Monocultural, Multicultural and Multi-Congregational Churches
By Executive Director John Wesley Yoder
This is the first of four blogs in a series on the three models of church structures most relevant to cross-cultural ministry. The first two are well-known and highly documented. They are the monocultural (or homogenous) and multicultural church models. The third is less well known, but I believe it is vital to the future of the church in a multicultural society. It is the multi-congregational church.
The picture for this blog illustrates three kinds of blankets that serve as great analogies for these three kinds of churches. A single-colored blanket made from one piece of cloth is an analogy for the monocultural church, defined as a congregation composed of people 80 percent or more of the same cultural group.
A striped blanket makes a good analogy for the multicultural church, defined as two or more different ethnic groups coming together for worship, where no group makes up more than 80 percent of the congregation.
A quilt is the best analogy for the multi-congregational church. A quilt is made up of many different pieces of cloth that are sewn together as a whole. Even if its constituent pieces are monochrome, the quilt itself will be brilliantly multicolored. I define the multi-congregational church as three or more worshiping congregations whose pastors see themselves as peers and engage in joint ministry.
I will unpack each of these 3 models in upcoming blogs. But for now I’d like to continue to overview by sharing the primary advantage and the primary disadvantage of each model.
The biggest advantage of the monocultural church is that it works. Even its most ardent detractors will tell you that it is the most pragmatically successful of all the models. The reason that it works is because homogenous worship is designed for a group of people who have similar preferences regarding the length of a service, the length of a sermon, the amount of emotion in the sermon, musical styles, clothing styles, and even favorite foods. It is much easier to design something for them than to design something for a more diverse group.
The biggest disadvantage of the homogeneous service is that it tends to remain isolated from other members of the Body of Christ. This robs everyone of the opportunity to share relationships, spiritual gifts, insights, resources and more. In our next blog, I will share how a monocultural church can fulfil Jesus’ prayer in John 17 “That they may all be one” by engaging in cross-cultural partnerships.
The biggest advantage of the multicultural church is that it provides tangible opportunities to express the unity of the body of Christ by loving one another, listening to one another, encouraging one another, and bearing one another's burdens. In a racially polarized society, the multicultural church has a great opportunity to show that Christians can indeed love one another. And it is a foretaste of what we read about in Revelation chapters 5 and 7, where people of all nations, tribes, tongues, and people come together before the throne of God in worship.
The biggest disadvantage of the multicultural church is that it's hard to keep the people in the pews. Many pastors of multicultural churches have observed that it is a great struggle to keep people of many cultural backgrounds on the same team.
The biggest advantage of the multi-congregational church is that it combines the advantages of both the homogenous and the multicultural models. It allows a number of monocultural and multicultural churches to share vision, staff, leadership, finances, facilities and more, while retaining their unique identities.
The biggest disadvantage of the multi-congregational church is that it's easy for pastors in this model to function independently in silos. In both corporate America and in ministry organizations, I have been part of groups that were called teams simply because they reported up to the same supervisor. But our team members had nothing in common. We were teams in name only.
In the upcoming three blogs I will share ideas about maximizing the effectiveness of each of these models.