The Multicultural Church
By Executive Director John Wesley Yoder
This is the third of a series of four blogs regarding the three church models most relevant to ministry in a multicultural society. I define the multicultural church as a congregation composed of two or more ethnicities, in which no ethnicity composes 80 percent or more of the congregation.
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.
Here are some benefits of the multicultural church:
- It displays multicultural oneness to the community. America is becoming increasingly fragmented and polarized. Every year, we are less and less able to listen and speak to each other across political, racial and other divides. A multicultural church, by its very nature, has to build relationships across that divide, and therefore becomes a wonderful witness to both the church and the community.
- It provides a foretaste of the united worship we see in Revelation chapters 5 and 7, where we see all nations, tribes, tongues, and peoples gathered together before the throne of God in worship.
- It increases the likelihood of impacting smaller ethnic groups. Here in the Minneapolis area, we have many Latinos, Russians, Chinese, and Indians, and they have all started monocultural churches. But there are less than 200 Tunisians in Minnesota. It’s unlikely that there will ever be a Tunisian church. A Tunisian might not feel very comfortable in a homogenous church. But if there is a multicultural church with many cultures worshipping together, a Tunisian may feel more comfortable there.
The biggest disadvantage of the multicultural church: It’s hard to keep the people in the pews. Pastors who write from the multicultural perspective share that pastors of homogenous churches have more time to dedicate to administration, counseling, sermon preparation and other responsibilities because pastors of multicultural churches need to spend more time maintaining unity among highly diverse people.
Those who love multicultural churches often want everyone to share their passion. Some even shame those who continue to attend monocultural churches. It’s my experience that monocultural churches attract monocultural people, and multicultural churches attract multicultural people. A multicultural church will see the greatest fruit with the least effort if it focuses on multicultural people. These include persons of mixed race, couples in mixed marriages, those who have lived abroad, second- and third-generation immigrants, and those who have grown up in multicultural environments.
That last category, those who have grown up in multicultural environments, includes most of today’s American young people. In most cases, Gen Z are attending high schools where there is no majority group. These young people experience schools, workplaces and entertainment media that are far more multicultural than previous generations. They may be more naturally drawn to multicultural worship.
Multicultural churches are a lot of hard work, but they are indispensable to the future of American Christianity. For the sake of future generations, it is imperative for those who prefer monocultural churches to labor for the planting of new multicultural expressions of worship.