The first model of relating Adventism to the Black experience is to not relate them. This approach would take one of two forms. The preacher would either preach Adventism or preach on issues related to Black experience. In other words the preacher might preach on the relation of the the Sabbath to the Gospel or preach on how the Gospel affects the educational plight of black people.
Some preachers would sometimes preach on issues of relevance to black culture and then other times preach on “Adventist” issues. What it means however is that one’s sermons are either Authentically black, or authentically Adventist, but not both, certainly not at the same time.
The problem with such an approach is that it makes Adventist teachings irrelevant for daily living. Whenever the preacher preaches on Adventism the people will not hear about the God who is working things out for their daily living. Instead the people will hear something devoid of human experience.
Too often this is how Adventism is presented and preached. I think that we must put a little Adventism in our Black cultural preaching and put a little Blackness in our Adventist preaching. How do we do that?
We will continue looking at another model for this interaction in the next post of this series.