CHICAGO--Sunday morning arrived, like so many before, with a mix of sunlight and
chirping birds and a warm greeting from my tiny son, lying beside my wife and me.
My wife rose quickly, announcing her plan to get ready for Sunday school at the Baptist church, not far from
our house in suburban Chicago, that she and our two children attend.
As for me, in what has become my ritual, I turned over and pulled the covers up around my head. I overheard
my 9-year-old daughter’s familiar question: “Mommy, is Daddy going to church with us?”
“No-o-o-o,” my wife replied.
After months of my failure to accompany them, she has abandoned the excuse that “Daddy has a lot of
work to do.”
Sunday mornings used to mean something special to me, but I now face them with dread, with a headache-inducing
tension that makes me reach for the Advil. I am torn between my desire to play hooky and my Pentecostal indoctrination that
Sunday is a day of worship when real men lead their families into the house of God.
Once, that is what I did. I am the grandson of a pastor and am myself a licensed minister. I love God and
I love the church. I feel as comfortable shouting hallelujahs and lifting my hands in the sanctuary as I do putting on my
socks. I once arrived faithfully at the door of every prayer meeting.
Yet, I now feel disconnected.
I am disconnected.
Not necessarily from God, but from the church.
What happened?
Probably the same thing that has happened to thousands of Black men who now file into coffee shops or baseball
stadiums on Sundays instead of heading to church, or who lose themselves in the haze of mowing the lawn or waxing their cars.
Somewhere along the way, for us, the church (the collective of Black churches of the Christian faith, regardless
of domination) lost its relevance. It seems to have no discernible message for what ails the 21st Century Black male soul.
While there are still many Black men who do go to church, any pastor will admit that there are far more who
don’t.
Jawanza Kunjufu, a Chicago educator and author of “Adam! Where Are You?: Why Most Black Men Don’t
Go to Church,” contends that 75 percent of the Black church is female. The church’s finger seems furthest from
the pulse of those Black men who seem to be drifting in a destructive sea of fatalism and pathology.
Without the church, most of those men are doomed, but it seems to me that the church will not seek us Black
men out, or perhaps even mourn our disappearance from the pews.
Instead, it seems to have turned inward. It seems to exist for the perpetuation of itself; for the erecting
of grandiose temples of brick and mortar and for the care of pastors and the salaried administrative staff.
Not long ago, a preacher friend confided: “The Black church is in a struggle for its collective soul,
to find itself in an age when it is consumed by the God of materialism.”
I am incensed by Mercedes-buying preachers who live in suburban meadows far from the inner-city ghettos they
pastor, where they bid parishioners to sacrifice in the name of God.
A preacher I know, and his wife and co-pastor, who exacted a per diem and drove luxury vehicles, their modest
salaries boosted by tithes and offerings from poor folks, anger me.
I wonder why, despite billions of dollars taken from collection plates, I see few homes for the elderly, few
recreation centers, and little to no church-financed housing development and few viable church-operated businesses that might
employ members.
I scratch my head at the multimillion-dollar edifice a local church erected and wonder whether that is the
most responsible stewardship for a church in a community filled with poor families.
I have come to see the countless meetings and church assemblies, camouflaged as worship services, as little
more than fundraisers and quasi-fashion shows with a dose of spirituality.
I am disheartened by the territorialism of churches, vying for control and membership, as a deacon at a Baptist
church said to me recently, in much the same way as gangs.
However, even in an age of preacher as celebrity, it is not the evolution of a bling-bling Gospel that most
disheartens me. It is the loss of the church’s heart and soul: the mission to seek and save lost souls through the power
of the Gospel and a risen savior.
As the homicide toll in Black neighborhoods has swelled, I have wondered why churches or pastors have seldom
taken a stand or ventured beyond the doors of their sanctuaries to bring healing and hope to the community; whether to stem
the tide of violence and drugs, or to help cure poverty and homelessness or any number of issues that envelop ailing Black
communities.
Once, after a service at my grandfather’s church in a Chicago suburb, I mentioned to a visiting pastor
that there was a drug and gang war going on in his community.
“I don’t know nothing ‘bout that,” he responded.
How could he not know about something that affected a community in which he was a “shepherd?”
Given the state of Black men in America; given the number in prison or jail or headed that way; given the
thousands of us who find our way to early graves; given the number of us who seek solace in a bottle of liquor or in illegal
drugs, it seems that we would make for a plentiful harvest for a church really seeking souls.
I suspect, however, that as long as our wives, our children and our money flow through the church’s
doors, few are likely to ever come looking for us.
I could be wrong. My criticism might be too harsh, but it is no harsher than my pain.
