The Minority Experience

I participated in a cohort last year with ministry leaders around the country. Our focus was on developing practices and rhythms of life to help sustain us in ministry, but our group was comprised of people passionate about and engaged in the Gospel work of reconciliation. For example, in my small group (pictured above), there was a female pastor in a denomination that had recently (and contentiously) began ordaining women, and an African American social worker serving Minnesota’s most affluent (and whitest) county. We spent a lot of our time together talking about how our Christian faith relates to current imbalances of power.

I was there by chance. I had planned on joining an earlier cohort but had to postpone and was grandfathered into this group. But I am grateful for this “accident.” God taught me a lot about myself as my new friends shared about their minority experience. Hearing their stories softened my heart, helped me see where my incredulity about their stories (‘Did that really happen?’) was functioning as a defense mechanism, and inspired me to “try a little tenderness” (Otis Redding) with people nearer to me in daily life.

Here’s one specific thing I learned: being a minority in a majority church/company/country is exhausting. Our twelve-month cohort was structured by four retreats. We would gather for a couple of days, engage in involved (and sometimes tense) discussions about the Gospel and race, pray for each other, and return home. These retreats were equal parts life-giving and demanding. I was never certain when it was appropriate for me to contribute and how much of my perspective was determined by the fact that I, in the very specific context of this conversation, was the minority.

Adrian Pei writes that self-doubt is a key component of the minority experience: “This self-doubt comes from repeated experiences of being different, being questioned or regarded with suspicion, and even being silenced and shut down.” I was not silenced (or even mildly disrespected) in those conversations, but I did experience self-doubt. My fatigue from the retreats is incomparable to the actual experience of being a minority. My point is simply that it helped me feel– in a way that reading a book or listening to a podcast simply cannot – how grueling (and invisible) daily life can be as someone who doesn’t fit in.

Joe Ho, who is speaking at the parish retreat and on Sunday morning, is a recognized authority on the intersection of ethnic identity and the Christian faith. Churches are often nervous to engage in these types of conversations, but I’m grateful Joe is here to show us how the Bible, far from sidestepping these critical issues, directs us to them. We’re in a moment where people who care about racial justice often distance themselves from the church (and vice versa). This separation hamstrings both sides. My hope is that events like this weekend will give us a sober awareness for how racial divides damage our world and a renewed appreciation for the Christian gospel in which “there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for we are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal. 3:28)

See you soon!

Nick

p.s. This Sunday we’ll celebrate the Feast of Christ the King and plan to mark the changing of the liturgical season by offering prayers of lament following the sermon. Be encouraged this weekend to consider what in your lived experience seems incongruent with the promises of God and give voice to that compliant as a way of taking initiative in the relationship you have with God.