Where exactly do you go for vacation when you live in Grand Cayman? I mean, do you call your travel agent and say, “Man, I really need to get away from it all . . . Find me somewhere cold and ugly.”

I REALLY WISH Thabiti had a national platform for giving that talk. There's lots of talk these days about the nation’s hope to become post-racial. Well, I think the ideas Thabiti presented are the way forward.  There may still be lots of questions, lots of issues to work through, but that’s the direction to a post-racial nation.

For that matter, what a great model of applying gospel truth to a universally pressing issue. Everyone is thinking about race these days, and most everyone is confused about it, if not downright angry. Thabiti’s talk was a wonderful example of bringing reconciling, peacemaking clarity to a boiling issue—just by applying biblical truth to it. 

JONATHAN, YOUR second question down there is the one I’ve had on my mind. I think I’d answer it by saying, Yes, we should just preach the gospel and give no attention to skin color. At all. To skin color. But I don’t think you can avoid giving some attention to what Thabiti’s calling ethnicity.  I mean, ethnicity is going to include a whole framework for how one thinks about the world, a whole worldview, and surely you have to give attention to that prevailing worldview as you preach the gospel.

But here's another question: Given that we’re recognizing the existence of ethnicity, and that we’re acknowledging that ethnicity runs deep, how do you build a church that doesn’t favor one ethnicity over another in its culture? Some people, of course, have just given up on that dream. Witness cowboy churches or hip-hop churches. But I would think one of the implications of Thabiti’s talk is that we should strive to build churches that transcend not only race but also ethnicity—a place where cowboys, hip-hoppers, and yuppies all worship Christ together. I think Thabiti put it something like, “a new Christian ethnicity.” But is that kind of church culture—where cowboys, hip-hoppers, artists, yuppies, and Irish rock singers all come together—a hopeless dream? If not, what would it look like?