The Story I've Been too Ashamed to Share

Please receive this post with tenderness.

Belmont Beach in Haughville. Photo taken by WHTR.

I want to tell you a story that I have been too ashamed to share with you until now.

It took me a year to share this story with anyone else, and two years before I could share it publicly with our congregation.

When I shared this story with the congregation last summer, I asked them to hold this story with tenderness, as I feel very vulnerable when I share it. I’m going to make that same request of you, reader.

I want to share my shame and vulnerability with you, inviting you into a posture of searching your heart for the prejudices and fears that keep you from wholeheartedly living into the unity Christ has won for His people (Ephesians 2:15-16).

It is the summer of 2022. Our family knew that we had been called to the Haughville community of Indianapolis to begin cultivating a new neighborhood-focused church that would bring neighbors together across racial, ethnic, and class barriers. Having moved to Indianapolis from the D.C. area, our family was in the middle of an arduous eight-month search for a home in Haughville. We were doing our best to be sensitive to unjust economic systems, yet investors were buying the houses in our price range with all-cash offers we couldn’t compete with. Banks were denying us loans because they considered our neighborhood a bad investment.

We understood that our neighborhood held a great deal of skepticism toward outsiders, particularly White outsiders. It was our conviction, therefore, that if we started ministry before we lived in the neighborhood, we would likely be received poorly by community residents. With deep pain and sadness, we waited to begin integrating ourselves into the community.

I had been getting to know one of the leaders in the Black community, a wise, community-focused man named Jason. As our relationship grew, Jason asked me to participate more fully in some of his work. One week, he invited me to a large neighborhood party taking place the weekend after Juneteenth at Belmont Beach. I felt very honored by the invitation.

Belmont Beach is a park in our community along the White River that was once a segregated swimming spot for Black residents of the city. The river was heavily polluted due to nearby dumping, but it remained one of the few places in the city where Black residents could swim. In recent years, efforts have been made to reclaim Belmont Beach as a place of beauty, hope, and peace within the community.

As our family pulled up to Belmont Beach, I realized that at this huge event, we would be the only White people in attendance. Suddenly, I was overcome with panic-inducing fear and anxiety. Numerous questions began racing through my mind: Is this a Juneteenth event that we’ll be crashing? What if we’re viewed as intruders? We don’t live here; is this party even for us? Are we going to be turned away as outsiders?

I became nauseous. I froze. I started to sweat. It was an experience unlike any I’d had before.

I looked at my wife, who was driving the van, and I said, “I can’t do it. I want to leave.”

So we turned around and left.

Rather than going to the party at Belmont Beach, we chose to attend an event hosted in our sending church downtown. That was a much more comfortable environment for me.

There are no words to describe the crushing shame and failure I carried with me for so long. Typing this story out today brings many of those feelings back to the surface.

Over and over again, I rehearsed shaming thoughts like these to myself: Everyone told me I was cut out for cross-cultural ministry, and I can’t even do this simple thing? I told Oprah on national television that I was committed to racial justice, and I can’t even go to a party? Everyone is counting on us to plant a cross-cultural church, and I can’t step foot into the neighborhood park? How could I possibly lead others into the challenges of cross-cultural work when I can’t even face them myself?

I felt like a coward. I was a fraud. I didn’t want to tell anyone. I kept my shameful secret to myself for a long time. The only person I confided in was Barbara.

Barbara, an older Black woman, was my intercultural coach at the time. She is an amazing, wise, godly woman, and I am so glad she was an authoritative voice in my life during this season. Unable to look Barbara in the eye, I tearfully told her what had happened and how ashamed I was.

Barbara told me three things that I will never forget.

First, Ben, you have just acutely experienced what many of your friends of color have faced their whole lives in predominantly White spaces. You’ve also experienced what your neighbors might experience as you invite them into this new ministry as it begins.

Second, you need to go to Jason and humbly ask for his forgiveness. He offered you a gift in his invitation, and you rejected it. You need to repent to Jason (I did. He didn’t care, but it was still the right thing to do!)

And finally, I need you to get back up and go again. Ben, you’re not pursuing this ministry because you’re gifted, though you are, or because you have experience, though you do. You’re pursuing this ministry because God has called you to it for the sake of the church. Part of accepting this calling will involve learning to say you’re sorry, asking for God’s help, and with all gentleness and humility, learning how to keep going.

Barbara’s words were a transformative experience for me. I have held her words close to me as a light in dark places.

The Apostle Paul instructed the church in Ephesus to “make every effort” to keep the unity that Christ has won for his people. Beneath Paul’s exhortation lies an important lesson: we will never simply drift into the difficult things of the Christian life. Unity is hard. Reconciliation is difficult. We must “make every effort” not because we are talented rock stars, not because we are going to swoop in and save a neighborhood, and not because we are guaranteed “success,” but because Christ has called us to this work.

We make every effort to pursue peace, unity, and reconciliation, not because we are good at it, but because Christ has uniquely entrusted this task to his church, and no one else (2 Corinthians 5:16-21).

John Chrysostom, a fourth-century theologian, once wrote on these verses in Ephesians 4 and said:

What is this “unity of Spirit?” To this end was the Spirit given, that He might unite those who are separated by race and by different manners; for old and young, rich and poor, child and youth, woman and man, and every soul become in a manner one, and more entirely so than if there were one body.

Now then, what impairs this bond? Love of money, passion for power, for glory, and the like, loosens them, and severs them asunder.

Before our family moved to Indianapolis, I believed I was a very compassionate and understanding person, including toward those very different from me. I had read all the books on anti-racism and how cities often exploit the poor. I scored high on the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI), an assessment that measures your ability to perceive culture and be flexible with other cultures. I was even on Oprah to discuss racial issues—twice!

Yet when our family moved from the suburbs of D.C. to the inner city, I found myself living next to all kinds of people I had never encountered before. I was devastated by how many sinful judgments and stereotypes emerged out of my heart. My natural inclination was not to move toward differences, but rather to move away from them.

I think most of us are unaware of whom we struggle to love, where we may be complicit in division, or how our hearts may be nursing a love for money or power because we’ve just always chosen what is comfortable for us. Until we make every effort to pursue unity and peace, we will never uncover those secret places in our hearts where Jesus still intends to work grace to make us more like him.

Perhaps this is why Paul connected true unity to Christian maturity (Ephesians 4:14-16). We cannot mature until we embrace discomfort, until we’re willing to explore the dark and prejudicial corners of our hearts, and until we’re willing to “make every effort” to love people across every kind of difference.

This work is only possible because the Triune God resides within His people (Ephesians 4:4-6). One Spirit, One Lord, and One God, Father of all. It is our privilege to participate in their life of love. With their love in us, we can embrace discomfort, confess our hidden prejudices, and overcome any challenge.

It won’t be easy, but it will be good.