Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church has invited “African American and/or Black Members” and their spouses of any ethnicity to attend a special gathering with racial trauma experts, with non-spousal white church members asked to pray for the event but to stay away.
Warren sent the invite out to members, informing them that “We don’t want to be a church that just talks about love, that just studies love, that just defines love, that just prays about love. It’s not enough to just say we love people. We have to show love.“
With Saddleback’s many campuses still closed and with no plans to reopen any time soon (the opposite of loving people in their church), the special gathering is happening via Zoom and is virtually hosted by Pastor Anthony Miller and Dr. Anita Phillips.
Miller is the communications pastor at Saddleback, and Phillips is the Trauma-expert. As one might expect, Phillips is a theological mess and deeply compromised. She promotes and partners with Trinity-denying Heretic TD Jakes, retweeting out his material and being a speaker at his “Woman Thou Are Loosed” masterclass. When she’s not doing that, she’s hosting In the Light Podcast, which is a smorgasbord of divisive, gospel-redefining critical race theory talking points. The announcement continues:
Our worship team has also arranged a one-of-a-kind gospel experience. We want this to be a safe space for our Black brothers and sisters to heal and be fed mentally, emotionally, and spiritually by their church family heading into the new year…
Worshipping next to a person with white skin is not safe? Congregational worship is not healing or edifying when there is white folk around? What fresh hell is this? Does Saddleback believe white brothers and sisters are giving black members the heebie-jeebies because of their melanin?
Furthermore, keep in mind this is a Zoom call. No one is even in the same room. This is some next-level divisiveness that the church is facilitating black members needing a virtual “safe space” to have their “gospel experience” so that they can “heal” away from the lighter-skinned congregants.” God forbid there might be white members sharing bandwidth with black members and streaming the same thing.
Notice also how Saddleback singles out “African American” members as privy to this evening of racial healing and that other “persons of color” like Asians, Hispanics, and Latinos will have to content themselves with staying away from this blacks-only service and hanging out with the whities in prayer? To wit:
For everyone else in our church family, I invite you to pray that God will use this night to begin the healing process that leads to true fellowship in our church family, and that God will begin the ministry of reconciliation in all of us as we head into new waters in the new year.
True fellowship and reconciliation do not occur within a body by having a “Blacks-only service,” or a “Latino-only service,” or a “Whites-only service.”
Rather, true fellowship occurs when you denounce these hellish, racist, race-baiting filthy rags as satan-stained damnable doctrine and instead have every tongue, tribe, and nation worship together as one in Jesus Christ, irrespective of race, gender, age, socioeconomic status, or any other artificial divider the world might think up.
Dear Saddleback Family,
We don’t want to be a church that just talks about love, that just studies love, that just defines love, that just prays about love. It’s not enough to just say we love people. We have to show love.
I can’t wait to share with you my vision for next year, and how we’re going to continue loving and serving people who are in pain. But right now, before the year is over, we’re starting with our Black brothers and sisters.
So if you are an African American and/or Black member of Saddleback (and spouses, no matter your ethnicity), you are invited to a special Zoom gathering Monday night December 14, at 6:00 PM with me, Pastor Anthony Miller, and Dr. Anita Phillips, racial-trauma expert and host of the In the Light podcast. Our worship team has also arranged a one-of-a-kind gospel experience. We want this to be a safe space for our Black brothers and sisters to heal and be fed mentally, emotionally, and spiritually by their church family heading into the new year. Click here to register and receive the link.
For everyone else in our church family, I invite you to pray that God will use this night to begin the healing process that leads to true fellowship in our church family, and that God will begin the ministry of reconciliation in all of us as we head into new waters in the new year.
I love you and miss you every day!
