The Monocultural Church
By Executive Director John Wesley Yoder
This is the second of four blogs regarding the three models of churches most relevant to cross-cultural ministry: the monocultural church, the multicultural church, and the multi-congregational church. The monocultural church is defined as a congregation proposed of 80 percent or more of people from the same ethnic background.
The majority of all churches around the world are homogenous. I've met pastors in 17 Asian countries, and most of them are pastoring homogenous churches. In America, the majority of churches, whether they are composed of whites, African Americans, or first-generation immigrants, are monocultural. The monocultural church has received significant criticism over the years from those who hold that it cannot fulfill Jesus' prayer in John 17, "That they may all be one."
Below is a helpful quote from the Pasadena Consultation of the Lausanne Movement regarding the monocultural (homogenous) church:
All of us are agreed that in many situations, a homogeneous unit church can be a legitimate and authentic church. Yet we are also agreed that it can never be complete in itself. Indeed, if it remains in isolation, it cannot reflect the universality and diversity of the body of Christ. Nor can it grow into maturity. Therefore, every homogenous church must take active steps to broaden its fellowship in order to demonstrate visibly the unity and the variety of Christ's Church. This will mean forging with other and different churches creative relationships which express the reality of Christian love, brotherhood, and interdependence.
So what can a homogenous church do to effectively serve a multicultural society? Let me list 5 possibilities.
The first is to make your existing worship service more welcoming to those from other cultures. The best way to truly understand how to do this is to identify current immigrant attenders of your church and ask them what you might change to make your service more attractive to those from other cultures.
The second is to partner with an immigrant church. Immigrant Ministry Connections specializes in equipping such partnerships.
The third is to partner with a local nonprofit serving your immigrant community. They might provide refugee resettlement services, teach English, work with international students, provide legal services, or more.
The fourth is to open your children's and youth ministries to immigrant believers and immigrant churches. There are many first-generation immigrants that love the Lord and want their children to grow up loving him too. But they only have the ability to train their children in Spanish, or Russian, or Swahili, or other foreign language. Your children's ministry programming can be invaluable to them. There are other immigrants that want their children to continue to love the language of the homeland, the culture of the homeland, and they will be less open to you.
There are others who will be concerned that their culture has different standards than an American church in terms of dress codes and hairstyles and music and much more. It's very important that you meet with parents, listen to them, hear their concerns, see where your ministries overlap. If you lovingly take time to hear their concerns, to see ways that your children's ministry might slightly adapt to fit them, you may become a great resource to immigrant believers in your community.
The fifth is to launch a new multicultural expression of worship. We're very familiar with churches that have a traditional service as well as a contemporary service. A newer trend is for churches to leave their homogenous service intact, and launch a new multicultural service or small group. Or you could launch a new multicultural daughter church. Your church might do this alone, or in cooperation with other churches in the community.
I believe that all three models we are exploring in this blog series, if done in a biblical manner, can affirm the unity of the body of Christ, bring people together across cultures, and help us build a brighter future for the church in our multicultural society.