The Denominational Leader

Your character

You are mature in your spirituality, giftedness, and ministry experience.  Pastors look up to you.

Because you’re leading a group of highly independent Americans, they’re not looking up to you as The Great Leader.  It’s like “herding cats”. You have to earn their respect through your competence to gain their attention.

You are probably presiding over numerical, institutional, and financial decline.  That’s not a bad thing.  Godly Old Testament prophets faithfully served during the spiritual and moral decline of the Divided Kingdom era.  They didn’t experience the repentance or revival they desired, but their reward in heaven will be as great as Peter’s who saw 3,000 come to faith through one sermon.

Those of you who have passion for cross-cultural ministry experience that passion more deeply than most pastors.  Pastors are obligated to focus on the immediate needs of their congregations.  They need to prepare for the next sermon, budget cycle, and wedding. You function at the 30,000-foot level.  You see that churches are in decline, and something needs to be done about it.  You see that first-generation churches are thriving, but have virtually no relationship with American churches beyond sharing space.  Some of you have clear ideas for steps forward, while others are still learning.  But you’re both stretched for time, have multiple responsibilities, and can give only a portion of your attention to local cross-cultural ministry.

Your challenges 

You may need to spend much of your time doing organizational busywork that doesn’t produce abundant Kingdom fruit.

Your denomination may be more focused on institutional survival than on Kingdom growth. Your pastors may view immigrant churches primarily as sources of rental income. Here’s a hard truth: the Kingdom of God was moving along just fine before anyone articulated your doctrinal statement or polity distinctions, and it will continue to do fine if they fade away.  But around you are souls who will last for all eternity, and they should be our priority.

Most of you aren’t Pentecostals (neither am I). But 80 percent of Christians from non-Western countries hold to some level of Pentecostal doctrine or practice. It will be a huge asset in cross-cultural partnership development if you can condition your people to be present around supernatural manifestations without freaking out. Such manifestations are a genuine part of American Christianity, and not all who practice them are weirdos. Your people need your example to legitimize spiritual practices that aren’t part of your tradition.

Your calling

As you know, if your denomination doesn’t figure out how to thrive in a multicultural society, it’s destined for decline and irrelevance.  It’s likely most of your pastors are too busy to figure it out.  They need you to figure it out for them. They need you to be like the wise men of Issachar. Of Issachar, men who had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do. 1 Chronicles 12:32. Someone in your national and/or district offices needs to become highly competent at cross-cultural church partnerships.  The more, the better.

About half the members of The Merging Streams Coalition are denominational leaders. They usually say something like, “I didn’t come here for myself: I came here to find resources for others.” When pastors join The Merging Streams Coalition, we focus on the issues they’re experiencing in their specific cross-cultural partnerships. But when denominational leaders join, we process how such partnerships can be multiplied across a district or even an entire denomination. Leaders from different denominations cross-pollinate ideas, models and stories with each other.

Here are some of the resources of Immigrant Ministry Connections you may find particularly useful.

• Subscribing to our weekly blogs will keep you current on what’s happening in North American cross-cultural ministry.
• The Networking section of our Resources page list directories of immigrant-focused nonprofit ministries in all 50 states and 13 provinces and territories of Canada. There are also listings of disciple-making videos, as well as ministries training in specific areas such as teaching English.  These will help you identify partners in your area.  Please let us know the websites of immigrant-focused ministry nonprofits in your area that we haven’t listed. The more Christ-honoring ministries we list, the more greatly we can connect the Body of Christ for effective ministry.
• For pastors who could use a quick read on how healthy cross-cultural partnerships are launched, point them to our book The Cross-Cultural Partnership Survival Guide.  It’s written from the fictional perspective of a monocultural American who is tasked with managing cross-cultural partnerships, and learns the ropes through hands-on experience and expert mentoring.
• It’s vital in a multicultural society that key staff in a ministry organization become well-versed in multiplying cross-cultural partnerships.  Our flagship platform to equip ministry leaders for this is The Merging Streams Coalition. The Coalition is an annual membership that provides 3-5 hours per month of coaching and content, as well as peer engagement with cross-cultural ministry practitioners.