Walking Across the Street — Then and Now
The Greenhouse movement named Walk Across the Street came from an actual crossing of a street. Many of you have heard the story of how Pastor Michael Wright and I met. I literally walked from Cornerstone Oak Park Church to True Freedom’s service in the school across the street, and a friendship—and a movement—began. Soon we shared a building. Week after week for several years, the members of our two churches mingled between our services, So when the amazing opportunity came for True Freedom to join with a historic Black church (Christ Tabernacle) about a mile away, their move was celebrated--and also mourned. We’d formed friendships, and we knew we would miss seeing each other regularly.
But this missing each other has ended up spurring us to action and deepening the relationship between Christ Tabernacle and all the Cornerstone congregations! Not long ago I wrote to you about the revival we partnered on late last summer. The fruit that came out of this sparked an idea in both Michael Wright and me. What if we started a joint service, one that was at a different time than any of the involved churches’ service times, a service that involved both of us preaching, music from both of our traditions, prayer time that led to people sharing their heart needs with each other…?
Neither of us could stop thinking about it! We kept talking. It felt right to us that we should meet in Austin, at Christ Tabernacle Church. We also settled on Friday nights as the perfect time for the service, as Black churches in Chicago have had a tradition of an extra service on Friday nights. When I shared this with one of Greenhouse’s Board members, Paul Wolfe, he was especially struck by the choice of Fridays as the day for the service. “Having a service at the beginning of the weekend implies a choice being made to change up the rhythm of our lives, to make space for more God,” he said. “And when we change this vertical dimension, it also impacts the horizontal. When we experience ourselves collectively as children of God, we look at each other differently. And after worshiping together as God’s children Friday after Friday after Friday, people become friends—real friends, seeing each other, knowing each other.”
Michael Wright is passionate about this kind of friendship. He told me he envisions hanging a large banner on the outside of Christ Tabernacle’s building that reads, “Black and White Church Service, Friday nights, 7 pm!” He wants to proclaim to the entire neighborhood that White Christians are literally “walking across the street” to join with Black brothers and sisters in worship and fellowship.
“I’ll be honest,” he told me not long ago, “where you are in the suburbs and where we are in the inner city, we’re worlds apart—we’re in parallel universes—even when that suburb and that inner-city are only a few blocks from each other. There is a very clear dividing street between these two worlds. I wish more white churches would take a chance and walk across the street with black churches in the inner city.
We’ve wanted racial reconciliation from a distance. That doesn’t happen. Racial restoration doesn’t happen from a distance. You can’t stand across the street and say, ‘Hope everything is going well over there.’ I want more churches of different ethnic expressions to come together as one.”
He said to me, “William, that day when you walked across the street and into our church service, I was preaching on Esther, specifically on the phrase, ‘For such a time as this.’ I invited you up to stand beside me that day, and we prayed for each other.
"The rest is history—because of the bond that was created by you walking across the street.
That’s what it’s all about. There are not going to be these divisions in heaven: black, white, Anglican, Baptist, so we have to take chances now. We have to just say, ‘That’s my brother, that’s my sister. It doesn’t matter the color. It’s getting too late for that.
‘For such a time as this’ is now, and if we can walk across the street and gather in joint ministry, in joint prayer, and in joint repentance, and say, ‘Lord, have your way, I believe that will usher in a tremendous revival.”
“For such a time as this” is now. These are powerful words from Pastor Michael. Now is the time to walk across the street. Now is the time to join brothers and sisters from what may feel like a different world—IN that different world. Now is the time to come together to pray and worship and become true friends. NOW, so that we may walk across ALL the streets that divide us—in this nation and around the world.
Canon William Beasley serves as Director of the Greenhouse Movement, working within the Anglican Church in North America to help establish new congregations in the Upper Midwest and throughout North America. Canon William is both a regional leader and a rector of multiplying congregations. William Beasley is passionate about bringing people together for evangelism, mission, and worship, bringing souls into the transforming presence of Jesus Christ.