We're making the mistake in trying to push it away and saying, "oh, we don't need to do that." We do need to speak truthfully about people who need to be held to account. We do need to speak honestly about people and movements that have caused harm. And we can we can call each other to be better as we move forward. Or the alternative is, we block each other, unfriend each other, and speak ill of each other, you know, forevermore, it seems like.
Eddie Rester 40:23
The key word I think you just that really stood out to me there, you used the word "and." We do call sins sin. We do call them out. And, and we talk about reconciliation and restoration and how, and again, the church is called to a different life than corporate America. We're called to a different life, I think sometimes, than the political sphere and other parts of the corporate world and we forget that sometimes and we just feel like, "well, this feels good, and the rest of the world is doing it. So we'll follow that, as well."
Chris McAlilly 41:00
It's hard work, though. And I think it requires resources. I wonder for you, I want to come back to that question of prayer. Prayer is something, I mean, you talked about it in the context of sitting with something that's very challenging and pray about it. But also I think, I guess... just talk through kind of what sustains you in the work that you're doing from the perspective of prayer. I know that a lot of people struggle with that reality, especially folks who are action-oriented, who want to see the world become a different place. Where, where do you, what are the wells that you draw from?
Jasper Peters 41:36
Absolutely, I mean, this is a... This is an interesting question. How many months? Four and a half into what effectively, for me and my family, has been something of a quarantine with folks who are at risk in our family and feeling just the weight of all of the things that we recognize everyone else is sort of feeling, at least some version of, in this moment. I'll admit that I pretty early on in this pandemic moment, I found it hard to pray because I simply didn't know what to pray for. I didn't know how to ask God to show up. And so my prayer became my simple and desperate default prayer, which is, "God, I feel lost, please come and find me." And that has been such a sustaining prayer, because I get to talk about the ways in which I, in which I'm feeling lost, right.
Jasper Peters 42:28
And there are some days that--this is gonna feel far afield based on our previous conversation--there are some days where I recognize my own mental health is in a place that makes me feel lost, right. But there are other days when the state of the world and the headlines and the prospects for the future of our collective society and the work we're trying to do together, when all of that feels like it's at jeopardy. When the things that I that I know that my father and his friends showed up for and some of them died for, when I see those things slowly sort of being chipped away as if they they almost never were, the prayer I pray is, "God, come and find me because I feel lost," and I'm able to both remember two important things: one, that I'm never lost, that God is right here. Every time I pray that prayer, it's like clockwork, I can immediately remember, "Okay, God is here, and I am here, and that's what matters. And therefore, what comes next." Right?
Jasper Peters 43:21
The other thing I realize is there are plenty of ways to feel lost in the world, but that doesn't mean that we can't keep moving forward. I remember the quote from Frederick Douglass who, I think that this is right, is that, "for 20 years I prayed for freedom. But some of that freedom didn't come until I started praying with my feet." So there is this sense that, especially for folks who feel action-oriented, for the folks who are looking at the world and saying, "Okay, something's got to give," please don't mistake prayer for inaction. Please don't mistake prayer for some sort of pious navel gazing.
Jasper Peters 43:56
Like, I pray when I'm at protests right now. I pray when I'm talking to people who have lost loved ones, who've lost jobs, we're praying while we're also making sure that those folks have food to eat. We're making sure that the people who are crying aren't crying alone. And so I think that for me when praying has become hard, and especially when praying has been hard because it has felt like it doesn't do anything, I've tried to let my prayer life come to life in the way that I show up with and for other people.
Eddie Rester 44:27
Jasper, thank you for your time today. There's so many other things we could talk about. We didn't even get to talk about your dad playing pool with Martin Luther King, Jr. I'd love to hear those stories at some point.
Jasper Peters 44:37
Those are fun ones and and we'll have to do this again sometime.
Eddie Rester 44:42
Absolutely.
Jasper Peters 44:42
Thank you all for the space you're creating and the conversation you're facilitating. Thank you very much.
Chris McAlilly 44:47
Thank you, Jasper.
Eddie Rester 44:48
Blessings to you and to the Belong church family.
Eddie Rester 44:51
[OUTRO] Thank you for listening today. Go ahead and follow us on Facebook and Twitter. And go ahead and hit the subscribe button on whatever platform you use to listen to podcasts.
Chris McAlilly 45:02
This wouldn't be possible without our partner General Board of Higher Education in Ministry. We want to thank also our producer Cody Hickman. Follow us next week. We'll be back with another episode of The Weight. [END OUTRO]