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Posted: January 9th, 2012 Ken Garfield

Xchange Sermons, the faith community’s grand crusade to bring us together, begins again Friday, Jan. 13, in and around Charlotte.

The concept is simple, yet soaring: Clergy of different faiths, backgrounds and color swap pulpits one or more times, showing by their words and deed that God loves us all, equally. This collaboration of Crossroads Charlotte, Mecklenburg Ministries and Temple Beth El is open to every imam, pastor and rabbi willing to take a stand for reconciliation. More than 40 congregations participated last year. In a city, and world, that seems to grow more fractured each day, the hope is that far more will get involved this time around. Clergy wanting to preach someplace new and different – and laity wanting to support the effort by worshiping at a house of worship other than their own – can visit the Xchange Sermons site. The program runs through May.

What an appropriate kickoff: The third season of Xchange Sermons begins at 7 p.m. Friday (Jan. 13) at Temple Beth El at 5101 Providence Road, as the Reform Jewish congregation holds its annual Sabbath service celebrating the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The Praise Team from Charlotte’s multiracial Briar Creek Community Church will sing. Briar Creek pastor Dennis Hall will share a prayer for peace. Kevin Vandiver, 24, an African American in his first year at Duke Divinity School in Durham, will implore all to commune with God, together.

Having spent last summer working with at-risk children through Freedom School at Shalom Park, Vandiver has seen the need for blacks and whites, Jews and Christians, everyone, to confront prejudice together.

“A common thread of unity before God,” says Vandiver. “I think it’s priceless.”

What’s priceless, as well, is how Xchange Sermons has inspired moments of brotherhood, joy and laughter all over town – among congregations large and small, rich and not so rich, from clergy who make the front page of the paper to those who serve God in lesser-known ways.

Last June, the pastors of two mammoth Charlotte pastors swapped pulpits on a beautiful spring weekend: At the Saturday evening service at the largely white, suburban Forest Hill Church, the Rev. Clifford Jones of Friendship Missionary Baptist Church made a promise: God will not only wade in the deep water with you, but “with loving arms bring you out.” The next morning at Friendship, the Rev. David Chadwick of Forest Hill Church found a different way to say that God is here for everyone. Invoking the lyrics of that 1970s pop classic, “I’m Just A Love Machine,” he burst into song (and a little disco dance) and told the African American congregation, “God did not create us to hate. He created us to be love machines to the glory of the risen Christ.”   It’s the stuff of harmony, and it’s what stirs the Revs. Russ and Amy Jacks Dean of largely white Park Road Baptist Church to sign up for a third season of pulpit swaps. In the past, they have forged friendships with Mount Carmel and Greater Mount Sinai Baptist churches.

Who knows where the crusade will take them this year? 

“I participate,” Russ Dean says, “because I believe our lives are still too segregated, and that while this is only a small effort, mostly symbolic, it’s a way for us to speak our desire to bridge our racial divisions.”   

Ken Garfield is Director of Communications at Myers Park United Methodist Church in Charlotte. Formerly religion editor at The Charlotte Observer, he has written extensively about Xchange Sermons in the past and will share stories from this year’s effort. Click here to send Ken an email.

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