God’s Word is sharp and powerful, and our Lord leads us in daily obedience then molds our decision-making to be conformed to His will as revealed in His Word.
We have all gleaned life-changing lessons from Bible characters whose lives can be so similar to ours. And God desires to use our personal stories to encourage, convict, and transform others as they observe us responding to the unfolding will of God, as revealed in His Word. This is my story of God’s grace.
My life began during a racially turbulent time. I remember the prejudices of the 1950s and 60s. I lived through the life and death of Martin Luther King, Jr., the riots, and the distinguishing labels of black (“darker hue”) and white (“lighter hue”)—not to mention a number of other less fortunate terms.
I was born in Kissimmee, Florida. My mother was a migrant worker. She and I lived with a man who was a father figure in my life. We moved between New York and Florida, years before Disney started buying up land to make it a playground. To us, Florida was a segregated workplace. We lived there in the winter and went back to upstate New York for the summer months. The North and the South were different in those days; New York was more integrated, although the prejudices were still there. The New York school that I attended almost had two separate student bodies; one was about 90% of the lighter hue during the winter, but in the summer and fall the migrants came back north and created that second group.
In my middle school years, my family settled in Williamson, New York which gave me continuity, both academically and socially. At the same time, my mother separated from my father figure during my middle school years. In God’s providence, he was giving and taking away.
During my high school years, I was an athlete, lettering in three sports, I was popular and served in Student Government every year. Even with the popularity and status that I had, I felt empty and unloved. My heart was yearning for a meaningful life and love—a love not based upon my performance. Clearly, the greatest need in my life was more than civil rights, it was getting right with my Creator.
The Gospel
When I was in seventh grade, I attended Sunday School with a friend. I heard about sin and the gospel from 1 John 5:13, but I reasoned that no one could know that they were going to heaven before they die. I missed the clear gospel message of salvation by grace! I thought God most certainly would grade on a curve because no one was perfect. I knew those kids in that mostly lighter hue class and they were far from perfection. So, after hearing about God I became more aware of my sin, I began to reform my life. I ceased to do some things I considered sin, but I continued doing other sinful things. I was convinced that I was good enough to make it into heaven based upon the curve! But my sin got the better of me, and I settled into a life that would not help me make it to heaven, however God graded.
The turning point came during my senior year when I returned home to the flashing lights of police cars. To my horror, my stepfather had killed my father figure from those earlier years. Tragedy had struck. Yet, as Genesis 50:20 tells us, what man intended for evil, God intended for good. And in this case, God was using this awful event in my life to draw me to Himself.
Publicly I pretended to be a happy and fulfilled teenager. However, internally I was weighed down by my sin and searching for true meaning in life. On two occasions a foreign exchange student brought up the subject of God to me, and on both occasions I cracked a joke and left laughing, even though I was deeply troubled by my own emptiness. In his mercy God was pursuing me. Shortly after those two encounters God’s grace rescued me!
The Grace of God in Salvation and Sanctification
During that same year, two white men came to my house one night to share the gospel; one, Reg Cook, was the son of the teacher, Bernard Cook, from my church I visited years earlier. The new youth pastor, Fred Napora, had challenged the youth to engage in sharing the gospel.They presented a clear gospel message to me, and by God’s grace I believed—not as a black man—but as a sinner in need of a Savior (Rom. 3:21–23; Eph. 2:1–10). I was soon baptized and became a member of a mostly white Bible Baptist Church, pastored by Larry Cooper. My mother said I looked like a fly in a bowl of milk! But I was just rejoicing in Christ and hungry for fellowship with Bible believing saints.
Moving forward, people of the lighter hue discipled me and engaged me in sharing the gospel. I went to youth retreats and camps. I only wanted to do the will of God as a new creature in Christ and desired to learn Christian conduct. I invited a black friend, who was an outstanding athlete, to a youth event where many white girls were sitting next to him. The director told him that he should not be sitting next to white girls—such was the thinking of many in the 1960s. It was clear that the director believed that interracial dating and marriage was wrong. I didn’t see that myself, but I thought it was because I was a new Christian and I was just missing that part of the bible. But if God was against it, so was I! As a Christian, then as now, my desire was always to be submissive to God’s Word.
During these youth events I heard two sermons that would become foundational for my spiritual growth. First, I responded to the invitation to present myself as a living sacrifice to my loving Savior. As Romans 12:1–2 puts it, I was to stop being conformed to worldly philosophies and lifestyle, and I was to seek being transformed with a renewed mind by the Spirit of God through the Word of God. At this time, Jesus Christ, the sacrificial lamb, became my model for living.
The second sermon I heard that anchored my soul was on Satan’s temptation of Christ. The point that gripped me was that the Devil will make a bid for your soul (Matt. 4:1–11). Interestingly, I was having opportunities to sin that I did not have before I trusted Christ. Were these opportunities to sin the Devil’s bid for my soul? To this day I remind myself that I will never have to disobey the Word of God to do the will of God. And this also applies to matters related to race.
The Problem of “Race” (In the Church!)
Shortly after God laid these foundations, I was confronted with the “race” problem—within the church!
The first instance happened when I was driving a group of fellow black athletes home from a Christian event. The speaker had shared the gospel, and I wanted to see if my friends would accept Christ. Timidly, I asked, “what did you think about the speaker?” One replied with a loud voice, “how could he say that!” Believing that he was challenging the gospel, I replied “say what?” I was stunned when he said, “how could he say we should go to a Christian college when many Christian colleges will not accept blacks?” His comment caught me off guard, but it was true. This reality was a stumbling block that kept this young man from reflecting on the good news.
Second, my best friend in high school was of the lighter hue. We had fun living in sin together before I was a Christian, and afterwards I shared the gospel with him on numerous occasions only for him to outright reject it. Around this time, my pastor took me to DC to share my testimony with a predominately white congregation who were relocating to the suburbs. After our visit my pastor informed that the church voted after we left to change their constitution to receive blacks as members. I shared this with my white friend as a testimony of God’s grace. He replied, “What’s wrong with those people? You and I get along fine without God!” What I thought would be an evangelistic encouragement became another stumbling block.
Third, while attending a Bible college, I had been called a “nigger” on two separate occasions by fellow Christian students. Fourth, at the same time, the black athlete I had invited to the youth meeting (who was told not to sit next to the white girls) was approached by Black Muslims who told him that Christianity was a “white man’s religion.” Due to this stigma and other reasons, he decided not to attend Bible college with me. Instead, he started taking drugs, and he was eventually shot to death in his late teens! His death caused me to look deeper into the interracial marriage issue that had been such a stumbling block for him.
As I continued to grow spiritually, I sought out what God had to say regarding interracial marriage. After a lengthy study, I saw from scripture that marriage between races—or to frame it more accurately—marriage between different ethnicities, is biblically allowed. Such an idea may seem absurd now, but in the 1970s, it was a very real issue. I wrote a paper as a result of this study in college called, “Prejudice and the People of God,” which later became the title of one of the books I have written.[1]
1. A. Charles Ware, Prejudice and the People of God: How Revelation and Redemption Lead to Reconciliation (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 2001).
The fifth and most troubling encounter with prejudice within the Christian community was experienced during my time in Bible college where I entered ministry. Nothing could have prepared me for the profound sense of sadness and disappointment that I would feel towards fellow brothers in Christ.
Getting Into Ministry
College students of the lighter hue approached me about starting an inner-city church nearby our college. They had been witnessing and had seen several people respond to the gospel. They asked me to participate. After much prayer, we took the leap of faith. They asked me to be the pastor, and I agreed. Revival Baptist Church was truly an inner-city work. We lived and ministered among a multiethnic people known for prostitution and drug addiction. God used us in those years and that church is still in existence today.
While in college, I met my future wife, Sharon, who was also involved in the church plant. Apparently, God has a sense of humor, for she was definitely of the lighter hue. I had prayed to God and told him I did not want to get married, but if he wanted me to, then “please don’t ask me to marry someone of the lighter hue!” As I continued to grow in the Lord and in the knowledge of the Word of God, I saw the flaw in the interracial marriage “ban” among Christians. It just did not exist biblically. Sharon and I believed that it was God’s will for us to get married.
That sweet-spirited woman desired to serve the Lord with me. She had a heart for God and a heart for me. She was my faithful companion and we wanted to serve the Lord side-by-side, but our skin color was different. That would become a major problem for some—and particularly some Christians who had administrative roles at the school. She was a junior while I was a senior, and she was told if we got married that she would be forced to drop out of college. Seeking to honor the Lord and the authorities around us, we decided to wait until she graduated.
Once she graduated and our wedding was pending, members of our church who were also white students from the college were given an ultimatum: leave the church, or withdraw from the college. I was deeply encouraged that all of these students, and even one white professor, refused to leave the church. They reasoned that God’s word affirmed local churches, and not colleges! The administration walked back this threat and allowed these students to remain in the church, but they denied any other students from becoming members. After our wedding, my application to attend the seminary connected to the college was rejected twice for superficial reasons. Providentially, a new dean of the seminary encouraged me to apply the third time and he assured me that he would do everything he could to secure my acceptance. Although my application was pulled from the process by the college president, the dean requested a specific reason for rejecting my application. He shared with me that he told the president that he would accept my application unless the president could give him a valid reason for denying it that did not have to do with the color of my skin. Due to this courageous dean’s advocacy, I was accepted.
Today, these acts of discrimination are seen for what they are—biblically indefensible, theologically errant, and morally repugnant. Accordingly, many may struggle to understand how I persisted in this environment, and didn’t simply “get out,” to borrow the title of Jordan Peele’s movie. The answer to that question is best illustrated by a “crisis of faith” moment from before college when I was grappling with the issues of racial preference in the church.
Finding Peace in the Midst of a Race War
While alone with God, I poured out my confusion and disappointment and sought His direction during this time of personal disillusionment. I reflected on my past: Had my decision to trust and follow Christ been a mistake? Because of my athletic abilities, I had been offered three scholarships to secular universities, but I felt led to go to Bible college, so I declined all of the other offers. Had renouncing secular worldviews and leaders and giving up those scholarships been poor judgment and missed opportunities? The Lord was testing my faith and my tribe. Would I follow Christ and be part of his people, some of whom were openly racist? Or would I deny Christ and identify myself only with people who looked like me?
Reflecting on the racism I had seen and experienced in the church, I was forced to ask: Who was my family? Though Christ was my Lord, I was “too black” in my skin color for whites to fully accept me and “too white” in my relationships and theological convictions for blacks. So I prayed, “God, should I go to an all-black church and listen to stereotypes of whites being racists and power-hungry oppressors whom blacks should not trust? Or, should I go to an all-white church and listen to stereotypes of blacks as criminals and dumb athletes who are always looking for handouts?
This crisis was challenging! But I could not deny my salvation! I had surrendered to the authority of Scripture, and sought to live accordingly. I was young in my faith and learning how to rightly divide the word of truth, but I was also coming to understand the truth of Psalm 119:97–104:
Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day. Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies, for it is ever with me. I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the aged, for I keep your precepts. 101 I hold back my feet from every evil way, in order to keep your word. I do not turn aside from your rules, for you have taught me. How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth! 104 Through your precepts I get understanding; therefore I hate every false way.
Clearly, the division between black and white even within the blood-bought community had brought me to a crossroads! And yet, the Word of God remained true and would become a firm foundation even as I wrestled with the pain of prejudice and the questions that resulted. In the midst of a race war, I decided to let Scripture lead. And I asked: What does the Bible say? And what does the Lord want?
In this time of inner turmoil, God moved my heart and set the course of my life: I would identify with the people of God—come what may. Little did I know that my life would be used in some small way to help heal some of the racial divisions that persisted among this very people.
A Ministry is Born
By now, it was the early 1970s and other issues were coming to the forefront, too. Communism, the social gospel, government overreach, abortion, liberalism, separation, and diversity were among the hot button issues of the day. In a state of confusion, as my mind was racing back and forth with “them and us” scenarios, God led me to another option: I would simply follow Jesus. This was the seed of GRACE Relations (God’ Reconciliation at Christ’s Expense)!
After I became a college president, I created a course called Culture, Race, and the Church along with Ken Davis, a co-worker of the lighter hue who passed away in 2023. All Crossroads Bible College students were required to take this course. As I reflect on my life, I see that God had used the evil that I experienced in my past for my good—to help me to think deeply about the crossroads of race and God’s grace in the Christian life (Gen. 50:20).
In this class, I was able to expose students to both negative and positive uses of Scripture by the church (past and present) in addressing cultural change in society. I was able to show different views Christians have held concerning culture, the origin of the races, racism, segregation, interracial (or cross-ethnic) marriage, and the consequences of such views in a multicultural pluralistic society. My goal was to teach students how to relate to different ethnic/cultural groups with integrity, compassion, and humility while promoting a biblical diversity with biblical truth and morality as anchors. A generation of students was equipped to think biblically about these issues.
All by God’s grace, this son of a poor migrant worker began a multi-decade, multi-national ministry in the 1990s that would come to be called Grace Relations. I have planted two churches and pastored one, and planted one Christian School. I have led seven national multiethnic ministry conferences, have spoken nationally and internationally, have served as a consultant to numerous organizations, and have given interviews on numerous radio, television, and print entities. I have a regular one-minute radio show, Grace Relations, with the Bott Radio Network. God has given me the opportunity to contribute to several books, including co-authoring One Race, One Blood with Ken Ham, who is the President of Answers in Genesis. I have also served with the Biblical Counseling Coalition.
From 1991 to 2018, I served as the president of Crossroads Bible College (CBC). It was my honor to serve with two of the college’s founders and witness it grow from approximately 90 to over 200 students. Under my leadership, CBC achieved accreditation and expanded our academic offerings while modeling an ethnically diverse board, faculty, staff, and student body. Crossroads Bible College merged with the College of Biblical Studies (based in Houston with campuses in Indiana). I currently serve as the Executive Director of Grace Relations for this college, and I oversee the Charles and Sharon Ware Legacy Ministries, an LLC that I created in honor of my wife who passed away in 2021.
A Final Word
It is critical that the church pursue grace relations rather than merely race relations. Grace—God’s reconciliation at Christ’s expense—offers a healthy foundation for dealing with the sins of the past and the alienation of the present. Grace relations are built upon forgiveness and the intentional pursuit of peace, trust, unity, and loving relationships because of Christ. The church must move beyond society’s philosophy of race relations with the anger and distrust so prevalent today.
Martin Luther King once famously said, “I have a dream.” And so do I. It is a church community of diverse and once divided people growing in trusting and loving relationships (Romans 15:1–7). God’s grace can make it a reality, and only God’s gospel of grace can make it a reality. We must be courageous enough to dream that the wisdom of God can be manifested and His love recognized through the church (Eph. 3:14–21; John 13:34–35).
Looking back on my life, I had no idea in 1968 what God had planned for me. I had no inkling that my questions about interracial marriage and race issues would become my passion and work. During that time, Bob Jones University taught that interracial marriage was sin according to the Bible. It was two Bob Jones graduates that played a significant part in my story: the director of youth events who told my black friend not to sit next to white girls, and the president of the college who threatened expulsion to students of the church I pastored and rejected my application for seminary. I had no idea that the deepest pains inflicted by prejudice would eventually be recycled for my good and the good of the church.
No, I never dreamed that I would speak accompanied by my wife at a Bob Jones University chapel in 2021 and for Bob Jones University Press Biblical Worldview Conferences on an annual basis! No, I never dreamed that the college from which I graduated would have the Ken Rudolph and Charles Ware scholarship! This is Grace Relations on display! I wanted to serve God as faithfully as possible and He made me as I am to use me as He has pleased.
History is still being written by the hand of God through His people. The defining image of the church of the twenty-first century is yet to be determined. But grace can loosen the chains of dysfunctional relations and weave a beautiful tapestry of multicultural churches. Grace can make the twenty-first century the generation of reconciliation. What is your story? And who are your people?
In Christ, the grace of God is sufficient to heal all wounds, forgive all sins, and reconcile all sinners. And for that reason we glory in the cross of Christ and the grace relations he creates.
