will the real Jesus please stand up?

every year for 30 years my church has gone to othello, wa to work with migrant farm workers' children. the children are mainly from mexico and guatamala.

every year for 30 years, my church has used flannelgraph to tell these children bible stories.

every year for 30 years, my church has used WHITE flannelgraph characters, with every angel being blonde with blue eyes to invite these latino children into the community of faith.

enter me.

i can't live with that. so....

yesterday i made the suggestion - ok, maybe sternly stated that we need change - that we use either jewish looking flannelgrpah characters or latino ones.

the response: an enraged glare and near-shouting proclamation "latino characters would be highly inappropriate because we are talking about jewish culture here!"

my response: "well, a white jesus is highly inappropriate too, but we've used that for years."

the leader who spoke up sat outraged, rolling his eyes and fuming in the corner for the rest of the meeting.

no amount of explatives can express how i feel. i want to give up, but it's not my church i'm fighting for here, it is young children who need to be able to see themselves in the biblical stories.

how do we make it clear: Jesus is not white!