Big Is The New Small

Just imagine if Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had Twitter or other social networking applications at his disposal, his message would have been even more world changing.  He was known as one of the best orators of his day and one of the top in the history of the country.  The exponential impact of his sound bites and oratory skills would have been extremely powerful with a tool like Twitter.

I believe we take for granted the fact that our message, story, voice and thoughts can literally be globally shared at our leisure and by the push of a button.  This year in the United States we set aside Monday, January 16th. to honor the life of a civil rights leader, pastor and social justice martyr.  MLK positively impacted the US and the world in so many ways, I think it’s great the US has an official holiday in his honor.

My wife and I are in Atlanta and in honor of MLK Holiday we will visit the Atlanta Memorial and the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church that Dr. King pastored.  It will be a great way to bring a different context and memory to the MLK Holiday.  This year I thought it would be great to share some of Dr. King’s memorable quotes that could have easily  been tweets. Not only are they tweetable at (140 characters or less), they are all short enough to be retweetable (122 characters or less).  Quotes can have such power, as a matter of fact I used a number of Dr. King’s quotes to illustrate some power points in my book.

25 Retweetable #MLK Quotes

• 1. Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or darkness of destructive selfishness. #MLK
• 2. A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus. #MLK
• 3. To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing. #MLK
• 4. Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase. #MLK
• 5. I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. #MLK
• 6. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. #MLK
• 7. The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict. #MLK
• 8. We are not makers of history. We are made by history. #MLK
• 9. We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now. #MLK
• 10. We must face the sad fact that Sunday morning when we stand 2 sing, we stand in the most segregated hour in America. #MLK
• 11. In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. #MLK
• 12. We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools. #MLK
• 13. Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, “What are you doing for others?” #MLK
• 14. The measure of a man isn’t whr he stands in moments of comfort, but whr he stands @ times of challenge & controversy. #MLK
• 15. If a man hasn’t discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live. #MLK
• 16. Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.  #MLK
• 17. We must use time creatively — and forever realize that the time is always hope to do great things. #MLK
• 18. The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be.  #MLK
• 19. The time is always right to do what is right. #MLK
• 20. I have a dream my 4 little children will 1 day liv in a nation whr they will not B judged by the color of their skin. #MLK
• 21. Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see. #MLK
• 22. Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. #MLK
• 23. Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. #MLK
• 24. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. #MLK
• 25. When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative. #MLK

There are so many more tremendous quotes by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  These are just 25 retweetable quotes that have stood out to me over the years.  Please share your favorites from the above list or any other #MLK quotes that you like.  If you can share them in 120 characters or less, please do so.   This will allow them to be retweetable.

Happy #MLK Holiday!  Please take a few moments on #MLK Holiday to share some quotes, watch a speech, serve in the community, attend the parade, talk to your family about his impact over dinner, communicate to your team that you value the holiday and what Dr. King stood for…  Do something!

Pastor Patrick Kelley of RiverPointe Church asks the question, “Am I Too White To Be Your Pastor?” He actually posed this question throughout the streets of his suburb of Houston.  Pastor Kelley also sat down and talked with former NBA Player Reggie Slater to talk about this same topic.  

This question raised a lot of eyebrows and help facilitate a great conversation about #ChurchDiversity.  I love Pastor Kelley’s heart for diversity and I will be speaking at RiverPointe Church this weekend.  If you are in the Houston area, stop by and visit.

If you would like to check out the news article of Pastor Kelley asking the bold question, you can click here.

I guess I could simply close with this question, “Am I Too Black To Be Your Pastor?”

Scott Williams TBN Interview – Church Diversity from Church Diversity on Vimeo.

Here is an interview that I did on TBN’s Praise The Lord program with Pastor Scott Thomas.  We had a great time on the show and have really been able to make some great connections for the Church Diversity movement, both within the United States and abroad.

#3. Top 11 Posts Of 2011 (From March 2011)

Nearly 8 months ago I made “The BIG Announcement” which was a little play off of LeBron James making the decision to leave Cleveland and head out to South Florida and Join the Miami Heat. My “BIG Announcement” wasn’t that I signed with the Miami Heat, it was that I had signed an awesome book publishing deal with New Leaf Publishing Group, to publish my book Church Diversity – Sunday The Most Segregated Day Of The Week. It releases in April, you can check out the trailer for the book here.

It was about nine years ago that my wife and I walked through the doors of this new church that some friends had invited us to.  This church was much different than the churches that we had grown up in and the one that we were currently attending.  This new church had rock n’ roll type of music, no choir, no gospel music and for the most part we were one of only a few minority families.  We began to like everything about this church and God was speaking to our family in an new and fresh way.  That church was LifeChurch.tv, I think it was actually Life Covenant Church at that time.  We are much cooler now.

Although we loved our new church, we had this nagging question.  What is the heart and passion of this church as it relates to diversity?  As we didn’t see many other minorities.  I remember having lunch with Pastor Craig 9 years ago and I asked him that exact question, “Where is your heart as it relates to diversity?”  His response was, “I have a heart for diversity, will you help me.”  Fast forward 4 years of my family serving, connecting and loving LifeChurch.tv.  Fast forward another 5 years and I had the opportunity to lead and be a part of a team that launched, grew and developed a campus that truly embraced diversity.  Our staff was diverse, our worship team/platform was diverse, our congregation was diverse, we served a diverse community and a diverse group of people were surrendering their lives to Christ.  Diversity matters to God, the local church is the hope of the world, We Are Church Diversity!

Today I’m making another “BIG Announcement” to the BigIsTheNewSmall.com community. After nearly 9 years of being a part of LifeChurch.tv and five years of serving as the NW Oklahoma City Campus Pastor, my family and I have decided to move to a new season of ministry.  This new season was prompted by God’s calling on my life to share His message of Church Diversity with the global church.  With the full blessing of LifeChurch.tv leadership, we have openly and bitter-sweetly accepted this new season.

• I absolutely love what God is doing at LifeChurch.tv.
• My family is better because of Pastor Craig’s leadership.
• The 5 years I served at the NW Oklahoma City Campus have been some of the best years of my life and I truly love, like and would go on vacation with every person that’s ever been a part of the n-dub staff.  I can’t even express how great it has been to be a part of such an amazing team, campus and community.  Thousands of lives have been changed at the n-dub since the doors first opened.
• I have already made this announcement to the congregation, but my last official weekend will be this weekend.
• I truly believe that the best years for my family and the n-dub have yet to some.

What will I be doing?  Where will I be going?

• My family and I will stay right here. (Edmond, OK)
• I have launched a consulting company and will be providing consulting to churches, non-profits, businesses and governmental agencies. We will focus on organizational growth both internally and externally. (Strategy, Leadership Development, New Media & Diversity)
• I will be traveling, speaking and promoting God’s message of diversity in the church.
• I will be doing some work for Outreach Magazine over at ChurchLeaders.com.
• I will be scheduling a select number of weekend preaching dates.
• I will be spending some QT with my family.
• We will be making plans that will allow my wife to be a (SAHM) Stay At Home Mom.

I am really looking forward to this new season of dreaming BIG and thinking BIGGER. All of the doors that are being opened, could only be opened by God, He is definitely doing the orchestrating and we are being obedient!

The best days have yet to come…  dream BIG. think BIGGER.

“For tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.” ~African Proverb

This is one of two book trailers for Church Diversity – Sunday The Most Segregated Day Of The Week. This one features “The Shoe Shine Man.”  The second one which will be released shortly, tells a great story.  

I am so grateful for the opportunity and I’m really looking forward to sharing this message with the world. It’s amazing the reception that the message of “Church Diversity” is being received by pastors, leaders and Christians at-large.

ChurchDiversity.com is launching very soon… stay tuned!

I really love our worship team led by Stephen Cole and Kaci Baldwin. The team is a diverse group of genuine worshippers that truly love Jesus and care about those they are leading in worship each and every week. One of the things that I love about their worship is the fact that they have fun and they are all “Worshipping” and not simply singing songs and playing instruments.

This weekend they were jammin’ as usual and broke out into a little reggae funk in the middle of a Rockin’ King Of Glory worship tune. Every service was different as Stephen was just free-styling.  One is the beauties of worship is the fact that it’s a universal language and genuine hearts for diversity will help to break down ethnic and style barriers. People were swayin’, bobbin’, yellin’, shoutin’ and jammin’ in the isles.

The above video is a little sample of today’s worship, shot with an iPhone video camera.

What do you love about your worship team? Share some of your favorite worship songs or unique things that you like to see from your worship team.

If we look at the myriad of diversity in the world we can clearly see that God values diversity.  Diversity is not always about race or ethnicity; for instance  Jesus certainly expressed diversity in his choice of staff: tax collector, fisherman, physician, former prosecuting attorney, women etc. He valued diversity and placed an array of personalities, backgrounds and experiences around him in order to advance his work.   The story of Jacob and the “minority” sheep is another great illustration.

The bottom line is most organizations and teams do not like to talk about or embrace diversity.  They would prefer to talk as though it doesn’t exist.  By doing this they are assuming that everyone has the same backgrounds, experiences and wiring.   People are so uncomfortable and worried about the “Race” conversation offending someone, they choose to make it a non-issue.  The only way that race will be a non-issue is if you make race an issue. (repeat that last sentence)  Although it may seem taboo, you must be willing to talk openly about race and diversity.

The even harsher reality is to acknowledge the realization that diversity in organizational teams should and in my opinion must exist.  It’s not like Jesus just said “I took a group of people to be on my team.”  Jesus articulated who they were and the uniqueness they brought to the table — this gives us a clear perspective of how he rolled.   I think Jesus was illustrating this mindset,  ”I know all of these people around me bring diverse backgrounds, diverse way of thinking and diverse ways of acting to the table, but that’s the beauty about how we are going to get this work done.”  In other-words, Jesus is saying that you and you and you and you… can be on my team with the unique differences, skills, thoughts and backgrounds that God has given you.

Jesus embraced diversity at all levels; I personally think we need to be like Jesus and move from tolerating diversity to embracing diversity at all levels.  Jesus embraced diversity — Do You?  Does Your Job? Does Your Church?

Fortune magazine states that “diverse groups make better decisions.  If everyone in the room is the same, you’ll have fewer arguments and worse answers.  Diversity is a distinct competitive advantage.”

Share your experience and thoughts working in organizations or attending churches that either embrace or simply tolerate diversity of any kind?  Race, Gender, Thoughts, Backgrounds…

Christians You Don’t Have To Go Across The World To Experience Diversity, Simply Go Across The Tracks.  There are many different ways for congregations to connect with a diverse group of people and going on an international mission trip is not the only solution.

Most churches give both time and resources to other non-profits, outreaches, ministries and mission efforts.  As it relates to Church Diversity, ministry leaders should look at the percent of their personal outreach and philanthropic budget that goes towards local multicultural organizations.  I’m not implying that a church should cut their international missions budget, I’m just saying look local.

The reality is church organizations can make great strides in impacting church diversity by exposing their congregation to local multicultural partnerships and outreach.  Congregations can find multicultural organizations to give to, partner with and work alongside.  When Jesus said go into all the world, that didn’t simply mean go around the globe—for many churches that simply means go across the train tracks.

For those of you who may not understand what “the other side of the train tracks” means, its referring to the fact that most communities were and some still are racially segregated by a set of train tracks or a dividing street.  It can be “The Hood” on one side of the tracks and things get a little nicer, cleaner and newer on the other side.  Hood or not, many times there is just a clear racial divide.

I thought the blockbuster movie “The Blind Side” provided an excellent illustration of what happens when people go across the tracks; the experience can be similar to an international mission trip.  When Christians get out of their comfort zones and be the hands and feet of Christ in a community that’s less than a 20-minute drive from their suburban utopia, eyes are opened.  In the movie The Blind Side, Sandra Bullock plays the role of Leigh Anne Touhy.  The Tuohy’s are a Christian family led by wealthy restaurant chain owner Sean Tuohy, played by Tim McGraw.  The short and skinny on the movie is the fact that a kid from the other side of the tracks got a shot to attend a rich private school, the Tuohy’s adopt him, he learns how to read, gets his grades up, becomes an excellent right tackle, learns to protect the quarterbacks Blind Side, goes on to play college ball at Ole Miss and eventually gets drafted in the 2009 NFL by the Baltimore Ravens.

There were several scenes in the movie where Lee Anne Tuohy was heart broken by what she experienced in “The Hood” only 20 minutes from her beautiful suburban home, in an area that she never realized existed.  She had a desire to reach out, give and make a difference.  She confronted some of her rich swanky girlfriends about their negative stereotypes as she had a desire connect with and change a community that she never knew existed.  She realized that You Don’t Have To Go Across The World To Experience Diversity and Serve The Under-served… You Simply Need To Go Across The Tracks.

Why don’t we simply go across the tracks more often?  Share your thoughts!

Most Pastors, Ministry Leaders and Christians don’t want to talk about the fact that “Church Diversity Sucks!”  Jesus said, “Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation.”    All the world and all creation includes neighborhoods and pockets of the world where people don’t look like you, your church brethren or me.

It’s important to have His will done on earth as it is in heaven.  What will it look like in Heaven?  It will be diverse, a great multitude of different people where that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb…

Pastors, Ministry Leaders and Christians don’t want to talk about this, but they should.  It’s not acceptable for The Church to settle for status quo and live out Dr. Martin Luther King’s 40 year old statement where he said  ”We must face the sad fact that at 11 o’clock on Sunday morning, when we stand to sing… we stand in the most segregated hour in America, and the most segregated school is Sunday School.”

Pastors, Ministry Leaders and Christians don’t want to talk about this and that’s the problem.  Start talking, start listening and start doing!

What do you think?  Why aren’t these folks talking?  Is it a problem?

Reason #2  Excuses

It seems like yesterday when I was in college pledging to become a member of a fraternity.  The whole process of pledging was quite a memorable series of events and one of the things that I vividly remember was quoting this short phrase that we called excuses.  The phrase read as follows: “Excuses are tools of incompetence, used to build monuments of nothingness… those that specialize in using them, never amount to anything.” 

One of the reasons Church Diversity Sucks is because of Excuses.  There are a plethora of excuses that pastors, ministry leaders and congregants use as justification to not address the issue of Church Diversity.  Here are a few common excuses:

• It’s about culture, so diversity is not necessary
• There is no ethnic diversity represented in the communities near our church
• Race is not an issue, we look beyond race… we’re color-blind
• Talking about race is divisive
• Nobody cares, it’s a non-issue

This list of Excuses could keep going like the Energizer Bunny.  Again, as we are talking about Excuses; let’s make some wording adjustments to that Excuses saying that I recited while pledging my fraternity.  Here is a new version of that saying being directly related to the topic of Church Diversity: “Church Diversity excuses are tools of incompetence, used to build churches of diversity nothingness… those pastors, churches, leaders and congregations that specialize in using them,  will never be diverse.” 

The bottom line is that if a pastor or ministry leader chooses to be serious and intentional about addressing the issue of Church Diversity, they will have some positive impact.  I you try and fail, that’s fine… but stop making Excuses about why you can’t.  Start with the baby step number one: Have a conversation about diversity and you will be one step closer to the ol’ “On earth as it is in heaven.”

Do you feel that pastors, leaders, churches… make too many excuses relative to this topic.  Are any of these excuses valid?  Share your thoughts or additional excuses!