Blueprint Church in Atlanta, Georgia, to start Urban Hope Church. Therefore, not only was there the challenge of merging new relationships, but also overcoming the existing racial barriers. According to Warren, this took time. He adds,
The first few Sunday mornings, if you were standing in the pulpit, you could look out and you could clearly see a line— a line separating the people that had come from one place or sitting in one section from the people of a different race who came from another place. And then, eventually and gradually, the line of division started to go away. But it didn’t just go away. It didn’t go away immediately. It took some work. I credit the Holy Spirit for working in the hearts of people who are gospel sensitive.1
Church leadership. The leadership style and structure of Urban Hope Church is a shared leadership model. Although the two main leaders, William and Warren, have different titles and unique gifts, they share the church’s decision-making and pastoral duties. This approach to leadership came out of each of their convictions and past
experiences. Warren, who was raised in and had previously participated in the leadership of a Black church, shared his belief that a shared leadership model creates a healthier balance of influence and protects the church from abuses that can arise from having power and authority centralized in one leader. However, making this transition was not easy for his Black church members. He recalls,
So, in a Black church, there are things that if I’m pastoring in an exclusively Black context that I would never have to negotiate or create a compelling reason, in order for people to do something to mobilize. I could just literally say this is what we’re doing, and people will say ‘All right. Yeah. You said it.’ I mean, there is a that dimension. I know that that’s been my experience in terms of how people respond.2
1 Warren shared how the Lord prepared him and his church to merge with Urban Hope Church by teaching them about the multi-ethnic nature of the church. They went through a study of the Book of Acts. He recalled, “This idea of seeing all these multicultural names in the church and how the church was just growing beyond Jerusalem, it wasn’t just you singularly. And I believe that was the Lord preparing us for this.”
2 Warren reflected on how his original church member’s responded when he shared the idea about merging with another church. He illustrated their view of his position as lead pastor and commented,
So for example, when I went from house to house to my flock to explain that I was going to begin sharing leadership with a White person, this was how they responded: While everybody knew that it wouldn’t be gospel and it wouldn’t be good to have misgivings about him being White per se, there was probably issues with me sharing the leadership. Because you have this iconic figure, the Black pastor, in their minds. Here I am. I am this relatively successful professional. So what is this? Is this
From his perspective, William adds,
We have a Black pastor, and we got a White pastor, and they are both our pastors.
So there must be this true shared leadership, I would say. This has been super helpful to us. Because there’s certain conversations pastorally, where we’ll hear about an issue in the church and either Warren or myself will say, you probably need to take that conversation, or I need to take that conversation, or you need to say this.
It’ll be more powerful coming from you . . . and that dynamic is really important.
Multi-racial leadership. From the beginning, Urban Hope Church was committed to pursuing diversity. Looking back on those first months of being a multi- racial church, the leaders remember the work of establishing a balance of leadership that would best represent the multi-racial dynamics in the church. This balancing work especially showed up in the preaching schedule and flow. Warren reflects,
So when people got here, it was some adjustment. Because it took a minute to find a good balancing act for how often each one of us would preach. You know, there was a runway where I think maybe William even preached like three or four or five weeks in a row. And that was the first time that I had not spoken for two Sundays straight. Before that time, there had never been two consecutive Sundays where I hadn’t been in the pulpit. And so this was about four or five, and I was starting to feel like, Well, Lord, is this my ego? Is this my call? Yeah, what’s going on? And I could see it in the Black people’s faces. They were saying, “When are you gonna get up there?” Yeah. So he and I had to start thinking through, what’s a good balance in the preaching flow?
Case summary. Urban Hope Church started as a multi-racial church. Initially, there was a season in the beginning when the members had to build trust, but it wasn’t because they were transitioning from mono-ethnic to multi-ethnic. Rather, it was the natural development of beginning new relationships and establishing trust and a shared vision. The most radically different dynamic was the shared leadership model that it introduced. Warren explains,
forfeiture? Are you giving up? Are you saying that God no longer spoke to you and told you to lead our church? There are all these questions that you have to answer around why you want to make this move. And then of all people you want to partner with, it is a White man. Why? What is it that he’s bringing to the table? So I had friends who I consulted with about this and who were like thinking that I did it exclusively for money. You know, oh, you’re trying to make this change because of the prospect of being paid full time. Oh, they’re baiting you. They’re going to bait and switch or whatever.
And so, early on, there was this little dynamic about our respective personalities where in certain spaces, some of the members, regardless of where they came from, would prefer me over William and other members William over me. And so in the past year, that’s dissolved. Yeah, that’s virtually dissolved. What it is now, because there’s also these layers of other people that have come that knew nothing about the dynamics of our respective past, now it’s not an active distinction in the way they view the church. And even in who’s leading the church, and in the groups and stuff like that. But there is this dynamic and it’s not what you think it would be. You would think maybe there’d be this drift of, you know, all the Black folks will talk to me, and the White folks will sort of talk to him, whatever. It’s not that, it’s not that dynamic at all. It truly is. It truly is diverse. I think they tend to come to us for different things and different perspectives, which is great.