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Shaping a Multicultural Church Plant
The challenge of shaping multicultural church plants in our cities is great. In this article Martin White shares some insights from his journey...
I have met some amazing people who work with minority communities who are strong, godly Christians who have come to the conclusion that the established church is not the answer. Often they have given up on church and feel let down by churches that have not welcomed their friends. They have tended either to work with mission organisations or to set up ministries that exist either apart from, or as satellites of churches.
I can understand why they have come to this conclusion – if you have worked hard to get an Asian friend to the point of coming to church with you, only to have them in tears afterwards because no-one spoke to them and they felt completely out of place, then it’s easy to conclude that it will never work.
But they are wrong!
I have also met many people who believe very strongly in the Church, but don’t really know where to start with cross-cultural work, meaning that people are very open to the idea, but there are several ‘blind spots’ that mean that, without knowing or intending to, people from other cultures may feel excluded or poorly served by the church.
It doesn’t need to be like this either.
I believe that the best answer to the challenge of our multicultural cities is to plant great churches that are, from their inception, aimed at being open to all cultures.
I want to suggest a few ingredients that I believe can help build truly multicultural churches.
1. Be Biblical, rather than cultural.
If we try to appeal to each and every culture, then at best I think we can build a bi or tri-cultural church. This may be appropriate for some settings, but we live in a very multicultural area and quickly realised we could never keep up!
So we decided that we would look again at the model of the New Testament church, which, of course was Middle-Eastern, and call everyone, from every culture, to come in line with this model as much as possible.
This has meant that on many issues, such as hospitality, family relationships, attitudes towards money, pastoral care and preaching style, it has been Western people who have needed to change most.
As I said earlier, some people tend to reject the Church when it seems ‘not to be working’; I think a challenge like this should push us back to the Bible to dig deeper. A solid ecclesiology is an essential starting point for thinking through any necessary changes in style that are necessary.
2. Start multiculturally
This is easier said than done and after 12 years, we are still on our way, but if I was to plant another church, I would start with a multicultural team that could become the eldership team, and then build around that. It is a challenge to be the first person from a culture in a church and having different cultures at the beginning ‘gives permission’ for more people to commit in the future.
It has sometimes been tempting to take shortcuts in order to achieve this, but clearly that is a mistake. If you don’t have the right people, pray and fast for them; I dream of and pray regularly for a team like the one in Antioch (Acts 13:1) and remind God that if He wants us to build multiculturally, He needs to provide what we need.
A dynamic, unified, committed multicultural eldership demonstrates something of God’s wonderful ministry of reconciliation – what a foundation to build on!
3. Build relationally
When you start a church plant everything is relational – you eat together; you have open homes. But when things take off more and there is more to organise, it’s easy to allow things like eating together to be pushed out.
In all non-western cultures, hospitality and community are central – that’s how it was with the Early Church in Acts 2; half of what made them distinctive was how they broke bread and enjoyed fellowship.
Building relationally may also dictate the eventual size of your church. A sociologist – Robin Dunbar has worked out that the optimum number of relationships we can have is 150; after that, sub-groups happen. If this is right, then that may limit a multicultural church to this size (otherwise sub-groups will happen – probably down cultural ‘fault-lines’)
Personally, my aim is to reach 150, then plant another multicultural church.
4. Be humble
It’s easy to be ‘gung-ho’ as you are sent out to plant. The final thing I want to mention is the need for humility.
It’s not a good idea to rush in and tell people what they need (of course we can do that with the Gospel!) It’s a much better idea to humbly ask how you can build together.
One of the joys of being in a multicultural church is that you can learn from each other and find different styles and understanding of the Bible that would probably be overlooked otherwise.
The fact that we have such multicultural cities is a great blessing from God – as long as we act on it. Our cities desperately need thriving churches that truly reflect their populations and shine out with God’s Prophetic, multicoloured Wisdom. Maybe the fact you’re reading this article is a sign that He’s already calling you to be part of the solution!
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