Diversity at Royal Lane Baptist Church

[Alan Carter]

Diversity has truly been achieved at Royal Lane BC in Dallas, Texas. They are adding their fifth gay deacon this month. To show their true diversity, their Chairman of Deacons is a lesbian.

I'm so proud of their openness and transparency in today's Baptist world.

[Ed Pettibone]

[Alan Carter]

They run about 200 in worship on Sunday and I imagine they have 10-12 straight deacons. I'm not sure how that ratio works out though.

[Tim Dahl]

[Alan Carter]

I'll check and find out those figures for your information.

Perhaps they will be participating or leading this conference on sexuality:

http://www.abpnews.com/content/view/6710/53/

[Alan Carter]

Just talked with one of their deacons and here are their stats:

3-5 Black deacons
3-5 Hispanic deacons
33-35 Total number of deacons
90-95% White people in the congregation as a whole

[Sandy]

[Ed Pettibone]

[Alan Carter]

I forgot to add that over half of their deacons are women. Diversity rules supreme in parts of Dallas for sure.

[Big Daddy Weaver]

[Haruo]

What's their membership like sexual-orientation/gender-identification-wise? I mean, is 5 gay deacons tokenism or overkill? Of the churches I've visited in my weekly peripateticism this year, the one I find most appealing as a place to go with regularity, if not join per se, , is rather heavily GLBT (and racially rather white). I think they may have been the very first (1987) Open & Affirming DOC congregation; certainly in this part of the country.

[Alan Carter]

I would say their membership is about 25% gay.

[Big Daddy Weaver]

And how did you arrive at 25% Alan?

Are you a member? What's your connection to the church?

[Matt Richard]

[Big Daddy Weaver]

Any proof that Royal Lane is actively seeking publicity?

All we have here is a comment on a message board making a claim based on what he's heard. I don't see where Royal Lane is advertising anything?

[Haruo]

Sounds like their nonwhite members are better represented in the deacon pool than their nonhetero ones are. Does "Hispanic" count as "white" or "nonwhite" when comparing deacons to the congregation as a whole?

[Alan Carter]

They aren't seeking publicity because they don't really care what the rest of the Baptist world thinks of what they are doing. I have many good friends who go there and have attended there myself. The figures I gave you came from deacons themselves so I would consider them trustworthy. It is quite an interesting place to go--you should all go sometime.

[Ed Pettibone]

[Big Daddy Weaver]

Just to add, how is a church calling its FIFTH gay deacon going to get publicity? News organizations generally cover FIRSTS not FIFTHS.

[Sandy]

I've always believed that church leadership was selected by evidence of a spiritual calling, and not with regard to a "representative" ratio of the presence of similar backgrounds in the congregation. Of course, in a Baptist church it is the Deacons who do the kind of leadership that most churches call "Elders" to do, but from a Biblical perspective, this is based on the individual's sense of calling, and ability to meet the Biblical qualifications, and not on the percentage of racially or culturally similar people in the church.

At our former church in Houston, about 40% of the congregation was Hispanic. The Deacons included two Asians (one Chinese, one Indian), one African American who served as chair the last two years I was there. Of the remaining men, mostly past 50, mostly caucasians, one was German, one was born and raised on Guernsey Island off the British coast, and one was an MK who was raised in Brazil. Attempts to ordain a "representative" number of Hispanics came up short because none of the Hispanic men in the church felt called to serve as Deacons.

Royal Lane doesn't have to seek the approval of any other Baptists with regard to the choices they made regarding Deacons, nor is the "diversity" of their Deacon body anything more than the lack of diversity is in any other church. It's the end result of their process of selection. If it is intended to make some kind of "statement" about how other Baptists should be doing it, then they have done it for the wrong reason, and if it is lauded as such, it is being praised for the wrong reason. The real question is whether they followed Biblical qualifications in choosing their Deacons. If they did, then that is to be praised and celebrated more than the achieving of some false standard called "diversity." If they didn't, well, that's between them and God.

[Ed Pettibone]

[Matt Richard]

I didn't say it WAS publicity, just asking the question. I think it's a good question to keep in mind in areas like this where the pendulum has begun to swing to the opposite side in Baptist life. "Proof" of something like this would be hard to substantiate and subjective at best. In all areas of church life, the question of "why are we doing what we are doing" can never get asked enough. Only the church can judge their motives.

[Ed Pettibone]

[Alan Carter]

I think they do it because they have a lot of gay members and they want to be represented on the deacon board. Of course they have some members that think its cool to have gay members so they can say they are open and tolerant but I think the vast majority are sincere in their openness to having gay members. I must admit that it does a bit of adjusting to get used to seeing openly gay couples in church on Sunday.

[Haruo]

Back in 1996 or so I went very intentionally to the Seattle Metropolitan Community Church once a month for a year. That pretty well inoculated me (if I wasn't already immune) against shock at seeing gay couples in church. At MCC it's more likely that the sense of something unusual would be occasioned by seeing two or more straight couples at a time in church. There was an interesting chapter in a book I once read (and have forgotten the title of) about congregational decision-making, that dealt with the conflict within an MCC congregation that was considering ordaining a straight male clergyperson. Wish I could recall the name of that book. (Interesting stuff in it on decision-making in Friends' meetings, too, as well as Baptist and other experiences.)