This is Part II of a two part series. To read Part I, click here.
Derek and Regina Thompson are the founders and directors of Hands of Favor, a nonprofit based in southwest Washington that provides free haircuts and builds loving relationships with struggling community members. Hands of Favor has been a consistent presence at our Compassion Clinics over the years and we have deeply appreciated their partnership in the journey of uniting Jesus followers to serve their neighbors.
Derek and Regina currently attend a church plant called Seeds of Greatness Fellowship Church and are also longtime members of Mt. Olivet Baptist Church in Portland. Both grew up in Portland and have two children, five grandkids and two great grandkids. Derek and Regina graciously agreed to allow us to interview them for this ongoing blog series highlighting the perspectives of faith leaders of color, and our hope is that hearing their story will open up a dialogue that allows us as the Body to more deeply understand and engage with the challenging topics of racial justice, reconciliation, and healing.
What is your message to the Church during this time?
Derek- I love this question because God has a big message for the church. A couple of months ago, with COVID and George Floyd, God stomped his feet right along with it and said, “Church, wake up. You’re not doing what I told you to do.”
One of our messages to the pastors is: what is your obligation as a minister of the church? Are you fulfilling that obligation? And how are you fulfilling that obligation right now in this particular time in this season?
So many churches are sitting back right now with their congregants scared, crying, wondering what is going on. We were somewhere the other night and somebody said their pastor has been scared to address what’s going on right now. Regina and I have been talking to those in our churches about the fact that you have to break down the walls because you’re in there preaching to the choir.
Jesus told us a long time ago when he left to go out into the world and make disciples. The disciples are people who are set apart to do the work of God. Churches need to wake up and know: it is your job to change the world because not a single government on the face of this earth has the power to do it. The only power that can change the world is the power of God.
“Churches need to wake up and know: it is your job to change the world because not a single government on the face of this earth has the power to do it. The only power that can change the world is the power of God.”
This is no time for quietness. God tells us to fight injustice. And right now, this is injustice supreme. So anyone who’s not–they can say what they want to say–but they will invariably show themselves as being noncommittal. And Christ also tells us, I would rather you be warm, or you be cold, but to be lukewarm–uh-uh.
But we’ll never say “you chose your side and we will never let you in our arms again,” because God doesn’t do that. He always keeps his arm open, so we’ll always leave our door open. But we won’t accept any nonsense at this particular time either. We’ll be full of love, but straightforward and to the point.
Derek and Hands of Favor volunteers at a 2019 Compassion Clinic in Tualatin, OR
What actions should the Church be taking right now?
Derek- Churches need to reach out in the community, but before that, they need to do what Compassion Connect came into existence to do: get churches to join together. Churches have to go back and redefine to themselves what a church is. And there’s nowhere in any lexicon or dictionary where it says a church is a building. A church is a group of people gathered together for religious and spiritual reasons. So churches need to reach out to each other, then reach out into the communities and each other’s churches to make sure we all are of one voice. Churches should learn to quit identifying as this or that, and and identify as The Church. Everything that God wants is simple but we complicate it. God is trying to break all this stuff down.
Regina- Right now we shouldn’t be divided. The Church needs to not only get involved, but talk to the people. There’s a lot of people that don’t know what to do. They’re hurting. So I think the churches need to give a wakeup call. It’’s all right to give a sermon but don’t just talk about it. Get out there and do something. Whatever it takes.
Derek- We are glad to tell people what they can do because there’s no blanket statement. Churches have an awesome resource, and that resource is people of all different skills, gifts, wants, and desires. God has given everybody different gifts, different faith, and there’s a lot of different things to do. One couple we partner with is sharing our videos and talking to pastors, seeing if they can open up their churches so that we can come in and talk to them. It reminds me of the verse where Jesus asks “does a man light a candle and put it under a cup?” He tells us also that we have to walk so that our light will shine, so others can see it and glorify God.
“We are glad to tell people what they can do because there’s no blanket statement. Churches have an awesome resource, and that resource is people of all different skills, gifts, wants, and desires. God has given everybody different gifts, different faith, and there’s a lot of different things to do.”
A Movement of God to Bring A Church Revival
Derek- I relish the opportunity to face these questions because we want people to ask. And I’m not the only one. This is happening all over the country, in pockets. This is nationwide. This is worldwide. This is all of those things because this is what God’s doing. We just can’t see it all because we’re here and we don’t have God’s eyes. But one body, many members, right?
I really believe the Church is going to look different down the road somewhere. We know it’s not going to be immediately, but it won’t be churches where it looks like everyone just came out of the cookie cutter. It will be a much more beautiful picture of heaven. I say to people, if you don’t like somebody because they’re another color or culture, then you probably don’t want to go to heaven. Because you would be disappointed.
Churches need to recognize that nothing is going to go back to like it was. That’s not God’s intention. It’s not going to happen.
Derek and Regina believe that giving a haircut can be the beginning of a meaningful relationship.
Regina- We’re trying to open up people’s eyes because it’s not going to go away. It’s been going on for way too long, and it’s time to break the ice. Some might not care, but I’m amazed that so many white people are getting it and understanding how people of color feel. Because it’s gonna take more than us. We need other people to speak out and stand with us.
Derek- We have to look at things through the eyes of God and not to our own eyes. We have so many in the church looking at things through their own eyes. So if we keep looking at things through our own eyes, we’re going to keep seeing the same things. And that’s not what God is looking at. He’s actually probably turning his head away from that, looking toward the better things that he has planned for us.
The devil is real. He’s manipulating. He’s joyous right now. Why is he joyous? Because he says, “I have so many people out there that don’t even know that I’m causing them to think the way they think.” And they think that’s the way it’s supposed to be. Right now, the media is trying to take this down to the fact that it’s all about George Floyd. That would make it so easy for them to make it disappear. You know? Protesters have to continue to protest. Nonviolently. But they have to continue to show up. And the numbers need to grow.
Do you have any thoughts about the concept of “white privilege”?
Derek- Here’s what white privilege is to me. White privilege means just like we just talked about a little while ago–who controls everything in this country? The white man, there is your white privilege. You are born into it; you have white privilege. You can’t feel guilty about white privilege. If you’re not using your whiteness to oppress me, God bless your white privilege. You can’t help it that your parents were your parents. You can’t help it that your parent’s parents were your grandparents and so on. You see what I’m saying?
From your perspective what role do relationships play in bringing about racial healing?
Derek- Regina and I realized the importance of relationships some years ago when we began Hands of Favor, because I was thinking, okay, a haircut makes people feel good, but God really, how do we minister to people? And he showed me very easily because he said because you have a unique position. People sit in your chair and invite you into their personal space. And that is the beginning of a relationship. That’s why Hands of Favor’s mission statement is “building relationships that rebuild lives.”
When we talk about God and religion, those of us in the know say it’s not about religion, it’s about relationship. You know, nothing, absolutely nothing positive can happen without first establishing a relationship. It’s really just that simple. If there are no relationships, then you have division. I believe that a lot of division is going to disappear as God’s people start coming out of the woodwork.
“You know, nothing, absolutely nothing positive can happen without first establishing a relationship. It’s really just that simple. If there are no relationships, then you have division. I believe that a lot of division is going to disappear as God’s people start coming out of the woodwork.”
Words like relationship, words like love and unity, those words should become bigger. They are words we’re going to be using a lot. Some words like love almost need to be explained because we don’t know what they mean anymore. Love is an action, it is something that you do. Love is something that was created by God; God is love. We’re going to be part of the movement that brings it back, because this is a movement and there is a revival afoot.
How loving and serving one another can open up a dialogue and the opportunity for progress:
Derek- People are talking about police reform and we’ve got to talk about police reform, but you can’t just jump in and talk about it. Nobody has a common point to start off with yet. We still have to get back to the root of the problem, because once we get to the root of the problem it opens up people’s minds, it opens up their ability to think and to see, which means that then we can begin to have a dialogue.
You know, we can’t just run off into this fray and start saying “God loves you” because people say okay, well then why is everything going on? God has strategies for everything he did when Jesus first came. The first mention of Jesus in the Bible when Jesus went and started rounding up disciples–did he go out and say you need to love me, you need to love God and you need to go to church? No, the first thing he did is went out and loved people. He fed people, he ate with them, and he loved them. Because when you do that, it’s called fellowship. And most people won’t resist fellowship because fellowship is true. It’s love.
Food is very, very, very important. When you feed somebody, they feel like they can take the time to talk to you for a couple of seconds. Feed somebody who’s hungry and see if they just walk away. Very few people will do that, they’ll talk. And most of them would say, God bless you. Open door right there, see?
Derek and Regina with a Compassion Clinic guest at the Compassion Sandy Clinic several years ago
What is on the horizon for you both?
Derek- We’re looking at different ways to impact, in a positive way and a godly way, what’s going on. We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel, but we’re trying to put some more air into it. It’s not doing anybody any good to rehash old things and God has other ways of doing things other than we tend to think. Everybody’s trying to, even churches, do things the same way that haven’t worked. Unless God tells us those old ways are gonna work this time, we need to go to God and say, OK God, how can I handle this? Our strategy at the moment is to listen to God.
Watch Derek and Regina’s series of interviews with Generations Church in Vancouver, WA >>
Something that’s big in my mind is to go on circuit, speaking. We are looking for people who can open doors. We always say “we’re looking for people like yourself” and people say, “what do you mean like myself?” And I say this because your skin is a different color than mine. You can get to some doors I can’t get to. Believe it or not, there are some doors I can’t even knock on. We’d love to get on radio stations and just talk about this. We also want to get in front of pastors, city leaders, police chiefs, city attorneys, all those influencers.
What has God been showing you throughout all of this?
Derek- God always has better reasons for things than we do. He keeps saying to me “your thoughts are not my thoughts,” and he keeps showing me in the biblical days, the wheel when they were threshing the wheat to separate it from the chaff. And in the same days when they refined gold, they made it so hot until it burned away the flaws and the person who was stirring it could see his reflection, which is the reflection of Jesus Christ. And that’s what I see is happening right now. It’s a perfect opportunity. Everything has been shut down, including the churches. And we’re left with what God gave us from the beginning: a whole bunch of time. Now, it’s a matter of what we do with that time.
There’s a lot of learning involved in this, I really believe that–from God. There’s going to be a lot of learning to do things and live the way (or at least close to the way) God intended for us to live. So it’s exciting.
To learn more about Derek and Regina’s work with Hands of Favor and racial justice, check them out on Facebook here or on their website here.
