“He has told you what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.”

                                                                                                Micha 6:8

I heard a podcast recently where four different groups did some research and came up with the same results.

There was Darryn Scheske, founding senior pastor of Heartland Church in Indiana; Derwin Gray, lead pastor of Transformation Church in South Carolina; Carey Nieuwhof, who writes a daily blog about trends in today’s church; and David Kinnaman of the Barna Research Institute. All well-respected individuals with great integrity.

What they found was that the reason young people are leaving the church is because it is not diverse enough; it doesn’t match the society in which they live. Churches that are multi-ethnic are attracting and retaining young people at an incredible rate. So, what’s happening when you see the number of young people at church go down, it’s not that they’re leaving “the” church, they’re leaving the traditionally “white” church and heading to one that looks more like their world.

With that in mind, I did a little research, and I warn you up front, it may unsettle some of you. And I’m okay if it does. I hope it puts all of us on the road to seeing and acting beyond the racism and prejudice and bias and stereotypes we have held for so long.

This is the race distribution of the world right now.

59.5% is of Asian descent.

19.0% of the world is of African descent.

16.0% of the world is of European descent.

5.5% of the world is of Hispanic descent.

That means that heaven is made up mostly of people who are not white and have never spoken a word of English in their lives. In other words, heaven doesn’t look like the church many of us sit in on Sunday mornings.

Just something to think about.

“Father, Open our eyes and our hearts. In Jesus’ name, AMEN.”

Grace,

Rev. Dan