The challenge of inclusion

Standing in line, the teenagers shared their raw, contagious joy. A few hours earlier they had joined thousands of others who met Jesus in new ways at an event called “Acquire the Fire.”

Now their local congregation was rejoicing in the overflow. Even the sermon was postponed as one after another laughed, cried, and sometimes haltingly, sometimes effusively, opened their hearts.

Then I spied a mother. Slipping from her seat in the sanctuary, she moved behind her two adopted children who stood in the line and with tears flowing laid one hand on the shoulder of each. Longingly, she was reaching out. I grieved for her and I was moved by her mother’s heart, yet I also sensed a wall between her and them. It seemed clear that she was not really wanted there, then.

In a flash I saw it.

Many times I had heard parents of adopted children say, “I love them just like I love my own biological children. As I know my heart, there’s no difference in the way I treat them.” And I believed them. Still do. But in that flash of insight I understood that one cannot treat adopted children “just the same” as the biological and anticipate that they will receive the same amount of love. The mountain of rejection they carry as a result of having been in some way unattended or set aside by their natural parents is just too great.

They need more, much more. Listening, loving, forgiving, lavishing care. Then maybe, by the grace of God, they may hear the same message that the biological children have already heard:

“I love you.” And when it is finally heard, they often grasp it more deeply than anyone ever did who did not know their rejection.

So it is in the church.

Those of us who have grown up in some congregation or circle of congregations too easily assume that we have a place there. It is ours, we think, because we were born into it by natural birth.

As a result, those who were not, those who enter from the “outside,” have a different path to walk. For like adoptive parents, we who were “born inside” often say to each other, “We accept them in just the same way we accept those whose parents and grandparents were part of this congregation from time immemorial. There is no difference.”

Yet in reality they too need more, much more. For in the millions of ethnic churches around the world only by a spiritual paradigm shift do ethnic majorities give and ethnic minorities receive the gift of full inclusion. How does it happen?

It happens when we fully know that all of us are in fact adopted children (Ephesians 1:5). The new family totally supersedes the old. The more completely we embrace this new family, the less we are bound by this world’s ethnicities.

May God unbind us.

Richard Showalter is president of Eastern Mennonite Missions. First published in Missionary Messenger (publication of Eastern Mennonite Missions), June/July 2003. Used with permission.