In his teens and 20s, James Croone ran with gang members and sold drugs. That lifestyle caught up with him in 1998 when he was arrested, tried, and sentenced for criminal activity.

“I got to a place in my life where I knew that there was something else,” Croone says. “There was something missing.”

Fortunately, Croone’s sister took him to church just before he began serving his sentence. They didn’t come from a particularly religious family. Growing up, Croone attended church only on rare occasions when his grandmother took him. That Sunday with his sister, however, he found what was missing from his life and made a commitment to Christ.

Consequently, Croone says, “I went into incarceration already at a place where the transformation had begun.”

Upon his release for good behavior in 1999, Croone matriculated at the A.L. Hardy Academy of Theology in Seattle. He eventually earned a doctorate in religious education in 2005.

Croone dates his call to ministry to this period. He adds, however, “I was more apt to want to teach than to pastor.”

The Hardy Academy affirmed that calling and hired Croone as a professor.

In those early years of teaching at Hardy, Croone had an experience that refocused his vision of ministry. He was driving through the neighborhood where he used to sell drugs. Seeing addicts on the streets, Croone felt God prompting him to repair the damage he and other dealers had done there.

In time, this led to Croone’s work at Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission. Today, he is director of the Men’s Recovery Program for that historic mission.

The recovery program serves men who have experienced addiction, homelessness, and incarceration.

In prison, many are forced to join gangs based on race or ethnicity. They make these alliances to survive a physically dangerous place.

Life is different for them on the outside, however.

“When they get out of prison and come to the mission, they have one thing in common: They’re all treated as outcasts,” Croone says.

Prison pushed them apart, but recovery pulls them together as they begin to recognize they all have common struggles.

Based on his personal experience, Croone believes Christ has the power to redeem even the most broken lives.

“Ministering to people in recovery is a beautiful thing,” Croone says. “You see the transformation in their lives because you’re able to give them the gospel.”

Men in the recovery program often express surprise when they learn about Croone’s experiences with drugs and incarceration. “I want to be like you,” some of them say when they see what he achieved post-incarceration.

“My desire has
always been to have
a multicultural
church.”
— James Croone

“You don’t want to be like me,” Croone always replies. “You want to be like Christ, because He’s the one who changed my life to make me who I am today.”

Croone wears many hats in addition to directing the men’s recovery program.

In 2014, Croone earned a master’s degree from Northwest University in Kirkland, Washington. That led to his appointment as an adjunct professor at the Assemblies of God school. Since 2015, Croone has taught introductory courses on the New Testament and the relationship between the gospel and culture.

Croone published his thesis in book form. Titled Seymour and Parham: The Move of God Amid Relationship and Conflict, it examines the relationship between William J. Seymour and Charles F. Parham, noting how these leaders cooperated for the sake of evangelism but also clashed because of Parham’s racist attitudes.

Despite the disputes between Seymour and Parham, Croone believes God accomplished His purposes through their ministries.

“The relational conflict between Seymour and Parham stands as a testament to many that God is faithful despite human differences,” Croone writes in the book’s concluding paragraph. “The ignorance and indecisiveness of humans cannot prevent or hinder the accomplishing of God’s will.”

In 2017, Croone planted Risen Church, an Assemblies of God congregation on Seattle’s south side. (Croone is an ordained AG minister as well as an executive presbyter in the AG’s Northwest Ministry Network.)

“My desire has always been to have a multicultural church,” Croone says.

It’s Croone’s way of repairing the damage racism has historically inflicted on American congregations. His research into Seymour and Parham taught him to distinguish between two very different models of multiculturalism, however.

The first model focuses on assimilation. This was Parham’s model of ministry. He promoted Seymour’s ministry as long as Seymour did what Parham wanted him to do. The moment Parham felt the Azusa Street Mission had stepped out of the narrow confines of what Parham felt appropriate, he excoriated the mission in frankly racist terms.

This cultural narrowness continues to be a problem today. Many churches express a desire to diversify their pastoral staff, leadership, and church membership. They want to look diverse, but the majority culture is in control of the congregation’s organizational culture, worship style, and ministry emphases.

In effect, Croone says, such churches require new attendees to “drop their culture off at the front door because they want everybody to worship God their way.”

A better model for multicultural churches focuses on acculturation. Revelation 7:9 describes the Church this way: “There before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb” (emphasis added).

This requires different groups to sacrifice their cultural preferences and privileges to accommodate others.

After all, according to John’s vision of the heavenly Church, no single race, ethnicity, culture, or language group dominates.

“Instead, they bring their own cultural way of worshipping God, which makes the Church even more magnificent,” Croone says.

They unite around what they all hold in common: “Salvation” — the ultimate repairing of the damages of sin — “belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb” (Revelation 7:10).

This article appears in the Winter 2023 issue of Influence magazine.