History And Future Of The Black Church

The Black Church is an adapting institution and a source of courage and vitality for resisting dehumanizing conditions. It was the primary and only institution black people had to deepen and to strength their spiritual life and to nurture and to practice Christian ethical value, to reconcile and liberate themselves. The days of coming to church for personal salvation alone are over. Now we are looking not only for personal salvation but for social salvation. If we do not change, the community will not change. I believe the writer is seeing the church as it is now and the future of the Black Church. He states “Bishop John Hurst Adams of the African Methodist Episcopal Church observed recently, black churches are operating essentially on the
agenda given to them by their founders. He emphasizes that even though our society is changing Jones encourages the church to keep the foundation that helped Blacks persevere through the challenges they had and will continue to face. Jones is advocating continuing educating yourselves and learning to transfer that information in the future without compromise. Jones also recognizes that our surroundings are changing with the new generation.
During the early years of the Black church the first agenda of the black American congregations and then of emergent denominations included (1) the proclamation of the gospel, (2) benevolences, (3) education and, by the mid-19th century, (4) foreign missions.
(Of course, in the antebellum period a concern for the eradication of slavery was also central.) That these items continue to dominate the church’s mission priorities and stewardship planning may be attributed in part to the continuing marginality and relative powerlessness of blacks in American society. At the time after slavery was eradicated, black churches nickels and dime of dues and assessment created their own economics and political structure building their businesses and churches. However, due to population grow the church is now in a time of
change.
I agree with Jones that the church is no longer able to maintain the benevolent fund for the needs of the people, but point the people in the direction that they should go. According to Ortiz during Jesus days the cities were very small or Jesus ministry in the village where it was easy to reach the people, but today we have great cities to reach. Churches today do not have the resource or the manpower to reach the masses (Ortiz.53). Social welfare programs sponsored by the government and by community and private agencies are far better resourced and programmatically more comprehensive than those that individual churches can sustain. The churches’ task in the area of benevolence has become that of ensuring people gain access to the benefits, different agencies offers, and what they are entitled to receive.
The churches have played a major role in history, but now it is not able to continue to build or maintain the masses using the same ethos of the founders.
By 1900, the churches had compiled an impressive record: black Baptist associations were supporting 80 elementary schools and 18 academies and colleges; the African Methodist Episcopal churches were underwriting 32 secondary and collegiate institutions; and the smaller AME Zion denomination supported eight. The denomination now named the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, only 30 years old in 1900, had established five schools. Though not a part of the format agenda of the churches, church buildings have been crucial community assets. From the earliest times, they were the only assembly halls to which the black community had access. They housed schools, dramatic productions, cultural events, social welfare programs, rallies and benefits of all sorts, and civil and human rights activities. The requirements in these areas are less critical today. However, if the need for meeting space has declined, the claims placed on church members by movements for social, political, and economic justice have not diminished. According to W. E. B. DuBois, the NAACP could not have survived without the support of the black
churches.
Jones emphasized that as we look toward the future, the agenda for black churches is a complex one. The existence of the churches is not in jeopardy; they are and will continue to be for large numbers of persons the only accessible institutions that will meet their need to be affirmed in their identity and sense of belonging in both a human and a divine dimension. What is in jeopardy is the capacity of the churches to attract urban dwellers in large numbers while church programs are still geared to a 19th century rural ethos. The new agenda for the black church is to create and implement a curriculum that would attract and keep an urban population. The most significant phenomenon to impact black churches in this century has been migrated to the cities. Urban churches grew and prospered because of that population movement; but the rural ethos continued to be reflected in worship, organization, and mission priorities. Nevertheless, the history of the church cannot be forgotten when talking about the current condition. During the ages, the church must be able to address the consciousness, realities, and urgencies of contemporary urban life. In this connection, the church must become bilingual: it must understand the language of the world and translate the gospel into the idioms and symbols of that language. Christian nurture must also be bifocal. It must keep its eye on heaven, but it must not fail to see the world at hand and seek to enable persons to wrest meaning and significance of their lives in it. In the future of the Black church, “lets us keep up, but not lose track (Just another UWW Blogs weblog).”