Christian Compassion without Culture Wars, episode 7 transcript
Becoming a Welcoming Christian
www.CrossCulturalVoices.org
George Yancey: Americans who have been socialized with only members of their own race are becoming less common. We now have more people who are much more comfortable interacting with members of different races and are more likely to enjoy a religious environment that is multiracial.
John Yoder: Hi everybody, John Yoder here. Welcome back to the final episode of this series, “Christian Compassion without Culture Wars”. Today we're going to wrap it up on a high note. This episode is called “Becoming a Welcoming Christian”. It asks the , how you and I can become the kind of people who can welcome those from any cultural background.
Just a quick recap of our first five episodes: we shared how that you can build marvelous cross-cultural relationships without engaging in culture wars. There will always be a group of people that want to argue about oppressed and oppressors, cancel culture, microaggressions, dismantling privilege, perpetual lament, and more.
But we've showed you that despite that there are millions of people, quietly, out of the news, who are building wonderful cross-cultural friendships and marriages and churches. They are doing this by following timeless principles taught by Jesus and his apostles, such as love one another, listen to one another, forgive one another, and center Christ.
Last time we talked about the welcoming church and we shared the good news that in the US there are increasing numbers of multicultural churches. That they are truly multi-ethnic in their makeup, not just a reflection of white culture. They are moving beyond simply being places of having worship service and program to a place where people are building authentic community. You can catch all of those blogs, transcripts, podcasts on our website, www.CrossCulturalVoices.org.
So today we want to build on what we talked about last time. If there are welcoming churches, they are obviously composed of welcoming Christians. So then what does it mean for you and me to be welcoming Christians? First of all, we need to understand that being a welcoming Christian is obeying the commands of God. Here's what the Apostle Paul says.
Romans 15:7 Therefore welcome one another, just as Christ welcomed us, to the glory of God.
We also need to recognize that when Jesus gave us the second great commandment, to love others as ourselves, he was quoting a passage from Moses where Moses is commanding us to love people of all cultures equally.
Leviticus 19:33-34: When a foreigner sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the foreigner who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself. For you were strangers in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.
So how exactly does that work? There are two parts to it. First of all, each one of us as individuals need to come to peace with the cultural identity that God has given to us. And then we need to come to peace with the cultural identity that God has given to everybody else.
Psalm 139:13-16: For you formed my inward parts, you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works. My soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance, in your book were written, every one of them. The days that were formed for me when as yet there was none of them.
This is an absolutely marvelous passage that teaches us that whoever we are, God sovereignly chose who we would be in the womb. No part of us is accidental. Your hair color, your eye color, your height, your gender, your skin tone, your parents, your mother language, your citizenship, all were ordained by God before he created you.
Some of you were born into monocultural settings where pretty much everybody looked like you, talked like you, and acted like you. Others of you were born into multicultural settings where you were surrounded by different people, maybe even by different languages, and we need to embrace that. All of those are equally gracious gifts of God, and we need to come to peace with who God has made us to be, and with who he has made everyone else to be.
Dr. Michelle Lee-Barnewall is the lead presenter for our podcast series “Unseen”. She is a second-generation Korean American. She was the only Asian kid in a class of 300 in northern Minnesota, and she came to peace with her Asian identity. She no longer needs everyone out there to understand or affirm her Asianness. Here is what she says in her book, “A Longing to Belong”:
Michelle Lee-Barnewall: For the first time, I was comfortable being Asian, and I didn't need to be around other Asians all the time to feel this. Being Asian was now a part of me, but it didn't dominate my life. I could think about it or not.
As I reflect on my childhood and those Barbie dolls, I see that having a doll who looked like me might have affirmed me as an individual, but it could not fix a more fundamental problem. How do I relate to people who are not like me? A Korean Barbie could not teach me how to live with people who have different skin color, gender talents, tastes, interests and backgrounds.
As important as it was to be validated for who I am, I needed to go beyond personal validation. The point of life in the world is not for everyone else to affirm me in all my uniqueness. If anything, it seems rather self-centered to expect everyone to understand how I feel the world doesn't revolve around me, as much as I might wish that were true. To be able to live in this truth and love each other in all our weaknesses in infallibility through Christ who lives in us and loves us, is both our challenge and our promise from God.
John Yoder: Now, it would be one thing to welcome people of other cultures if we lived in a country like Japan that is 97 to 98% ethnically pure. But America is becoming more multicultural every year. Here is what sociologist Dr. George Yancy says in page 34 of his book “One Body, One Spirit”:
George Yancey: Americans who have been socialized with only members of their own race are becoming less common. We now have more people who are much more comfortable interacting with members of different races and are more likely to enjoy a religious environment that is multiracial.
John Yoder: And so friends, there is a great need for us today to become welcoming Christians, and it's really important that we emphasize both of those words. We must be both welcoming and Christian.
Now we focused so far about that first word welcoming, but I want to talk about that word Christian as well. I believe there is a big difference between older and younger generations of Americans. We older American Christians tend to focus on the word Christian over the word welcoming. We want to make sure that people are born again. We want to make sure that they're theologically orthodox. We might even want to see that they fit inside our denominational wall.
With younger generations, it's much more important to be welcoming. We must include all ethnicities. We must include both genders. We must include all kinds of people, but it may be more difficult for them to take a stand on the Christian faith.
Several years ago I was speaking with a missionary in Northeastern China, and he said he had a group of young people come up from a city and they had a ministry to one of the local universities. And he said, if I ask these young people to go to the university and teach English, they’re excited. If I tell them that we're going to do something to serve the poor and needy in the community, to work in an orphanage, they were excited. But he said, if I say to them we might share the gospel of Jesus Christ with people and invite them to come to faith, it stressed them out. It was completely outside their paradigm that serving others may mean sharing the Gospel of Christ.
It is very difficult for people who have learned to be inclusive of all ethnicities, nationalities, languages, income levels, denominations, political parties, then to be exclusive when it comes to faith and to moral codes. Jesus says that he is the one and only way to heaven, and that all religions are not valid. The Ten Commandments are God's immutable moral code, and he is not open to other morality. It is imperative for all of us to understand not just the exclusivity of Christ, but the eternal peril of everyone who does not follow him.
John 3:36: Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life. Whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.
Jesus is saying that the eternal wrath of God is already abiding on everyone who does not believe in him. That is, those who are not Christians stand in danger of eternal hell. Now, most Christians focus on one of two things. It's either meeting people's spiritual needs or material needs, but few of us care for both.
Some just want to preach the gospel and get people into heaven, but don't meet their physical needs. Others are concerned about the hungry, the oppressed, the illiterate, the prisoner, the homeless, but they don't share the gospel. And the risk with that is, you may find somebody who's hungry and you may feed their belly today, but if you do not share with them the gospel of Christ, they may face eternal punishment because you did not share the truth with them.
We said last time that our younger generations are more likely to be attracted to multicultural churches than our older generations. And with that said, it's really important for multicultural churches to do a couple of things. One is to really give attention and focus to discussion and dialogue about the truth and not just giving lectures and sermons. And the other is to be meeting physical material needs in the community and not just sharing the gospel, but ideally it is doing those two things together.
So with that said, how do we really practically become good welcomers of people of other cultures? Missionaries study that question for years. People get their doctorates on subsections of that question. So we are not going to answer it in one podcast. But if you're just getting started, our Communications Director, Sai Wang, has three really helpful suggestions to get you out the gate.
Sai Wang: I love asking questions. Jesus is very good at asking good questions, and when we look at the gospel and many of the stories that were recorded of Jesus, he asked really genuine and authentic questions so that people would be willing to naturally share about what they think. And so similarly, I have found asking good questions that do not set any agenda or presumption about people really breaks down the barrier and bring people closer to each other.
John Yoder: Here is Sai’s second suggestion.
Sai Wang: I have noticed that whenever I bring up my view on a certain political issue with my friends from other cultures who may hold a very different view on the country or the situation. I see that our conversation becomes less genuine about ourselves, but more tending to argue. So I would suggest that we stay away from things that are highly politicized.
John Yoder: Folks, if I meet Sai for the first time and I realize she is a citizen of China, I can start peppering her with questions about the Chinese Communist Party or about the persecution of the church. Sai is not responsible for the decisions of the Chinese government. Sai is not responsible and maybe not even knowledgeable about the persecution of the church.
Even if she is, if I focus the conversation on government, I will miss out on the opportunity to meet an absolutely delightful, wonderful sister in the Lord, because I find government more interesting than her.
And for those of us born in the United States, we know that politics is highly divisive. So if a group of people are going out for lunch after church, or meeting in the lobby at the end of the service, why would we be bringing up subjects that are divisive when we could be bringing up subjects that build bridges?
Culture warriors tend to join justice-focused churches who believe that all Christians must vote in ways that will tear down systems and structures of oppression. To do that, you must believe that everyone in the church in unison believes that you vote for the party that does that. In this course, I have argued for the gospel-centric church that embraces people of all political persuasions, and therefore does not expect that Christians will all vote for the tearing down of systems and structures.
For those of you that disagree with me, I understand your position. Just please understand that your church will only be attractive to people of a certain political perspective. And now let's listen to Sai's third suggestion for meeting new people of another culture.
Sai Wang: Prayer is another thing that I really see valuable, because I see that by praying for someone after meeting with them, and the next time you bring it up they feel touched and they feel that they're seen, that they are being valued by you, so that you will pray for them. And from a selfish standpoint, praying for someone helps me remember what they have shared with me, and it helps me to remember what they are dealing with and what is important to them.
John Yoder: And so friends, I hope this series has really been helpful for you. I hope it has helped you come to peace with this whole concept of culture wars and understanding that there will always be some people who are combative, who believe that they need another apology, but that despite all of that, that there are millions of people who respond to love and kindness, and churches around the nation are building healthy cross-cultural relationships. You can be part of that.
So this brings our series to a close. And I'm really excited to tell you about our next series. It's called “Our Cross-Cultural Family”, and it's interviews with husbands and wives and kids of cross-cultural families where we learn the joys, the struggles, and the best practices for making those kind of families work.
The other thing I'm excited about is next time you are going to meet our new co-host, Robin Karkafi. Beginning next time, you're going to meet Robin. You're going to love him. He's 25 years old. He's a second generation Lebanese Canadian. He works with people of a lot of different ethnicities. He has a degree in audio-visual. He has experience in podcasts. He's a lot of fun, and he is going to join me as co-host. We hope before very long we have a young lady that will join us as a third co-host as well.
So we rejoice in the new participants in this ministry. We rejoice in our new subscribers. Folks, would you pray for us that God would anoint us as we meld together as a team, and that he would bring these resources to the attention of people that desperately need them? I'll talk to you next time.
