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The Sermons of the Black Church – God Will Hook You Up

Posted on May 9, 2008

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Otis Moss III, pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ, contributed to the chapter “At the Table: The Next Generation” in the book Blow the Trumpet in Zion. Moss’s contribution is entitled “Discerning among Theologies in the Black Church. There Moss writes of “three prevalent theologies in the Black church.” These are a: “theology of pimps, a theology of prostitutes, and a theology of prophets.” Moss sees the theology of pimps as reduced to preaching “what can you do for me.” Here the preacher is seeking to extract from the people benefits for the preacher. Moss sees a correlation between that mindset and the mindset of a pimp.

The next is the theology of the prostitute. Here the preacher serves the people without any respect for the preacher’s own needs spiritual or otherwise. The preacher asks “What can I do for you?” The final one is the theology of the prophet. Here the prophet asks, “What can we do together?”

God will Hook You up

As I thought about this, I decided to riff on the idea. The product is largely consistent with Moss’ presentation, but it is a different one. I ask what are messages in the Black church. There are certainly more, but these demonstrate much of the message. The first message is “God will hook you up.” This is the narrative where good things happen to good people. This message sometimes comes in during the celebration phase of a message. The preacher will say good things will happen, you will find that job, your son will come back to church, your mother will be healed of cancer. Pay your tithe and you will be guaranteed money. If not money, you will be guaranteed blessings that your room will not be able to hold. In addition, if you don’t get a blessing down here, you will get one in the bye and bye. God is gonna hook you up with a mansion where you will eat milk and honey hanging out with Jesus.

Possible Errors in the Message

Certainly there are blessings to Christ’s followers. However there are two errors that sometimes crop up into this message. First, we sometimes do not recognize that everybody don’t get hooked up like we would think. We can ask John the Baptist who’s head was displayed on a plate or Stephen who died preaching the gospel. Sometimes we don’t always get what we think we should or what this message may betray. Your child may not come back, you may not get that job, and your mother may die of cancer. You even may lose your house even though you tithed faithfully. That is the truth. So sometimes we paint a picture of a fairytale world. Now it is true that many of us know how to interpret such messages as not being a certain promise of healing for cancer or the like, but there are some among us who do not have the expertise to interpret what is happening in the Black church.

We Need Balance

Another error that crops into this message is that when it is all you preach it can cause problems. We are not called to JUST preach the benefits, but some of the responsibilities and the like. So another problem is a problem that is possible for all these messages, is one of balance. We must be balanced between them all. After having said that, we certainly must continue to preach this message, let us just do it responsibly.

In the next post we will look at the other two messages of the Black church namely, “God will fix it up”, and “God will clean you up.”

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1 thought on “The Sermons of the Black Church – God Will Hook You Up”

  1. Grace says:
    October 20, 2011 at 2:55 am

    If more Christians actually read their whole bibles verse by verse they’d understand the difference in Old vs New Covenant, Law vs. Grace, What changed after Jesus fulfillment to fulfill the law and His words on the cross, “Paid in Full”.
    Jesus said he did not come to abolish the law and the Prophets but they forget the most important part of this verse continues with.. TO FULFILL. Jesus fulfilled the law for us because No sinner could keep the whole law all 613 of them are described in Leviticus.

    Jesus went beyond the law to count our thoughts and he said what we think about is the same as the act. Looking with Lust on another woman (not your wife) is adultery in your heart according to Jesus.

    After years of Prosperity and tithe teaching, yet this economy continues to take a nose dive and things are getting worst, not better. If people really read their bibles they would know that there is not one command to tithe, keep the Sat. Sabbath, circumcise 8 day old male infants, stop eating pork or keep the Jewish Feast days (all requirement under the Old Covenant just like tithing) AFTER Jesus said “IT IS FINISHED,” MEANING PAID IN FULL.
    Galatians 3:13-14 declares “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law” That verse came after the Malachi 3:8-9 curse. It voids the curse for not tithing sillies!

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