“A Vision for Biblical Diversity” | Pastors Rod Hairston & Pastor Jim Eaton | Converge Biblical Diversity
In this discussion, Pastors Rod Hairston and Jim Eaton, co-directors of Converge’s Biblical Diversity initiative, share a powerful framework for achieving biblical diversity, using a baseball diamond as a simple metaphor for progress. From empathic listening at first base to fostering flourishing intercultural communities at home plate, this conversation provides essential insights for anyone seeking to embrace diversity through a biblical lens.
The journey begins with empathic listening—stepping into others’ pain and validating their experiences—before moving to cultural intelligence, where we learn to understand and respect the unique cultural contexts of others. The conversation then focuses on racial healing, drawing from the story of the Good Samaritan to highlight the importance of addressing deep, intergenerational trauma and practicing empathy across racial divides. Finally, the discussion culminates in the vision of flourishing communities, where people from all backgrounds come together to live in authentic, joyful connection.
By embracing empathy, cultural awareness, and a commitment to healing, we can pave the way for reconciliation and embody the heart of the gospel.
Transcript
Jim: So I’m really excited about this conversation we’re having. We want to talk to you about our vision for biblical diversity. And what we’ve done is we’ve created a simple way to remember it. It’s just like a baseball game. It’s a baseball diamond, and you’ve got four bases. And so what we wanna do is just briefly talk to you and have a conversation just about going from one base to the next and the different arenas we want to be trusting God for and working on. So from when you’re taking off and you’re headed for first base, we wanna talk about empathic listening.
Rod: So, first of all, this framework, I think it’s brilliant and it’s not brilliant because I had anything to do with it. This guy right here came up with this framework so that we could have a strategic approach to how we help our movement, make progressive steps to embracing biblical diversity and getting to the place where we flourish and flourish in communities.
Jim: Yeah.
Rod: Which is home base after we go around.
Jim: You’re very kind.
Rod: Well, I’m just telling the truth.
Jim: Now we’re talking about listening.
Rod: All right. So yeah, this, I think this first, this first base, right. Getting on first base with this whole idea of empathic listening is huge. You know, no relationship can flourish, where there’s not empathy.
Jim: Mm mm.
Rod: No relationship. So whether it’s on my job working with coworkers, right. And I shared this in some corporate spaces, right. And my work with couples. This is a huge, huge piece. In fact, yesterday I was working with a couple and they got to a point where they’re at an impasse, and the wife was ready to give up because she was in such extraordinary pain because of what happened in their marriage. And then I’ve been, you know, her husband said, I wanna save our marriage.
Jim: Yeah.
Rod: Right. I want it to work. And he’s been doing some important work, but when we got to this place where she wanted to safely share her pain, ’cause before she was like, I don’t wanna risk-
Jim: Right.
Rod: Sharing my pain.
Jim: Sure.
Rod: And so, he would not, for some reason he couldn’t empathize. So he would be very logical, he would be very rational. So anytime she would share something, he would give sort this logical, rational expression of, well, this means this and this is this, and what you need to do is that, and she would just shut down. And I said, do you realize what it means to be empathic toward her? So, the point was that they can’t move forward until she can feel heard, and that’s really what empathic listening points to.
Jim: Yes.
Rod: Right? It is how we listen to other people in such a way that we step into their pain.
Jim: And talk to us for a minute about what, how do you see the difference between sympathy and empathy?
Rod: Oh, that’s a great question. So, sympathy. It’s interesting. In the Latin it’s , I think something like that, empathy is , right? The patho is about the pathos, or the passion or the suffering, right? We talk about the passion of Christ. Well, to sympathize is to agree with the person suffering. And it’s kind of, oh, it must hurt. But it is to do that with distance between us. So that I, okay, well that must be bad. And that’s too bad for you, right. And I hope that works out, right. So we can have distance where there’s sympathy. It’s helpful, but it doesn’t transform. That’s what I tell people, right. Sympathy is helpful, but it doesn’t transform. Empathy transforms because it has the power to heal.
Jim: Yes.
Rod: And Jesus was the quintessential empath, because as we watch Him with the woman at the well, for example, in John 4, we watch Him with the woman who’s been caught in adultery. We watch Him with the crowd in Matthew 9, where He sees this crowd of people who harass and helpless like sheep without a shepherd.
Jim: Yes.
Rod: We watch Him empathize. The Bible says He was moved in His entrails, in His gut, in His bowels. So to be an empath, to be empathetic, it is to step into.
Jim: Into, that’s it.
Rod: Right? In with, in with the people in their suffering. And Jim, isn’t that what Jesus did for us?
Jim: Yes. Yes.
Rod: Right.
Jim: And when you’re in, when you’re among different cultures, the temptation is, is to step toward the person’s pain or their story or whatever, until it’s different than our own. And then our instincts kick in to interrupt, to modify, to refute. And that’s where we have to just suspend all of those and walk with the person into a totally different story than we’re familiar with. But whether it’s in a marriage or whether it’s in a cultural diversity setting, that’s so crucial.
Rod: Yeah, man. You know, we’ve prized in Western culture, the whole idea of our rational abilities, right, IE the enlightenment, right, of the 17th, early 18th century. What we left out was what it means to feel with people, right. And so we have a lot of smart people who don’t know how to feel. And what I think, you just hit on a point, is that people are afraid to feel other people’s pain.
Jim: That’s right.
Rod: Right. Because I might have, you know, I might be awkward, I might not understand it, right. But we don’t like, we don’t like pain naturally, but we don’t like being in other people’s pain. And so Job had this experience.
Jim: Yes.
Rod: Right. In Job 19 and in 20, so much of the whole book of Job, right. Where his friends could not empathize with him. In fact, they blamed him for the pain that he was in, right. You must have-
Jim: They were the experts.
Rod: They were the experts. Like, you must have done something wrong.
Jim: They had all their theology straight, they thought.
Rod: Yes. Yes. And it’s interesting, in chapter 20, you see that they have a great treatment on how God deals with the wicked. I’m like, okay, yes, this is true and this is accurate, but that’s not Job’s story.
Jim: That’s right.
Rod: Right. And so, when we fail to empathize, we often become those who criticize or who blame, or who vilify people. If they had not done this, they wouldn’t be there. Right? Oh, you must have been the problem-
Jim: Yes.
Rod: Or you wouldn’t be going through what you’re going through.
Jim: Yes. Yes.
Rod: So this empathic-
Jim: And frequently this happens between people of different ethnicities or cultures because we read our own cultural experience into their story, and we start to make correctives based on what we think our experience would be, but we’re not listening to the fact that they’re living in a different story.
Rod: Yes. Yes, Jim. I feel the need to really just dial this piece back for a moment, because I think if we go too fast, people will miss this.
Jim: That’s right.
Rod: This is such an important, I’m so glad you put this at first base, because until we get listening, until we get empathy, we can’t really be a part of God’s redeeming story, right. It is learning to listen to things that I didn’t understand, I didn’t know, I didn’t even believe. I heard differently all of my life about these people and their experiences. And so rather than listening to, you know, especially as a black man, listening to my story of when I travel, for example and I go into a store being followed around, or when I step-
Jim: Or like we had it, not that long ago, we had an experience where we were both in the same restaurant, but you went in before me. You had a different experience than I did in the same restaurant.
Rod: The same restaurant. In the same restaurant. Absolutely, right. And yeah, I think that’s a great example that, you know, we are, people are having very real painful experiences, right. And it’s me as a black man, it’s friends of Asian descent who are having painful stories, right. People across the spectrum of ethnicities have very painful experiences. And until we can listen and hear and really sort of like validate.
Jim: That’s right.
Rod: Right. This is what empathy involves, right? It’s listening intentionally, and it is validating. And it is not saying, oh, that must be bad. Well, at least you’re in America. Right? Well, at least you got a job. You know, at least, you know.
Jim: Or what about. The what about isms.
Rod: Yes. Yes. Yeah. Right? And so, real listening, real empathic listening says, wow, I’m so sorry that that’s been your experience, right. I can’t imagine what that would be like if I were in your shoes, right. So to empathize, to listen empathically is to be willing to step into the other person’s story to feel with them, and it is to validate their voice and their experiences.
Jim: That’s right.
Rod: So that, so that they don’t feel like you heard me, but you didn’t really hear me.
Jim: Oh, that’s good. That’s so good. So then what we want to do is we want to, and again, think of it like a baseball game. So when we’re saying we’re going from first to second to third and rounding home plate, that’s not the end of the game. That’s just one time around the bases.
Rod: That’s right. That’s right.
Jim: So in all of that we’re doing with Converge Diversity, we’re saying to people, this is going to be a long process for every one of us, in your church environment, in your corporate environment, in your marriage, wherever it is. So these are just different steps, but once you’ve gone through one, you’re not done, it’s just you’re going to encounter it again. So that going from first base to second base is what we call cultural intelligence or cultural awareness. And this is so important because so much of life really does have cultural dimensions, and they’re almost like keys in different locks. And once you understand a cultural arena, you get a key to it. And all of a sudden you go into a room and you say, oh, now I’m beginning to understand. For example, one of the areas that I’m very sensitive to is the whole issue in the immigrant community. There is a considerable difference between the first generation Americans who come here from another country, and there’s a whole story that they’re going through. They leave their home, they leave security, often they trade an advanced high paying job to have to work in a maybe a blue collar job or a menial, something that is completely different from what their training was. But they leave all that to come into America. And now they’re the first generation. And so there’s a whole set of, there’s a whole world in the first generation immigrant story.
Rod: Yes.
Jim: But then their children are born here, or they come over when they’re four or five or six or whatever, and they grow up here. They’re the second generation. And there’s a great deal of difference in the stories and the contour and the worlds they live in. And so if we simply look at immigrants and say, oh, they’re just all immigrants, we’re missing something. But if you start to, if you meet someone and you discover they were born in the same state that you were born in, but they have a different ethnic background, they’re second generation immigrants, they have a different kind of story. They’re hybrid people, and they’re some of this, and there’s some of this, they’re Americans, but they have deep ties to Kenya perhaps, or to Korea or wherever. And so, this is just one cultural tool for your toolbox. And there are many, many of these things. And we’re eager as we move among Converge, and as we do videos and we write and we have opportunities to speak and engage people, we wanna give as many people as possible cultural tools for your own environments. No matter what your background is, there are things that you can learn that will enhance your own experience wherever you are. Whether it’s a church environment or some other thing.
Rod: Man, this cultural awareness piece is big, because we don’t, we’re not very intentional in Western culture about being aware of other people’s cultural dynamics and experiences. The awareness really begins with the self-awareness, right. The self-awareness, which is really important to empathy, right. So going back to first base for a moment, right. Until I’m aware of me, right. Until I’m aware of how other people experience me, right. I was telling my church recently that, you know, my early years of being a pastor, I was so unaware of myself. I was so unaware of how other people were experiencing me, my assumptions, and-
Jim: Sure.
Rod: I would just come into the space and, right. Well, when I’m more aware of me, I become more aware of others because I become much more interested in others and the experiences that they’re having.
Jim: Yes.
Rod: Yeah.
Jim: That’s good. And sometimes people may think, oh, okay, so we’re going from listening. Well, that’s deeply biblical, you know, be swift to hear, slow to speak. But now we’re talking cultural tools. Maybe we’ve left the Word. No, no, no. This is embedded in the Word, right. Because you look at the Apostle Paul, when he was on his travels in the book of Acts. And he goes into a synagogue and he’s among his own fellow Jews. How does he present the gospel to them? He starts with Abraham, he tells the story of the Jewish people, then he goes to Mars Hill in Athens.
Rod: That’s right.
Jim: A very different cultural approach.
Rod: Yes.
Jim: And he speaks to them as people who are familiar with the Greek poets and the Greek literature and the Greek traditions. And he goes all the way back to the creative story. He doesn’t start with Abraham. He starts back there with Adam. And so, then he explains in 1 Corinthians 9, this is my strategy. This is what God has called me to do. So when I’m in this environment, I adapt my cultural approach to this group. When I’m with this group, I adapt it to that group. You never adapt the gospel that always stays the same. And you never abandon your conscience for Christ that always is sure and solid.
Rod: That’s right. That’s right.
Jim: But you do learn to adapt your approach in different environments so that you can minister to people.
Rod: Absolutely.
Jim: So that you can help people in their arenas. And what Natalie and I have found over the years is, there are so many open doors that we don’t even imagine.
Rod: That’s right. That’s right.
Jim: Because too often we think too little of what God can do in our lives. Like the last few years, Natalie and I have been deeply involved in the Muslim and Jewish communities around the Washington DC area. And last year, October 7th, just has created a huge upheaval in both communities. So as we have been ministering among rabbis and imams in their congregations, we practice empathic listening. We don’t come in saying, we understand what it’s like to be Jewish. We don’t come in saying, we understand what it’s like to be Muslim. We come in to listen. And when you’re sitting with Muslim friends and they say, last week our chief of staff at the mosque lost 13 family members in a bomb. That takes you to a place. When you’re talking with a rabbi and he says, October 7th reminds everyone in my synagogue of the Holocaust. Takes you to a place. So cultural intelligence is deeply biblical, and it’s deeply centered in the Word. And our hope is that you’ll take encouragement that God can do so much more with your life in your environments than you can imagine.
Rod: What Paul said this way, Jim, and I’m glad you point to him, he said, I’ve become all things-
Jim: That’s it.
Rod: To all people. That by all means, I might save some, I might save many, right. I love what you said. It’s kind of like you and I were talking about this recently, which I said, how do you introduce yourself?
Jim: That’s right.
Rod: Right. How do you introduce yourself? When we were having this conversation, I said, well, you know, we could introduce ourselves as co-leaders of Biblical Diversity. I can introduce myself as a pastor. I can introduce myself as a relationships expert and executive marriage coach. But it all depends on who I’m talking to.
Jim: On who you’re talking to. That’s right.
Rod: Because what I wanna understand, first of all, is who are they and what are their experiences and what’s relevant to their lives? Is that, am I on the right track, Jim?
Jim: That’s it. That’s that’s exactly it. That’s exactly it. And sometimes as Christians, we confuse being very steadfast and firm in our doctrinal beliefs from being very flexible and adaptable in our cultural adaptations. And what the Scripture says, we have to be both. We have to, and Paul is a great example of this.
Rod: Classic example.
Jim: You look at him in 2 Corinthians, and he is as rigid as can possibly be about the purity of the Word of God.
Rod: Yeah, and he-
Jim: But in 1 Corinthians, he’s talking about, I’m becoming, so this man is not schizophrenic. This man is like, I’m with the Word, and don’t ever change the gospel, but I’m going to be all kinds of fluid and flexible when I’m with different people.
Rod: Well, and he got on Peter, right? He got on Peter because Peter did the exact opposite.
Jim: Exact opposite.
Rod: Right. Because Peter was really kind of a stern, you know, when he has his vision, right. When he has his vision in Acts 10, right. He is like, you know, I don’t eat that stuff, right. I don’t do that, right. The Lord’s like, no, don’t, don’t call anything unclean-
Jim: That’s right.
Rod: That I call clean. Well, when Peter is ministering to the Gentiles, Paul found him trying to impress on the Gentiles his Jewish religious understanding.
Jim: That’s it. Yeah.
Rod: And Paul says, I confronted him to his face because he says, he said, I told him you’re not doing right.
Jim: That’s right.
Rod: Right. Because he was taking cultural, religious understanding, trying to impose it in a way that really did not take into account their cultural experiences.
Jim: That’s so good. And here’s what’s so ironic about it, is that if we’re not following the Word on both of these things, learning how to be firm on the Word and flexible in our cultural intelligence, we’ll be like Peter. We’ll be stiff and firm on the cultural stuff, which is wrong, and we’ll shift all over the place on the truth of the gospel, which is wrong.
Rod: Yes.
Jim: So we have to be true on the gospel, and we have to be flexible in cultural intelus.
Rod: That’s good.
Jim: Now, what we wanna do is go from second base to third base. And I want you to talk a little bit about this. So we’re calling this “Racial Healing.”
Rod: Ooh man. What, I love the term. I love the phraseology “Racial Healing.” ‘Cause I think it’s, you can get to third base, right, if you’ve done first base and second base with intentionality and integrity, because racial healing follows it.
Jim: Yes.
Rod: Right? You can bring, that’s really what empathy is about, right? It’s what cultural intelligence is about. It is about bringing healing to people. Because people carry grave, deep, longstanding racial wounds.
Jim: Yes.
Rod: It’s interesting that in Luke 10, when Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan, and He talks about this man’s wounds, and the Bible says that he poured oil and wine and he bandaged up his wounds. The word wounds there is his trauma.
Jim: Mm. Mm.
Rod: It is literally trauma. It is the only place in the New Testament where the word trauma shows up. And so, when we’re talk about racial healing, we’re talking about racial trauma.
Jim: That’s right. That’s right. Intergenerational trauma.
Rod: Intergenerational. Absolutely. And so racial healing happens where there has been the empathy of the Good Samaritan, right. Where there has been the concern, right. The good Samaritan, he is culturally aware because he’s a Samaritan, but he knows that this man who’s lying on the ground is Jewish. And so, he does not allow that to keep him from caring for him in his pain. He doesn’t blame this man for being down. In fact, the text says that he fell among robbers, right. He didn’t just plan on getting beat down, but something happened to him because of the 17 mile road between Jerusalem and Jericho, right, that was notorious for these beatings and beat downs. He was beaten, stripped, and all those things.
Jim: Yes, yes.
Rod: And so the Good Samaritan comes along and he brings healing to him.
Jim: Yes. Yes.
Rod: This is such a powerful, powerful tool you’ve created for us, man, right. When we talk about how do we help people heal?
Jim: Yes.
Rod: Right? If Jesus didn’t do any, you know, most of His miracles in the New Testament were miracles of healing.
Jim: Yes. Yes.
Rod: And I think we sort of downplay in the Western world this, we think that it’s so, sometimes so supernatural that we can’t, right, promote it, but it is very practical as well as supernatural, right. That healing. He is a God who heals. I am the Lord who heals you, and He wants to use people to heal. And so, if we go through the passage-
Jim: That other passage heal me, O Lord, and I will be healed.
Rod: And I will be healed. Right. We’re called to be a part of people’s healing.
Jim: That’s right.
Rod: I know, in my case, Jim, the wounds that my people have suffered-
Jim: Yes.
Rod: Have been so extraordinary, so generationally-
Jim: Yes.
Rod: Impacting, that it takes relationships like this, by the way.
Jim: That’s right. That’s right.
Rod: Right. That bring, that bring the healing so that people can begin to move forward in their lives and feel like somebody actually does care, right. They want to hear the gospel where they know you care, right. If people don’t know that you really care, empathic listening and cultural intelligence-
Jim: That’s right.
Rod: Right? It’s hard to help people.
Jim: And this is so biblical. I mean, sometimes people will say, well, is this really biblical? Are we talking about the social gospel? There are ways people can sometimes kind of push it away from where it really is in the Word, but this is central in the Word. I mean, Isaiah 58, God is so clear, “You keep coming to Me with your worship. You keep coming and you’re saying, ‘Why aren’t You hearing me when I’m fasting, when I’m raising my hand. Like, why aren’t You?’ He says, ‘Because your hands are covered in blood. But if you would stretch your hand out and help the one who’s been oppressed, if you’d offer your clothes to the naked stranger,’ then God says, ‘Then you will call and I will answer.’ Then you’ll cry out and I’ll say, ‘Here I am.'” So what God is saying is, when we pursue the places where racial healing is necessary, God opens up the doorways of worship in our own lives. It’s very similar to the passage in the New Testament where it talks to husbands. You and I, you and I know this one right?
Rod: We know it. We know it.
Jim: If we’re not treating our wives in a dignified understanding way, God puts a ceiling on our prayers.
Rod: That’s right.
Jim: We can’t keep coming to God and saying, “Listen to my prayer.” And God says, “Go learn how to love your wife.”
Rod: Oh man.
Jim: So the same thing is culturally, if we’re saying, well, God, bless my church, grow my church, and God’s saying, “What about that community across town? How are you pursuing the healing in that community?” Whether it’s an immigrant community, an African American community, whatever it is, we are our brothers keeper. That’s how God’s Word has taught us.
Rod: That’s right. That’s right. People, when people are suffering, right, it’s imperative that we care about their healing. Man, I’m only imagining what would happen in our nation if Christians, those who call on the name of Jesus would be about racial healing.
Jim: That’s right.
Rod: Right. That’s born out of empathic listening and cultural intelligence, right, so that people really believe that Christians actually care. Amos says something very powerful.
Jim: Yes.
Rod: Right. He says, right, you can stop all of the, you know, your gatherings and your hands in the air. He says, but let’s see you care about people who are hurting.
Jim: Yes.
Rod: Yeah. This is huge. This is huge.
Jim: It is. It is.
Rod: Imagine, I think it would change the trauma in our nation, the division.
Jim: Absolutely.
Rod: Right. The extraordinary pain if Christians led the way with racial healing.
Jim: Yes. Absolutely.
Rod: Let me just say this last part.
Jim: Yeah.
Rod: Because we can’t ignore that there’s been extraordinary racial pain from the inception of the nation.
Jim: Yes.
Rod: Right.
Jim: Our nation’s original sin.
Rod: Our nation’s original sin. Right, which was really sort of passed down from Plato and Aristotle, which they sort of said, no, if you were enslaved, right, you must have deserved it, right, and you know. And the sympathy says, well, at least you’re in America.
Jim: Yeah.
Rod: Right? But empathy says, who in the world could have survived things like the middle passage? Right. Things like slavery. Generation after generation.
Jim: Jim Crow.
Rod: Things like Jim Crow, right. And we think about other groups that migrated to this country-
Jim: Yes.
Rod: Who’ve gone through their own thing, the Japanese and the Chinese. Yet, until we can start looking saying, oh man, there’s something that needs to be healed here.
Jim: That’s right. That’s right.
Rod: We miss the heart of God.
Jim: That’s right. It’s so true. And I think from the vantage point of my own ethnicity and culture, from white America, sometimes people will inaccurately think, oh, okay, so what you’re doing is you’re saying, I’m to blame for this, or I’m a racist or whatever. No, no, no, we’re not. Don’t go there at all. What we’re saying is what the Word says. When you look at Ezra and Nehemiah at the outset of those two books, what they did was they saw the heartbreak and the devastation in Jerusalem, and they prayed prayers, and they included themselves and they said, “I and my people have sinned.” Now, did it mean that God was putting His finger of blame on those two men? No, they were godly men. What they were understanding is the memory of God is long.
Rod: Yes.
Jim: A day with the Lord is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day. So when they look at that and say, but I am a part of the people who hurt Your heart, God, I want to be a part of the people who heal Your heart. So what I’m saying to my white brothers and sisters is, don’t go off on that detour. That’s a dead end street, okay. Don’t go down that path. Instead, get into the Word and realize, all right, I may not have caused this, but I’m collectively a part of a people who had some hand in this, so let me turn it around. Let me say, God, show me how I can be a person who can advance righteousness, who can advance reconciliation, who can advance justice, who can be a healer. You know, at the end of Revelation, it talks about the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. So get your vision bigger and realize, God isn’t blaming you personally. In white culture, we tend to be very individualistic. He’s saying, think collectively. Think you’re a part of a people and you can take a step forward and listen and speak to God and let God’s heart begin to heal. And then He will use you as an ambassador for His own righteousness and healing.
Rod: Wow! That’s a huge challenge, Jim. That’s a huge challenge. I’ve heard people say, they’ve said to me, right, I’m not a racist. When I was never calling them a racist. What I think is important is the idea that it’s hard for people to see such a big problem and feel like they are part of the contribution to it.
Jim: Yeah.
Rod: Right. Because, because. Right. It makes us look bad, right. But more than that, it makes us feel badly, right. There’s a feeling of guilt that people get, right. And I wanna be sensitive to that because I know that that makes you not want to face the situation.
Jim: Yes.
Rod: And what I want to encourage people with here is racial healing is not suggesting that you are guilty.
Jim: That’s right.
Rod: But what it does suggest is that we all have a responsibility-
Jim: That’s it.
Rod: As believers, to bring healing to these deep and grave wounds.
Jim: That’s good. That’s good. So then what we’re going to try to do then is go from third base, rounded to home place.
Rod: So before you go to home plate.
Jim: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Rod: I think you need to give people some, what is practically, right. What’s something people can do practically to bring racial healing? ‘Cause it’s such a high level conversation.
Jim: I think where I would start is just, you know how we often talk about, build a bridge? Right, I often tell people, you need to be, you need to become a bridge. Latasha Morrison has started an organization called Be the Bridge, and that’s exactly the concept. You need to embody the bridge in your own person, in your own lifestyle, which means before you go out there to build a bridge, you need to say, my whole posture of life is going to be a bridge. So that, that means it’s going to involve tension, it’s going to involve going across to another arena. It’s just going to be a part of your life. So I’ll say a practical thing is take, pull up your phone, look at your text threads. How many of the text threads do you have that are of people different than you? They look different. They live in a different community. They might even worship differently, but you have built relationships 24/7 in real time with real people. Then when the crises hit, you just continue on as you are, it gets more tense.
Rod: Wow. Wow.
Jim: Yes, but you have been embodying a bridge in your lifestyle, and that helps with the cultural intelligence, with the listening and with the racial healing, because you’re already in that arena.
Rod: Wow, and we just have to imagine that happening in micro rays.
Jim: Yes, that’s exactly right.
Rod: Many times, and many times over-
Jim: That’s right.
Rod: Across our nation and the world. I was having dinner with some friends recently, and we just joined this fitness group, and one of the ladies invited me and my wife to dinner, and several of the other couples within the group, and she and her husband are Jewish. And so we didn’t know we were being invited to Shabbat dinner, right, which was beautiful. I’ve been to them before in Jerusalem. And so, we’re there and we begin talking about October 7th, and she says something very powerful. She says, “They hate us. They hate us. Why do they hate us?” And all I could think to say to her was, “I’m so sorry for you and what that must feel like, I can’t, I can’t understand what, I can’t imagine rather what it must feel like to know you’re so deeply hated. And we want you to know, Sherry and I are really sorry, and we care about you guys.” I got a call from her the other day. She said, “I just want you to know, my husband absolutely loves you.”
Jim: Mm, that’s good.
Rod: I had only met him. That’s the second time I met him.
Jim: That’s so good.
Rod: And I think that’s what you’re describing, Jim.
Jim: That’s it.
Rod: Right. That’s how the racial healing happens, just being culturally aware and being empathic.
Jim: And wherever God opens that door or puts a little more, maybe puts 10 or 20 yards of the bridge out in front of you, keep walking, because the problems are way too big for any one person. And so often we then give up and we step back and say, “I’ll just live my life.” But if you just say, “God, open a door, take me another step, but please do miracles through my life.” Because people’s lives are so precious, and they’re so important for there to be healing and for there to be growth and flourishing, which then rounds us around from third base to home plate. And what we’re talking about on this is developing flourishing intercultural communities. Our great prayer and our dream is not just that we tolerate each other, it’s that we flourish together.
Rod: Yes.
Jim: So that we flourish among churches and among people within our churches and in our neighborhoods and schools and workplaces, that we begin to find ways to flourish, because that’s really what the gospel is calling us to be. And like, you’re the specialist in marriage, and you know, the goal of a marriage is not that each partner just keeps saying they’re sorry to each other.
Rod: That’s right. That’s right.
Jim: The goal is that the marriage is really exciting and fun and flourishing.
Rod: Yes.
Jim: And that’s our dream for diversity, is that people would start to become so joyous about this and so engaging with this, that instead of it being like taking medicine, like, well, let’s just get it over with. Instead, we realize, this is God’s heart. So if we keep pursuing this pathway, at some point, we’re just gonna say, praise God that I’m where I am now, versus where I was five years ago.
Rod: Yeah, you’re describing Jim, authentic connection with people, right. That’s the best way I can think of it. It’s authentic connection.
Jim: That’s right.
Rod: Right. Where people feel cared for, right. Where they feel like you really care to understand their journey, where they feel like, wow, this person is a Christian and I’m not, but they seem to really care about me, right. They wanna know more about the God you serve.
Jim: That’s right.
Rod: When there’s that kind of authenticity and care. And I’m telling you, I think we are poised, we’re in one of the most important periods-
Jim: Amen.
Rod: Of human history.
Jim: Amen.
Rod: And national history. Right? If the church leads the way with this, what glory God will get.
Jim: Amen.
Rod: What glory?
Jim: And I would add global as well.
Rod: Yes.
Jim: We absolutely, in Converge in all different nations in the world. And the whole world right now is in various forms of upheaval.
Rod: Yes. There’s no doubt. There’s no doubt. The church, I believe that for such a time as this God has raised up His church.
Jim: Yes.
Rod: If you will. Right?
Jim: Yes.
Rod: That we get to stand in the gap and demonstrate, right, what it looks like to bring racial healing, what it looks like to demonstrate the empathy of Jesus, right. The savvy of cultural awareness, right. Nobody’s too old or too young to do this.
Jim: That’s right.
Rod: Right. We can all do this and we can make an extraordinary difference.
Jim: Amen.
Rod: In Jesus’ name. Man, thank you for drawing up that diagram. I don’t know where we would begin with this.
Jim: But God just put it on my heart and I hope it blesses somebody.
Rod: I know it’s gonna bless a lot of people. I can’t wait to, for us to share this with more and more people, to help more and more people get trained in these really important dynamics.
Jim: Amen. Amen.