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PRACTICAL WISDOM FOR LEADING CONGREGATIONS
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The 2016 U.S. presidential election stunned many Americans. Even so-called experts–journalists, pollsters, and media talking heads–were left scratching their heads. How could their predictions have been so wrong? Amidst their post-mortem dissection of the election, pundits particularly expressed surprise in the seemingly mild response of Latino voters, the ones most affected by the inflammatory rhetoric of candidate Trump about immigration, trade with Mexico, and “the wall…a great wall– and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me.” Election preview articles and television shows held out hope for the Democratic candidate by referring to Latinos both as a “sleeping giant” within the American electorate and as Hillary Clinton’s “firewall” that would assure her victory. Yet exit polls revealed that Trump’s provocative comments failed to catalyze Democratic support among Latinos. In fact, Trump maintained roughly the same percentage of the Latino vote as Mitt Romney in 2012—while Clinton’s notably dropped from Barack Obama’s.[1] What happened?
Part of the answer reflects that Latinos in America should not be seen as culturally or politically uniform, especially since they are experiencing profound shifts. More specifically, the cultures and politics of Latinos have been influenced by the growing numbers of Protestants in their midst. Fully 22 percent of all Latinos in the United States are now Protestant. And that percentage is growing. Pew Research Center projects that by 2030 at least 50 percent of all Latinos will be Protestant.[2] Thus, to fully appreciate the heterogeneity of Latino-ism, it will be increasingly necessary to understand Latino Protestantism in America.
Latino Protestantism today stands out for its exceptional growth. We know that Christian leaders are concerned about the rise of the nonreligious (“nones”) in the United States. Yet, Latino Protestants are increasing even more rapidly, and church leaders may be taking their increased presence for granted. After all, denominational and congregational leaders are indeed seeing higher attendance of Latinos in their churches, supporting numerous Latino sub-congregations within their buildings, and watching the proliferation of Spanish-speaking congregations in their neighborhoods—many of which are sponsored by white-dominated organizations. More than just their numerical increase, though, Latino Protestants should be more intentionally recognized and supported because their faith matters deeply for them. One study reported that 85 percent of Latino evangelicals indicate that their religion is very important in daily life.[3] Such a high percentage becomes even more impressive when compared with other Christian groups (white evangelicals: 75 percent; Latino Catholics: 72 percent).[4] Simply said, faith matters more to Latino Protestants than it does to white evangelicals or Latino Catholics—perhaps due to conversion: many Latino Protestants are converts, and converts tend to be more zealous. Regardless, the saliency of their beliefs and behaviors has significance beyond mere church attendance; it permeates all aspects of their lives.
Although we can confidently report some characteristics that all Latino Protestants share, this must not be mistaken to mean that they are a homogeneous group. The work of the Latino Protestant Congregations (LPC) Project—a national ethnographic study—seeks to tease out this diversity.[5] It encompasses a range of congregations, from megachurches that pulsate with flashing lights and nightclub atmospheres to intimate lo-tech gatherings in basements that feature children playing instruments for worship. Some of these Latino Protestant congregations embrace Roman Catholicism as a source of comfort and familiarity for their converts, while others distance themselves from Catholicism as a clear marker of distinctiveness. And while many Latino Protestant congregations embrace charismatic worship, others practice more restrained, ordered liturgies with set agendas accomplished at a measured pace.
Similar to the outstanding diversity found in their congregational life, Latino Protestants also demonstrate significant diversity in their social and political life. While it might be assumed that immigration reform and concerns related to deportation might preoccupy Latino Protestants, we actually find something quite different: 69 percent identify education as their most pressing issue while only 44 percent regard immigration as a priority. Beyond that, we see interesting polarities within Latino Protestantism. When Pew asked Latinos to assess the Trump presidency, a higher percentage of Protestants than Catholics labeled Trump as “terrible” (29 percent to 23 percent), yet the same survey also found that a higher percentage of Latino Protestants described the current administration as “great” (12 percent to 3 percent).[6] In other words, we see Latino Protestants expressing extremes in their evaluation of President Trump.
As their widely divergent political views suggest, Latino Protestant identity is complex. Some scholars refer to Latino Protestants as “doubly marginalized” because they exist as a religious minority within an ethno-racial minority. The LPC Project is aware of this dynamic, and our researchers bring great sensitivity to this complexity. For instance, for many years a small Baptist church in Texas had separate worship services in Spanish and English. Recently, though, their pastor, Carlos Flores, told his congregation at a combined language service (where he fluently translated for himself) that God laid it on his heart to drop the word “Hispanic” from the church’s name. Flores explained: people might assume that the church worshipped only in Spanish and drive right by. He shared that visitors had wondered aloud to him whether the congregation only accepted Latinos. For Pastor Flores, removing Hispanic would not be a loss but a gain, since the church would be more inclusive. He was worried that his decision would somehow communicate to his members that he was ashamed of being Latino. Flores quickly emphasized great pride in his Mexican heritage, adding that he would never be able to scrub the brown pigment from his skin anyway—garnering laughs throughout the sanctuary. He paused, and then reminded the congregation that being “Latino” was not his first calling. No, his primary calling in life, and the calling he urged for his congregation, was to be “Christian.”[7]
Of course, Pastor Flores’ church does not represent the only narrative of what is happening among Latino Protestants in America. The story is, however, a rich example that illustrates how Latino Protestants process their identities in various ways to varied ends. Their churches are important because they function as prominent sites where U.S. Latino identidad is worked out. The reports coming out of the LPC Project indicate a continuum of identities within church life as some congregations offer venues of assimilation, while others encourage the re-entrenchment of identities based on race, ethnicity, and nation-of-origin.
The first book-length reporting from the LPC Project, Latino Protestants in America: Diverse and Growing (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017), gives the most current information on the growth and complexity of Latino Protestants. It also argues that the effort of uncovering this dynamic branch of American Christianity demands even greater attention while providing patterns and illustrations from across the country. Rather than be satisfied with thin stereotypes, the book invites church leaders and observers of American congregational life to recognize and further explore the breadth and depth of Latino Protestant diversity, one of the most intriguing developments in the religious life of the United States today.
[Mark T. Mulder, Aida I. Ramos, and Gerardo Martí are the authors of Latino Protestants in America: Diverse and Growing.]
[1] See http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/29/hillary-clinton-wins-latino-vote-but-falls-below-2012-support-for-obama/.
[2] Pew Research Center, May 7, 2014, “The Shifting Religious Identity of Latinos in the United States.”
[3] Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell, American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), pp. 285-287.
[4] Pew Research Center, May 7, 2014, “The Shifting Religious Identity of Latinos in the United States.” See Chapter 3, “Religious Commitment and Practice”: http://www.pewforum.org/2014/05/07/chapter-3-religious-commitment-and-practice/.
[5] See lpcproject.org.
[6] Pew Research Center provided these figures to Christianity Today: http://www.christianitytoday.com/gleanings/2017/february/half-of-hispanic-christians-worry-deportation-trump-dhs-ice.html. See also Pew Research Center, February 23, 2017, “Latinos and the New Trump Administration.” Access at http://www.pewhispanic.org/2017/02/23/latinos-and-the-new-trump-administration/.
[7] Mark T. Mulder, Aida I. Ramos, and Gerardo Martí; Latino Protestants in America: Diverse and Growing (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017), pp. 59-74.Read more from Mulder, Ramos and Martí »
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Mention promo code 4ALBWK517 when you order on our website at www.rowman.com or order by phone at 800-462-6420. Offer expires on 6-30-17.
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IDEAS THAT IMPACT: CONGREGATIONAL DIVERSITY
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Faith & Leadership
Isaac Villegas: I long for the church of many identities"
I long for the church of many identities"
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A young Latino pastor celebrates the church that allows everyone to be whoever they happen to be, working together to create communities of abundant life.
A few years ago, I was asked to preach at an annual board meeting for my denomination, Mennonite Church USA. Then 28, with barely three years’ experience as a pastor, I was honored to be invited. But I was also nervous about the prospect of speaking to an assembly of 200 respected church leaders.
Not wanting to look out of place, I asked a friend who was familiar with these sorts of meetings for advice about what to wear. Suit and tie? Tie but no coat? Coat but no tie?
He told me not to worry and to wear what I had on -- a T-shirt, jeans and my Chuck Taylor All Stars.
“They’re asking you to preach to them because you’re young and they’re old, so look as young as you are,” he said. “They want to see youthfulness.”
After much deliberation, I went with the tie-but-no-coat option -- and left the Chuck Taylors at home. When I arrived at the conference center, I was relieved to see that I had managed to satisfy the unwritten dress code.
But even so, wardrobe aside, I knew immediately that I still stuck out: I was in my 20s; the church leaders were not. In fact, virtually the only other young people in the crowd were two women who, I soon found out, were the other speakers.
The three of us, I discovered, were there to speak for our generation, to share our youthful hopes for our denomination. We were the eventual heirs of the church; the 200 of them were God’s faithful servants who had spent decades building and sustaining a church that they would one day entrust to a new generation. The three of us spoke with unearned confidence, but the crowd received our words with warmth and grace, respect and gratitude.
Afterward, I realized that my friend was right. They wanted me because I was young. They would have loved my Chucks.
As you can probably guess from my age and my surname, I fit at least two underrepresented demographics among church leaders in many denominations: pastors under 35 and pastors who are Latino (especially those who happen to be acculturated enough to write and speak in English).
So whenever I’m asked to write or speak or join a committee, I can’t help but wonder, Why? Is it because I am, at least for the next few years, young? Is it because I’m Latino? Or is it because I am -- to borrow the phrase that Jack Donaghy on NBC’s “30 Rock” uses to describe his African-American, Harvard-educated employee -- a “toofer,” a “two-for-one,” one person who satisfies two desired demographics?
As the child of Latino immigrants and a member of a generation that is by all accounts heading out the church door, I confess that I sometimes wonder whether I am valued only because I am a “two-for-one.” I can’t help but worry that I’m wanted only to the extent that I fit someone’s stereotype of an authentic minority or a bona fide young person.
In her book “Sister Outsider,” the late African-American writer and activist Audre Lorde wrote about how all of us want to “be seen as whole people in our actual complexities.” The problem, Lorde said, is that “we come to each other coated in myths, stereotypes, and expectations from the outside, definitions not our own.”
Inevitably, those expectations will not be met. People who are invited to participate because they fill a missing demographic category or otherwise satisfy someone’s definition of a minority are ultimately “going to be found wanting in some way,” Lorde wrote.
Lorde, for example, noticed how some did not find her black enough or womanly enough. In my case, I worry that I won’t be brown enough or young enough to meet others’ expectations about what I am supposed to look and sound like. Does my accent sound Latino enough? Does my beard make me look older than they want me to be?
But as Lorde explained, we are at our best only when we act out of wholeness, when we can call upon all the pieces that make up who we are as individuals.
“My fullest concentration of energy is available to me only when I integrate all the parts of who I am, openly,” Lorde wrote, “allowing power from particular sources of my living to flow back and forth freely through all my different selves, without the restrictions of externally imposed definitions.”
I understand what Lorde is saying, and I want what she wants. I want to be invited to participate and to join in the struggle for hope. I want myself and others to be free to wander in and out of stereotypes and to offer our minority identities, our difference, “not in order to be used, but in order to be creative,” as Lorde put it.
I want to be part of a group that allows each person to be ordinary and strange, to be the same and different, to be whoever we happen to be and whoever we have to be, as we work together to create communities of abundant life.
“I came that they may have life,” Jesus said, “and have it abundantly” (John 10:10 NRSV).
I’ve found such life among my Mennonite sisters and brothers. That’s why I welcomed the chance to speak as a young adult to our denominational leaders. I knew that we -- both the leaders and the young people they had chosen as speakers -- were committed to the same work, the abundant life of Jesus, here and now.
Yet I know what it feels like when a group wants me to play a part, to use me to legitimate a project unrelated to my hopes and the hopes of the demographic I’m supposed to represent. I’m wary of tokenism, where people want to use my otherness for their own purposes, regardless of how that would affect me and my people.
There’s always a risk that a group might try to use my identity, my difference, to make their project more valuable and more appealing to a wider public. Even with suspicion in the back of my mind, I take the risk, because I long for the church that the apostle Paul described in 1 Corinthians, where the body of Christ “does not consist of one member but of many” -- a church full of many identities, not of sameness, all working together in the movement of the Holy Spirit for the sake of all of us (1 Corinthians 12:14).
The only way to discern what is good for all of us is for all of us to risk working together, to experiment with the creative power that comes from putting our different identities in conversation.
For, as Paul wrote, “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good” (1 Corinthians 12:7). The common good is something we discover along the way, as we make room for the Holy Spirit to manifest God’s presence in the midst of our differences.
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Faith & Leadership
Soong-Chan Rah: Freeing the captive church
Freeing the captive church |
America's growing diversity is a key not only to church growth and evangelism but also to freeing the church from cultural captivity, says a North Park Theological Seminary professor and author.
 Our nation’s growing diversity represents more to the church than a pool of potential new members. Even more, it’s an opportunity for the church in America to begin to live out a richer, more biblically authentic form of Christianity, Soong-Chan Rah said.
“Often, Western white culture has been so dominant in the church that we have trouble distinguishing it from biblical Christianity,” Rah said. “As the demographics of America change, how do we understand church not just through a Western lens of Christianity but also other lenses?”
The question for the church in America is not, “Is there diversity?” but, “What do we do about it?” said Rah, the Milton B. Engebretson Associate Professor of Church Growth and Evangelism at North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago.
If the goal is hospitality, then the church must decide what kind of hospitality it is willing to extend -- traditional Western hospitality or a more demanding, biblical form of hospitality.
“It’s not just a Western host saying, ‘Hey, come on in. We have room for you,’” Rah said. “It’s the church saying, ‘We are now coming into the fullness of what Christ originally intended.’”
Rah is the author of “The Next Evangelicalism: Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity” and “Many Colors: Cultural Intelligence for a Changing Church.” He was the founding pastor of Cambridge Community Fellowship Church in Cambridge, Mass., a multiethnic, urban church committed to racial reconciliation and social justice.
Rah was a faculty member for the 2011 Summer Institute (link is external) at Duke Divinity School and spoke with Faith & Leadership about diversity, church growth and freeing the church from cultural captivity. The following is an edited transcript.
Q: You’re an associate professor of church growth and evangelism and you write about race, ethnicity and culture. What’s the connection between those? Are race and ethnicity keys to church growth?
When we look at evangelism and church growth and America’s changing demographics, we have to consider issues like multicultural and multiethnic ministry. In my own denomination, the Evangelical Covenant Church, the two have gone hand in hand. Diversity has been a big factor in our growth.
Twenty years ago, the Evangelical Covenant Church was overwhelmingly white and Swedish, because it was a Swedish immigrant church. But in the last 15 years, it has become 20 to 25 percent nonwhite and has been one of the fastest growing denominations. It’s a place where we see a denomination’s growth parallel its growing diversity.
Q: Tell us about your first book, “The Next Evangelicalism: Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity.”
I look first at how Christianity has changed globally and in America. The assumption has been that Christianity in America is on the decline, but because of immigration, we’re actually seeing American Christianity, if not increasing, then certainly leveling off. We can be thankful that immigration and changing demographics are contributing to the church’s growth in the United States.
But given that demographic reality, what elements of American Christianity are still beholden to systems and structures from a previous time when it was dominated by Western white culture? And what do we need to think through in light of the changing demographics?
So where does our Christianity look more cultural than scriptural? Where do we go from here as we become more ethnically diverse? What is our theological and biblical understanding of culture? How do we start looking at multicultural communities? How can we build cross-cultural relationships?
Every expression of Christianity has cultural baggage, both good and bad. All Christianity has cultural relevance to a particular context. Churches need to do that. But at what point does it become captivity rather than relevance?
Often, Western white culture has been so dominant in the church that we have trouble distinguishing it from biblical Christianity. As the demographics of America change, how do we understand church not just through a Western lens of Christianity but also other lenses?
Q: What are the most obvious signs of the church’s captivity to Western culture?
One is the individualism of Western culture. We see this very strongly in evangelicalism, which tends to be highly individualistic. Is that really a biblical approach, or is it acquiescence to American culture? If Western culture is individualistic, then the Western church had to develop patterns of church life that parallel that individualism. But at what point does that become not just relevance but captivity?
Another is how we worship. Does our preaching reflect more the values of individualism than biblical values of community life? Western culture is very much about the individual, but is that what the Bible talks about when it talks about church? Do we need to move out from Western cultural captivity to see other models of community and church? How do African and Asian churches do church life? In what ways might they reflect a more communal spirit rather than the individualism of Western culture?
Captivity doesn’t allow us to see that. Captivity forces us into a particular worldview that says, “This is the way we do church.” But if we’re freed from that, we can see other expressions of church life.
Q: Do you first have to help people realize they’re captive?
That’s an important first step. When you grow up in a particular church context with a particular worldview, you develop assumptions about what faith is. After a while, a culture develops within all churches, and we assume our particular cultural expression of Christianity is what the church is supposed to be.
In any context, whether the American church or globally, we have to offer that knowledge about captivity. But part of that comes when we’re in conversation with each other. When a white suburban church talks to an inner-city black church, or a Western church talks to an African church, then we start seeing which things are more cultural and which are more biblical. We start learning from each other what church is really about.
Q: So how do you free the church?
That’s the tough question. Right now in the U.S., we’re blessed to have an increasingly multicultural society. I’m a Korean and grew up in a Korean church, but I was educated in the context of American Christianity and American culture. So I have a bicultural lens.
The subtitle of my second book is “Cultural Intelligence for a Changing Church,” but I always thought the better phrase would be “Cultural Intuition.” “Intelligence” implies just a set of knowledge that you pick up. Intuition is more something that you develop through experiences. A person who has lived in one cultural context all their life doesn’t develop an intuition for culture. They might read books on culture and gain knowledge about it, but they won’t develop intuition.
The more you’re in cross-cultural relationships and settings, the more you encounter people who are different, the more you can develop cultural intuition. And through that, you can start asking, “Well, where is my faith coming from?”
Q: What does a culturally sensitive, culturally intuitive church look like?
We’re just starting to figure that out. Part of the problem is that the U.S. has very few multiethnic churches. Only about 7 or 8 percent of U.S. churches are multiethnic, meaning 80 percent of one group and 20 percent of another. We don’t have churches that have been at this for 20 to 40 years and know what it’s like to live through stages of church life as a multicultural community. We’re starting to see more examples.
I hesitate to suggest principles that everybody should follow, because every context is different. But we have to develop even more intuition, relationships and abilities. We have to be patient. Maybe we first need to have more multiethnic churches and be more intentional about being part of multiethnic communities. Then we can see what principles emerge.
Q: You’ve written about the conditions that are required for people to grow and to change regarding issues of race and culture. Tell us about that.
I was a pastor for 15 years -- 10 of those in one church -- and that deeply shaped the way I view how people change.
Two variables are helpful, and you have to have both. One is a place of safety, a place where you feel safe enough to ask stupid questions, make mistakes and feel affirmed in your basic identity. That, by the way, is often why people go to single-ethnic churches -- because they’re safe. We feel safer with people who are like us and who understand us.
But we also need the flip side of that, which is a place of discomfort. Most of us don’t grow unless there’s a reason to grow, unless discomfort is introduced -- and usually that is introduced by people who are different.
That’s why it’s hard to establish multiethnic churches, because you’ve got to have both. You’ve got to have places of safety, but you also need a place of challenge, where people will say, “Hey, maybe you need to think about that a little more.”
Safety and challenge are things I hope the church could offer. That would be a great church, wouldn’t it? A place where people can say, “I’m affirmed here. God accepts me as I am. But at the same time, the community has challenged me to grow in areas that I would not have thought of unless I’d been part of this community.”
Q: The debate over immigration reform is an area where these issues of safety and discomfort seem relevant. Yet church people have often been some of the harshest voices in the debate. Why?
There’s no easy answer, but it goes back to cultural captivity, where being an American and protecting an American identity, usually associated with a white European identity, became more important than the scriptural values of compassion for the alien and immigrant among us. That reflects a cultural Christianity. Christianity as a whole has fallen captive to this idea of American exceptionalism and triumphalism. That has become more important than being the servant of all.
I get disturbed when people say, “We want America to be a Christian nation.” That usually means triumph, victory and maybe even violent conquest. The best way for America to be a Christian nation would be if we accepted the alien and immigrant among us. That would be more of a testimony of America as a Christian nation than any Islamic jihad we were able to defeat or put down.
Q: How should historically single-ethnic congregations welcome and minster to people of different cultures and languages?
American churches don’t look the way they did 20 or 30 years ago. They are more multicultural and more diverse than they’ve ever been, across all denominations. So the question is not, “Is there diversity?” but, “What do we do about it?”
Is our goal to be hospitable? Well, yes, if we’re talking about the biblical understanding of hospitality, but not if we’re talking about the Western concept of hospitality, which means, “Come to my home for a couple of hours -- we’ll feed you, but at the end of the night, you’re going to leave.”
Hospitality in the Western concept is an occasional event. Hospitality in the biblical context means, “No, actually, we’re going to live together. My home really is your home.”
What happens when that kind of hospitality changes not only your living arrangements but your food? If I’m a guest in your house, you might fix kimchi for me, but you can throw it out after I leave. But if I’m living with you, that kimchi’s going to be in your refrigerator for a long time, and your milk is going to start tasting like kimchi, and you might not like it as much as when it was just a random, one-night visit.
What happens when we live together for a long time and the liturgy changes? What happens when our children marry each other? What happens when all the things that make family life messy become what our church life needs to be?
It’s not just a Western host saying, “Hey, come on in. We have room for you.” It’s the church saying, “We are now coming into the fullness of what Christ originally intended.” That is a very different approach to being a multiethnic church.
Usually, you get the dominant church or the dominant culture saying, “Come join us and become like us, and then we’ll have worship together.” This other approach says, “Unless you’re here, the way God made you, my life as a Christian is incomplete. By you being here, bringing your different culture and style of worship and approach to fellowship, my life becomes complete in Christ, because I’m seeing Christ in you the way I can’t see Christ just in my own life.”
Q: What advice do you have for churches that want to do what you describe?
Studies show that neighborhoods generally are six times more diverse than churches. Every neighborhood is different, but the excuse that “our church isn’t multiethnic because the neighborhood isn’t” is probably just that -- an excuse. If you look within a mile radius, certainly four or five miles, you’ll see more diversity.
A first step would be to ask, “What’s going on in our neighborhood? Have churches started up that we didn’t know about? How can we partner with churches that are already doing this work?”
Then, also think about evangelism. What does it mean to do outreach and evangelism into communities that are already diverse?
Churches should also think seriously about what it means, what it costs, to become a multiethnic church. What would be lost potentially? It could be a lot.
I’ve been looking at what dying churches do with their buildings -- churches that were vibrant for 40 or 50 years but they’re down to 15, 20 people, and they’re just kind of waiting. They have a huge endowment and the building is paid for, but they’re not going to make it. In many cases, those churches shut down and become community centers or libraries or bowling alleys or condos.
But what would it mean for that church to give the building to a Spanish-speaking church or a Korean congregation? That would require thinking about what it means to pass on a legacy to people who are in some sense your children but don’t look anything like you or even speak the same language.
What would it mean to think in such a larger, kingdom mindset that you would say, “Our run has ended, and our time is coming to a close. The next generation is not our biological children. It’s the Hispanic church or Asian-American church down the street that we should pass this legacy on to.”
It’s coming to a point in American church history where we’re passing on our legacy to people who look very different from us.
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Faith & Leadership
Gerardo Marti: A diversity of diversities
A diversity of diversities |
"Diversity" can mean "having some blacks attend our mostly white church." What about the Pakistani pastor working with an Iranian congregation in the Southeast?
The desire for truly multiethnic, multiracial congregations continues to surge among church leaders. Now entire conferences are being created to support this effort. Last week, over 400 pastors, scholars, and denominational leaders gathered in San Diego for a first-ever Multiethnic Church Conference that brought together scholars Michael Emerson, George Yancey (link is external), Curtiss Paul DeYoung (link is external), and myself alongside practitioners like Mark DeYmaz (link is external), Dave Gibbons (link is external), Alvin Bibbs (link is external), and Brenda Salter McNeil (link is external) to assess the promise and progress of overcoming racial and ethnic segregation in the church in America.
The conference gathered energetic, enthusiastic pioneers, seeking to create “heavenly communities” that anticipate the kingdom of God manifesting grace in a multi-cultural fashion. We sang in Spanish, English, and Hindi. Singers and speakers came from African, Asian, Latino, and Euro-American heritages. Shared stories reflected a never-ending series of inspiring encounters of overcoming cultural differences. The crowd was smiling and laughing. The conference was further evidence of the extent to which the motivation to overcome racial and ethnic divisions has grown. The drive among these leaders is a mission of “gathering the nations” from all ethnic backgrounds and systematically working through prejudices to make the church a place where discrimination finds no place.
At the same time, I was struck by the rhetoric surrounding the impetus for diversity. I found myself asking what a “multiethnic ministry” might look like. One conversation in particular comes to mind -- with a Caucasian pastor serving in a multiethnic Asian congregation in Los Angeles.
He and his wife are the “white” leaders while his church consists of second and third generation Chinese and Korean Americans. He signed up hoping to find help in managing the unique challenges of ministering to his diverse group. Yet the sessions and workshops “didn’t relate” to him. For him, the conference aggressively pushed for specific strategies like incorporating Spanish lyrics in worship music and including more African Americans on stage. The organizers’ type of “diversity” addresses the “black-white divide,” which was not immediately at issue in the demographics of his area of metropolitan L.A. After attending a half-day, he concluded the conference was “not for me,” and spent time working through emails and preparing for the coming Sunday.
The conversation brought home to me that the vision for diversity among some church leaders -- as expansive and challenging as it may be -- may actually be a bit too narrow to represent the actual diversity of diverse congregations in the United States. Too often “diversity” means “having some blacks attend our mostly-white church.” Add a little exotic presence through chimes, djembe drums, and other folk instruments, and the sensitized sacred setting is complete.
But other church leaders are confronting a diversity that remains uncharted territory. What of the Pakistani pastor working with an Iranian and white congregation in the southeast? What of the Asian worship leader hired in a mainstream American Latino and white congregation? A single paradigmatic push for diversity may not fit the circumstances of many congregations. Moreover, the failure to recognize contextual differences may lead us to minimize the level of diversity actually experienced in many congregations today.
In our passion for diversity, those most committed to transcending racial and ethnic barriers may be assuming a vision of diversity that is actually not diverse enough.
When it was my turn to give my keynote presentation, I reminded the group that this was the first Multiethnic Church Conference and not the last one. The questions and issues of diversity are still being uncovered, and we should not settle too soon into an assumed set of answers and approaches on what “Biblical diversity” looks like. This is not to give an excuse to churches that greatly exaggerate the level of diversity of their churches. But perhaps our vision of diversity might need to be expanded to accommodate those that do not fit neatly into a single or familiar “diverse church” framework.
Read more from Gerardo Marti »
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As a troubadour for global music and an instigator of cross-cultural worship for more than 15 years in a variety of denominational settings, including congregational, national, and international venues, Michael Hawn has observed many faithful people who find that a taste of Pentecost in worship is refreshing and invigorating.
In One Bread, One Body: Exploring Cultural Diversity in Worship, Hawn seeks to help bridge the gap between the human tendency to prefer ethnic and cultural homogeneity in worship and the church's mandate to offer a more diverse and inclusive experience. He offers a rainbow vision of the universal church where young and old joyfully and thoughtfully respond to the movement of God's Spirit in multicultural worship. Hawn and four colleagues from Perkins School of Theology in Dallas formed a diverse team in ethnicity, gender, academic field of study, and denominational affiliation to study four United Methodist congregations in the Dallas area that are grappling with cross-cultural ministry. Their four case studies illustrate both the pain and the possibilities encountered in capturing the Spirit of Pentecost in worship. Hawn also offers a concise and practical theological framework as well as numerous strategies and an extensive bibliography for implementing "culturally conscious worship."
This book is invaluable for congregations that want to undertake the hard work of cross-cultural worship.
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