Ain't That Good News
The Negro Spiritual, not that Sam Cooke song.
In February 2020 (before the pandemic), my family regularly attended Harvest Community Church after three long but beautiful years of working to plant a church in East Birmingham. After an exhausting period of life where we saw God do beautiful things, we decided to close our church plant and see where God was leading us. He led us to a lovely congregation pastored by Mike Jones, who planted the church in the mid-90s. Terrance Jones, a friend and mutual church planter in Montgomery, Alabama, introduced me to Pastor Mike. If you ever find yourself in Montgomery on a Sunday, you should visit Strong Tower At Washington Park; it will change your life.
On this particular Sunday morning, we were celebrating Black History Month with negro spirituals, youth speeches (YES!!!), and a sermon detailing the legacy of Black people in the Bible. Needless to say, it was a good Sunday morning, especially since my daughter, ten years old at the time, was giving a speech and participating in her first Black History Month program, a Black Church staple. It had been a long time since we worshipped with a large group of older saints, and their rootedness in the faith was what my family and I needed during this time. The church had good gospel preaching, a beautiful choir, a loving and kind pastoral staff, and a diverse group of believers.
During that season, I was in the midst of a journey that began four years earlier to understand the legacy of faith in the Black American experience. I got saved in a contemporary Black church and then joined white evangelical ministries where I assimilated into their worldview, view of history, and scriptural interpretation. It was both exhilarating and exhausting. Since Mr. Rutsky, my 12th-grade literature teacher, challenged me to find and read books I enjoyed, I’ve had a deep love for reading and studying. So, I naturally devoured books and authors that shaped the men discipling me. I wanted to understand the faith that I’d inherited. So I fell in love with the Bible, and I fell in love with those I felt could teach me the Bible and how to live out my faith.
What jolted the foundation of the faith I’d acquired is an all too familiar story. It was the bombardment of Black death at the hands of vigilantes and police officers and the response by those white evangelical churches that I’d grown to love. You know the names, but they bear repeating here. From the murders of Trayvon Martin and Tamir Rice to Michael Brown and Eric Garner, I became increasingly disenchanted. But it was Philando Castille that broke me. I saw too much of myself in him. A father with his daughter and the woman that he loved and that loved him riding in the car. At the time of his murder, my daughter was six years old, and his daughter, who witnessed his murder, was four years old. It hit too close to home. The subsequent debate about the circumstances involving his death made me sick. Too many people I knew and had grown to trust were either silent or thought that he did something deserving of being shot five times at close range in rapid succession with his girlfriend and daughter in the car.
His death and the speedy embrace of Donald Trump as a valid presidential candidate in 2015 and 2016 disillusioned me. Disoriented from all the conversations and panel discussions on race and racial reconciliation, I fell into a depression. I had never been depressed, but this season would morph and last far longer than I initially imagined. During this four-year season, I was betrayed, lied to, and many dreams I'd carried with me felt snatched away. That's why my soul needed refreshing when I found myself in Harvest Community Church on a crisp sunny Sunday morning. I was more aware of Black people's contributions to this nation and to "Applied Theology." “Applied Theology” is the term I've adopted to describe an understanding of theology that isn't just good for the classroom or the pulpit but actionable for the pews and the people. I am a deep thinker, but knowledge for the sake of knowledge or just for teaching is a waste. Knowledge must be for living. That's the only way it ever turns into wisdom and understanding. A zeal for knowledge is great, but applying knowledge to gain experience is better. That's what my journey taught me. That Black people in America couldn't afford to have a theology that only lived in the mind, book, church, or ivory tower. We needed a theology that carried us through slavery and oppression, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the post-reconstruction era. Through convict leasing and Jim Crowe. Through segregation and apartheid. Through lynching, the KKK, and White Citizens Council terror. Through Black Wall Street and the Red Summer. Through the Great Depression and World War II. Through the Great Migration. Through the Civil Rights Movement and Mass Incarceration. Through disinvestment in urban communities to substandard housing and low-performing schools. Through Rodney King and George Floyd.
It was all of this that led me to Harvest Community Church, and it was that morning that the choir stood together and sang the Negro spiritual “Ain’t a That Good News.” A song initially arranged by John Wesley Work III, affectionately known as J.W. Work. J.W. was born in 1901 into a musical family. His grandfather, John Wesley Work, was born into slavery, but after emancipation, he became a church choir director in Nashville, TN. Many of his fellow church and choir members sang as original members of the famous Fisk Jubilee Singers. His father and uncle were also well-known musicians and composers. J.W. graduated from Fisk University and studied at The Insitute of Musical Art in New York City (Julliard School of Music). J.W. also earned degrees at Columbia University and Yale University.
He is credited with arranging songs like “This Little Light of Mine” and “Go Tell it on the Mountain.” He traveled from church to church and town to town, recording and documenting Fok Music. He also became the Choir Director for the Fisk Jubilee Singers. For me, his most moving arrangement is “Ain’t a That Good News.” Sung by many school and church choirs and glee clubs over the years, but I love the recording by Prince Yelder & The Disciples for Christ (linked below).
There is nothing purer to the American experience than Negro Spirituals. That's why that Sunday morning in February 2020 is seared into my mind. It would go on to carry me through the next two years. As the choir stood to sing the spiritual "Aint a That Good News," I was swept back to long choir practices rehearsing until we couldn't get the notes or lyrics wrong. I was transported to singing with school, church, and community choirs. It brought to mind all the books I'd read about the Black Christian experience and all the people who sought to survive in a hostile land—it reminded me that amid the bad news and the broken, the gospel is and has always been good news. The gospel freed the souls of those who were physically bound, and it kept their minds from breaking because their "minds were stayed on Jesus," which meant their "minds were stayed on freedom." They would taste that promised freedom, whether in this life or the next, but they would not lose hope.
Over the last three years, my resolve has been tested. I've doubted. I've questioned, and I've cried. Like so many of you, I felt the sting of the loneliness and isolation that Covid-19 brought. I've experienced the pain and weariness of the call, "How Long, O Lord?" But I have not lost hope. How could I? These light and momentary afflictions are temporary, but my crown and robe in that Kingdom are eternal. That's good news. So what will I do? I'll keep praying. I'll keep leading. I'll keep studying and serving. I'll keep holding on to the Good News.