President Paulson's Comments To Oakwood Students Options

[Guest_Tiombe_*]

Is the Gospel of Christ more important that one's racial heritage?

Well, I'd like to ask this question of conservatives who call themselves Christians and yet do things to hinder particular racial groups in the church.

[princessdi]

Sorry for being so late in coming to this thread.

I think Denny was asking my view of this because I live in Pacific Union , where there is no Regional conferences. I am of the beliefe that there should be.

The focus is defintely different, especially in the area of evangelism. When the Net series was started in 1995, we had our annual consisituency meeting in 1994, not to ask if we would like to participate or did we see any issues that might result, but to tell us that if we didn't partipate in the Net '95, we would get no money for evagelism period. As you can imagine, many minority churches could not then afford the $5,000 price tag then on the satellite equipment(conference package deal). Not the case at my church, but we defintiely had aproblem with presenting as they "suggested". Don Schneider, then our conference president proceeded to "suggest" that we make the screen "larger than life" for effect. Well, we would have had some kind of effect, alright.

First thing is the black community was defintely n ot in satelllite the, neither was most of America. It quickly became apparently that this series was meant to bolster dwindling caucasian membership. Plus many in our community were not going to take kindly to coming and sitting down to watch a"larger than life" white man on the screen. Our church is int he hood, often in the crossfire of warring gangs, the focus of this evangelistic push was defintely not geared to reach them, or the community around them.( I also had an increasing problem with the series as it took them 10 years to find somebody besides a white man to give the message, but that's a subjec t for another time perhaps.)

Ok, I also want to address Mr. Paulsen's answers to the Oc students. Tht was so evasive, it was pitiful. He was not Christ like. If you really understand what he said is that yes we have segregated conferences/churches and we like it like that! This is one time we, as African Americans, and any other minority should have been offended by a white man's use of the word diversity. He used to explain why they(GC) have no plans to do anything about the racial divison in the church, choosing instead to spin as "cultural diversity". They started black conferences because they didn't want to worship with the blacks they were evangelizing our of racial prejudice, they are still here for the same reason.

I think someone said something about they only want to merge with us if they can maintain control. IOW, all of the Regional conferences, along with all of those jobs, would be eradicated and everyone would just be under the white conferences.

Yes there are all kinds of ethnic groups but if those ethnic groups are of European decent, then the treatment is not the same as non-european/non-cascausian

[Denny]

Is the Gospel of Christ more important that one's racial heritage?

No but unfortunately Christianity has been hi-jacked by the 'pink skins' (Star Trek term) and it probably hasn't been the same since. Hence in Adventism the need for regional conferences in the USA, former apartheid practises in the South African conference,the German churches relationship with the Nazis in the 1930's/1940's and the UK church own little racial tensions in the 1970's.

[princessdi]

This is choice the white christians always ask black people to make. But it doesn't have to be so.

Is the Gospel of Christ more important that one's racial heritage?

[princessdi]

In light of the thread currently being discussed about the church being divided along racial lines, I though I would bump up this thread on our GC President's view on the subject.