DEVOTIONAL FROM PASTOR DAVE FEBRUARY 15, 2023

Have You Ever Changed Your Mind?

Have you ever changed your mind? Not about what you would wear or where to go to dinner. I mean have you ever changed your mind about something big? Something you may have grown up believing or have believed for a long time? Something you never thought you’d ever change your mind about?

Yesterday, Gene and Louise Petty invited me to go with them to the UTC campus to hear a presentation by Franklin McCallie. He’s a big man (he stands 6’5”), and even a relative newcomer to Chattanooga like me knows that he’s got a big name. His grandfather was the founder of the McCallie School, and his father was a former headmaster.

Franklin described growing up white in segregated mid-century Chattanooga. When the Supreme Court ruled in 1954 that public schools needed to start integrating, his mother told him that Jesus didn’t demand or require integration in order for people to be good Christians. Such were the racial prejudices that he was explicitly taught and implicitly assumed to be true.

When he went to college in Memphis, a classmate organized a visit to a nearby historically Black college. Franklin reluctantly went along. He was simultaneously impressed and irritated by their intelligence. He got to talking with one of them, and they discovered that they each had two uncles who fought in World War II. Fought for the same values, in fact. And they both shopped at the same department stores in downtown Memphis. But Franklin’s uncles could eat at the lunch counter, while the Black student’s uncles had to ride a bus two miles to the “colored” part of town to eat their lunch.

That conversation changed his life. It opened his mind to the world as they experienced it. He realized everything he thought he knew was all wrong. He says he went back to his dorm room and cried for three hours.

When he eventually finished his college degree, he told his father he would only come back to teach at McCallie if they would integrate. His father told him that wasn’t happening. So he took a teaching job at Howard High School. That launched him into a long career in education and school administration where he advocated for integration and racial reconciliation.

When he retired, he and his wife Tresa moved to the southside of Chattanooga, where they initiated a series of gatherings in their home among both Black and White citizens. They call it Chattanooga Connected. This group has been featured on CBS News (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RishUx2yh8 or click here) and imitated in other major cities like Chicago.

He also described how, after many heated arguments, his father eventually changed his own mind. The elder McCallie went on to initiate the integration not only of McCallie School but also his church congregation and the Kiwanis Club.

There was a word that Franklin never used, not even one time, in his entire presentation. But it is a word that came to my mind as he was talking about both himself and his father. That word is repent. The Greek word for repent is metanoia, which means to change your way of knowing. To change your mind.

Have you ever changed your mind? Have you ever repented of some wrong-headed thinking? The Gospels record that Jesus’ earliest and main message was very simple: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17).

Repentance is one of the main emphases of the season of Lent leading up to Easter. Lent starts next week with Ash Wednesday, February 22. I will also be leading a study of Roger Owens’ book Everyday Contemplative on Monday nights at 7 (starting next Monday, the 20th) that is all about mindful prayer and practice. I hope you’ll get a book and join us on this journey.

Let us pray that our minds, our hearts, our lives may be open to being changed, transformed, more and more into the mind of Christ (Philippians 2:5). For the kingdom of heaven is always at hand.

To read more about Franklin McCallie’s story, visit https://www.salvationsouth.com/the-redemption-of-franklin-mccallie-racism-chattanooga/