Baby Steps: Overcoming Fears in Racial Reconciliation

In the movie What about Bob? the main character (Bill Murray as Bob) is invited to go sailing with the daughter of his psychiatrist (Richard Dreyfuss). As Bob’s psychiatrist taught him to take baby steps to overcome his fears, Bob struggles with the fear of sailing, but decides to go anyway, to be with his friends and to learn about something that they enjoy doing. In the film, we see him tied to the mast, yelling in the midst of his fears, “I’m sailing! I’m sailing!” We all have fears—fears of sailing, fears of public speaking, fears of spiders, and unfortunately, fears of people who are different from us.

At Purdue University, where 37,000 students come together to study from all over the world, the students have segregated themselves along the lines of their socialization. It seems that Asian and Asian-American students tend to hang out at the library and the student union. Most of the international students stick close together. African-American students frequently congregate outside a particular building and on benches that surround a large oak tree. I rarely see white students mixing in. Some of the African-American and white students in one of the all-women’s residence halls spent an entire year feuding because of cultural differences in the ways they played their music or laughed loudly, as if one way were right and another wrong. This ongoing segregation has placed in us a fear of our differences because of our unwillingness to try to understand and value one another.

As Christians on a university campus, God continues to transform us more into the image of Christ, and we are realizing that this tension and separation is not what God desires, especially for his people. When our InterVarsity chapter had an opportunity to experience cross-cultural fellowship several years ago, we decided—much like Bob—to get in the boat and go sailing.

My small group leader called one evening, saying, “Carrie, we’ve been invited to sing in a choir for the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Musical Celebration. Want to be in it?” I had never been in a choir before, and decided that this in itself was reason enough to participate. This was true for most of the students from our InterVarsity chapter that decided to participate. Our InterVarsity chapter slowly got into the boat to fellowship with our African-American brothers and sisters from HOPE (House of Praise Experience)Ministries by participating in the MLK Celebration. For some of us it was scary, because for the first time in our lives we were the minority, a handful of white and Asian-American students in an African-American gospel choir. We found ourselves having a blast, struggling to sing on pitch, sway, and clap on the off beats all at the same time. And many of us—for the first time in our lives—dealt with the discomfort of being the minority. For most of us, worshiping with our African-American brothers and sisters became more than a one-weekend thing. God grew in our hearts a desire to continue as a chapter to experience and understand the beautiful diversity of the many parts of God’s kingdom.

After participating in the choir, we invited HOPE to join us for our large-group meetings and invited the pastor of HOPE’s church to speak at our meeting so we could fellowship together. The next year we had another joint meeting and continued our participation in the MLK Celebration in January. We also began participating in HOPE’s GospelFest in the fall. We continued to meet together once a semester with our joint meetings and when we saw each other on campus we would smile and say hello.

But we soon found that meeting once a semester was not enough and we still had fears to face and remove from our hearts. This fall when we were invited to participate in GospelFest, members of our chapter began to recruit younger members of our chapter to come and experience the diversity of God’s kingdom with us and with our African-American brothers and sisters. The evening before GospelFest would also be our first joint meeting of the year and HOPE’s pastor was going to speak on the topic of the Holy Spirit. We were hoping to get our chapter excited about the diversity of God’s kingdom and getting in the boat with us. As the evening went on, we ran into some rather large cultural, denominational and doctrinal differences in worship and in the message that was spoken. The following night at GospelFest we ran into the same differences—to a heightened degree. Many of us felt our fears surface, but did not understand where those fears came from. Because of these denominational and cultural differences and its being early in the fall semester, we were concerned that many of our younger students would be scared away from our InterVarsity large-group meetings.

In addition, because we had only been meeting with our African-American brothers and sisters once a semester, we did not have solid personal relationships with each other. Many of us, including the leaders, wanted to give up on our relationship with HOPE. We felt hurt and afraid because we felt that the trust between us had been broken. Both as a chapter and as individuals, we had a choice. We could get back in the boat, despite our fears, and work through our cultural and denominational differences, or we could run away and ignore God’s call to be one in Christ.

Fortunately, God wasn’t going to let us give up. After returning from the Urbana missions conference where many of us were convicted about our own sin of racism, we came back to this campus desiring to see God’s kingdom come here at Purdue as it is in heaven and to let Jesus take the fear from our hearts and replace it with love.

During the first semester, our staff worker, Trever Risinger, and HOPE’s pastor decided it would be good to meet to talk about our feelings and to discuss how to work through the situation. Unfortunately, they were never able to find the time to meet. At the beginning of the semester, Derrick Williams, the director of the MLK Mass Choir, called Trever to invite us to participate in the choir again. Trever had to explain honestly that he thought it would be difficult to get InterVarsity students to participate. God gave Derrick the energy and initiative to set up a meeting with our staff worker, the student president of HOPE, and their pastor to pursue the relationship with us, even though we felt like giving up.

As a result, the president of HOPE Ministries, Ja’lon Rhinehart, came to our chapter leaders’ meeting and our small-group leaders’ meeting to rebuild the trust that had been broken. We attempted to see each side of the situation and understand the way each person felt. These meetings were difficult and awkward as we discussed our cultural and denominational differences in attempts to understand one another. As we discussed the issues that had broken our trust, we realized that we needed consistent fellowship to build relationships with a solid Christ-centered love and trust so that when other differences came up, we would not even think of giving up on the relationships that God has blessed us with. In fact, through the understanding of our differences, the relationships we are building with our brothers and sisters are growing stronger. We praise God that he has shown us the ugliness of the disunity and racism that dwells in our hearts and that he is continuing to let these sins surface and remove them so that we may be conformed more into his image and his body.

Although many of us had earlier decided that we wouldn’t participate in the MLK Choir after our difficult experience at Gospel­Fest, God graciously convicted us of our disunity and racism, and we worshiped him with our brothers and sisters again. This semester we have also begun a joint small group with members of HOPE where we will be studying what God’s Word says about justice and racial reconciliation.

In addition, the day after the MLK Celebration, InterVarsity was invited to come together on a Tuesday evening with the Black Student Union and HOPE Ministries and discuss the question, “Is the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., being lived out on the campus of Purdue University?” A reporter from our campus newspaper was there as well to join in our honest, intense two-hour discussion. Many issues were discussed, including affirmative action, role models, stereotypes and economic differences. The campus newspaper reported that the president of the Black Student Union and our staff worker commented that “the question asked is a large, difficult one to answer, but the first session was a big success. It was helpful in getting people to relate to each other in figuring out a solution.” We plan to meet again in another open forum in March to continue to build relationships and understand each other better. With God’s grace, we will continue to take baby steps to see the dream of Martin Luther King, Jr., come true—the same dream as the request that Jesus taught us to pray—that we will see God’s kingdom come on our campus as it is in heaven, every tribe and tongue and nation worshiping the one true God.

Though at times we still feel like Bob, tying ourselves into the boat because of our fears, one day we will not need the ropes, but we will sail with our brothers and sisters without any fear, with the joy of the diversity of the body of Christ. As we wonder what gave Bob the desire to sail and proclaim to the world that he could do it without any fear, the students on Purdue’s campus will wonder what brings us all together and God will be glorified and his kingdom will grow.