Exploring Multicultural Ministry
“Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every nation.”
Multiculturalism is a mandate of Christianity.
Many church consultants have postulated that if the Church is to grow it must become multicultural.
This is indeed desirable but difficult for parishes to undertake. There are many things standing in the way of congregations entering into intentional multicultural ministry.
- People looking for a church home tend to be attracted to groups that are like them.
- People inviting tend to relate most easily to people who are like them.
- Leadership is often uncomfortable with spearheading multicultural programs. It is outside their training.
- Resources for developing multicultural ministry are few and developing resources for such a broad topic is difficult.
2×2 grew from Redeemer Lutheran Church which had a thriving multicultural ministry. It did not grow from any master plan skillfully implemented by strong, well-trained leadership.
In Redeemer’s experience, multicultural ministry grew from accepting who we were and adapting as the neighborhood changed. Slowly, year by year, member by member, the faces in our congregation changed, our worship changed, and our fellowship changed. Within a decade, our small congregation with century-old ethnic roots in German and Scottish-English traditions had become predominantly East African with members from many countries and speaking many languages. This was managed without major upheaval from within the congregation. We are, however, experiencing difficulty with our denomination, who viewed the changes as one group dying — giving them rights (in their view) to move in and control assets and reassign new members to another location.
Multicultural ministry can be very tough for the whole church to accept.
While we have experience in multicultural ministry, we cannot claim expertise. Surely, there are other congregations with as much or more experience than ours, although they are not easy to find. Redeemer has visited 33 congregations in our synod. We have encountered only two or three that concentrate on multicultural ministry. Among them, one or two are diverse without being noticeably multicultural. In fact, defining multicultural might be a helpful exercise.
Many years ago, in a discussion of an upcoming mixed-race marriage, someone among the gossipers commented, “Hey, when you come right down to it, aren’t ALL marriages mixed? Isn’t that what marriage is all about?”
That’s a good starting point. Take a close look at the cultures that are already present within your congregation. You might be more diverse than you think!
Please share your experiences as we share ours in a series of posts. Perhaps together we can encourage multicultural outreach. We invite posts from anyone with thoughts to share on multicultural ministry.
Despite the fact that this is an original mandate of Christianity, we need to break new ground.
Send us a comment and we will get back to you.
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