men's retreat

I went on a men's retreat with my church this weekend. Katie spent the night with friends of ours from church, and we headed up to Slumber Falls in New Braunfels. It was okay. Katie had a blast staying at Alana's house, which is exciting as hopefully we can do more sleepovers in the future. This is good as it brings with it the hope for going on dates in the future ......

Anyway, back to the retreat. The topic was building a multicultural church, a noble goal and a noble topic.

One of the things I have always loved about Travis Park is that it looks like San Antonio. There are black and white and brown; there are wealthy and poor and everything in between. But what struck me in particular this weekend is how much we don't look like San Antonio. Gathered this weekend were some 40 men and it was racially diverse. But it was affluent white men and poor black men. And the black men that were there all came from the House of Discipleship, which is a wonderful ministry doing great things. I do not want to denigrate it or them; this is a rambling post trying to come to terms with what I saw this weekend. But the HOD is a ministry for men who have been addicted to drugs and alcohol and our recently out of prison. It does an amazing job of transforming lives.

But this mix hardly makes for a balanced discussion of race. And all of the sudden, while I see that Travis Park represents a cross-section of white and brown (English-speaking) San Antonio, I see all of a sudden that there is no affluent black population. And so part of me wonders how progressive this is having a population of wealthy whites and poor blacks. Or is this paternalistic?

I give the church the benefit of the doubt. The main reason is that the services to the homeless have worked to get people into the worship services. None of the social service type work that goes on in the church is contingent upon coming to worship services on Sunday mornings. But the people that come to be fed are treated with dignity above all else. We deal in meals, not just in food. We deal with people as brothers and sisters. And after the disrespect that comes from living on the margins in society, that treatment is attractive. And quite frankly, it is what Jesus calls us to do.

But I had a hard time bonding this weekend with the men there. I don't have much in common with the black men that were there. Except I do, or I should, as they are sons of God as I am. But I have never been inside a jail cell. I have never been drunk. I have never used drugs illegally, though I guess I have been with people smoking weed. But I was such a straight lace that not only didn't I smoke myself, they never even offered it to me. But I do have some experience with having to pull my life back together, with relying on a grace that is greater than I am

So on Friday night, we had one man talk about growing up Hispanic (and protestant) in San Antonio and how that affected him. And then we had another man talk about growing up black in San Antonio. But noone was asked to talk about growing up white in San Antonio. I wonder about that; was it an oversight or was it intentional?

I do not mean to pretend that I have not benefited in my life from being white. I think something all people need to understand is how blessed they are. I was born into a middle class family in the wealthiest nation in the history of the world. 90% of the peer pressure in my life has been pressure to do things that were good for me, not bad for me. I am blessed to have parents who for 25 years of their lives made every major decision based on what they thought would be best for their children. And the success I have had is based also on a lot of good decisions, on studying hard, avoiding the pitfalls of partying and the like. I felt last night like I should be embarrassed for making good choices because not everyone else did.

But I think the thing that made it hardest to get anything out of the retreat was that I simply didn't believe the people who talked about discrimination. I believe that they were honest in describing their perception, but I don't think that they were describing reality. I have been a teacher at the college level before, and had students of all races complain about grades. But minority students would complain it was racism in the grading. In most of those cases, it was patently silly. I had as many as 200 students at a time, and by the time of the first test wouldn't know 20% of my students' names to even know what the race of the person was. Sometimes the name gives it away, but even then, I always graded one page at a time, and from the second page on I wouldn't know even the name of the student. My point is that they perceived racism as the excuse for their failure. I think a lot of the same thing was happening with these men last night. I do not doubt that they had rough childhoods. I do not doubt that their hearts are sincere in transforming their lives now. But when they struggle finding work, is it racism? Or is it that they have a felony record? And if it is not racism in actuality, are we benefitting them by nodding sympathetically and trying to understand them in their misperception? Or are we enabling them and in fact making it harder for them to understand the world in its reality and thus making it even harder for them to be successful?

This and many other reasons make me wish that there had been a broader cross-section of minorities there this weekend. You have to work with what you have, I guess, but I wonder how different the conversation would have been. I would have liked to have been on that retreat. But I wasn't and I came home feeling it had really been a waste of time.