In April 2001, an unarmed African-American teenager named Timothy Thomas was shot and killed by Cincinnati police. Thomas's death was the latest in a series of intriguing deaths of unarmed African-Americans by city law enforcement, and for a few brief days, the city's racial tensions erupted into uprisings and rioting.

At the time, Chris Beard was pastor at First Christian Assembly of God, a historic Pentecostal congregation in the heart of Cincinnati. Of the more than 500 regular attendees, roughly 98 percent were white. The congregation did not reflect the demographics or the experiences of First Christian's neighborhood. Beard's first response was to repent of a history of blissful ignorance and lack of deep concern for those who lived in the same neighborhood as First Christian.

In the aftermath of Thomas' death, Pastor Beard made a commitment to transform his congregation into a church that looked more like its neighborhood and a church that looked more like heaven, rooted in the heavenly vision of Revelation 7:9 (NIV): "After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb."

Since 2001, First Christian Assembly has lived up to Pastor Beard's vision. The congregation is now 25 percent African-American and 25 percent international and other ethnicities. The church is speaking out for racial justice, advocating for the voting rights of blacks in Cincinnati, and working to dismantle the devastating effects of the war on drugs and mass incarceration.

One of the more amazing stories of transformation at the congregation now known as Peoples Church involves Terry Thomas, Timothy's younger brother. Terry was 16 when his older brother was shot in 2001. He is now a member of Peoples Church, a growing follower of Jesus and a loving father and husband. Peoples Church is a congregation whose transformation is rooted in a spirit of humility, repentance and transformation.[i]

The above story is but one example of the amazing redemptive role repentance can play within our congregations and communities. Recognizing and acknowledging when and where we have failed can have a powerful role in advancing the cause of Christ.

Admittedly, the church has often embraced a redemptive role in our society. This conviction historically has led to many important movements, including the faith-filled work in Great Britain to outlaw first the slave trade and later slavery in the British Empire and the abolitionist movement to end slavery in the United States. Jesus' followers in the U.S. played important roles in ending child labor and ensuring women's suffrage in the early 20^th century, and in the Civil Rights Movement half a century later.

Unfortunately, the church has too frequently remained silent or even perpetuated grave injustices in the name of Jesus. In the recently-released book Forgive Us: Confessions of a Compromised Faith, co-authors Mae Cannon, Lisa Sharon Harper, Troy Jackson and Soong-Chan Rah explore the historic sins of the American church in the public arena against African-Americans, immigrants and the LGBT community, among others. The examples in the book include Christian complicity with slavery and Jim Crow segregation, the rabid anti-immigrant sentiments that marked our faith during the early 20^th century, and what has all too often been a hate-filled response to the LGBT community over the past 40 years.

This history leads us to call for confession and repentance and to plea for forgiveness from the culture around us. Our nation and our world are filled with people who so desperately need Jesus, and we believe a posture of humility can help lead people to a relationship with God's Son.

Part of the challenge we face is the way the church can appear to the world around us. Too often we adopt an approach that is not too different than that taken by the crowd who caught a woman in adultery as recorded in the Gospel of John. Led by faith leaders, including teachers of religious law and Pharisees, they bring a woman caught in adultery to Jesus. According to the text, they made "her stand before all of them." They inform Jesus that such actions warrant stoning and death.

In this story, the leaders adopt a posture of judgment, arrogance, pride and even hatred. They would fit in nicely at a Westboro Baptist Church rally picketing a soldier's funeral. They use the woman as an object to demonstrate their righteousness and superiority. By parading her in front of Jesus and the crowd, they humiliate her and dehumanize her.

Rarely are the conflicts played out in the public arena in the same way in the 21^st century. Instead, followers of Jesus can troll message boards and Facebook or Twitter, spewing vitriol, hatred, judgment and arrogance, and somehow connect this to the name of Jesus. In the end, this approach widens the gulf between those needing the grace and mercy of Jesus and the body of Christ that is here to share this good news with them.

We might be well served to take some lessons from a parable Jesus told, as recorded in the Gospel of Luke:

"He [Jesus] also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: 'Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, "God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income." But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!" I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted'" (Luke 18:9-14, NRSV).

What if we adopted the way of the tax collector and encouraged those in our churches to set aside self-righteousness and arrogance and instead adopt a posture of humility? What if we chose to pursue forgiveness and repentance in the public arena as a starting point?

Shortly after this writing, superstar basketball player LeBron James, as a free agent, made a historic decision to return to Cleveland, where he began his NBA career. James played for Cleveland for his first seven seasons and then decided to go to Miami in a less than gracious way in 2010. Following what was called "The Decision," a bitter Cavaliers' owner [Dan Gilbert] wrote an open letter to the fans in which he called James a coward and a poor example to young people.

In his recent negotiating meetings with James, one might ask if Gilbert retracted those remarks, seeking forgiveness for his letter and comments. Apparently some restoration in that relationship took place, as James agreed to return to Cleveland.

If this approach is clear in the world of sports, might we not be well served to adopt and encourage this approach by followers of Jesus in our neighborhoods and communities? What if we led with a humble attitude of confession? What if we asked those far from God to simply forgive us, and were specific about what we have done that has been a disservice to the name of Jesus and caused injury for people created in the very image of God? What might God do to soften hearts and heal wounds if we simply confess and repent?

What if the words of 2 Chronicles 7:14 (NRSV), "If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land," are not meant first and foremost to be applied to our culture in judgment, but rather are meant first to be embodied by followers of Jesus? The call in 2 Chronicles is, after all, for those who are called by God. Shouldn't the church apply this text to our uneven history of complicity with injustice and hate in society?

Let me say that humility and confession should not preclude a passionate engagement in the public arena for causes of justice. We desperately need followers of Jesus to be advocates for vulnerable children in our urban centers and around the globe. We need to be working to stop human trafficking and to end abortion.

We ought to work to fix a broken immigration system in a manner that communicates God's love to the undocumented immigrant, and we should support fair wages for hard-working single moms trying to make ends meet on substandard pay from a big multinational corporation. We should commit ourselves to fighting for racial and economic justice for all, and particularly work to defend and protect people of color who have so often borne the brunt of church-sanctioned injustice in our land.

We should do all this in a spirit of humility, confession and repentance, recognizing our need and dependence on God to use our words and actions for God's glory and for justice. The change we wish to see in the world will never come to pass by our self-righteousness and zeal, but rather through the righteousness and power of our all-loving, gracious and mighty God.

What if, sometime over the coming year, you led your congregations and communities through a season of confession, repentance and forgiveness? What might God do to transform our congregations and to heal our land? I long to see what God will do in and through our humble submission and repentance.

[i] Taken from Forgive Us: Confessions of a Compromised Faith (Zondervan, September 2014). © 2014 by Mae Elise Cannon, Lisa Shannon Harper, Troy Jackson and Soong-Chan Rah. www.zondervan.com.

Troy Jackson (Ph.D., University of Kentucky) attends Peoples Church, an Assemblies of God congregation in Cincinnati, Ohio. He is interim executive director of the AMOS Project, a Cincinnati faith-based organizing effort for racial justice, and co-founder and director of Ohio Prophetic Voices.

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