Multicultural Church - Part Three: Is it wrong for a church to celebrate becoming or being multicultural?

Surely a church that desires and therefore strives to be multicultural should have the liberty to praise God when they show signs of becoming multi-cultural!

By way of example, I was recently delighted to see a series of tweets from my father, Barry King, about developments at Dunstable Baptist Church where he is pastor (the whole thread can be viewed here). The third point of his vision for the church was

“I desire for us to be multi-cultural. While some may find comfort drawing up the bridge to keep strangers at a safe distance, I desire for us to have a warm-hearted, open-armed embrace for all who live in our town.”

Noting that, he went on to explain briefly how God has answered prayer and rewarded their efforts to that end:

“This morning in our gathering for worship there were 10 nationalities represented and regular attenders from five other countries were absent. I know by London standards this is normal not exceptional. But, Dorothy, this isn't London. It was exceptional and encouraging.

“We were particularly blessed to have 17 Romanian friends visiting with us for the first time. Dunstable has a growing Romanian population and we desire by God's grace to reach many of them with the gospel.”

Is there anything wrong with this? Not in any way, so far as I can see but based on some of the commentary I have read in recent months, it is wrong to have being multicultural in the church’s vision, as a church priority, it is wrong to identify a specific cultural community in the area and desire to strategically and biblically reach it with the gospel, and it is wrong to make note of when that vision starts becoming reality. For some they claim to see this as an assault on the universality of the gospel message, but from my perspective it actually demonstrates it. In contexts where the surrounding town or city was to some degree ethnically diverse but the church - for less than Scriptural and sometimes anti-Scriptural reasons - was ethnically homogenous, intentionally working toward diversity and celebrating God-given progress powerfully communicates that “all are welcome” not just ideally but really.

Of course statistics, like anything, can be misused. This remains the case when the joyful subject at hand is the growing diversity of a church. Certainly we must ever be watchful against superiority and self-righteousness in how we use our own statistics: by collecting and publishing such figures, are we saying “Look at us, we are better than the rest of you!” or are we saying “Look at Christ, he is better than everything else that could define us!”? We should also guard against cynicism in how we read other people’s statistics: “They are so woker-than-thou, telling us how diverse and multicultural they are. More concerned with being diverse than being faithful to the gospel”. The fact of the matter is, I really don’t see people using diversity statistics in the worldly or sinister way critics claim. Generally, they are noted for the same reasons a church might make note of attendance numbers, baptisms, admissions to membership, finances, or length of pastoral tenure: cause for prayer or praise, opportunity for self-examination or celebration, identifying room for growth or rejoicing in God’s grace.

Much of the criticism I have read from some circles - whether tweets or blogposts - is simplistic, reductionist, misrepresentative, incoherent, and illogical but nonetheless strident and totally self-assured. Sadly in the era of Trump, this sort of approach passes for statesmanship, even in professedly Christian circles. Unfortunately, no robust biblical exegesis or particularly clarifying theological critique is made as to why envisioning and celebrating a multicultural church is wrong. The gist seems to be that the Bible does not show interest in these things and that the reconciliatory work of Christ somewhat erases them. I beg to differ.

Christ does not erase cultural distinctives or render a person’s background unimportant; rather a multiplicity of cultural distinctives and personal backgrounds shouts in surround sound with full colour vision “Christ is more important!” This is seen throughout Scripture.

The Law

The repeated covenantal promise of God to Abraham - last made to him in Genesis 22:18 in the Christ-foreshadowing context of Abraham's willingness to give up his only son and a divinely appointed substitutionary sacrifice - makes clear: "in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice." This is later interpreted by the Apostle Paul in Galatians 3:8-9 as evidence of God's salvific interest beyond the Semitic people later known as Hebrews, Israelites, or Jews. In this text toward the beginning of the books of the Law, we read the good news - not that God is disinterested in any particular nation/nationality but rather that he is interested in every nation/nationality. 

Despite the covenantal focus on the people of Israel, this global interest continues as God makes clear that "resident aliens" (in other words, immigrants) are to be loved and looked after and may even be brought into the worship and witness of the Jewish people should they wish to participate as new believers in Yahweh (cf. Exodus 12:48-49, 22:21, 23:9, Leviticus 19:9-10, 24:22, Numbers 9:14, 15:13-16). It is important to note that they are placed in the same category as the poor ("widows and orphans"), and as such are to be recipients of financial aid (Deuteronomy 26:12-15). God has strong words on justice for these foreigners and the poor: "The one who denies justice to a resident alien, a fatherless child, or a widow is cursed." Not that it matters how God's declaration was received, but it met with unanimous approval and the "Amen" of the assembled nation of Israel (Deuteronomy 27:19). 

The Writings

The principles and promises laid down in the Law are lyrically communicated and prayerfully contemplated in the musical worship of Israel, as reflected in the Psalms. Their depiction of Yahweh is not simply of a territorial God but a global God, not a God who rules over a region but a God who reigns over all nations. In Psalm 18:49, David gives thanks to Yahweh from "among the nations". Here they are David's enemies, laying battered and beaten around him, cowering in fearful servility before the grave-bound shepherd turned risen and victorious king. They are observers of the thanksgiving, even as they have observed the wonders that produce it. 

The psalms are not content to relegate people of other nations to mere "observer" status, but look to a day when people from Gentile nations with join with the Jewish tribes as participants in praise. The messianic Psalm 22 begins with a forsaken cry but ends with a faithful congregation from around the world: "All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord / And all the families of the nations shall worship before you / For kingship belongs to the Lord and he rules over the nations."

The Prophets 

The multicultural nature of God's plan is further developed by the prophets, and contra those who claim that Scripture is not interested in where a person comes from or what their cultural background may be, people of specific nations and even specific cities are routinely the recipients of God's message. 

In Isaiah 19:19-25 Egypt, Assyria, and Israel’s real distinctions are not glossed over nor are their ethnic identities somehow erased but the prophet envisions how they are brought together in worship, accentuated by the beautiful bizarrity of it all. The repeated theme of Ezekiel is “They shall know that I am the Lord”, and “they” is used to refer to several specific nations and people groups beyond the Hebraiocentric expectations of the exiled Jews. Indeed, as already stated, many times throughout the Prophets, specific people groups and nations are singled out for specific messages both of judgement for sin and blessing upon repentance.

The Gospels

"God so loved the world..." are the most famous words in all of Scripture. But is that just a general love for no world-people in particular, or is it a meaningful love, manifested in the person and work of Jesus Christ, that is directed at specific people (and thereby people-groups) that added together make up "the world"?  The context of John's words indicates to me, the latter. John 3:16 comes at the conclusion of a dialogue between Jesus and Nicodemus, a self-righteous "ruler of the Jews", before Jesus and the disciples go into the Judaean countryside to preach and baptise. John 3 precedes a dialogue in John 4:1-45 between Jesus and an unrighteous Samaritan woman who summons her whole town to meet Jesus, following which the marginalised Jew-Gentile hybrids say "we know that this is indeed the Saviour of the world". Not content to leave us with stories of Jewish and semi-Jewish lives touched by Jesus, John ushers us to Capernaum (the village of Nahum, himself a prophet to Gentiles), in a region known as "Galilee of the Gentiles" (cf. Matt. 4:14-15). There a Gentile official, identified elsewhere as a Roman centurion, has a miraculous encounter with Jesus that leads to belief for him and his household. A Jewish cleric, a Samaritan woman with a trail of broken marriages in an unlawful relationship, and a Gentile soldier stand as three witnesses to exclaim "we are the world that God loved by giving his only Son!" 

The Early Church 

Hastening to a conclusion while moving deeper into the New Testament and the formation of the early church, we read that people from a list of 15 different, specifically identified places were represented on the day of Pentecost and heard the wonders of God proclaimed in their nations’ tongues (Acts 2:8-11). 

The first pastoral crisis of the early church involved charges of discrimination against the majority culture Hebraic Jews. The Hellenistic Jews, culturally and linguistically Greek, noted that their widows were being left out of the church’s aid benefit programme. This led to the formation of the first diaconate, consisting of seven men from the overlooked community - six Hellenistic Jews and one identified as a convert to Judaism from Antioch - in modern day Turkey. 

Acts 10 and 11 show the Jewish majority church awakening to the scandalous realisation that the “all flesh” of Joel’s prophecy expounded by Peter on Pentecost meant not simply Jews with a Gentile flavour but proper, Roman army-serving, pig-eating, uncircumcised Gentiles. This led them to praise God, saying: “So then even to Gentiles God has granted repentance that leads to life!” (Acts 11:18). 

Acts 13:1 uses ethnic and class identifiers to describe the leadership of the church in Antioch, brought together not by a shared background but worship, fasting, prayer, and mission. 

The list of relevant passages only keeps growing but it would be remiss of me not to note Paul’s obligation as a Jew to nevertheless preach to people of different cultural ("Greeks and barbarians"), class ("the wise and the foolish"), and credal ("to the Jew first and also to the Greek") backgrounds recorded in Romans 1:14 and 16, his particular burden for the salvation of the Jewish people in that letter’s later chapters, and the underlying agenda throughout the letter of proactively building genuine love and fellowship between Jewish and Gentile background believers. The genuine love of Romans 12:9 does not callously overlook cultural distinctions but rather seeks to be considerate of them precisely because our distinctions in culture should not divide us in Christ.

To conclude... 

So do not begrudge those of us who celebrate the multicultural church joined in worship of the transcultural Christ. Instead, why not rejoice with us when we rejoice? I was preaching away this past week but I praise God that the week before at Grace Baptist Church Wood Green there were people from at least 18 different ethnic backgrounds: from England (a white northerner, an Irish traveller, and black Londoners!), Belarus, Bulgaria, Cyprus (Greek and Turkish!), Ghana, Greece, Iran (Persian and Azeri!), Jamaica, Nigeria (Igbo and Yoruba!), Philippines, Uganda, Ukraine, and even the USA. From baby to eighty. Unemployed, asylum seekers, students, working poor, people with more professional occupations, retirees, the government-housed, home renters, and even a few home owners. Are these details personally, practically, or pastorally insignificant or unimportant? Absolutely not! But we have looked beyond our broken kingdoms, even this United Kingdom, to the unshakeable kingdom where Jesus reigns. 

That is worth noting, and celebrating!