Winning Back Generation Y

The Hampton University Ministers' Conference is one of the most influential gatherings of black church leaders. And HU chaplain Debra Haggins O'Bryant is the event's driving force.

A new Time magazine article explores the budding promise of racial diversity at evangelical megachurches that were once bastions of homogeneity. Can Willow Creek pastor Bill Hybels take his congregation all the way? An interview with Time religion writer David Van Biema.

Two-hundred years after a nasty split over segregated seating that led to the formation of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the black and white descendants of a historic Philadelphia congregation unite to worship, repent, and heal past wounds.

This profile of Gardner C. Taylor was originally published in the Dec. 11, 1995, issue of Christianity Today magazine. We reprint it here in honor of Dr. Taylor's 91st birthday.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the "Prince of Preachers," summed up his philosophy of preaching this way: "Above all, [the preacher] must put heart work into his preaching. He must feel what he preaches. It must never be with him an easy thing to deliver a sermon. He must feel as if he could preach his very life away before the sermon is done." Gardner C. Taylor knows something about this kind of preaching. For more than 50 years he has "preached his life away." In 1979, Time named him "the dean of the nation's black preachers," and in a recent issue of the Christian Century, he was dubbed the "poet laureate of American Protestantism."

Ministry has its up and downs. Such is life. But one of the joys of planting and pastoring Quest Church is that it's one of the most unique and diverse communities I have ever been a part of.

This isn't meant to be a slam against homogeneous churches. In fact, I believe that every community is multicultural on some level (hint: think beyond race). While I very much miss the uniqueness of my experiences in Korean American churches -- food, generations, languages, etc. (and still am involved in Korean American/Asian communities) -- I now understand why God called my wife, Minhee, and I to venture out from our homogeneous suburban church into the city to plant Quest and Q Cafe.

There's no shortage of talk these days about a "new Black Church" led by a dynamic movement of anointed, intelligent, and innovative up-and-comers. At the same time, many contemporary scholars are debating the question of whether there's such a thing as a "Black Church" in the first place. Though often portrayed as a singular, monolithic entity, the constituent congregations of the "Black Church" often share little more in common than the Christ they preach and the skin color of their members.

It's no secret that America is a very religious nation. A comprehensive study in 2007 by the Pew Forum revealed that a whopping 92 percent of all Americans say they believe in God, and 82 percent say that their religion is very or somewhat important to their lives. Of these, 78.5 percent claimed affiliation with some branch of Christianity.

I am not and never have been a fan of John McCain, his proposed policies, his inconsistent record on many issues, his poor choice for a running mate, his thoughtless economic plan, or of his very negative campaigning against Barack Obama. It was hard for me to bear the thought of voting for him. It was equally hard for me to bear the thought of siding with a campaign for "change" that would passively allow each state to choose whether it would change the definition and legal institution of marriage, and that would not actively seek to change (read: "work for the overturning of") Roe v. Wade. For me, neither candidate represented change or progress for the country, except on the issue of the country's readiness to be led by a candidate of color.

This letter comes from an actual email that was sent to members of Living Word Church near Detroit, Michigan. In it, Pastor Randy Duncan offers his congregation spiritual insights and practical advice that all American churches -- and individual believers -- would do well to heed as this heated election season comes to an end.