Multicultural Church – Part One: Is it wrong for a church to desire to be multicultural?

For a few months, I have read commentary from friends and strangers alike on the subject of racial reconciliation, ethnic diversity, and how these things should be worked out in church life. Most of this commentary has been in response to various social, political, and ecclesiastical factors in the United States, still reaping the whirlwind for centuries of oppression, slavery, and segregation, but there have been some good conversations started in the UK also. As ever in a conversation or debate, I have found some contributions helpful and others less so.

One of the things that I have seen that has troubled me is the negative reaction in some circles to the idea that a church should, where contextually possible, make being “multicultural” a priority, and so seek to better reflect the composition of their local community and the eschatological Kingdom. Furthermore, when churches and church leaders, particularly with a majority-culture homogenous history, celebrate real progress in this area, they have been criticised for somehow being out of step with Scripture. The allegations vary and even after they are made it still puzzles me as to what the problem is. For my own reflection, as much as anyone else’s, I have asked three questions on the subject and provided what I believe to be biblical answers. These will be covered over three separate posts, with the shortest being this, the first. Frankly, the more I consider it, the more I am saddened that we even have to have this discussion, but I remain hopeful that good things will come out of it.

Is it wrong for a church to desire to be multicultural?

Such a desire is surely natural for any church in a multicultural context! After all, a true church believes in the Father who “so loved the world” (John 3:16), the Spirit who is poured out “on all flesh” (Joel 2:28; Acts 2:17), and the Son before whom “a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” (Revelation 7:9) will stand in worship.

I desire that the church I lead, Grace Baptist Church Wood Green, be multicultural. I have no pangs of conscience for so doing, nor do I understand why according to some, it seems I should. It is the natural outworking of what I believe about God, salvation, and church, and of what I observe in my local community.

If heaven will have people identifiably of every skin colour, nationality, ethnicity, and language worshipping Christ, is it wrong to desire some small piece of that heavenly multicultural unity in the local church? My area has - depending on who one talks to - between 150 and 300 first languages represented in the borough’s schools. On one small residential road you can have both a Hollywood actor in a terraced house and a single mum in a cramped bedsit. Is it wrong for me to desire that my church not simply be all white people or all black people, all middle class people or all working class people, but a diverse range of backgrounds more representative of my local context united in worship of Jesus as Lord and Christ? I cannot fathom how anyone could answer these questions in the negative and still lay claim to biblical fidelity and missional integrity.

Part 1 of 3. Next post: Is it wrong for a church to strive to be multicultural?