On Sunday, September 11, the Friendship Presbyterian Church in Black Mountain, NC (near Asheville) hosted an evening on the subject “Perspectives on Race, Grace, and the Church in the 21st Century.”

The Rev. Craig Bulkeley had completed seminary at Westminster but went on to be a lawyer for 25 years, working many of those years in Miami, Florida before entering the ministry in 2001 as pastor of Friendship Church in Black Mountain. His desire is setting up this event was the hope that the public will know clearly the positive impact the Gospel can have on racial issues and its clear opposition to racial bigotry, building on lessons learned during those ministry years.

Appearing on the panel of the program were area pastor Dr. Jeffrey Hutchinson, a member of the PCA’s Standing Judicial Commission and a former Moderator of the Western Carolina Presbytery of the PCA, which was confronted with a variety of troubling racial issues over the past three years which came to fruition at Friendship in 2010. (The Aquila Report reported on those stories here and here.)

Sharing the panel time was The Rev. John C. Neville, Jr.,was a founding pastor of the PCA and cousin to G. Aiken Taylor, long time editor of the Presbyterian Journal. As a pastor serving in Alabama in the 1960s, Rev. Neville was asked to and did organize and chair a committee of black and white community leaders to work through racial issues. He has been a distinguished pastor for more than 50 years, having served most of those years in at Hendersonville, North Carolina. He is currently Minister of Teaching at Friendship Presbyterian Church.

Also invited and planning to participate was Ruling Elder Joel Belz, founder of WORLD Magazine who serves on the Session of one of the Asheville area churches, but he was providentially hindered.

The primary speaker for the event was The Rev. Mark Robinson, an African-American pastor in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). Rev. Robinson is an ordained Teaching Elder in the predominantly “white” PCA. He is a graduate of Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia and has served on the staff of churches in South Carolina, New York City, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. He has also been a guest lecturer at Westminster Seminary as well as Covenant Theological Seminary’s Francis Schaeffer Institute. Currently, he serves as interim pulpit supply of Community Bible Church, a small diverse community in Inwood, NY. Rev. Robinson is also a classically trained concert pianist.

Rev. Robinson’s heart-felt concern over the state of race relations in the church led him to help form ‘Grace & Race’, an intentionally multiethnic initiative intended to bring the Gospel to bear on troubling race matters in the church.

Rev. Robinson also preached at the church’s 11 AM worship service to which the public was invited.

Pastor Hutchinson shared his impressions of the event publically, both through his Facebook page and during a face interview with the author over this past weekend.

Some of you were aware of the big events this past weekend and have asked for a brief report. I am going to be leaving out a lot, but first of all, thank you for your prayers. I believe that Mark Robinson and Craig Bulkeley and the good folks of Friendship Presbyterian Church in Black Mountain, NC were borne up in the Lord all weekend long. Mark’s preaching and teaching were especially anointed by the Spirit.

His sermon Sunday morning (on “Gospel Conflict” from Galatians 2:11-21) was very, very well received, and has already been bearing fruit. The congregation was so pleased to have Mark with them, and we all enjoyed a lingering family “homecoming” luncheon afterwards, with wonderful stories and laughter and fellowship. Not to be too melodramatic, but Mark was certainly the first African-American to preach at Friendship, and, as far as I can tell, most likely the first African-American to preach from any pulpit in the churches of the Western Carolina Presbytery in our 39 year history (I’ve nicknamed him Mark “Jackie” Robinson).

Sunday evening the church was as full as I have seen it since J. I. Packer preached there ten years ago. All sorts of people from the community attended, including the leading community organizer, members of the PCUSA church (their pastor had announced it from the pulpit for two weeks, urging her members to attend), African-American neighbors (Black Mountain is only about 8% Black), the Town Manager, Asheville’s leading African-American leader (she marched with MLK, and feeds 13,000 people a year in downtown Asheville), and other leaders in the community.

Although an announcement of the special events had been made to all 28 of the churches in Western Carolina Presbytery, there were only a handful of visitors from two other PCA churches.

Mark’s lecture was helpful, powerful, professorial, cheerful, helpful (did I say that?), witty, substantive, and too short! After he lectured we had a panel discussion and what was so pleasing was to see how members of the community felt so at home and so free to speak and ask questions and simply share their hearts.

A visitor from one of the African American churches asked if it would be possible for the churches to gather more frequently for special events, noting how valuable the evening had been. An interracial couple shared the blessing they had received from attending the meeting.

Monroe Gilmour, the town’s leading community organizer (who describes himself as a ‘backslidden Presbyterian’), stood to commend Craig and the members of the church that stood firm to the whole community, saying that it was their faith in Christ that had sustained them, that the suffering they had endured was beyond what he could have endured, and telling the community that Craig and that church had suffered for them, for the valley, for the community. Gilmour, who had worked as a civil rights worker in the South during the 60’s and later for many years in the Peace Corps in India and Africa, had returned to his family homestead in Black Mountain for family reasons but continues to work in the community.

Then Tracy Bulkeley (Craig’s wife) stood at the very end, and, addressing the crowd, welcomed them all in the name of Christ, and said something like, “…and whatever you may have heard about this church in the past, those days are OVER! It is a new day for Friendship,” and people began applauding. It was so wonderful.

Then, when it was over, no one wanted to leave. There were refreshments downstairs and it was packed, even while many others remained upstairs in little groups of conversation all around the sanctuary. Such a blessing for Friendship Church! Thank you for your prayers, thank you, Mark, for your ministry, and thank You, LORD!

When the issue of racism came to a head at the Black Mountain church in the Fall of 2007, there were about 60 people active in the church. About half of them were three family units that had moved to town in the early 1990’s, together with some other members who supported them. The three family units had moved to Black Mountain after having been associated with the Aryan Nations in Idaho.

By the time the church judicial cases generated from the conflict (close to a dozen, total) were finally completed (the last one finished this past June), all of these members had left the church, reducing its size by about half. However, the remaining group has become more deeply knit than ever before and its attendance has grown by close to two dozen in recent months, as it continues to be a force against racism, and a gospel-driven church in the mountains east of Asheville.