Building Bridges That Last
By: Carine Lewis (Director of Women’s Ministry & Campus Ministry Staff)
I love how God chose storytelling as a means to communicate truth about Himself and the world He created. Not coincidentally, all throughout the Scriptures, we find God using imperfect people and their stories to point to His ultimate story of restoration and redemption through the person of Jesus Christ. Based on the nature of my job as Urban Hope’s Women’s Ministry Director and Campus Minister at Miles College, I've been reading a lot this year about the human brain and how it’s designed. It has been proven in a number of studies that humans have been neurologically hard-wired for stories. Joe Lazauskas and Shane Snow, authors of The Storytelling Edge say it like this: “Something surprising happens when information comes (in the form of) a story rather than just simple facts: More of our brains light up. When we hear a story, the neural activity increases fivefold, like a switchboard has suddenly illuminated the city of our minds.”
My passion and call are to evangelize, disciple, teach, and equip the next generation of black women for the glory of God. I long to see generations of women reject the lies of this perverse culture and become fearless, Christ-adoring, missional women of grace. There is nothing that sets my heart ablaze more than this and, as a part of this calling, I have the opportunity to be a bridge builder between many different groups of women. One such divide for which I am particularly passionate is that between black women from poor, urban contexts like Fairfield and black women who do not come from, nor understand the context of poverty and its effects. As someone who comes from the latter group, I can attest to how God has broken my heart and has given me great compassion for the former. Over the course of time, He’s shown me how He’s called Christian women to be change agents in inner-city communities filled with women whose spirits have been broken time and time again.
This work grants me many opportunities to learn from all kinds of people and to have my mind “illuminated” by some heart-breaking stories. Some of these opportunities have made it clear that there is a deep need for cultural bridge-builders if we are to see the Gospel shared in poor, urban contexts like Fairfield. Two examples come to mind. This first began one Sunday this year, when a young woman who lives in Fairfield came to visit our church and filled out a visitor’s card with a specific prayer request for her and her son. After receiving her information, I strongly sensed the Spirit of the Lord leading me to be intentional about growing a relationship with her. I texted her to let her know that I had been praying for her son and, per her response, we ended up sharing a meal and scheduling time in the subsequent weeks to get to know each other. She began to open up to me about the traumatic things that had occurred in her life and about how the mechanisms she had used to cope had failed her. Every week, I shared the good news of the Gospel and prayed for her to see that she was not without hope.
One day, I was talking about God’s design for marriage and family and we discussed how God uniquely designed women to honor him with our bodies. All of a sudden, she began to cry uncontrollably. I was confused and incredibly concerned. I asked her what was wrong and then she said, “I just want to thank you for talking to me. Women like you don't normally talk to women like me. I’ve been praying for something like this my whole life and God has finally answered my prayers.” This small, but impactful statement drew my attention to her expectations and relational experiences between a woman like her (a poor, urban, black woman) and other women like me. Even though we were both black women, there was a large culture gap between her experience and mine.
Another example from the other side of the coin came while meeting with a young, black woman who recently gave her life to Christ in one of our meetings. She is an incredibly kind, passionate young Christian who is growing in her faith and knowledge of the Word of God. In one of our meetings, we were talking about evangelism and the call for Christians to live missionally, particularly in her line of work where she is proximate to other black women who don't know Jesus. I noticed that she understood the importance of living missionally from a theological perspective, but seemed very uninterested in actually living it out herself. I then asked her to share with me what made it hard for her to share her faith and her response is another one that stuck with me. She said, “Carine, I just don't like talking to people who are different from me and are living crazy lives. They’re tiring. If I'm honest, I just want to stay as far away from them as possible.” Through more conversation, I recognized something in her statement that I often struggle with myself. It’s always a challenge to love people who are different than we are, but her perspective shed even more light on the divide between socioeconomic groups particularly among black women. This has been a challenging and sanctifying realization for me, but has also provided serious motivation and fervor in my pursuits of discipling women from both contexts.
It’s taken a long time for me to see how wide the gap is between women like these two individuals and like Nehemiah when news spread about Jerusalem's broken walls, I’ve mourned over this and have laid awake considering these relational barriers. Never in a million years did I think God would put me in a position to bridge a gap like this for the sake of unity in the Body. I am at the beginning stages of recognition of this gap in my relational ministry and I feel incredibly ill-equipped to lead women into life-giving, cross-cultural relationships with other women. It’s a task that often feels impossible. However, I’ve been so encouraged and overwhelmed by the grace of God in this journey. Like Paul mentions in 2 Corinthians 12:9, I fight to not exalt myself as strong, but to “boast all the more in my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may rest on me.” I’m excited for what all He has accomplished and can’t wait to see what He has in store for the unification of this unique mix of women through the ministry of Urban Hope Community Church! Please pray for me and for our women as we continue building and developing our women’s ministry to provide opportunities for authentic, Christ-centered relationships that reach beyond culture and socioeconomics and seek to build up the UHCC body in the love of Christ for years to come!
