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Culture

Your Church & Multiethnic Ministry

From major metropolitan centers to rural back-road hamlets, America is becoming increasingly multiethnic. Accompanying this increasing demographic reality are churches’ attempts to Biblically respond and think through issues related to multiethnic ministry. On Nov. 2 and 3 churches from a wide spectrum of evangelicalism will gather for a Multi-ethnic Church Conference, a prelude to the National Outreach Convention, which will follow. This conference marks a departure from the church-growth model that centered on homogeneous principle. I believe this is a needed and Biblical change.

We need to think more about multiethnic ministry in our Regular Baptist circles. I was encouraged to participate this week in the Illinois-Missouri Association of Regular Baptist Churches Fall meetings hosted by Village Baptist Church of Aurora, Ill. The conference centered on multiethnic ministry with the theme “From Many . . . One.” You can listen to the conference messages at www.vbcaurora.org/2010conference. It was a stirring and thought-provoking conference. I hope this focus will continue to increase within our fellowship.

What are your thoughts? How are you seeking to develop a multiethnic focus to your ministry? What questions do you have regarding multiethnic ministry? Let’s share and learn together.

3 Comments

  • We are pondering the phrase “multi-ethnic” ministry. As a church plant in a “multi-ethnic” community, we praise the Lord that we have not had to focus on any particular ethnic group. We have focused on Worship, Outreach, and Discipleship. As we have focused on those three pillars the Lord has brought people from a variety of ethnic backgrounds to worship. They have not come because of their ethnicity, they have come because of a desire to worship God. On any given Sunday I can look out on our small congregation (usually about 40 people) and see a Pakistani family, still dressed in traditional eastern clothing, with their Urdu Bibles, sitting next to the Cambodian and his Filipino wife, sitting behind a Black man and his Hispanic wife, beside the young couple from Mexico, etc….Many of our people bring Bibles in their native tongue, but we all worship the same God and we come together as AMERICANS. There is no ethnic division. We have much to learn from each others backgrounds and cultures, but we join to worship ONE GOD. Our people come from Buddhist, Atheist, Mormon, Catholic and a variety of other backgrounds, but we were all saved by grace through faith. The culture of our church is not ethnic, it is family….ONE BODY. It has happened smoothly because our emphasis has not been on blending race or culture, it has been on worshiping God and that is unifying. We believe that we have a little taste of heaven each time we join together, and long for others in our fellowship to have that same blessing.
    And, by the way, fellowship meals are incredible!!
    And we have some great pictures from the Tracy 4th of July Parade, where our VBS float was sandwiched between a Seikh Indian group, in turbans, handing out water bottles and a Mexican Style Mariachi band on horseback.
    Our churches should be as diverse as our communities!

  • Tim,

    I am encouraged to hear, again ;-), of the diversity in your church. I trust that Christ will continue to grow His church in a way that looks like your community. I completely agree that we are to worship the one God as one body.

    I wonder though about coming together as Americans. If you do in fact have people that are still strongly identifying with their ethnic origins wouldn’t it be wonderful to allow them to express forms of worship from their cultural perspective (i.e. praying in their native tongue, sharing Christian music from their culture, reading Scripture from their Bible). I think this increases our appreciation of the one God and one body concepts while also providing a wonderful example diverse expressions of praise, and providing a powerful testimony of the love of Christ breaking down barriers between God and man which results in the breaking down of barriers between people.

    That is not to say you shouldn’t have “American” elements to the service because I am assuming the majority of your congregation would fall into this category.

    Keep up the good work in Tracy! I’m glad to be part of our GARBC and BCP networks with you. See you in the spring at the board meetings if not before.

  • Dick Dayton says:

    We have a Scripture reading time as a regular part of our morning worship. From time to time, I have someone who speaks another language read the Scripture in their heart language.

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