When The Doctor Says, You Should Sit Down.

In 2010, I was leading worship in front of a few thousand people and I closed my set and went to pray. I was so incoherent that everyone just kept standing and staring at me. Before I turned to walk off stage, I saw the medical team running across the back of the auditorium. I got backstage to my green room where I am bundled up with a coat on, and they came bursting in the room. They thought I was having a stroke. They rushed me back home and my wife immediately drove me to the hospital. They gave me a battery of tests, checked my speech, and a host of other things, then they admitted me. 

The next time they came into the room, it looked like a scene from the movie Outbreak. I sat up as best I could in bed and said. I've seen this movie. Somewhere out there Cuba Gooding Jr, and Dustin Hoffman are looking for a monkey. They said, you have H1N1 and you are in heart failure. 

Maybe you have been in one of those situations where the doctor walks in and says you better sit down. When you were fine just a few days ago but now your world is turned upside down. The only thing you want to do is go back a few days ago when things were normal. I have said for some time for some of us normal wasn't all that great. 

It's the best analogy I can think of to describe what I see going on around the world when it comes to the topic of race. As a society we were fine, or at least we thought we were. I can deal with that pesky nagging thing or it doesn't hurt all the time. Then something happens and you realize we have been asked to have a seat. We awake to the realization that maybe we weren't as good as we thought, maybe those things we thought we could tolerate are now serious things that have to be addressed. Like anyone, we want the quick fix. Can't you just give me a pill and fix this. Isn't there anything I can do? That is when we realize, we should have been doing something all along. Now we have to focus on it. And there is no quick fix. There is no pill we can take and there is no going back to "just a few weeks ago I was fine!" 

This is going to require regular visits, check-ups, medicine, various treatments but most of all a change in lifestyle. In a doctor's office, it always begins with symptoms, then a test, then a conversation, then the acceptance that I have a problem and need to deal with it. Finally a partnership with trained professionals that will walk this out with you. For each of us, I believe we are all at the "why don't you take a seat" part. Hopefully, we will address this soon enough to make a full recovery and the lifestyle changes we make will extend our lives.

White Privilege & My Favorite Game - Monopoly.

I had a Nissan Murano once. Man, did I love that SUV. My wife's first trip home, it wouldn't start when it was time to come back. My father-in-law bought whatever parts were needed and then she was on her way. A few years later, on our way to my sister's wedding in Texas, the vehicle needed tires, brakes, brake lines, pads, and rotors. So we sunk a small fortune into the car. Two weeks later, it stranded my wife at the soccer field with my kids because it wasn't shifting. Back to the dealership this time. 

They can't just isolate the problem. It is so deeply embedded in the DNA of the car's computer, they have to run these diagnostics. They have to fix the first thing on the list. Then run the diagnostic again, then the next code comes up, and another repair. One by one they eliminate all the codes and get to... the battery. Now I'm pissed, what if it was a battery all along and only the battery. I get the car back with a brand new transmission replaced under warranty. So I'm thinking sweet, I'll fix the broken seat, and the cracked fog light and I'll have this car another 150,000 miles. I mean I already have $6K invested in this car over the 7 years of ownership. The very next day my kids arrive home in a stranger's vehicle. They casually walk past me toss their soccer stuff down and say, mom's stuck at the soccer field, with the car lights flashing and the windows rolling up and down on their own. That's it. We traded that car. Hold that thought!

So what is white privilege? Did it exist? Does it still exist? Since these words probably trigger for many reading this, let's use some analogies. But honestly, let's just call this: One Huge Freakin Huge Head Start. 

I love the game of monopoly. I have an Xbox version of it, an iPhone version, a traditional version, and a mustang version. Anyone that has ever played this game knows it can last for days. This one will last about 400 years.

Go: Everyone gets to roll but slaves. A Portuguese slave ship is hijacked and 20 Africans are brought as slave labor as early as the mid 1620s. 

America is born in 1776.
Though most northern states did not own slaves as workers, they were key in selling slaves through the slave trade to the southern states. In 1787 fearing inadequate representation in congress based on population, the 3/5 compromise is proposed. Southern states were told they could now count slaves as 3/5ths of a person. This was the beginning of the end of slavery. Though we were now only a portion of a human, it meant we were no longer property. 1808 Northern States abolish slavey. And Congress outlawed African slave trading. Now states would basically collapse under their own economy. Or maybe not. Because 74% of the exports to the north were from southern slave-owning states. 

Monopoly: 150 years have gone by and everyone gets to go around the monopoly board except the slaves. They pass go, collect $200 grab their community chest, chance cards and even pocket some 'get out of jail free' cards.

Keep rolling the dice for another 100 years. Slaves are still on GO. Everyone else has made it around the board several times, Don't forget we are playing with house rules. So there are a few free parking jackpots too as a new economy begins to emerge.

By 1860 the slave population reached 4 million. During this time, marriages between enslaved men and women were not recognized, families were torn apart, names of slaves were changed, and many were raped, brutalized, and prevented from learning to read and write as to remain completely dependant on their masters.

1861 - 1865 we have a civil war. General Lee writes: 
"The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing is necessary for their instruction as a race, and I hope will prepare and lead them to better things."  

Every Southern state that seceded mentioned slavery as the cause in their declarations of secession.

During the civil war, encountering black competent fighting soldiers on the battlefield blows apart the myth that Lee held about slaves being docile content servents. Soldiers under Lee’s command at the Battle of the Crater in 1864 massacred black Union soldiers who tried to surrender. Lee even ordered his own slaves to be beaten for the crime of wanting to be free claiming it was out of his Christian love for the South. 
It is easy to see now how his earlier writing can seem like a reluctant abolitionist when in actuality, he was doing what we all do with all sin. Justify it and rationalize it.

It is also why Fredrick Douglas wrote: “between the Christianity of this land and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference.” 

Back to Monopoly: Slaves are still on GO but the rest of the country is starting to own land and develop the property. The expansion has moved from Baltic and Mediterranean, all the way around past free parking to the red and yellow properties, where the big bucks are made. All those properties are being farmed by free black slave labor. 

The Emancipation Proclamation signed on Jan 1st, 1863 frees 3 millions slaves. Eliminating free labor in the south. As Union soldiers advanced into Virginia, Lee vacates his home. Private William Christman of PA., is the first of hundreds of military service members to be buried on Lee's estate on May 13, 1864.
In August of 2013, My father was buried there. It is called Arlington Cemetary.

It took until June 19th 1865 for the news of the Emancipation to reach the southern states and those still in slavery in Texas. Hence the name Juneteenth. Jim Crow laws begin immediately. Enfranchisement for black becomes a political agenda. Lee tells Congress that black people lacked the intellectual capacity of white people and “could not vote intelligently,”

The monopoly game has now been played for 250 years from 1620 - 1865. The KKK is founded in 1866. Lee dies in 1870. Black codes were enforced by former confederates who were now the police and judges in states. Jim Crow spreads. Public parks were forbidden for African Americans to enter, and theaters and restaurants were segregated.
Segregated waiting rooms in bus and train stations were required, as well as water fountains, restrooms, building entrances, elevators, cemeteries, even amusement-park cashier windows. Segregation was enforced for public pools, phone booths, hospitals, asylums, jails, and residential homes for the elderly and handicapped. Even prostitution was segregated. Cohabitation and interracial marriage was illegal in most southern states.

Let's fast forward through the aftermath of WWI where lynchings became commonplace. In 1918 Leonidas C. Dyer, a Republican from St. Louis, Missouri, presents a bill making lynching a crime. In 1919, Red Summer occurs. In 1921 in Tulsa Oklahoma, Black Wall Street was burned to the ground. In 1922 the anti-lynching law is passed into law.
1929 - 1939 the stock market crash, and the great depression. Seemingly leveling the playing field, however only generational wealth sustained. Blacks were 
last hired/first fired. WWII sees the birth of The Tuskeegee Airmen, an elite group of Black Bomber Escort fighter pilots. 

It is now 1965, Monopoly has been played for 350 years. All the good properties are bought up. Because of oppressive laws on the books, let's say from 1865-1965, blacks are now only able to move between "GO" and Just Visiting Jail. Everyone else can travel freely, live where ever they want, work where they want, buy land, build businesses, amass generational wealth, pass that generational wealth down through their families, acquire loans and start businesses.  

Now we quickly dive into the Civil Rights movement. Black are fighting to equal opportunity in education, we get is forced integration.
A Democrat in 1957 named Strom Thurmond records the longest filibuster in US History opposing the civil rights bill. Robert Bryd, a Democratic Senator and a man who was unanimously appointed one of the highest positions in the KKK after recruiting over 150 new Klan members. In 1946, Byrd wrote a letter to a Grand Wizard stating, "The Klan is needed today as never before, and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia and in every state in the nation." 

11/23/1963 JFK is assassinated. 

In 1965, after 70 Days of Hearings and a 54-day filibuster, the civil rights bill passed by a vote of 290 - 130. With 82% of Republicans supporting the bill and finally passing with Northern Democrat support.

3/21/1965 Malcom X is assassinated. 
4/4/1968 Martin Luther King was assassinated 
I was three years old. 
6/6/1968 Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated.

It took until 1987 to investigate what happened in Black Wall Street and they are still trying to uncover where the bodies were buried or dumped in the rivers. 

In February 2020, that's right 2020 the Emmett Till bill was signed into law classifying lynchings as a hate crime. It took 120 years. Emmett was a 14-year-old boy who while visiting family, was lynched in 1955 in Mississippi. Carolyn Bryant Donham, the accuser, admitted in 2007 at the age of 72, that she fabricated the story, but as to what really happened she couldn't remember. 

Byrd later left the Klan in 1952 while running for office. Where he won the election and preceded and succeeded Thurman. Remaining as a Democrat Senator in office until his death in 2010. 

Let's not paint Democrats with such a broad brush, because Strom Thurman switched parties and became a Republican in the late 1950s to support Barry Goldwater. In 1960 Goldwater repeatedly stated the Civil Rights Bill was unconstitutional. Blacks who had stuck with the party of Lincoln began to shift as white southerners were drawn to the Republican party. Southerners like David Duke, Born in 1950 in Tulsa Oklahoma. Duke is are now vocal, republican politician and he is an American white supremacist, far-right politician, a convicted felon, and former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, who advocates Neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. So do I think the political system is my savior? Absolutely not, but for many in the absence of true faith and leadership politics has become a religion. 

Monopoly:
1965-Present, ding, you are now free to move about the cabin.
Athletes, movie stars, musicians breakthrough to the yellow's Marvin Gardens, A few elites even make it all the way to the Green properties. Boardwalk and Park Place are still only for the elite. For the rest of us, we can't even imagine living there. We are just renters in a game hoping to stay alive until we land on free parking. Or someone goes bankrupt from over-extending and we can pick from the estate sale. 
My friend Drew Skladany posted this week, "They must have been all out of white privilege when I was born because I work really hard for my life."

White Privilege, or Advantage or what I am calling "One Giant Freakin Head Start" doesn't mean life for any of us is easy. Some have it harder than others and we come in all colors shapes and sizes. But the game wasn't stacked for 400 years before you were allowed to play. There was no generational wealth to be passed down. American Blacks learned to read and write at risk of death during slavery. After slavery, we could own property, build wealth and when a small 35 block section of Tulsa did, it was burned to the ground. We were allowed to fight for our country but barely live in it when we returned from war. We couldn't even file a patent on a board game. Now, political parties on both sides of us play us between each other, and the new media make sure the noise floor is so loud that the voices of reason are silenced. We live in a time where if we are going to be in a relationship with each other, we have to make sure we believe exactly the same thing. Sunday is still the most segregated day of the week in our country. Pastors, preachers, and teachers today never thought they would need the tools and skillsets to function like it was the 1960's. But have somehow found themselves right back there. 

When I hear people say it's only 1% of cops, It means out of an 800,000 person police force, we are ok with 8,000 of them being horrible at their jobs. What is the number we have to hit before it becomes intolerable? How can we make it easier for other 792,000 officers to see it, report it, stop it, and hold them accountable? 

I didn't steal one thing during the protests. So can I say it's just 1% of black people rioting? 

When I hear people say how Floyd was not an upstanding citizen, I ask, how good does someone have to be before we say, dying that way is inexcusable?

When my friends become experts on black conservative views, I am more than willing to sit and have a conversation. However, if the only reason you are sharing this with me is to say there are bigger problems in black communities than bad police. We know that. But if what you are really saying is, you don't have the right to talk, then you are not really listening. 

I know there are problems, I know we are missing fathers, I know gangs may seem like the only real family some people have, and violence against their own race could possibly be because it is the only people around they can steal from. But if we really are serious about using this tipping point, we have to listen. 

And listening is NOT just waiting to talk. It is listening to understand until the change, occurs. And I don't mean removing statues, or removing the black faces off of rice, and syrup. I mean, a real change of heart. 

The church is the only organization equipped to address the human condition, the condition of the hearts and spirit, to help us understand our anger and bitterness. To safely peel back the layers of callouses on our hearts, and remove the blinders from our eyes until we love what He loves and hate what He hates. 

Recently when I say God looks at society and says "This is not my plan for you, but I can work with this."  

I believe he is looking at the church and saying. "Yeah, thanks for coming in, but we've decided to go in another direction."

I have to do better, you have to do better, we have to be better, and the church needs to be the image-bearer of Christ and not some blurry representation of the new political religion. This is not about white guilt, it is also not about left or right. And it is not about black on black crime. It is hoping you see the advantage of getting a 400-year head start on my favorite game, monopoly. So when someone says, why can't they just pull themselves out of their situation, challenge yourself. Ask yourself, especially if you are my age. What must it feel like to be the first, fully-free, no strings attached person in your family? Then someone like Tyler Perry gets stopped on his way to meet the President of the United States because he is driving a really nice car. It's exhausting.

If only there was a diagnostic code to fix what is going on in our country. We can't just trade it in for a new one. We can't strip it for parts and sell it off to a scrapyard. Some of you reading this might feel that is exactly what is happening. The United States is a hoopty for better or for worse. But it's our hoopty, and we are all in this together. 

So like I always say, let's get comfortable being uncomfortable. Still Listening? 

Inward Or Outward Focused - What signals are we giving.

Imagine a large dining table. Ten people are seated at that table, chatting it up. It is clear they know each other and they are at least friends. The table is certainly large enough to seat many more but there are only 10 chairs and every seat is taken.  Now someone approaches that table. They are familiar to the people at the table but it is clear they are not in that inner circle. A few at the table remain silent, and a few toss some friendly smiles and a head nod.  No one rises from the table, but one person does turn and greet this person. They say "Hey, it's good to see you." "How have you been?" The one standing says, "Ok, but don't want to interrupt, I just wanted to say high, I can see you're busy." The person seated says, "yeah, we were just about to have dinner, but it was so good to see you."  "Let's get together sometime."  The person standing leaves, and dinner resumes for all the people seated at the table.  This is my simplified version of an inward-focused team.  Now let's rewind this tape and give you a different scenario.  Ten people are seated at that table, chatting it up. Someone approaches that table, a few smiles and head nods are tossed their way but three people stand up. A hug a handshake is exchanged, a hand on the back to the person standing and an introduction starts to take place. Now everyone is standing. Greetings take place and the new arrival says. "Well I can see you are busy, I just wanted to say hi." This time almost in concert, people start sliding closer together to make room for an extra chair. One of the of the ten says, "please, have a seat", then instructs the rest of the team to make some room. Someone grabs a chair and pulls it up to the table for them. They all sit back down. Now 11 strong. The other ten begins to serve the newest member at the table.  Someone grabs a plate and says, what would you like? Someone else calls the server over and says we are going to need another place setting and some extra glassware.  Once the new person is served, the dinner resumes. 

I am sharing this analogy because this is partly how I tell stories. The point of this story is not about the 10 at the table, nor is it about the 11th that joined. It's about 12th. What do you think will happen in that situation the next time 11 are seated and a twelfth person approaches the table. The culture and expectation have already been set.  The 11th person automatically stands, grabs a chair and begins to make room at the table.

This is how contagious culture happens. It is observing, modeling, and inclusion. Then rinse and repeat. In today's culture, it is far too easy to miss these moments. Not being aware of opportunities to stand and make room at the table is a sign that a team, organization, church, company or ministry has become, myopic. 

In an example of social cohesion, you have a group of people who interact so well together. They like each other, are friends and care for one another so much they prefer to spend their social time together.

A group with high task cohesion shares a commitment to a goal that can only be successfully achieved if a group is motivated to coordinate efforts to reach that goal.

Some feel task cohesion may be more valuable than social in raising the performance of a group. A high social group can lose the ability to challenge the status quo. Correct decision making can be hindered because of groupthink. In addition, the mission can be sacrificed for the sake of preserving social cohesion. 

So what if the mission of a task cohesive team was to help create social cohesion? Then there must always be a focus on communication, both inward and outfacing, vision casting, feedback sessions, temperature checks and debate, and inclusion. Everything must be looked at through the lenses of a newcomer. A team addition can often be the bad apple or the missing link? The type of cohesion you seek as a priority can be the difference in which of those you attract. 

I believe this is why we are always recruiting our own kind. But this is not always healthy. What is our own kind? What if you inserted someone into an inner circle that maybe the rest of the team did not have high social cohesion with but the team was responsive enough to not feel threatened by a dissenting opinion. What if all communication from your organization said we are pulling out a chair for you. What if everyone served the newest one. Think of the mission that could be accomplished by a task cohesive team, whose mission was to create social cohesion. 

Basically, if you are a company, what can you do to feel like a corner store. If you are a team, what can your veterans do to help the serve the rookies, and vice versa. If you are a large church what can you do to avoid feeling too big, and if you are a small church trying to grow what can you do to not feel too small.

I know as a leader of creatives, and former leader of business people. We often share the same mission. I want to leave a place changed for the better because I passed through.