Develop a Discipleship System
The Future of Discipleship
By Junius B. Dotson
There is something unique about the Black Church and discipleship. In trying to articulate the power and profundity of the Black Church, I ran across a video of the late, great social critic and comedian Dick Gregory who died in 2017 but whose thoughts and images of the Black Church still resound like an Easter morning bell tower.
Gregory said in a society that did all that it could to render black people invisible, the Black Church made him feel “seen.” It made him feel human. It met all of his needs.
The lessons of that history have never meant more than now.
As we think about the future of discipleship, we can learn much from the African American church tradition. The love, the faithfulness, and the discipleship in the Black Church offer aspirational insight into how all of our church relationships can look.
The pain of our past during which we held so tightly to God’s hand can prove instructive and transformative for the church we are becoming.
“The Black Church was my daddy. The Black Church was where I went to school. The Black Church was my camp,” Gregory shouted in the video. “It was my Christmas. It was my Santa Claus.”
The pain of our past during which we held so tightly to God’s hand can prove instructive and transformative for the church we are becoming.
Gregory said when one of the elderly women in the community died, no one would read in the white newspaper that Mrs. Jones had been sick and she passed away. White newspapers didn’t cover black people much in life and certainly not in death. He said he had to read that in the church bulletin.
“My church bulletin was my New York Times,” Gregory said, his voice again rising to a shout. “It told us who had been drafted. Who made the honor roll. Who had finished college.
“And it didn’t tell me who was in jail or who had been murdered at a crap game.”
He said he wanted to learn to read because he wanted to know what was happening in the community. He wanted to be somewhere that affirmed his personhood. His humanity.
“So I came here to the church,” he said, “and got visible.”
I’d argue no racial or ethnic group needed the church more than African Americans.
The Black Church served as the headquarters and launching pad for civil rights marches. The Black Church continues to send thousands of youth to college with scholarships culled from tithes and offerings. The Black Church bestows leadership opportunities to people otherwise invisible everywhere else in society.
That desperation created a special kind of discipleship.
When society said we were nothing, the church gave us everything.
It offered community, political power, protection, learning, inspiration, and even recreation.
The tragic past that made that so, can be our gift to the denomination we’re becoming. Our discipleship and witness illustrate how our faith was our life, not just our lifestyle. United Methodists will need this kind of faith during this difficult transition.
The Black Church served as the headquarters and launching pad for civil rights marches. The Black Church continues to send thousands of youth to college with scholarships culled from tithes and offerings. The Black Church bestows leadership opportunities to people otherwise invisible everywhere else in society.
There has been much we’ve learned and can learn from our membership in a predominantly white denomination. But there’s a lot that we can teach, too.
What we’ve painfully earned, we can generously share in order to strengthen the people called Methodists.
During this denominational test, African American testimony has never been more crucial and more necessary.
A recognized visionary leader in church revitalization, the Rev. Junius B. Dotson is the former General Secretary (chief executive officer) of Discipleship Ministries, an international agency of The United Methodist Church. Prior to joining Discipleship Ministries, Rev. Dotson was pastor of Saint Mark United Methodist Church in Wichita, Kansas, where he was instrumental in transforming the church into a 3,500-member multi-campus congregation. Rev. Dotson passed away in 2021 after a brief battle with cancer.