In this episode of the podcast, Greg sits down with friend and board member Albert Tate, lead pastor at Fellowship Church in CA. Greg and Albert discuss Albert’s new book, How We Love Matters, and have honest conversations around the important issue of racial reconciliation in the church.

Insight from Our Guest, Albert Tate

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1. How We Love Matters: Pursing Relentless Racial Reconciliation

  • How we love is a big deal to God
  • Pursuing racial reconciliation without understanding that how we love matters will never help us truly achieve reconciliation

2. Loving well requires relationships and revelation

  • Proximity breeds empathy, and empathy breeds intimacy
  • Leaning into empathy (and intimacy) paves the path for racial reconciliation
    • “…What a missed opportunity for him to love me. Because he showed up looking for evidence when what I needed was for him to show up with empathy… Empathy does not require agreement.”

3. Loving well requires imagination.

    • “Love needs to be curious. Love doesn’t need to be defensive. It doesn’t need to try to hold my line. It should be curious of my brothers and sisters burdens.”

4. Too often in Christian culture, convictions are strong but compassion is anemic.

    • “My hope and dream with this book in particular is that my grandchildren will see it and think it was the dumbest idea they’d ever heard of. I hope that they look at the work and the sermon series and how I talk about my church and just think… Was that a thing? Like, are you serious right now? I hope they look at my work as like a VHS tape and be like, this was an actual thing?… Because I hope that the world that they live in and as the body of Christ, that it would be so irrelevant, that diversity will be so integrated in our discipleship, in how we walk in maturity of Christ, that they would be flabbergasted by the idea that it was worthy of a whole book. That’s my dream for irrelevancy in the next 20, 30 years.”

5. Achieving the dream of irrelevancy

  • Christians must be willing to sit at the table and be sore, be offended, without getting up and leaving
  • Enter the conversation with a desire to love and empathize
    • “The first mile was to fulfill a requirement. The second mile was an opportunity to transform a relationship. I think as we enter into these conversations in these spaces of racial reconciliation and conversations… come in with an extra mile Christian perspective to say, when I feel like I couldn’t disagree more, I’m going to invite myself to go an extra mile in your story, an extra mile in your narrative, an extra mile, understanding your burden. And if we can bring that posture to this conversation, I’m convinced we could change a generation.”

*Transcripts are created through automated processes and may contain errors

More About: Albert Tate

Albert is the founding pastor of Fellowship Church—one of the fastest-growing multiethnic churches in the United States. He began in ministry pastoring just a few families at Sweet Home Church in Mississippi before serving the historic Lake Avenue Church in Pasadena, California. Hearing the call from God to plant a church, Albert and his wife, LaRosa, launched Fellowship Monrovia in January 2012. In its short history, this gospel-centered, multiethnic, intergenerational church has already established a solid foothold in the region for life transformation to the glory and honor of Christ.

 

As a dynamic communicator, Albert is passionate about sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ both to the local church and the global community. Blending the power of storytelling with a good sense of humor, Albert enjoys illustrating God’s amazing grace and love in church, academic, and conference settings.

Albert and LaRosa have four beautiful children. Albert serves on the Board of Trustees at Azusa Pacific University, the Museum for the Bible in Washington, D.C. and Global Church Planting Organization, Stadia. He was recently published in Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and in 2018 launched the Albert Tate Podcast.