What Do Woke Churches Look Like?

I’ve been reading a book called No Reason to Hide by Erwin Lutzer; it’s a call for Christians to stand firm in a world which is becoming increasingly hostile to Christianity. One of the chapters is about woke churches. Trying to define “woke” is not as easy as it might first appear, as definitions vary according to the source. Going back to the early 1960s, it meant conscious and aware, or well-informed and up-to-date. In 2017, it came to mean “alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice,” according to the Oxford dictionary. Previous to that, following the deaths of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown in 2013 and 2014, the word “woke” came to be associated with the Black Lives Matter movement and before long the LGBTQ community as well.

Lutzer writes about a church that has an all-white staff but a very diverse congregation. Following the Charlottesville riot in 2017, the staff began to warn against Christian nationalism, which I think is wise. However, following the death of George Floyd in 2020, the leadership began to publicly pray for “Black Lives Matter,” but then also “Hispanic Lives Matter” and “Asian Lives Matter.” No mention was made that “White Lives Matter,” even when white people were murdered. As the riots continued over the next few years, the pastor bought into the nonsensical narrative that the demonstrations were “mostly peaceful.” You may be familiar with the instance of CNN national correspondent Omar Jimenez reporting from Kenosha, WI, in August 2020, standing in front of a raging fire with this graphic on the screen: “FIERY BUT MOSTLY PEACEFUL PROTESTS AFTER POLICE SHOOTING.” This was very widely mocked in much of the media, but perhaps the pastor had been misinformed. However, when a man who was part of the church brought it to his attention, the pastor called him “selfish.” Sermons in this church became focused on social justice, encouraging the congregation to become “involved in the fight for racial and economic equity.” This man further wrote, “No longer did we hear that Christ can redeem sin and evil. We were not asked to share the gospel with our lost neighbors. Rather, we were told that we whites were to be blamed for all the rage that was happening around us. The unity we once knew has given way to blaming some and excusing others.”

Thankfully, my city has been spared the rioting that has happened elsewhere over the past decade or so. However, some churches here have “gone woke.” One of them had been trending for a while in the direction of being supportive of people in the LGBTQ community. However, when I read their “social justice” statements about racism, gender equality, and LGBTQ+ (among others), I understood why about two-thirds of the congregation recently left and formed their own, more-conservative church.

Another church in my city is part of a denomination that has been “open and affirming” in welcoming and including people in the LGBTQ community. They have also taken perverse pride in having had the first openly lesbian pastor in that denomination. During the COVID lockdowns, they took it a step further, at least publicly, with a large mural of an LGBTQ rainbow flag on one side of their church; they also had a large Black Lives Matter sign on their property. You may think by this point that I am against Black Lives Matter; I am, but only in the sense of the very corrupt organization, which is finally under investigation by the DOJ for gross financial mismanagement and alleged embezzlement by some in its leadership. In addition, as I have written about in another post, Black Lives Matter has had as one of its goals to “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure.” Perhaps most supporters of BLM have not known about this mismanagement and the aforementioned goal. Regardless, the truth is that all lives matter, not just black ones!

A third church that has been moving in the woke direction for many years is one that my family and I used to be a part of. The leadership used to preach about the sin of homosexuality about once a year; however, when a new pastor (now gone) took over several years ago, things began to change. I have a close friend who used to serve in the college ministry. One night, a student asked what the Bible says about homosexuality; my friend told her, focusing on Romans 1. Another leader overheard all of this and told my friend, “You hate gays.” This was in spite of the fact that my friend was responding to the student’s question! Regarding the new pastor: the only thing I heard him say about homosexuality, at least from the pulpit, was that the second half of Romans 1 was not even about that. While it is true that not all of verses 18-32 of that chapter are about homosexuality, verses 24-27 very clearly are, so his statement was very misleading, at best. My friend told me that he had talked to the pastor about this, saying we shouldn’t assume that young people today (like that college student) know what the Bible says about homosexuality; the pastor’s response was that if he preached about that sin, half the congregation would leave. Well, since then, even though he didn’t preach about it, more than half the congregation has left. I think a lot of the pastor’s reluctance had to do with the fact that there are some lesbians in the congregation; he also has a lesbian relative. Interestingly, I recently ran into another pastor who had been over the senior adults of that church; he very recently retired but said that he had been nudged out. He said that the church had “gone woke.”

Thankfully, there is new hope for my former church; the head pastor I wrote about in the previous paragraph stepped down last year, and they are in the process of “vetting” a new pastoral candidate. Based on his responses to a series of questions, including some specific ones related to human sexuality, I believe he can lead the church in the right direction.

At my church, there are three brothers who give our pastor a “break” by taking turns preaching on the last Sunday of the month. One of them recently preached on 1 Corinthians 5; in this chapter, the Apostle Paul sharply rebukes the Corinthians for being proud of a man in their midst who was sleeping with his stepmother! As an application of Paul’s teaching to contemporary American society, this brother wanted to preach about homosexuality, but he decided to talk to the pastor first. The pastor’s response to this brother’s intention was “Oh, good! That is especially important for our teens to hear!” When I heard this, I thought of the pastor who stepped down from my previous church last year and what his response would have been in that situation!

As Christians, I believe we need to be attuned to matters of social justice; however, we need to first be focused on the Gospel. If we’re not, we will inevitably water it down to the point where we may even hear this absurdity at the end of a prayer: “Amen and awoman.” This was spoken by Congressman Emanuel Cleaver at the close of an opening prayer for the new Congress in January of 2021. More than one pundit quipped that at restaurants, we may need to have a menu and a “womanu.” I would also quip that we should have a menu and a “womenu” to be grammatically consistent! Admittedly, this did not happen at a church, but Cleaver is an ordained minister.

On a more serious note, I love these words from Lutzer: “We must distinguish between accepting a person and approving of their conduct. Every human being is created in the image of God and deserves to be treated with dignity and respect, but not every human being deserves approval for their conduct and lifestyle. We can be welcoming even when we cannot be affirming.” Amen to that! As Ephesians 4:15 tells us, we need to be “speaking the truth in love” and to leave the results to the Lord. I think it is clear that God’s people want to hear His Word clearly spoken and explained; when church leaders do this, people will come–and stay–to hear it.