Monday, May 11, 2015

Growing Up In the race Divide (part 5e)

This post is not specifically about racism, but it would hardly be fair to not tell how it all ended.

After the church made the decision to merge, I went into damage control mode in order to protect my youth group. I mean, I knew I wasn't going to have a job anymore once all the merger stuff happened, but I wanted to make sure my kids were taken care of.

Wait, let me back up a step:
What they tried to tell me (and kept telling me over the few months that all the legal stuff for the merger took place) is that I would be necessary through the merger and beyond; they would need me to help integrate the two groups of kids. "Don't worry; you're not going to lose your job." But I knew that was bullshit. Not that it mattered. There was no way I was transferring to the other church.

We set up some joint events between the two youth groups... you know, so they could get to know each other. Yeah, it sounds like it would be such a great idea. Except, well, the other group, being the teenagers of upper middle- and lower upper-class parents were completely dismissive of my group. And my group tried. I had a couple of very outgoing kids, and they walked right up to some of the other teens to introduce themselves, and the kids from the other group would just turn and walk away without saying anything. Basically, at each event we had set up, my group got shunned by the other group. And their youth pastor did nothing about it. Each event, within 20-30 minutes, my kids were saying to me, "We don't want to be here. They won't talk to us."

And here's the complication:
I spent a few years working as a substitute teacher during this time (because I wasn't on staff at the church, just an hourly worker), so I knew a lot of the kids in the other youth group. I was a well-liked sub. In fact, I was the favorite sub of at least two schools because, as the administrators said, I was one of the very rare subs who was liked by both the students and the teachers. So I knew the kids in this other group, and they already knew that they liked me. Many of them liked me more than their own youth pastor (who, honestly, wasn't a lot of fun).

At the very first joint event we went to, a social event at their youth center, within 10 minutes of us being there, a girl from the other group, a girl that I knew, walked over to me where I was standing with a couple of my kids and said to me, in front of them, "Why are you hanging out with these losers? Come hang out with us; we're better." After I recovered from my disbelief, I made it clear that my kids were not losers, and I wasn't going to have anyone talking that way.

Yes, the other pastor and I had a discussion, though it was less discussing and more me just telling him like it was. This guy who was a decade older than me. But he didn't argue. It also didn't change anything.

Which mostly brings us up to the week of the merger. There was a last Sunday at the church I grew up in; that was the day they announced the merger was official and that the next Sunday would be at the other church. The other church was supposed to send one of their buses around to pick up my kids for the Sunday morning youth stuff on that first Sunday. That was the only thing I was concerned with.

Now, you have to understand that on the Sunday of the announcement, the last Sunday in our building, they were still telling me, "We need you. We need you." Technically, we didn't become part of the other church until midnight, so Monday. Monday afternoon, I got a call, a call I was expecting, "We just wanted to let you know that your services are no longer required." That's pretty close to the exact wording, "Your services are no longer required."

I called everyone I knew that week, everyone with any power to affect the first Sunday of joint services, to make sure that they picked up my kids. "Yes, yes. It's all fine. We'll pick them up." Sunday morning came. My parents and brother went to church. I was somewhat livid over that fact. My mom, I suppose, was trying to keep her job. At least, at the time she was. They went; I stayed home. Sometime around mid-morning, I got the first call, "No one picked me up."

"No one picked me up."

"No one picked us up."

"What do we do?"

"What do I do?"

It's what I knew was going to happen. I was full of rage and tears, and there was nothing I could do about it. Again, on the Monday, because I had made some calls on Sunday knowing I wouldn't be able to get anyone, I got a call, "We've decided that it's not cost effective to pick up your kids. You'll have to find some other place for them to go."

And I did try. But these kids had just had their home ripped away from them, and for some of them, my group was almost literally their home. The only place they felt safe. Including the kid I had to kick out of service about once a month whom I never expected to keep coming back, the kid who, when picked up by the cops one night, had them bring him to me, not his parents, and who did, always, keep coming back. And their home was just... gone. Because it wasn't "cost effective."

Of the three dozen kids, only three of them allowed me to get them situated in another group. My old youth pastor's group at the church he'd moved to when I was graduating from high school. Just three. The rest... just quit church.

What they learned was that churches couldn't be trusted. Churches were full of hypocrites. Churches only wanted you if you had money and wore the right clothes. The people in churches were worse than the people not in churches so why bother to go. There was no, "They will know you are Christians by your love."

Now, it's easy to say at this point, "Well, that was just a bad church," but I  have worked with and in a substantial number of churches across three states, and they were all essentially the same. Except one. That one was a church composed of homeless people and existed through donations to keep it running. "Keep it running" meant enough money to pay to rent the space they used on Sunday nights and to feed the homeless people who came. Yes, they came to eat, but they also listened while they were there. There was no salary for the pastor or any staff or deacons. Just some people who volunteered to help make sure people were getting fed.

All of the other churches where very much about looking the part if you wanted to attend. The right color skin (white or, maybe, slightly "tanned" (meaning there might be someone of Asian or Pacific Islander descent, but there were no black people)), the right kind of clothes, and, most importantly, the right kind of money. You know the focus is wrong when, during a social event, the pastor turns to you and says, "Hey, by the way, how much are you tithing, right now?" [True story.]

20 comments:

  1. Oh that is so sad. I was hoping for a happy ending.

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    1. JKIR,F!: At the time, I was, too. Against hope, I was hoping, even though I knew it wasn't going to happen.

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  2. That was a horrible message to send to those kids and to the community. That wasn't Christian love at all.

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    1. Alex C: It was a horrible message, and what they learned from it, as many of them told me, "Church sucks. I'm never going back."

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  3. This is what give church and Christians a bad name. They should have at least been up front and honest about the situation, what was going to happen, and even how they honestly felt. It's not just churches that are like this though. I guess we see this sort of behavior in all corners of our society.

    Arlee Bird
    A to Z Challenge Co-host
    Tossing It Out

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    1. Lee: It's exactly the kind of thing that gives Christians a bad name. And the problem with honesty is that, to be honest with other people, you have to first be honest with yourself, and there was no one there willing to say ahead of time, "We're going to screw these kids over," and, before that, no one willing to say, "We'd rather close our church than have black people in it."

      And, yes, we do see this behavior in all sorts of places, but church is the LAST place we should find it, yet it is often the first.

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  4. There's no need to argue with someone you're not listening to. These are some of the most disgusting and un-Christian people I've heard about. All I hear is how "immoral" this country is becoming, but the so-called moral people do stuff like this. I guess they figure it doesn't count if it's brown people.

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    1. Jeanne: The problem is that they are actually no different than the majority. This situation, although it happened 20 years ago, is still pretty much the norm, especially across the South.

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  5. All corners of society, but surely the church is supposed to be different by following in the footsteps of Jesus etc. Not practicing such terrible discrimination. I am horrified at the bigotry in this story.

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    1. Jo: Church is supposed to be different, which is, of course, the problem. It wouldn't be a problem if so many "Christians" didn't act as if they are morally superior (and just superior) to other people.

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  6. It's funny, but I'm anti-organized religion (I'm not an Atheist, I simply don't believe in religion the way it's practiced). Yet I've had overall positive experiences in churches. Then again, I was never an integral part of them; I was simply trying them out, experiencing the different places. Church was almost always a positive experience. Then again, my experiences consisted of going with various friends and neighbors. In this way, I managed to go to probably every branch of Christian church, including an all black Baptist church (where I never once felt out of place--it was a wonderful place full of delightful people), a Mosque with an Iranian friend, Jewish Temple, Catholic mass, etc. The only place I had a bad experience was at a local Evangelical church I now refer to as The Cult, wherein they chained us kids who had shown up to "youth group" into a room (literally chained the bars of the doors so we couldn't get out) and showed kids from about age 10ish to teens graphic anti-abortion videos. Want to know the quickest way to turn me away from your cause? Yeah, by doing that.

    Anyway, it's heart breaking that they cheated the kids from your youth group the way they did. Instead of sad, as I was with your other posts, I'm just angry. What a disgusting thing to do. But, as I've sadly learned over the years, church people aren't automatically good. They just maybe try harder to hide the bad and cover it, like a dog kicking grass over...well, you get the point.

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    1. Shannon: I am completely against organized religion, but I learned to be that way through many horrible experiences in organized churches. I will say that, generally, the bad doesn't happen till you get behind-the-scenes where you can see it. Except for those cult churches, and there are a lot of those out there, too.

      It still makes me angry to think about it.

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    1. I've never belonged or believed. It's hard, sometimes, to feel in a position to criticize from the outside looking in. But this is not my first time hearing such stories. Just leaves me wishing the world were different.

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    2. TAS: You know, I don't have any expectation that the world should be different. People are people. However, I do expect that the people whose whole stance is based on "We're different" ought to be different. Not only are they not different, very frequently, they are worse.

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  8. There are really no words to express my sorrow for those youths. Not just for the religious aspect, but humanity in general. That can be so damaging to a group that is already struggling where there shouldn't be a struggle (nuclear family.)

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    1. Alex H: Yeah, it was a horrible thing. I know at least two of the boys ended up in jail withing a few years after this, but maybe that wouldn't have happened if they hadn't had the rug pulled out from under them.

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  9. There is a lot that I don't like about churches, and this just gave me more to dislike. I have many many thoughts about religion and I find them clearer and easier to contemplate and pray on when I'm not being told how to do it by a chuch.

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    1. Briane: There's not much I do like about churches at this point in my life.

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