About 150 professors, scholars, students and members of the clergy attended the summit held at the Emory Conference Center Hotel. This year’s theme was “Where Do We Go From Here? Black Church Traditions, Textures and Transformations.”
Several universities “take turns” holding the summit each year, said Teresa L. Fry Brown, director of Candler’s black church studies program. Brown, as well as the directors of the black church studies programs at Duke University and Vanderbilt University, served as a consortium to organize the summit.
Candler also hosted the first of these summits, according to Rodney Mason, a third-year theology student assisting with summit events.
In planning the summit, emphasis was placed on discussion across social, political and denominational lines, Brown explained in the summit program.
Brown noted the diversity of the attendees in an interview with the Wheel, citing the presence of clergy from multi-racial churches, scholars from across the country, community organizers and laypeople. People attending the summit ranged from approximately 18 to 90 years of age, Brown added.
A panel discussion on Saturday morning titled “It’s a New Season: Not Your Mama’s Church” featured four pastors describing the differences between the church of the current generation and previous ones, and providing guidance for black churches of the future.
Each pastor explained in turn how he or she was responding to the demands of the post-baby boomer demographic.
“The Y and X generations have invaded our churches,” said the Rev. Ronald Slaughter, pastor of St. Paul AME Church in Macon. He added that he is “attempting to minister to four generations at the same time.”
The pastors agreed on the importance of using technology such as websites, e-mails and text messages to reach new church members and stay connected with current ones.
The Rev. Cheryl D. Moore, pastor of Zion Temple in Durham, N.C., said that in this era, “there has to be a disconnect from the antiquated modality of ‘having church.’”
Moore spoke on what she saw in the youth of today.
“It’s not that they do not relate ... to God,” Moore said. “Christ has become irrelevant.”
However, Moore also warned against catering to young people in the wrong way.
“Appeal and relevance are not necessarily congruent,” Moore, who spent nine years as a youth pastor, said. “I’m afraid that we tried so hard not to look like church that we failed to be church.”
The Rev. Charles Goodman, pastor of the Historic Tabernacle Baptist Church in Augusta, similarly saw a need to keep with the times but not go too far.
“Change in the black church is like a cuss word,” Goodman said, to laughter.
Goodman spoke about how church leadership must deal with a new generation’s “Wal-Mart mentality” of essentially shopping for a place of worship, basing the decision on websites, television and the supplemental services a church offers.
Slaughter noted that today’s churchgoers, more literate than those in the past, are less likely to take preachers’ interpretations for granted.
“The preacher can no longer depend on clichés,” Slaughter said, and instead must concentrate on “integrity of the scripture.”
Goodman agreed that there should be “a shift back to biblical preaching,” but disagreed with Slaughter on why, saying that people do not know the Bible nearly as well as they did in years past.
The Rev. BeSean Jackson, pastor of Fellowship of Love Church in Fayetteville, rounded out the discussion with a look at the field of black church studies. He said that black church studies is held back by a barrier of “intellectual elitism,” and needs to be transformed by “effective novelty.”
“There is nothing good, in and of itself, about new,” Jackson said. “But there is nothing bad, in and of itself, about new either.”
You need to be a member of Black Business Women Online to add comments!
Replies