Blended worship

With recent events like those in Ferguson and Charlottesville, Christian leaders from Russell Moore to John Piper have encouraged believers to repent of the passivity that has prevented us from being the light we should be in this period of resurgent racial strife. How Christians with different skin colors can do a better job loving one another is the question on which the documentary 11AM: Hope for America’s Most Segregated Hour seeks to shed light.

The film follows a Richmond, Va., ministry called Urban Doxology that brings together a diverse group of college-age musicians so they can blend their musical styles and compose praise songs.

In a refreshingly open tone, its leader, Pastor David Bailey, points out that it’s not surprising for believers of different backgrounds to see the troubling events of our day differently. What we can’t do is shout at, belittle, or foment resentment against one another. We also can’t avoid the uncomfortable issue with an excuse of “It wasn’t my sin” if we wish to obey Christ’s command to bear one another’s burdens.

In contrast to the snark and quick-draw outrage invading social media and cable news, Christians should feel emboldened by the early church’s example to enter into loving if sometimes spirited conversations. Doing otherwise, Bailey says, discredits the gospel in the eyes of a watching world.

The film does such a good job offering a Biblically grounded call for racial reconciliation at a broad level, it sometimes neglects to show how that messy process works at a close one. It would have been instructive to see the students hashing out their different perspectives rather than simply hear them describing them.

Despite that, 11AM effectively reminds us that as believers we stand outside the world, and our ability to ask for and offer forgiveness should seem as alien as our citizenship. Then the world may pause from screaming at each other in the streets to say, as the Greek pagans did of the early church, “Behold, how they love one another.”