Every Thursday in June, we’re sharing reflections from some of the Grace DC members who participated in our March panel on cultural intelligence. This week, Hlase Baloyi discusses why he has often felt out of place at Grace DC churches—and why that has prompted him to stick around:
The reason I took part in this cultural intelligence discussion is because I’ve found the theological side of my experience at Grace Downtown to be excellent, but I’ve struggled mightily to find myself connected to the community. This disconnect has been a result of cultural differences or failures to understand one another, or failures to acknowledge the difficulty in connecting.
I really do believe in community and singleness of Spirit. We are all one in Christ Jesus. We are all serving and loving and worshipping the same God. Yet we all come with our unique selves, and sometimes we come from divergent communities, which shape our identity and frame of reference. Those things matter in terms of connectivity.
My hip-hop background, which in and of itself generates a slew of frames of reference, is something I found very scarce in the Grace DC community. In fact, what I found was that most of the people who attend Grace DC either had no black friends, or had no exposure to the black subculture, which is rich and expansive in its own right.
I want to share more of this with people. I want them to know more about me, not so that I can aggrandize myself, but so people can connect with me more deeply as I likewise hope to do with them. That first begins, of course, with a discussion, one that informs its listeners about the climate in our church community, and how we can move forward.