Michelle McClain-Walters has traveled to over fifty nations and inspired thousands to follow God. For many years she was the director of the prayer ministry at Crusaders Church in Chicago, as well as a house prophet and a member of the apostolic team. Her book Chosen: Appointed for Favor, Destined for Greatness was released this September (2019) — her sixth book under Charisma House, a leading publisher of Charismatic-Christian books.
With all these accomplishments, Michelle knows a thing or two about operating in a male-dominated profession. Her experience in church culture and study of godly women in the Bible have granted her a deeper understanding of what it means to be a God-honoring woman in leadership.
You Don’t Have to Be Like a Man
For Michelle, this isn’t a challenge. She loves to wear makeup and high heels. She jokes that you can smell her perfume a block away, and the more glitter and rhinestones, the better. But she also recognizes that femininity goes deeper than accessories.
In her writing, Michelle draws true feminine qualities from the Bible, learning from women such as Deborah who boldly led others in the military.
“Femininity is power and authority under control. Deborah’s lifestyle is a lesson for all women who are looking to define themselves and fully use their potential. You can be gentle and assertive. You can inspire and not intimidate,” she says.
Michelle acknowledges how, in today’s culture, it has become less necessary for a woman in ministry to adopt more masculine mannerisms to be considered equal. She encourages women to embrace their femininity, with or without nail polish.
Re-vhealed photography (LaVincent Nelson)
Your Meekness Means You Submit to God—Not Men
In her book Chosen, Michelle describes a time she traveled to another country to minister alongside a group of other prophets. She was the only woman. They shared a stage where those with a prophetic word stepped forward. But Michelle kept getting pushed further to the back.
“I just moved myself to the back and tried to stay out of the way,” she says. “God was telling me just to stand there and be silent.”
She obeyed even as the room rose with energy. Then the leader called Michelle to the front. She stepped forward and said what she felt God had been speaking to her. Instantly her words resonated with the people. Healings, deliverance, and other miracles happened right there.
Michelle was thankful that God had softened her spirit to be submissive to Him.
“If I had not listened to God, I don’t know what witness I would have given another woman who was watching and learning how to operate in predominantly male spaces. If I had not listened to God and tried to grab a mic and prophesy without His permission, I would have been in the flesh, and there’s no telling the damage my ego and disobedience could have caused,” Michelle says.
Some may encourage meekness. Some may encourage boldness. For Michelle, either can be glorifying to God when it’s under His leading.
Your Team Includes Men
God created men and women to work together. When God observed Adam alone in the garden, He said, “It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper suitable for him” (Gen. 2:18, MEV).
Michelle urges Christians to go back to the Bible to understand better what makes healthy man-woman relationships:
“Men and women alike were created in God’s image and likeness. Our society changes its expectations of us from generation to generation. This is why it must be His Word alone that we use to correct the distortions and devaluing of the differences between men and women. His Word for us does not change.”
By all means, acknowledge injustice, both on a larger, historical level and in the more personal sphere. However, Michelle distinguishes the difference between desiring justice and desiring vengeance. She encourages Christians to seek reconciliation in spite of past inequality and dysfunction.
As the effects from the past are being reversed, Michelle foresees more women working in ministry.
“We are being healed and delivered from tradition and religion that have held us captive for centuries. The Lord is releasing His favor and grace upon us to fulfill His purposes in the earth,” she says.
She poses this question to women: “Will we submit to the process of being trained and commissioned to fulfill these purposes?”
Michelle McClain-Walters is the author of Chosen: Appointed for Favor, Destined for Greatness(Charisma House, 2019). She is the author of The Prophetic Advantage and five books about biblical women of influence, including The Esther Anointing and The Deborah Anointing. Michelle has appeared on LeSEA Broadcasting Network’s The Harvest Show, Lifeline Church TV, and many national radio broadcasts. She and her husband, Floyd Walters Jr., currently reside in Orlando, Florida.
In June 2017 — in response to the planetary climate crisis — Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu and Taoist religious leaders joined hands with indigenous peoples from five tropical countries to form the Interfaith Rainforest Initiative (IRI) — devoted to protecting the world’s last great rainforests.
Since then, IRI has worked to engage congregations of all faiths around the globe in an effort to, through political pressure, protect the rainforests of Brazil, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Indonesia, Colombia and Peru — accounting for 70 percent of the world’s tropical forests.
During Climate Week at the United Nations in New York City starting September 22, IRI will unveil its Faiths for Forests Declaration and action agenda, jumpstarting its global campaign to harness faith-based leadership and the faithful in recognizing tropical forests as “sacred” and humanity’s obligation to provide stewardship to these great bastions of biodiversity.
IRI recognizes the staggering scope of the challenges that lay ahead — to create and energize a worldwide interfaith movement that will successfully pressure national governments to act on climate — national governments that have long backed industrial agribusiness, mining and timber extraction within the world’s last great rainforests.
Looking toward heaven in the Indonesian rainforest. The Interfaith Rainforest Initiative (IRI) is an alliance of Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu and Taoist religious leaders, their congregations and indigenous peoples working to save the world’s last great rainforests. Image by Rhett A. Butler / Mongabay.
An ambitious global interfaith partnership, targeting five rainforest countries in Asia, Africa and South America, is emerging to harness interdenominational congregations worldwide in demanding aggressive climate action from national leaders.
The Interfaith Rainforest Initiative (IRI) is an international alliance bringing the leverage of faith-based leadership and moral urgency to a global effort to slow and reverse tropical deforestation by shifting the priorities and policies of world leaders.
Scientists say that meeting the forest conservation goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement is vital to preventing catastrophic global warming of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100. But reducing deforestation as a means of slowing the pace of global warming is seen as increasingly difficult — with the objective hampered by the rapid expansion of industrial agribusiness, mining, and timber extraction, all heavily supported by corporate and financial interests and national governments.
IRI was formed at the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, Norway, in June 2017 as Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu and Taoist religious leaders joined forces with indigenous peoples from the five tropical countries. Promoting the rights of indigenous peoples — whom environmentalist call the true “guardians of the forests” — is viewed as essential to the cause.
The countries on which IRI is focused contain 70 percent of the world’s remaining tropical forests, and include Brazil, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Indonesia, Colombia and Peru — nations which are daily seeing their capacity to regulate the earth’s climate diminished by rampant deforestation due to wildfires, mining, timbering, agriculture, roads, dams and other infrastructure construction.
“This isn’t about churches planting trees,” said Joe Corcoran, IRI program manager with UNEP, the United Nations Environment Programme. “We want to say clearly and definitively to world leaders: religious leaders take this issue of forests and climate very seriously, and they are going to be holding public officials accountable to make sure these issues are addressed.”
During Climate Week at the United Nations in New York City starting September 22, IRI will unveil its Faiths for Forests Declaration and action agenda. Its website will promote the next phase of organizational capacity building, or the congregational “entry point,” as Corcoran called it. Religious leaders and places of worship will be asked to endorse the IRI declaration, access educational materials and learn how to participate in political activism.
Also during Climate Week, millions of young people, led by Swedish teen Greta Thunberg, are expected to participate in global strikes aimed at pressuring policymakers into action.
Corcoran says that IRI’s “movement building” initiative comes at a critical moment, as wildfires rage in Amazonia and the Congo, and as the world turns its attention to New York. There, on September 23, UN General Secretary Antonio Guterres will make a single demand on the world’s nations: stop delaying and commit to aggressively cutting your carbon emissions, and dramatically increase the aggressiveness of your climate action plans now.
Young Munduruku warriors in the Brazilian Amazon. IRI has joined with indigenous groups in five tropical countries to apply political pressure and help preserve indigenous claims to ancestral lands and forests. Image by Mauricio Torres / Mongabay.
Irreplaceable rainforests
“Twenty years ago there wasn’t even a thought connecting religion and ecology,” recalls Mary Evelyn Tucker, an environmental scholar at Yale University with appointments in its schools of forestry, religious studies and divinity.
And it’s likely that this moment in history marks the first time the interfaith community is stepping prominently into the political arena to help significantly reduce rainforest deforestation. The IRI declaration is seen as a rallying point for faith leaders and their followers. It decisively states: “Tropical deforestation is a crisis of existential proportions. We either deal with it now, or leave future generations a planet in ecological collapse.”
But for IRI to be successful, Tucker explained, faith leaders must preach and promote a “change of heart and conscience” that values tropical forests not only for the ecosystem services they deliver to humanity — such as carbon sequestration and climate stabilization — but also for the sake of conserving God’s creation. With more than half of the Earth’s plant, animal and bird species living in the world’s rainforests, s it is vital people of faith understand and value the irreplaceable creatures that keep tropical forests thriving.
“Religious leaders can come onboard for practical reasons,” Tucker noted. “But they can also come onboard because the goals are sacred. That’s why their voices are essential.”
This was the central message offered up by Pope Francis in June 2015 in his unprecedented Catholic teaching document, Laudato Si, On Care for Our Common Home. Concerned by the extinction rate driven by human activity, Francis wrote: “Because of us, thousands of species will no longer give glory to God by their very existence, nor convey their message to us. We have no such right.”
In an early September 2019 swing through southern Africa, the pope denounced the exploitation of natural resources for the economic gain of a few, and decried rampant deforestation in Madagascar: “The last forests are menaced by forest fires, poaching, the unrestricted cutting down of valuable woodlands.”
In August, Laura Vargas, the coordinator of IRI Peru, convened meetings and workshops with three dozen national interfaith and indigenous community leaders in Madre de Dios — a biodiverse hotspot deep in the Peruvian Amazon, now being rapidly deforested by illegal gold mining.
Vargas, along with Bishop David Martinez in Puerto Maldonado, the capital of Madre de Dios state, have joined with NGOs and other environmental activists to lobby the historically environmentally-lax Peruvian government to act decisively to protect the already badly ravaged Madre de Dios region from the miners.
“This is a very important moment and we have to act,” Vargas said from Lima. “This is as important as the Mass or religious activity. Caring for the forests is essential to our faith.”
A Coquerel’s Sifaka lemur (Propithecus coquereli) in Madagascar. The interfaith gorup is trying to curb climate change and preserve sacred rainforest biodiversity. Image by Rhett A. Butler / Mongabay.
Untested political capital
IRI received a boost in August when its Faith for Forests declaration was endorsed at the Religions for World Peace assembly held in Bavaria, Germany, an interfaith organization that represents more than 900 million people in 125 countries.
“We were floored by the reception we received — the commitment across faiths and the recognition of indigenous rights in fighting deforestation,” said Corcoran of the event.
Today, partners to the Interfaith Rainforest Initiative include Religions for Peace, GreenFaith, the Parliament of the World’s Religions, the World Council of Churches, the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology, Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative, Rainforest Foundation Norway and the UN Environment Programme.
But IRI and its goals aren’t finding easy acceptance everywhere. Efforts to organize in Brazil and the Democratic Republic of the Congo have been slowed thus far by political leaders who are actively promoting deforestation as part of their pro-business policies. However, Corcoran reported that small lobbying successes are emerging in Colombia and Peru.
“IRI Colombia held a briefing with 11 members of Congress in July,” he said, and negotiated an outcome document “where government representatives in attendance agreed to include wording around a commitment to ending deforestation in the forthcoming National Development Plan for Colombia.”
The Rev. Fletcher Harper, an Episcopal priest and the executive director of GreenFaith, a U.S.-based interfaith environmental coalition, is cautious; he has seen religious interest in the environment wax and wane over the years. For all its ambition, IRI has its challenges, he said.
“There are places on the planet, Brazil being one of them, where religious groups are part of the problem, as well as the solution,” Harper noted. “You have some conservative Christians working in support of deforestation efforts.”
The administration of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, for example, is moving quickly to “develop the unproductive Amazon,” and is also heavily backed by Evangelical Christians.
Harper said that in places like Brazil and Indonesia, IRI would do well to “lift up the voices of religious moderates and conservatives” who represent a more politically potent segment of those countries’ religious populations. In Indonesia, he added, “there are moderate and conservative Islamic leaders who want to be involved in this [conservation] effort.”
One challenge to truly building momentum, Harper said, will be in getting religious leaders of all sects to use their political capital in a way that most haven’t yet tried.
“Does this effort stand a chance?” he asked. “I think it does. But around the world, that question is still up in the air. Religious groups have more potential for political influence than they have yet deployed. But it’s going to take a level of education, resolve and scale of action that is altogether larger and different than we’ve seen so far.”
Justin Catanoso, a professor of journalism at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, is a regular contributor to Mongabay. Follow him on Twitter @jcatanoso
Indigenous Ticana children in Colombia. Their future depends on people working together around the globe to conserve rainforests. Image by Rhett A. Butler / Mongabay.
In 2010, two economists claimed that graduates of historically black colleges and universities, or HBCUs, suffer a “wage penalty” – that is, they earn relatively less than they would had they gone to a non-HBCU.
In an early draft of the paper, the economists – one from Harvard and the other from MIT – argued that while HBCUs may have served a useful purpose back in the 1970s, they were now, by some measures, serving to “retard black progress.” The reason why, they suggested, is that traditionally white institutions may have gotten better at educating black students and that there might be value in “cross-racial connections” when it came time to get a job.
The paper, which relied on data from the 1950s through the early 2000s, generated negative headlines for HBCUs. For instance, The Wall Street Journal called HBCUs “academically inferior.” The New York Times warned readers about the “declining payoff from black colleges.”
As a scholar who has researched HBCUs, my colleagues and I have found contrary evidence: Students who went to HBCUs do not suffer a relative wage penalty. In fact, we found that they typically and on average earn more than similar students who went to non-HBCUs. Our findings are based on comparing HBCUs to other schools with a sizable black student population.
Our study included 1,364 nonprofit colleges and universities, both public and private, that award at least a baccalaureate degree.
Increased wages were strongest for the elite HBCUs: Hampton, Howard, Morehouse, Spelman and Xavier. But the effect persisted 10 years after graduation for graduates of all 59 HBCUs – more than half of the 100 or so HBCUs in the nation – that were included in the sample. Other HBCUs were not included because of lack of data.
And it wasn’t a small amount of money, either. In our study, we found that HBCU students from the elite universities earn 32% more six years after attendance than students with similar characteristics who attended other colleges and universities.
But before anyone celebrates our findings as a clear victory for HBCUs, a few caveats are in order.
Penalties exist
First, all HBCU graduates don’t earn more than all non-HBCU graduates all the time. In fact, much like Freyer and Greenstone did a decade ago, we found that early in their careers – extending to six years after graduation – typical HBCU graduates do in fact suffer a wage penalty.
The HBCU study in 2010 found grads earned 20% less than peers from other colleges in the 1990s, although it’s not known how long after graduation this occurred.
We found that there’s an 11% wage penalty after six years but then it disappears after 10 years, and in fact turns into an advantage. So while typical HBCU graduates may be earning less money than non-HBCU graduates in their late 20s, by their early 30s, they are earning more.
We also found that the wage advantage for HBCUs remained no matter what the major. In my view as an economist, the relative gains for HBCU attendees after six years suggest, that on average, HBCU graduates are better able to find jobs that match their skill and capabilities.
Demographic factors
Just what is it that makes HBCUs more effective as escalators for labor market earnings and income mobility? Earlier research my colleagues and I conducted at Howard University found that a high proportion of black students in a college or university serves as a boost to black identity and self-esteem. That boost, we found, translates into labor market skill acquisition that results in an earnings advantage.
Given the history of HBCUs receiving unequal resources, our results suggest that government and philanthropy could consider more funding for HBCUs. That could enable them to be even more successful at what they do, particularly when it comes to enabling students from households that earn the least money to move up economically.
Months before the annual observance of the bombing that rocked a congregation, a community and the nation, 16th Street Baptist Church has been getting ready.
Renovations were taking place in June: fresh paint and new technology for the classroom spaces in the basement. Just as at worship services, Sunday school attendance ebbs and flows each week, depending on the number of longtime members and curious tourists. This Sunday (Sept. 15), which marks the 56th anniversary of the attack that killed four young girls, the church hopes to unveil the refurbished space where visitors can watch videos about kindness, caring for all humans no matter their race, and the civil rights history of the church and its community.
“After you leave this place, we don’t just want you to experience history,” the Rev. Arthur Price Jr. said in a June interview at his church. “We call the four girls ‘angels of change’ and our hope is that people will leave inspired, become agents of change as a result of what happened here.”
The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church sanctuary, which features images of the four girls who were killed in 1963, in June 2019. RNS photo by Adelle M. Banks
“We’re adding more content about not just what happened in 1963 but how the church was organized and the tension that was going on in the city during that time,” Price said in a subsequent interview about the church that was at the forefront of the civil rights movement before and after the bombing.
The pastor was busy this week preparing for his church’s “memorial observance” that is expected to feature special guests including a prominent U.S. chaplain, the pastor of another church that was attacked and a presidential candidate.
Lt. Col. Ruth Segres, an Air Force chaplain at Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph in Texas, will be leading the Sunday school lesson.
“That Sunday school lesson that was taught that Sunday (of the bombing) was ‘The love that forgives’ and she will teach a lesson surrounding that theme,” Price said of Segres, who is in charge of recruiting Air Force chaplains.
Just before the church bells are set to toll at 10:22 a.m. — the moment on Sept. 15, 1963, that the dynamite set by members of the Ku Klux Klan went off — former Vice President Joe Biden “will give a reflection about the day,” the pastor said.
After a wreath laying, the Sunday service will start, with the Rev. Eric S.C. Manning, pastor of Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church of Charleston, South Carolina, serving as the guest preacher.
“I think we have a symbiotic relationship, considering the two churches experienced acts of violence within their place of worship,” said Price of the AME church where nine worshippers were killed by a white supremacist during a 2015 weekday Bible study.
“This is a way that we can come together in solidarity and preach the message of Jesus Christ and how he teaches us to stand tall and not to fear in the face of adversity.”
Flowers are placed on a marker remembering the four girls who were killed in a bombing on Sept. 15, 1963, at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, in June 2019. RNS photo by Adelle M. Banks
The observance recalls the deaths of Denise McNair, Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Morris, who is also known as Cynthia Wesley. They were preparing for the church’s Youth Day when they died. As a poem by Camille T. Dungy in a recent special edition of The New York Times Magazine noted, had they lived, one of the girls would have been 67 and the other three 70 this year.
“We’ll toll the bells for the four girls and two more times for the two boys who lost their lives that day,” Price said, referring to two black male teenagers who were shot to death in Birmingham in the hours after the bombing.
The church, which dates to 1873, reopened in June 1964. Price said the basement was renovated the following year and has since featured fellowship gatherings, men’s breakfasts and Bible studies.
Convictions in the killings did not occur for decades.
A memorial at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, where four girls were killed in a bombing on Sept. 15, 1963. RNS photo by Adelle M. Banks
A “Justice Delayed” exhibit at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute across the street from the church noted that Robert Chambliss, Thomas “Tommy” Blanton Jr. and Bobby Frank Cherry were identified as potential suspects as the FBI initially investigated the blast. But it wasn’t until much later, after subsequent probes, that they were tried and received sentences of life imprisonment. Cherry was the last to be convicted, in 2002.
Beyond the annual Sept. 15 observance, at other times there are reminders of the tragedy, some marked with grief, others with hope.
In May, Price officiated at the funeral of Chris McNair, father of one of the four girls killed in 1963, and a former Alabama state legislator. And just last week, Price welcomed to the church a government delegation from Wales, including its minister for education, Kirsty Williams.
“She was proud to see the Wales window that was given by the people of Wales in 1965 to the church because the people of Wales wanted to make a statement of solidarity with the movement,” he said of the Sept. 5 visit.
Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, right, is across the street from the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, left. RNS photo by Adelle M. Banks
Price said the visitors from Wales were heeding the message he hopes his church inspires even before the church launches the new videos about kindness across racial lines.
“That’s one of the things that the Welsh government did,” he said. “They presented us with a plate with a black hand and a white hand extended to each other, dealing with even though we’re different, we’re not deficient, and that we ought to be working together so that we make sure that what happened here 56 years ago never happens again.”
The soundtrack of the 1970s still speaks to us. Life, as many had known it, was rapidly changing back then. A generation had found its revolutionary voice and was confronting oppression domestically and abroad. Disenchantment with status quo Americanism had sparked the nation’s social consciousness. And from the center of this whirlwind emerged a cry for deep justice.
A singer captured the ethos of the age: “What’s going on?” he asked.
War, social decay, and racial unrest conspired against a generation. Too many mothers were crying, too many brothers dying. “We don’t need to escalate,” he urged. Please stop judging and punishing picket signs with brutality. “We’ve got to find a way to bring some lovin’ here today.”
Fast-forward almost 40 years and Marvin Gaye’s music feels as timely as ever.
Where’s the “Lovin’ Here Today”?
At its core, the Gospel is a story about a loving God who reconciles humanity into loving relationships with Himself, themselves, and each other. Justice fits into the story as Christ rights the wrongs that prevent those relationships. Worship as both music and lifestyle should reflect this. But does it?
In a world marked by wars, genocide, street gangs and terror thugs, ethnocentrism, generational poverty, famine, AIDS, substandard housing and education, rampant materialism, religious hatred, and environmental degradation, where’s the lovin’ in our church music? The kind of lovin’ that rights wrongs and reconciles relationships?
The songs that typically rank as the “most popular” in mainstream evangelical churches today are filled with beautiful expressions of God’s holiness and love. But they seem to lack a consistent emphasis on worship that moves beyond a personal experience to include a clear declaration of the social-justice dimension of God’s activity in the world.
Sadly, too often our church music is directed inward as a distorted, selfish facsimile of worship. We long for God to meet personal needs and mediate justice on our own behalf, radically reducing our songs to individualized laundry lists of wants. Consider these popular contemporary worship song lyrics:
• “Every time I turn around there will be blessings on blessings, blessings on blessings / The favor of the Lord rests upon me, in my hands I have more than enough” (from Blessings on Blessings from Anthony Brown & group therAPy)
• “I’m gon’ praise Him, praise Him ’til I’m gone / When the praises go up, the blessings come down / It seems like blessings keep falling in my lap” (from “Blessings,” by Chance the Rapper featuring Jamila Woods)
• “I can feel [the ‘presence,’ ‘spirit,’ and ‘power’ of the Lord] / And
I’m gonna get my blessing right now” (from “The Presence of the Lord is Here,” by Byron Cage).
• “I can feel [the ‘presence,’ ‘spirit,’ and ‘power’ of the Lord] / And
I’m gonna get my blessing right now” (from “The Presence of the Lord is Here,” by Byron Cage).
•“In my life I’m soaked in blessing / And in heaven there’s a great
reward / … I’ve got Jesus, Jesus / He calls me for His own / And He lifts me, lifts me / Above the world I know” (from “God Is in the House,” by Hillsong United).
•“(I got the) anointing / (Got God’s) favor / (And we’re still)
standing / I want it all back / Man give me my stuff back / Give me my stuff back / … I want it all / … I want that” (from “I Want it All Back,” by Tye Tribbett).
Contrast those with the three recorded songs that accompanied Jesus’ birth. While the melodies have been lost to time, the lyrics reverberate through history.
The first, a spontaneous soulful utterance by a pregnant virgin, marveled about the Mighty One who miraculously conceived His child within her. “He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty” (Luke 1:52-53). What of the Rolls Royce-driving, private jet-flying, multiple mansion-dwelling, high fashion-wearing preachers and modern Christian subculture profiteers? What about the good life to which their songs and sermons aspire? What fills them?
The second, a choir song performed by heaven’s finest angels for an audience of outcast shepherds, proclaimed: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests” (Luke 2:14). The peace of which they sang is shalom, and favor refers to “the year of the Lord’s favor” embraced within Christ’s mission (Luke 4:18-19, quoting Isaiah 61). More than the absence of strife, shalom is what the Prince of Peace came to reestablish: The interdependency of vibrant communities; the vitality of healthy bodies; the manifold mysteries of parental love; and the majesty of the cosmos. The condition of sin robs shalom, but Jesus’ justice restores it. When the most affluent people in recorded history attempt to co-opt Jesus’ favor as a rationale to get more stuff, we cheapen everything the gospel represents.
The third song, by an old man long past his prime, declared Jesus, “a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.” He then explained the lyrics to Jesus’ parents: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too” (Luke 2:32, 34-35). Not much touchy feely hoopla here either.
Not one of these songs celebrates the themes that predominate our weekly worship services. No mention of “me,” except in the context of calling and responsibility beyond oneself. No focus on “blessing,” except as it relates to our ability, empowered by God, to bless others. No pursuit of personal comfort; rather, the promise of a sword to pierce one’s soul.
Indeed, the soundtrack that accompanied heaven’s lyric — the Word made flesh and dwelling among us — bears little resemblance to popular songs we sing in our churches. When that timeless Word “moved into the neighborhood” (John 1:14, The Message) his manner of doing so invited shame and ridicule, not material bounty. He lived among us as a child of poverty (born in a barn); political refugee (in Egypt); social pariah (survivor of unmarried pregnancy, a capital crime); ghetto immigrant (“What good comes from Nazareth?”); and blue-collar subject (carpenter) of an imperialistic colonizer (Rome). He was a friend of prostitutes (such as the woman who anointed his feet with perfume), crooked bureaucrats (tax collectors like Matthew and Zacchaeus), and terrorists (including his disciple Simon, the Zealot, a card-carrying member of a first-century Palestinian terror organization).
If He actually showed up to one of our stylized worship experiences, He may well sing a different tune, one that sounds more like the warning He gave through the Old Testament prophet Amos:
“I can’t stand your religious meetings. I’m fed up with your conferences and conventions. I want nothing to do with your religion projects, your pretentious slogans and goals. I’m sick of your fund-raising schemes, your public relations and image making. I’ve had all I can take of your noisy ego-music. When was the last time you sang to me? Do you know what I want? I want justice — oceans of it. I want fairness — rivers of it. That’s what I want. That’s all I want” (Amos 5:21-24, The Message).
Taking Amos at his word, if all God wants is oceans of justice rather than egocentric noise, then the needs of a broken world must reclaim center stage from personal blessings during corporate worship experiences. Notwithstanding the public repentance for neglecting the poor by high-profile leaders like Bill Hybels and Rick Warren, many churches remain mute on such issues and have abandoned prophetic moments in lieu of religious protocol.
What to Do?
How can worship leaders help navigate oceans of justice within congregational gatherings? First, in the music and expressions of worship we embrace; and second, by facilitating worship as lifestyle, not just musical ritual.
Marvin Gaye’s opus reminds us that music ennobles ideas, emotes passion, and defines eras. Because we feel it, music penetrates hearts and stimulates a response. Combine inspired notes with well-crafted lyrics and the results can be liberating. Or lethal.
In Call and Response, a 2008 documentary about sex trafficking, Dr. Cornel West describes music’s power to accentuate and ultimately eradicate injustice:
“Music is about helping folk … by getting them to dance. Getting them to move. Getting them to think. Getting them to reflect. Getting them to be themselves, to somehow break out of the conventional self that they are.”
As musicians use that power to draw attention to injustices, people cannot help but get involved, West contends, because “justice is what love looks like in public.”
Historically, some denominational traditions have embraced justice-oriented hymns and music (e.g., Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance and “O Healing River“), and Native Peoples have more than most (e.g., “Every Part of this Earth,” words by Chief Seattle). CCM pioneer Keith Green was an anomaly among evangelicals through the ’70s and early ’80s with songs like “Asleep in the Light,” which challenged: “Open up, and give yourself away / You’ve seen the need, you hear the cry, so how can you delay.” But increasingly music ministers across traditions are giving voice to justice within worship services (e.g., Jason Upton’s “Poverty,” Brian McLaren’s “A Revolution of Hope,” and Aaron Niequist‘s “Love Can Change the World”).
Jesus’ mission — Good News for the poor, sight for the blind, and liberty for the oppressed — requires the courage to break free from convention, perceive the new things God is doing in our midst, and zealously pursue them.
How We Get There
1. Refocus. Reductionist Western worship is possible because we have lost a sense of awe and reverence for Who God is, fashioning instead a God in our own image. Mark Labberton in his book, The Dangerous Act of Worship, writes:
The God we seek is the God we want, not the God who is. We fashion a god who blesses without obligation, who lets us feel his presence without living his life, who stands with us and never against us, who gives us what we want, when we want it.
Rather than appealing to God on account of his character — a holy, righteous, just, and mighty God — we have become gods unto ourselves, presupposing long before we encounter His presence what He needs to do on our behalf and prejudging what matters most. Let’s refocus on Who really matters.
2. Repent. The failure to incorporate laments for justice into corporate worship underscores a much deeper problem. Fundamentally we misunderstand what worship really is. Worship is neither the rhythmic pursuit of a euphoric high nor the somber embrace of silent reflection. Such either/or myopia forgets that Jesus describes true worshipers as those who worship “in spirit and truth” (John 4:23).
Paul elaborates that “our spiritual act of worship” requires offering our very selves as “living sacrifices” (Romans 12:1-2). First century Romans familiar with ritual sacrifices understood that phrase to be a contradiction. One did not sacrifice living bulls, for example. The peril of potential impaling demanded that sacrifices be dead first. Yet God invites worshipers to voluntarily self-sacrifice. Paul continues: “Do not conform any longer to the patterns of this world” — white picket fences, trendy fashions, and such — “but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is — his good, pleasing and perfect will.” Where our will conforms to the world’s patterns and trumps God’s will, let’s repent for rejecting true worship.
3. Remember. The holy God we revere is also our righteous king who exacts justice on behalf of his people. Moses and Miriam remembered in Exodus 15 when they praised Yahweh for demonstrating justice in his dealings with Pharaoh and liberating his people. Hannah remembered when she thanked God for his justice on her behalf (1 Samuel 2). King David remembered when he declared, “The Lord reigns!” and embraced a heavenly King who ruled above him and all other powers, whose eternal justice and righteousness are irrevocable. Let’s also remember that our “Lord loves justice” (Isaiah 61:8).
4. Reconnect. No longer should worship gatherings embrace the first part of the Great Commandment, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength,” at the expense of the second part, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Let’s reconnect His love in a coherent whole.
5. Realign. Justice and worship at their core both deal with power and the abuses of power. By emphasizing God’s kingship, his rule over all creation, and his impeccable character, we intentionally create space for the Most High to address the fallen powers in our churches, states, nation, and world. Let’s realign our congregations under God’s power as work within us rather than the abusive power structures dominating the world.
6. Rediscover. As we identify and proclaim the laments of the marginalized with a deep understanding that their cries are our cries, we will begin to see our perspectives shift and the power of God move in ways that we never would have imagined.
Let’s rediscover the unleashed, all-powerful God, not our tempered and tame God in a box. Like Aslan of Narnia, He may not be safe, but “He is good.”
Michelle McClain-Walters is the author of Chosen: Appointed for Favor, Destined for Greatness (Charisma House, 2019). She is the author of The Prophetic Advantage and five books about biblical women of influence, including The Esther Anointing and The Deborah Anointing. Michelle has appeared on LeSEA Broadcasting Network’s The Harvest Show, Lifeline Church TV, and many national radio broadcasts. She and her husband, Floyd Walters Jr., currently reside in Orlando, Florida.
