History of Birmingham
Download MP3Hey, everybody. It's really encouraging to see so many of you here tonight to hear about the history of our beloved city, Birmingham. Our speaker tonight is Colin Hanson. Colin serves as the editorial director, for The Gospel Coalition, and he is an elder here at our church. He and his wife, Lauren, have 2 wonderful children, Carter and Elise.
Speaker 1:And over the last, several years, Colin has become a particularly dear friend to me because he's one of only 2 other people in my life who are equally willing to talk about baseball and theology. So I'm really thankful for Colin for his leadership here at our church and for his friendship. We've invited Colin to speak tonight because we wanted to let you guys in on some conversations that we've had as elders over the last several years. What does it look like for Redeemer Community Church to seek the welfare of this city? How does our city's past, especially our city's history on racial issues, shape its present and therefore shape our answers to these questions.
Speaker 1:We've invited Colin in particular, because we've all learned a great deal from him on these subjects over the years. He's, spoken about the history of Birmingham at, The Gospel Coalition's MLK 50 conference at the Sojourn Network's Pastors Conference, and he's led several tours of Birmingham for various churches that have come in, to visit. Now, before we begin tonight, I just kinda wanna set up a few parameters. Tonight is not going to answer every question that you may have. It's not going to answer every objection that you can think of.
Speaker 1:Tonight is not meant to be exhaustive. We only gave him 45 minutes to speak followed by a short q and a. So just bear with us. And all of that is for the sake of our beloved childcare workers downstairs. Can we give them all a big round of applause and hope they hear?
Speaker 1:Tonight is also not going to fully answer the question, what's next? Because those difficult questions need to be worked out in every individual heart, in every individual family, in all of our home groups, and within community. And we love talking about these things even though they can be really difficult because the wealth fair of the city is not just an issue for the left or the right. Loving our neighbor is the call of every single Christian. So we come tonight wanting to learn with humility, wanting to learn how to pray, wanting to learn how to seek the welfare of the city because we cannot know where to go if we don't know where we've been.
Speaker 1:So with that, let me pray for us. Our father, we thank you that you loved us with a love that is too great for words. God, we pray tonight that you would give Colin a lot of wisdom, a lot of clarity, and that by your spirit, you would speak the truths and the history that you have laid upon his heart. We Give us a heart for this city like your heart for this city. Give us a heart for this city like your heart for this city.
Speaker 1:God, give us the humility to search our own hearts and see if there is any offensive way in us. God, lead us in the way that you want us to go and heal our beloved city. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
Collin Hansen:Thank you, Matt. And if I say thank you, Matt, for giving me the invitation to do this, to speak in front of my favorite people, in in front of my beloved church, to talk about some things that have been on my heart and your elders' heart for some time, and that, we would love to just kind of continue that conversation tonight. I wanna prepare you. I will probably be emotional tonight. I don't know where, and when, or how.
Collin Hansen:You might be emotional tonight. You might be angry at me. You might be angry at other people you've never heard of before. You might be angry at some of your family members. You might just be sad.
Collin Hansen:I'm not sure. I don't know how you'll react. I do trust, though, that the Lord is at work and that he can help us together through this process. I think it's only appropriate as well tonight to begin with I was actually just speaking down in Mobile today at the University of Mobile, and I was asking why the flags were at half mast down there. They said we had a local police officer shot.
Collin Hansen:And I thought, of course, that's the same for us here. So I think it's only appropriate we begin with a lament to the death of Birmingham Police Sergeant Wytasha Carter. Observe that it's, it's altogether so tragic that some of those who've always been most active in seeking the blessing and flourishing of our city have been the ones who've suffered the most. I think you'll see that thread as we look together tonight. From the start of Redeemer Community Church nearly 11 years ago, we have been committed together to seeking the welfare of our city.
Collin Hansen:You've heard a lot about that the last several weeks. You heard Matt preach eloquently about that this last Sunday, that city of Birmingham, Alabama. God's message through Jeremiah the prophet to the Jewish exiles living in Babylon, their conqueror, says this, Jeremiah 29:7, but seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. So we seek the good of Birmingham, and in its good, we'll find our own good. In those 11 years, Redeemer has become one of the largest and most influential churches in Birmingham.
Collin Hansen:I say that not to boast. I say that because it's our responsibility then to understand this city and to love that love this city as well as we possibly can, to be stewards of influence for good. I talked last year just briefly with mayor Woodfin. He was across the street eating with some of his staff members at Saul's Soul Kitchen. I told him, here at Redeemer, across the street, we were praying for him.
Collin Hansen:He responded by saying, and observing how young this congregation is, he's taken notice of us here at Redeemer. We're unusual in particular, among many different ways, but in our in that youth. Maybe he feels a little bit of kinship there himself, being such a young mayor. But that youth also makes it even less likely for us to know Birmingham's history, because few of us have lived through it. So why history of Birmingham and why now?
Collin Hansen:It's significant as I was thinking about this. Redeemer started let's think this is something Joel would be proud to say. Redeemer started in 2,008 at just about the worst time possible. It would be harder to figure out a worse time to do this. The Great Recession hit Birmingham even harder than it did other cities.
Collin Hansen:This is significant. President Roosevelt said during the Great Depression as well that Birmingham was one of the hardest hit cities in the country. One third of the entire city of Birmingham in the Great Depression was actually on government welfare. And in the great recession of 2,008, last month, actually, the New York Times reported that our city lost 45,000 jobs in that great recession that we never recovered. You may have read that article in the New York Times.
Collin Hansen:Basically, it was an argument for why Birmingham is so pathetic compared to Nashville. Awful article. I hated it. I hated it, and I think you all would join me in that. Of course, most of those jobs heavily concentrated in our banking industry, in particular.
Collin Hansen:It's interesting. Home sales dropped 29% just that 1 year. I remember visiting Joel, telling me with some relish that he thought this was so good for the community and for our church, because it meant people lost some money that couldn't move away. Alabama, our state, our beloved state, was very hard hit. Unemployment rose that those 18 months from 5.9% to 11.8%, those 18 months after Redeemer started.
Collin Hansen:Yet that was just the time when Redeemer's leaders and founders invested their lives in this city and bought houses and started families here, even though many of them did not grow up here. Actually, very few of our initial leaders, even still today, to a certain extent, have actually grown up here. I think that's actually a key part of our story. It's probably better that way, that they were not from Birmingham, because so many Birmingham natives, especially those of us whose families had actually left the city at one point, have viewed the city of Birmingham so negatively. A narrative has set forward, basically, of decline and danger, the view of many toward, especially from the suburbs, toward the city of Birmingham.
Collin Hansen:But Redeemer's enthusiasm for spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ in this city, in this place, was so infectious, so attractive to my wife Lauren and I, that we made plans to move to Birmingham and to join them in this church. In the fall of 2010, Railroad Park opened on the south side. It's become then, as you know, the official backdrop of all of your Christmas card picture, family photos. In the fall of 2,011, Avondale Park, just right over here for us, reopened after major renovations. You remember hearing about all those shovel ready projects and all that stimulus money coming out of the great recession?
Collin Hansen:That's what it was spent on, among other things. The spring of 2013, Regions Field opened. I remember asking Joel if we should organize groups to go, and he said, you're already too late, Con. I think about 5 different groups from Redeemer that are going to that first game there at Regions Field. Since then, in those years, we have heard much about urban renewal in Birmingham.
Collin Hansen:We see it in the new restaurants opening just about every single month. Read about it in Conde Nast Traveler just today or yesterday. One of those articles about Birmingham's urban renewal. You see it in increased home values, especially in Crestwood. But of course, for something to be renewed, something had to go wrong.
Collin Hansen:You never hear about renewal in Mountain Brook. So why does Birmingham need to be renewed? What can we learn from this history, and how can we seek the welfare of all of its residents today? Do have one last preparatory question, though. Why me?
Collin Hansen:Why talk about this? For the record, I need to be very clear about this. I don't live in the city of Birmingham. I live on, perhaps, instead, the most controversial real estate in this entire area. I live on the Red Mountain Expressway cut.
Collin Hansen:You'll understand, I think, a little bit why. That's so controversial as we continue to talk here. I live in my wife's hometown of Mountain Brook. You can see Homewood from my backyard, Shades Valley. You can see Birmingham 1 block away in the front yard.
Collin Hansen:You can see Vulcan out of the closet window off my bedroom up stairs. Work began on the Red Mountain Expressway cut in 1962, and it opened to traffic in 1970. We're going to see why those years are so crucial in Birmingham history. Bottom line here is that that road made suburban expansion feasible for the city. Before then, it simply wasn't realistic for people to commute very far, at least to work at the hospitals and law firms and banks.
Collin Hansen:Maybe you've heard stories from family members of how out past 280, you just saw Lloyd's. There was nothing around it. That kinda thing you might have heard before. Before, it just It just wasn't realistic. And our city's distinctive geographic jargon, if you think about it, of over the mountain doesn't make sense.
Collin Hansen:With the Red Mountain Expressway. It should be through the mountain. But of course, so much of that was set in stone before that Red Mountain Expressway cut open in 1970. It made these communities, again, out 280, possible and available for growth. So, again, why why am I here to talk to you about this?
Collin Hansen:I I love Birmingham. I love Redeemer. I studied our history, city's history to teach it in various forums that Matt had talked about there last year at the MLK 50 conference in Memphis. There was a church group from Indianapolis down, met at this building doing a civil rights tour not too long ago, a few months ago. Their first stop was Birmingham, planning to teach again.
Collin Hansen:The Southern Baptist Convention will be coming here to downtown at the BJCC. Excellent timing there with the 2059 shutdown. I'm not calling it 5920. I don't know who decided to flip those numbers, but I'm sticking with 2059 here. Okay?
Collin Hansen:Well, there is, whether you know it or not, there is a lot of interest in Birmingham history, but notably it's mostly from the outside, not so much from the inside. I find Birmingham history is more like family history. You'd wanna know if you're, say, related to Abraham Lincoln. But if you suspect there's something in your family history that you can't brag about, I think you'd rather just not know. You'd rather just not know.
Collin Hansen:And nobody nobody makes friends by dragging family skeletons out of the closet in polite company. That's not proper proper Southern etiquette. But any good counselor knows you have to dig in to family history to find healing. For those of us whose family history is mainly white, we don't know what story we're supposed to tell about Birmingham. I mentioned before, I think the common response is essentially one of decline and danger.
Collin Hansen:That could be modified over the last 10 years with a story of bounce back or urban renewal. But generally speaking, that's often what I hear. It's very confusing because many of us, many on the outside, regard us in ways that I think are a little bit confusing. Some regard us from the outside as the quintessential deep south city, which makes some sense, because after all, we're the biggest city in the heart of Dixie, in the middle of the Bible Belt. We're the most churchgoing, most Bible minded city in America.
Collin Hansen:And if Chattanooga wants to say otherwise, we challenge them to a Bible trivia contest. Alright? We are we are number 1 in something. But we are more new South, actually, in our history. More new South in our history than old South.
Collin Hansen:Whatever you might think when you see the Birmingham bells dressed on parade. Birmingham has no Civil War history. We we were founded after the Civil War. All we have to represent the antebellum period is Arlington home on Cotton Avenue on the Near West Side, Atlanta, Memphis, Nashville, Montgomery, Mobile, you go on and on and on. All have deep civil war and old south history, but not Birmingham.
Collin Hansen:We call ourselves the Magic City, but hardly anybody remembers why. Sloth Furnaces and Vulcan there are a few other examples here as well, but mostly those are the high profile examples, reminders that we have to show for our industrial history that made this city grow like magic, and, of course, which gave us our original name of Birmingham to begin with, named for Birmingham, England. The beautiful Birmingham terminal station was demolished in 1969, remember that date as well, to make way for the Red Mountain Expressway to connect US 28031 to Interstate 2059. That was significant for a number of different reasons, because in the process, Birmingham lost its iconic Magic City sign, It also lost one of the great architectural marvels of this city, if you've ever seen that, those those pictures. It's significant because it came at a time when Birmingham had no interest in looking to its past, but only looking to branch out and to forge a new and different future.
Collin Hansen:More than anything else though, of course, what we're known for around the world is civil rights. And that is what we're going to focus on tonight. But it's not a story that, certainly, I think that most whites in our city like to tell or even to know. It's interesting: I've visited and I've hosted guests from as far away as Copenhagen, Denmark, who visited Birmingham because of our history and made special stops just to see that. It's amazing how far your city's fame can spread when its name is in the title of one of the most famous writings in, really, Western history, Letter from Birmingham Jail, doctor Martin Luther King Junior.
Collin Hansen:But I rarely meet Birmingham natives or transplants here who have ever visited the Civil Rights Institute downtown. Like I said, sometimes with family history, you'd just rather not know the truth. Birmingham has a story. Some of the most famous events and I am not exaggerating. Some of the most famous events in world history in 20th century happened here, just blocks from here, just miles from here.
Collin Hansen:And we'll talk about some of the actors in those events, but I think we don't look into Birmingham history because somebody's grandmother was standing outside Woodlawn High School this is where I knew it would probably start to happen was standing outside Woodlawn High School on September 2, 1965, screaming at black girls just trying to go to school. Somebody's grandfather can't account for his whereabouts on May 14, 1961, when Freedom riders integrating the interstate bus system arrived at the Birmingham Trailways station, and the Klan beat them near death with police approval as they watched and waited. Somebody's great grandfather was one of the doctors at Carraway Hospital who refused to treat a white victim of the beatings. But that is not the whole story. As citizens of Birmingham, there is much to collectively lament.
Collin Hansen:We'll do some of that. And celebrate, actually, in our city's history, because the people who changed our country, who changed the world through their bravery and through their sacrifice, were citizens of Birmingham, Alabama, as well. The courage of the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, namesake of our airport, is worth remembering and worth celebrating. Because above all, as Christians, we are citizens of the city of God, and Birmingham produced maybe the most effective faith movement for social change in American history. It's one of the great ironies of God, I think.
Collin Hansen:That estate anybody want to call out the motto for the state of Alabama? Anybody? We dare defend our rights. Okay? It's so fascinating that for much of Birmingham and much of Alabama's history, this motto of we dare defend our rights is associated with the civil war and with states' rights, first capital of the Confederacy.
Collin Hansen:But how ironic and how beautiful and how redemptive of redemptive of God to make that motto fit so well with the city whose citizens gave and restored civil rights to this country. An amazing, an amazing work of God there through these people, whose history is worth celebrating. There is much then, that we can learn from Birmingham's history if we are willing to see. So what do you see? What do you see in Birmingham?
Collin Hansen:Normally, when I'm able to drive people around and talk, we go through all of these different places and I can point out these different things. So you'll just have to bear with me on this. Let's take a little bit of a visual tour of Birmingham. Let's start over here in Woodlawn. What do you see when you travel through downtown Woodlawn?
Collin Hansen:While you probably, perhaps, see many different things at once, you know that you're not far from one of the city's most dangerous neighborhoods. High crime, high poverty, Woodlawn High School received a grade of d in the last state assessment. For some of you for some of us who've been around Redeemer for a a while longer, we we see the previous home before we moved here to Redeemer Community Church at Cornerstone School. Cornerstone School, which meets at the former Sunday school building of Woodlawn United Methodist Church. You can also see in Woodlawn, on most mornings, probably about half of Redeemer's elders sitting there at Woodlawn Cycle, one of the more hipster locales in our city.
Collin Hansen:There's one other thing that you might not see, or you might not know that you're looking at in Woodlawn. You probably don't know that you're also seeing the old headquarters for Eastview 13 Clavern, the deadliest branch of the Ku Klux Klan in American history. They met in the old city court chambers of Woodlawn City Hall, which is now home to East Side Funeral Home. This is the clan that nearly killed Fred Shuttlesworth and his wife in 1957 when they tried to enroll their daughter in an all white city school. They were the ones who nearly killed the Freedom Riders in 1961.
Collin Hansen:And on Sunday, September 15, 1963, they were the ones who planted at least 15 15 sticks of dynamite underneath the 16th Street Baptist Church and finally succeeded in killing 4 little girls, the youngest of whom of these girls, Carol Denise McNair, would be 67 years old today. No one was convicted of this heinous crime until 1977, and the final conviction and sentence of life in prison was not handed down until May 22, 2002, with current US Senator Doug Jones in the prosecution on behalf of the Federal Government. It was this dynamite, though this was certainly not the only attack using dynamite, that gave Birmingham its nickname of Bombingham. Think about it. There was lots of dynamite readily available in Birmingham at the time.
Collin Hansen:Think about the mining that was needed in the steel industry. Think about the Red Mountain Expressway cut, which was happening that exact same time. If you'd like to read more and to know more about these specific connections between Birmingham's industrial and economic history and its racial history, one of the places I would recommend you turn is Diane McWhorter's book, Carry Me Home. This was a Pulitzer Prize winning book written by a mountain brook native about 1963, one of the first places that I began to learn a lot about our history. Just making an an observation here.
Collin Hansen:One of the things that you often hear is racism is America's original sin, and there's a lot of truth to that observation, but you'll hear from a number of other people to correct that a little bit and say, it's not racism, actually. It's greed. Slavery, racism has often been employed in terms of greed and and to advance monetary interests. I think that's one of the things that McWhorter really draws out. She be she draws the connections between Birmingham's industrial and steel industry to the civil rights movement.
Collin Hansen:And it helps to explain why you end up with things like a militarized police force in Birmingham, because Birmingham's police force was also responsible for things like putting down strikes, being able to keep down those kinds of, violent events from breaking out. Much of Birmingham's growth history comes in that period of social unrest, the early 20th century. Communism, socialism, all those kinds of things, talk of, like, machine gun nests and things like that at steel mills to be able to make sure people didn't organize. The basic argument there being fairly simple. If you can keep poor white people thinking that they're better than poor black people because of their skin color, you make it less likely they're gonna team up on you and go on strike and declare a union.
Collin Hansen:Again, we don't have to get into all those details. Just wanted to say, if you want to read more about that, McWhorter would be one of those places that you could turn. So again, I ask, what do you see in Birmingham, and what does that little stretch of Woodlawn tell us about ourselves? How many of you have seen the movie Woodlawn? Not man.
Collin Hansen:Oh, more than he. Okay. Alright. Based on the box office numbers, it's probably pretty good. It came out in 2015.
Collin Hansen:I like the movie. I recommend it. Some of you probably don't. It's interesting. I posted a picture of our church on Facebook, and somebody said, is that the church where they filmed Woodlawn?
Collin Hansen:It's like, that's quite nice. Yes. It is. Actually, they are the where they filmed the climactic baptism scene right here. And in fact, of course, our baptistry didn't work when we moved into this church, which is kinda sad to think about, in a church.
Collin Hansen:But, they were able to fix it for us to be able to use that for the film. The Woodlawn movie tells the story of spiritual revival and racial integration at Woodlawn High School in 1973. Know how they tell you, you grow up with history and you think everything's about names and dates and it becomes so boring, and then some smart Alec comes along later and tells you, it's not about names and dates at all. It's about something else. Then you kinda come back and you have to realize, yeah, actually, it is a lot about names and dates.
Collin Hansen:So much is significant here when you think about chronology, when when you think about, think about dates. Again, Woodlawn is set that movie is set in 1973, and it's talking about racial strife here in Woodlawn High School. That is 19 years 19 years after Brown versus Board of Education, which ended the Supreme Court decision, unanimous 9 nothing Supreme Court decision that ended racial segregation in schools, judging them to not be, by judging judging, yeah. Anyway, we don't need to get into all that detail. Anyway, that's I mean, 19 years later, they're still fighting over this.
Collin Hansen:It's an interesting observation here. Justice Hugo Black, probably the most famous legal figure in Alabama history, a federal courthouse downtown named for him an Alabama native. He voted in that decision, with the majority striking down school segregation. His son the decision was so incredibly unpopular that his son was forced to leave the state as a result of that decision. 19 years after Brown versus Board, 10 years after the bombing at 16th Street Baptist Church, 10 years later.
Collin Hansen:Still, racial integration was controversial. The movie depicts the most famous high school football game in Birmingham history, which came the next year in 1974. Future Alabama stars Tony Nathan and Jeff Rutledge met at Legion Field in front of 42,000 people. Just an amazing scene. The movie is basically a Christian version of Remember the Titans.
Collin Hansen:You know? As you might imagine, then football and spiritual rebirth become means of overcoming racial strife in the city and the school. Nathan and Rutledge go on to be co captains at Alabama and win the 1978 national championship under the coaching of Jon Voigt, or Paul Bear Bryant, in that case. And it's the end. The end, happily ever after.
Collin Hansen:It's a strange experience, though, to watch that movie in Birmingham. The rival high school for Woodlawn is Banks High School, opened in 1957. As far as schools go, that's not that long ago. But by the 19 nineties already, it was no longer a high school. Closed for good in 2,006, actually, after it had shifted to a different different purpose.
Collin Hansen:Watched the movie, I had no memory at all of Banks' high school. And Woodlawn High School today is only formally or technically integrated, with 95% of its students being black. So the question I ask here is, where is the happy ending? Where was the happy ending for Woodlawn High School? It's only in the film.
Collin Hansen:It's been often and painfully observed that racial integration is the time between the arrival of the first black person and the departure of the last white person. And that is certainly the story of Woodlawn High School. We don't have and just in case you were wondering, we are in Woodlawn's district here. We don't have a happy ending here. We have scars.
Collin Hansen:We have open wounds. Time has not healed everything or everyone. Today, and you know this viscerally, we all know this if we live here, Today, to this day, school zoning remains the most critical factor in Birmingham's civic life. For so many people who grow up in this city, geography is destiny. Geography is destiny.
Collin Hansen:It was interesting. I was trying to calculate like I said, we're we live in Mountain Brook, but it's right on the border between Homewood and Birmingham. And I noticed I kinda I I think I stopped kinda at 10 different schools that are closer to where we live than Mountain Brook High School. It's pretty fascinating how these things work. Woodlawn borders Mountain Brook, maybe the best school system in the state, which, as you might surmise, is basically the racial opposite of Woodlawn, 98% white.
Collin Hansen:But I think a more interesting comparison here to Woodlawn would probably be Vestavia Hills High School. So we're still on the visual tour here. Follow me up over Shades Mountain to a life above. That is the official motto for Vestavia. You can see it on the signs.
Collin Hansen:There's actually a website also. I actually did not know that either until I was looking this up. Okay? It's it's a lot of chutzpah. Sorry.
Collin Hansen:That might just be a mountain Brook person talking, though. A little bit of a rivalry there. Okay. Anyway, I love all you Vestavians. Okay?
Collin Hansen:You know that. Vestavia Hills High School did not open until 1970. Why is that significant? It is the same year the Red Mountain Expressway cut was finished. The same year.
Collin Hansen:That's not a coincidence. There aren't many coincidences here. Between 1960 1970, the population of Vestavia Hills grew from 4,029 to 12,250. That's an increase of 204% in 1 decade. It's not unique in Birmingham, and in fact, it's not actually unique for it's not unique for many cities.
Collin Hansen:This phenomenon repeats all over the place. I was just talking to somebody at length who grew up in Northwest Indiana. Very similar dynamics when you talk about Chicago. It's not unique to the South either. My brother lives in Detroit.
Collin Hansen:Very similar dynamics there as well. The city of Hoover did not become a city until 1967. There we are again, that same time frame. And between 1970 1980, it grew from 688 residents to I had to double check this. 18,996.
Collin Hansen:1 decade growth of 2,661%. And that's not because there were a lot of jobs moving into Birmingham suddenly. A lot of people moving here. But let's go back to Vestavia for a second. You may know the school's nickname, its red, white, and blue colors, and its colonel Reb Mascot.
Collin Hansen:But Colonel Reb, notably, was retired in 2015, a decision that, according to sources I read, was directly attributable to costing the mayor and 75% of the city council their jobs in the 2016 election. I've never seen this before, that apparently, the city council appoints the school board of Vestavia. I did not know that till I was looking this up. The previous decade, Vestavia had actually made a decision to ban the Confederate flag from their football games. It was interesting how they went about doing this though.
Collin Hansen:They didn't ban the flag, which they legally could not do. They banned polls on the basis of public safety. That was actually pretty creative. Some of My Best Friends Are Black is the book by Tanner Colby. Jason Williams, a good friend to many of us here in the church, was the first person to recommend that book to me.
Collin Hansen:Some of my best friends are black by Tanner Colby. He's a Vestavia native, and he writes about the story of racial integration in America. Here's a most interesting connection, though, between Vestavia and Woodlawn. Do you know the mascot of Woodlawn High School? Anybody?
Collin Hansen:Colonels. Colonels. Alright. Of course. Colonel Reb.
Collin Hansen:Well, he doesn't look like that today, admittedly. He's made a color shift. Vestavia adopted the same mascot as Woodlawn High School, the same mascot. I don't think it's a coincidence. And I wasn't alone.
Collin Hansen:The federal government didn't see any coincidence either, which is one reason why Vestavia has been subject to mandatory busing to fulfill laws related to racial integration. Same would also be true of Hoover, and for very complicated reasons, not true of Mountain Brook. Interesting. We'll talk about that some other time. Let's head back down, then, through 31 through down 31 through Red Mountain to Birmingham.
Collin Hansen:And what do you see? What do you see? At Redeemer, we see a city that could use some help, that needs renewal, that suffers from chronically bad schools and job loss, that suffers from violence and murder, where on Saturday night at 11:40 PM on August 6, 2017, a 2 year old was shot in the head and died in his father's arms in the back seat of his car at the Chevron gas station across the street. Where a 17 year old unbelievable. A 17 year old is paid to kill the 16 year old defensive captain with the Woodlawn High School football team, which he does on September 1, 2018, shooting him in the middle of the night inside his own home.
Collin Hansen:If that wasn't bad enough, they went in the next day, and they stole his clothes. But why? Why does our city suffer in these ways? We could answer that question in many ways. And, again, I don't know how you're reacting to all this, but I just wanna say whatever reasons you want to attribute for this being the reality of our city, you would probably be correct.
Collin Hansen:Whatever you wanted to say is probably correct in some way or another. Family breakdown, absence of fathers, a lack of good jobs and gainful employment, moral decay, a need for spiritual transformation and revival. It's all true. On and on and on, we could go in talking about this. But I think it's sobering to consider that these tragedies are not so distant as we might imagine them to be, especially if you're like me and you live over the mountain.
Collin Hansen:What do you think would happen to Mountain Brook if, say, 10% of its population moved away every year for the next decade, what do you think it would look like? I imagine we'd see something like Woodlawn or Fairfield or Westend or any number of communities afflicted by white flight in the 19 sixties, seventies, and eighties. This is the bottom line here, people. You can't pull the people, the money, the business, the education, the families, and the churches. And the church is out of a community and be surprised when it falls apart.
Collin Hansen:You can't do it. Back in Cornerstone, when we used to worship there, I was hoping to clean out an old closet, and I saw class pictures from Sunday school at Woodlawn United Methodist. You may not even remember, if we're taking that visual tour here, that there was a gorgeous, original sanctuary right there next to Cornerstone on that green grassy lot there that's empty now. That sanctuary burned down on Josh and Laura Howson's wedding day, May 31, 2009. I saw when I was looking at those pictures, a perfect snapshot of the 19 fifties sixties in white America.
Collin Hansen:And it began at that moment to realize something deeply painful, that instead of making room in their schools and their churches for blacks, these people gave up the houses where they brought their babies home from the hospital. They gave up the schools where they played football games and danced in sock hops, and they gave up the churches where they got married and baptized their children. Often when I make this observation, I get very angry push back, especially from people whose families left. And I need to qualify to say that I don't mean to say that every single person who left did so out of some kind of explicit racial animus or racism. Not all did.
Collin Hansen:Some did. Many did. And here's the most important point. The systematic effect of their departure was nevertheless the same. White flight, which led to abandoned schools, neighborhoods, and churches.
Collin Hansen:And Birmingham, to this day, has never recovered from their loss, which then poses an interesting question for us. What does Birmingham see in Redeemer Community Church? I would say, I see here at Redeemer a church that has grown a great deal. A great deal, especially and including the last couple of years as good neighbors here in Avondale. Maybe the most encouraging work I've seen has come in our relationship with Avondale Elementary School.
Collin Hansen:I could actually cite a number of our leaders by name for your excellent work in this neighborhood. You know who you are. You have your elders, your pastor's great appreciation for that, what you do not only through our church, but through your own volunteering, your own time, through your own vocations. And I see in you an example here that the rest of us can emulate, an example to always be sensitive as neighbors in light of our city's history. That as much as we want to aid in the renewal of our city, we must remember how and why these neighborhoods declined in the first place, and to realize that our neighbors will not necessarily see us as saviors as we come to help in light of this history, especially if they know that history better than we do.
Collin Hansen:Often, when I hear people complaining about the state of our situation here in Birmingham, it seems to assume that history began in 1980 and without reference to the city's previous 100 years. But I want to encourage you, there is a lot that you can learn if you read and ask. And this inquisitive approach approach, I think, can help us a great deal today. And we'll continue, and we're gonna talk about some more details here. But I wanna make sure that if if you don't remember anything I've said before or after this, my main takeaway request for you tonight is this, just to to talk to your neighbors, to get to know them, to seek to know things from their perspective.
Collin Hansen:I think Dwight and our other pastors set such a good example for us when they talk to us about our short term missions, to realize and to assume that when we go on these trips, we have a lot to learn ourselves, and that God maybe wants to change us as much as he wants us to help change our neighbors. I think that short term policy is something that could do us a lot of good here at Redeemer, even with our closest neighbors. So now, let's zoom in on what Diane McWhorter dubbed the climactic battle of the Civil Rights Revolution, the events that made Birmingham famous around the world, and how they affect us in this same place more than 50 years later. This week, we've been celebrating the legacy of doctor Martin Luther King Junior, who first name first made his name as a pastor in Montgomery. He came to Birmingham in 1963 to I don't think there's any other way to put it.
Collin Hansen:He needed a miracle. He needed a miracle here in Birmingham to keep his campaign for civil rights alive. He had failed the previous year in a campaign in Albany, Georgia. He failed because the city was relatively accommodating to him in his demands, which is not at all what he was looking for and what he wanted. What he wanted was a fight to dramatize the evils of racial segregation that kept blacks as second class citizens across the South.
Collin Hansen:What he was looking for was a public enemy and a willing stage for his morality play, and he knew there was one place to go, one place that would give him what he wanted, just 2 hours west of his hometown of Atlanta in Birmingham, Alabama, ruled by Bull Connor. Bull Connor, Birmingham's elected public safety commissioner, was a member at Woodlawn Methodist Church, where I said, Redeemer had previously met, and a resident of Crestwood. He had just built his new ranch house in 1962. You can go see it today at 1116 53rd Street South, in Crestwood South. You might miss it, though, because it doesn't have the bull outside, like it did the big statue of a bull, like it did when he lived there.
Collin Hansen:Conner's history is fairly complicated. He actually had lost his campaign for mayor on April 2, 1963. In November of 1962, the city, actually, to try to oust Bull Connor from his position of power, changed its entire governance structure to keep him from running those police and fire departments, and they succeeded in this. And actually, King had postponed his campaign to actually wait for the before he implemented what he called project c, c for confrontation. But he did then enact that that plan assembled in front of media, who had gathered from around the world to Birmingham.
Collin Hansen:He needed Connor, and Connor obliged in his role as the villain. The result was the most iconic images of the civil rights movement, images you're probably familiar with, images that shocked the public and finally contributed to the end of racial segregation across the country. They are the images that made Birmingham famous around the world and still today. Not least, they made Birmingham famous in the Soviet Union, where communists delighted in images of police unleashing fire hoses and police dogs against their own citizens, even children. Shuttlesworth himself had been hospitalized after one of the water cannons from the Birmingham Police Department knocked him down a flight of stairs.
Collin Hansen:All this because the marchers called for integrated shopping downtown. These are the places now that we see as the Pizitz Food Hall and McQueen Science Center, those areas. Many know King versus Connor. Few, though, understand or know about the challenges that King faced actually here with the Black community of Birmingham. The local Black newspaper didn't even bother to cover the marches.
Collin Hansen:Many churches refused to participate. Condoleezza Rice was one of those, she was actually about the same age as the 4 little girls killed. Her family and her church were one of those people who did not participate in these marches. Children marched in large part because adults would not. The children wanted out of school.
Collin Hansen:The adults realized that after Birmingham, King would move on to his next march, to his next campaign, but Birmingham would be left to live with the consequences. And the local black residents of Birmingham knew what those consequences would be. More bombings, more unsolved murders, more intimidation from the police and from other leaders. Basically, local Black residents didn't want didn't want a march because they were scared. Indeed, they were horrified, but not surprised by the church bombing that would indeed follow in that that fall.
Collin Hansen:King's great challenge then was to persuade them to take the chance, to convince them to risk their lives for equal rights for themselves and for future generations, and ultimately, to entrust themselves to God who seeks justice for his people. Many do remember those 4 little girls not realizing, though, that that same day also resulted in other deaths. Same day, police shot a 16 year old black boy in the back with a shotgun and killed him. 2 white boys grabbed a pistol and shot a black 13 year old boy on his brother's bike handlebars and killed him. 1 of those white boys was convicted of second second degree manslaughter and freed in June of 1965, less than 2 years later.
Collin Hansen:But these people, these citizens, even these youngest among us, did not give this last full measure of devotion in vain. Because in their death and in the national horror over that violence, the laws in our country would change. How then? How then did the churches of Birmingham navigate these changes? Well, the weather topped out at 84 degrees on May 7, 1963, a gorgeous spring day for Birmingham, not anything like today.
Collin Hansen:There was no rain and a nice breeze. It was the same day, actually, that Shuttlesworth had been hospitalized. That day, a journalist told Bull Connor that Shuttlesworth had been injured in the marches. Connor responded, I waited a week to see Shuttlesworth get hit with a hose. I'm sorry I missed it.
Collin Hansen:Then they told him Shuttlesworth had been taken away in an ambulance. Connor responded, I wish they'd carried him away in a hearse. That same day, the members of South Avondale Baptist Church adopted a recommendation of the deacons. The church minutes don't tell us the content of that recommendation, but the church historian does. It was a prohibition on seating black visitors to the church, to this building, where Redeemer meets today, even now.
Collin Hansen:So far as we know, the ban continued into the 19 seventies, though the historian does tell us that later in the life of this church, which closed in 2000 and then was passed along to 2 African American congregations in succession, that this ban on seating black visitors would not have been enforced. Why would the members and the deacons of South Avondale feel the need to formalize a ban on blacks? It's not as if most blacks in this neighborhood would have felt welcome in the first place. It's because on Easter Sunday, April 14, 1963, civil rights activists sought to integrate many Birmingham churches. They were allowed in to Church of the Advent, First Presbyterian Church, and First Baptist Church.
Collin Hansen:These, quote, unquote, kneel in protests continued the next week. Blacks were not allowed to attend First Methodist Church of Birmingham, First Christian Church, Woodlawn Baptist Church, which is right over here, Southside Baptist Church, or Highlands Methodist Church. So South Avondale took the initiative to enact a preventative policy in case the kneeling protests came to their church. These kinds of preventative measures were not they were not alone here in Birmingham, not unique to Alabama. In fact, there's a lot of writing, if you wanna read this, about what would happen, especially in places through later, in the 19 sixties in Jackson, Mississippi, where churches would occasionally put their elders on the front steps holding shotguns to keep blacks from entering.
Collin Hansen:At the time of all this, First Baptist Church met 2 miles away downtown. This decision to integrate the church would eventually cost pastor Earl Stallings his job. Jonathan Bass of Samford wrote an excellent book, I highly recommend, Blessed Are the Peacemakers, about Stallings. It's one of the amazing ironies that we have here. Stallings was one of the one of the pastors that King was responding to in his letter from Birmingham Jail.
Collin Hansen:And actually, the only one in there that King commended for this allowing, allowing the church to be integrated. One of those movement leaders with King who integrated that church, was a youthful man named Andrew Young. Andrew Young, who would go on to be US ambassador to the United Nations, a US congressman, and mayor of Atlanta. But despite these early signs, I mentioned to you that pastor Earl Stallings had been fired a couple years later as a result of this. But the first Black member would not be welcome at First Baptist Church of Birmingham until the 19 eighties, The 19 eighties, shortly before the church moved to the suburbs.
Collin Hansen:You've probably seen it before. It's next to Samford. Yes. That also does mean that that First Baptist Church of Birmingham is not in Birmingham. Why would it take so long?
Collin Hansen:Why the 19 eighties? This is one area where your church government and your church discipline matters. Because First Baptist required 75% affirmation by its membership to admit new members. But like many churches, they had 100 of inactive members. They were not disciplined and removed from the membership as a result.
Collin Hansen:So when the vote would come up again and again and again to admit black members, they teamed up with some active members to always keep the vote just beneath 75%. Neither were, throughout this process, open racist severed discipline, as far as I could tell, for their sin. And significant, as I was researching this, the church today mentions none of this history on their website history page. But again, I don't mean to single them out. They were far from alone in this, because their attitude toward integration was actually, effectively, Birmingham's predominant attitude in the white community toward desegregation in the tumult of the 19 sixties 19 seventies.
Collin Hansen:This is a really important pattern to note here. The first response was to fight, and not just for a little while. We're talking about for decades. To fight for decades, to fight legally, to fight violently, to fight with every means possible, and then when the fighting was no longer sustainable, then to move away, and then after moving away, to pretend like it didn't happen and to ignore it. And churches, again, one of the great ironies, were perhaps the most resistant institutions in the city to this change.
Collin Hansen:We like to imagine and in my work, I'm often criticized along these lines, including just today. I'm often criticized along these lines with the message that if we just preach the gospel, that positive social change will result. But I think of all people, we here in Birmingham understand that things are not so simple. And I don't mean to downplay the transforming power of the gospel of Jesus Christ here. What I'm saying is that these churches preached the gospel.
Collin Hansen:They preached that message of salvation. That's what they were doing while at the same time banning blacks from visiting. It happened at the same time. It's possible to belong to Jesus Christ, to be saved from your sins, and still to be blinded by sin. It's it's as plain as as day looking back through history, and it's sobering for us.
Collin Hansen:Churches became integrated the military and the schools and the sports teams, so they were fiercely protected by folks who saw them as a last as last resort against change. And whether the church had a top down leadership structure I've researched these churches. Whether they had a top down leadership structure, like the Methodists did, or a bottom up structure, like the Baptists did, popular resistance to integration trapped entire congregations in sin, even on the relatively rare occasions when their pastors tried to teach a gospel for all. But it is also significant to note that not all was bad in this period. There is some encouragement and example for us as well.
Collin Hansen:Because 1 year later, on Easter Sunday of 1964, Billy Graham, as a result of the tragedies of 1963, would come to Legion Field and lead the largest integrated audience in Birmingham history until that point, 35,000 people with 4,000 professions of faith. And it was, of all people, Billy Graham, who actually put up the bail money for King when jailed by Connor in writing his letter from Birmingham Jail in 1963. Billy Graham is one of my great heroes. My first job was to write a book about him. He was by no means perfect, though, and that's in part why I find him so relatable as a leader.
Collin Hansen:He tried to rein in King from pushing too far and too fast. Indeed, I actually think in Letter from Birmingham Jail that King might have had the likes of Billy Graham in mind, because it was King who criticized moderates, who say, wait, to their brothers and sisters in Christ who suffer injustice. But just to bring this as close to home as I possibly can, often, I think I'm one of those moderates. At best, if I were in that situation in 1963, at best, perhaps, I might have been one of those moderates. But I'm talking about even today, who King would have criticized.
Collin Hansen:I can't imagine. I mean, I'm incredibly convicted reading that and often at a loss as what to do when I read it. But it's easy as we wrap up here. It's easy to sit in judgment on history, Much harder to consider where we might be in sin today. But just to help us to process this, I wanna point out at least 2 unhelpful ways.
Collin Hansen:2 unhelpful ways to look back on our history. One of them is to judge our ancestors as if we can't be wrong in other ways. That tends to be what I find to be the the liberal and progressive impulse to imagine that we've transcended sin and defeated human nature. The other unhelpful approach to history is to sanitize it, to remember only the good parts, or only those parts that were good for people who look like us, that tends to be the conservative impulse toward nostalgia. But think about history this way.
Collin Hansen:History is more like your grandmother. Alright? History is more like your grandmother. Naivete is thinking that your grandmother is right about everything. Arrogance is thinking that your grandmother is wrong about everything.
Collin Hansen:Maturity is realizing that you're a lot like your grandmother. That's the kind of approach to history that I commend here. Again, I'm not sure how you process through this history. There are 2 typical responses I hear. Some people feel guilty.
Collin Hansen:They feel ashamed. Some are angry about these events. They're angry about why they never knew or had learned this history, and they want to do something about it. But as Matt said, I don't have that to do list for you beyond the request ask your neighbors questions and to adopt that posture of empathy. I do have some thoughts, and maybe some of that will come out with a little bit of q and a, but it's really beyond my mandate for tonight.
Collin Hansen:And before anything else, I think it's most important that we simply know the history, just to know what we're dealing with here. I I think there's another factor here as well. I, along with the rest of your elders, have to be very careful in terms of how we bind your conscience. What I mean by this is, we have no mandate to tell you what to do or to encourage you in how to think beyond what the scripture explicitly teaches us. So we're not going to tell you what you should do about schooling.
Collin Hansen:We're not gonna tell you what you should do about your children. Things like that, it's not our responsibility to do that. We can help with wisdom, but again, we wanna be very careful about not going beyond the biblical mandate that we have. Though I do encourage you to take advantage of the significant wisdom and experience that we do have on our staff, and I want to commend it, especially Dwight Castle, to you, our pastor for missions with a long history of experience of working in these neighborhoods, and encourage you to learn from from his example. Another response that I often get though, and this is the one that was most common online today, was anger.
Collin Hansen:Because they think I'm trying to blame them for something that they didn't do. Maybe you're not from here. Maybe this isn't, it's not your generation anyway that I'm talking about. But whether we know or acknowledge our history, it still affects us. Even if we don't know the history or take responsibility, you still pay for it.
Collin Hansen:Let me give you an example, an illustration. As I said in the beginning, I'm so glad that redeemers, founders, and leaders embraced Birmingham at one of its absolute lowest points. You could go back to the Great Depression, you could go to 1963, you could find some other low points, but 2,008 was about as bad as it could get. I was graduating from seminary and looking for a job in 2010 when I read a Rolling Stone article about Birmingham. Has anybody else read that article?
Collin Hansen:Probably not many of you, other than Matt over here. Alright, Melissa. Okay. And, Thomas well, Thomas, you've worked on this stuff, so that's why. Basically, the Rolling Stone article profiled with a great measure of Rolling Stone profanity about how Birmingham is the epicenter, or at least once a time, the epicenter for public corruption, and that's a pretty high bar.
Collin Hansen:I mean, I've lived in New Jersey. I got family in Detroit. I was in Chicago for 12 years. That is a high bar. Jefferson County would not emerge from bankruptcy due to this widespread corruption in financing our sewer system until 2013.
Collin Hansen:You may not know this story. That may be the first thing you've ever heard of this. But I tell you, you pay for it. If you live here in Jefferson County, you pay for it in your water bill, and you will for a long time. You'll have to ask Thomas Ritchie exactly how much, because I don't know.
Collin Hansen:I'm not even sure Thomas knows. We'll see there. You will pay for it a long time. But this is the place. This is the place, and this is the time God has called us to serve even though redeemers, founders, and initial leaders didn't grow up here in Birmingham and weren't part of this problem.
Collin Hansen:But I think it's just like Jesus, to choose to bear sin and suffering on behalf of our neighbors out of love. You may not have been part of the problem, but by grace, you can be part of the solution. We can be part of the solution here together. The gospel of Jesus Christ tells us that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and the creation groans for redemption that will finally and fully be consummated only when Jesus returns. Every time and every place bears the common grace of God, who sends rain on the just and on the unjust alike.
Collin Hansen:And every time and every place suffers the afflictions of a fallen and depraved world. That was true for our grandmothers and our grandfathers in 1963, and it's true of us today. So again, I leave you, what do you see? Where do you see the evidence of grace? Where do you see the effects of the fall?
Collin Hansen:And can you see from your neighborhood's neighbor's vantage point empathy, for all of us who spend 2 seconds on social media in particular, is value In short, supply today. And I'll say it one more time. Look at Birmingham from the perspective of someone who doesn't look like you. Assume you have something to learn from empathizing with your neighbor. I don't know what's gonna happen if you do that.
Collin Hansen:I don't know what they'll say. It might be redemptive, it might be convicting, but whatever the outcome, we have only one hope. There's only one hope we need, and that's Jesus. Because he humbles the proud and he makes the first last, he can turn the wealthy and the powerful into kind, humble servants, and he is the one who lifts up the poor and the forgotten. He makes them in the image of God and redeems them in the image of his son by the power of the spirit.
Collin Hansen:He makes them more than conquerors. The meek will inherit the earth. Because of our future with Jesus, we need not fear history. We're not bound by history. We can learn from it, good, bad, and ugly, and walk in newness of life in the name of the risen son.
Collin Hansen:We can seek the welfare of Birmingham and find our welfare here too. Let's pray. God in heaven, thank you for gathering us here together with many stories from many places. God, do what you will. Do what you will with this information.
Collin Hansen:Convict me. Convict others. Do what you will, Lord, to help us to love our neighbors as ourself, and above all, to love you with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. In Jesus' name. Amen.
Collin Hansen:Matt is gonna walk we have 15 minutes for questions.
Speaker 3:So, you mentioned, Birmingham is now kind of in some ways being known as, for urban renewal. In what ways is gentrification the opposite or the same but different as white flight? And in what ways can we make sure that if we're having this conversation in 2030 or 2040, we're not looking back on urban renewal as another blot in the history of of racial tension.
Collin Hansen:Actually, we published an article yesterday at the gospel coalition when church planting harms the city. And that was exactly the question that we were trying to explore there. Was Okay. Alright. No.
Collin Hansen:No. No. No. I just wanted to say there are better places to go. That's, so a couple pastors in Washington DC, they face a lot of those questions in an acute way.
Collin Hansen:In fact, the kind of economic development of Washington, DC is so intense that actually, churches can't even stay in their buildings anymore because they're being so quickly turned into condos and things like that. Of course, there's a number of of differences between white flight and with gentrification. I was actually talking to a friend of mine. She's a native of Birmingham. She's in New York City now and Amazon's, put one of their 2 headquarters in in in, there.
Collin Hansen:And she said, never before until now do I understand what gentrification is. There will be a lot of new people coming, benefiting from these things, but for me, it'll only make my life more difficult. It'll only mean more taxes and more people on the subway and more headaches for me. And she said, now I can understand that in a certain way. Now if you talk to a number of people, including people doing great work in our church about gentrification, one of the things they'll point out, and I think the mayor would point out point this out as well, is that Birmingham's in a a city that greatly needs economic development.
Collin Hansen:So part of the mayor's plan and others is actually to bring people and to bring money into the city. So to that extent, I don't think we have a lot to be kind of guilty about when it comes to that. That is actually one way of blessing the city, and our whole urban kind of our whole region will benefit from from a strong, economically vibrant Birmingham in that regard. The simple question is just to be able to to look at that question from, like I'm saying, the perspective of your neighbors. Property taxes are not as much of a significant factor in Birmingham.
Collin Hansen:Just in Alabama in general, they tend to be fairly low. But rental prices could be one of those pressures that they might face, or simply the reality that those things that are moving in are so clearly not for you. That's one of the things that there was actually a fairly significant controversy at the city council here a few years ago centered on Avondale, and that was specifically the point. There's lots of good things coming in here, but they aren't necessarily things that are benefiting the people who had lived here before. And of course, in some ways, that can be true of churches as well.
Collin Hansen:So I think the main issue there is simply to to have that posture of empathy and of understanding, and try to seek that welfare by not assuming that those things that might benefit you would necessarily be those things that benefit others. And one one way to one way to put this is this. Most of the people in our church have options when it comes to school. Many of our neighbors do not have options when it comes to that. Those are 2 very different perspectives then when we're looking at what it means to be living in this area, and even what it means to be for us to be working as partners with some of those schools.
Collin Hansen:And that's, again, something I just wanna be sensitive about, because kinda like with those short term missions, it's one thing when you know you're going home after a week. It's another thing when you're gonna be there permanently. Those are 2 very different perspectives, and just encourage us to be very sensitive and mindful of that. If that's the start question. It's a great question though.
Speaker 1:I think I'm gonna, just, as opposed to frustrating some of you guys who might have questions, I'm just gonna go ahead and frustrate all of you who have questions. Can we do a handful of things just to make sure that we get out of here, with our kids in a timely manner? Would you guys join me in thanking Colin for giving his time and putting some more thought in this? I know that a lot of what Colin has talked about has only stirred more things in you than answered, and we want to, again, encourage you to have those conversations with your neighbors, with people, that you interact with in the city, around your own dinner tables, with your families, with your home groups, with other people in this church. Join us in praying for our city and understanding what it looks like to love this place where the Lord has led us.
Speaker 1:So with that, let me pray for us. Lord, we are greatly sobered by a lot of the things that we have heard tonight, And I think, for a great many of us, we are just utterly overwhelmed. We look at our city's history, and we look at our cities present, and we don't know what to do. So, Lord, like King Jehoshaphat did, we said, Lord, we don't know what to do, but our eyes are on you. Lord, you who are the maker of all things, you who made every single person in your own image, you who sent your son to live the life that we couldn't live and die the death we deserve to die, Christ, who is coming back to redeem and restore all things, we look to you.
Speaker 1:Lead us, we pray, as your ambassadors in this city to communicate your love to the people that you have made. Lord, help us to live out your gospel in word and deed, that you might bring healing to redeemer, that you might bring healing to Avondale, and to Woodlawn, and to Birmingham, to Alabama, and to this whole earth. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.
