What does a healthy multiracial church actually look and feel like in real life? This article highlights the beautiful story of Nim Maua, pastor of Church in the Valley (CIV) in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Nim and I met at the 2025 Global Exponential Conference and I was struck by how his story reflects the realities of global migration and multiracial church planting.
Here’s what I mean: Nim’s parents immigrated from Samoa to New Zealand, where Nim was born. His family then moved to Sydney, Australia to help plant a church. Nim grew up in Sydney and married an Australian. Now he pastors an international church in Canada that is planting multiracial churches. Let that sink in.
In our interview, Nim named several of the key dynamics that we see in multiracial churches, including the pastors’ identity formation, seeking unity in diversity, and healthy sharing of power.
Identity Formation
For many pastors and planters who are not from the majority culture, they wrestle with who they are and where they belong. Given Nim’s bicultural background as Samoan and Australian, he acknowledged that “There was a lot of identity issues there. Am I Samoan first? Am I Australian? Yeah. Am I Christian first? It took a lot to figure that out.”
When Nim struggled with anger issues in his 30’s, he confronted his mom about her extremely strict form of disciplining him as a child.
That day, as they revisited their past, Nim shared, “I forgave her, you know, and we both reconciled that day and we were able to find a way to move forward. And I’ve come to appreciate [that] she was an immigrant working, you know, she gets up at 6 a.m., finishes at 2:30 p.m., starts her second job at 3 p.m., comes home at 11 p.m. just to put us through private school. And so I came to understand that she was under immense pressure… I can appreciate the pressure she was under because we got to talking as well, reconciling. And so that’s how we came to be able to forgive each other.”
When Nim followed God’s call to move his family from Sydney to Vancouver, Canada, in God’s providence, it was actually his mom who traveled with him and reminded him of who he was:
“In my culture, when you take a big move like this to another country, my culture will send one person with the family. Their sole job is to come over and make sure we can settle in, and all the family gives that one person money, so that they can pay for groceries, set you up. And that’s what my mom was doing. And so my mom came over to Canada with me. She’s looking around at the church, we’re going around in the local community areas and we meet not one Samoan, not one.”
“And so for my mom, she saw that and was like, ‘Son, you need to make sure you wear your Samoan shirts,’ you know, like this one I’ve got on and my leis, you know, I’ve got different kind of leis – brown, red. And so my family sends me shirts and these different leis, we call it Ula Fala. And so she said, ‘Make sure you’re preaching in these so that the church can visibly see you are Samoan, because I don’t want you to forget who you are and where you’ve come from.’”
Kind of a Simba moment there!
“So just me preaching in these shirts and wearing my Ula Fala. All of a sudden, we started seeing people coming in with their cultural gowns. They’re wearing the Filipino shirts, and they’re wearing the African gowns and their African hats, you know, representing where they come from. And I was at a multiethnic workshop [at Exponential] about having a slide with different languages [for the Scripture reading]. And so I brought that back. And just to have that one slide, you know, with different languages, I didn’t know how much power that was going to have for people to see the [Bible reference] in their own language, how much power that would have, but for them to wait for me at the end of the service to say, thank you for speaking in my language. But I didn’t speak in that language… And they felt seen.”
Unity in Diversity
When Nim arrived, the church was primarily white, and now it has grown and diversified to become 45% non-white. The congregation even includes both Russians and Ukranians. Rather than feel threatened, the Whites at CIV “actually celebrate this beautiful array of cultures that we have now. And it’s wonderful to see that the white people group just appreciate it. And they cannot wait to plant a church that’s going to be the same, you know, what we have now. And so that’s, that’s exciting to me. I mean, apart from the grace of God, how do you understand or explain this kind of positive response?”
“Representation matters, you know, because I’m the first lead pastor of color, you know, people of color coming to the church because they feel like, Oh, we can get listen to him because he is of color….our worship director is Filipino, and you’ve got Alison there who’s from the U.S. You have Pastor Abraham, he’s discipleship and evangelism, he’s Mexican, and Grant, who’s Canadian, and then I come in as a Samoan from Australia.”
“On the platform, you’ll see what’s represented in our congregation, because Jolly [the Worship Director] and I, we meet every Monday to prepare for service. And one of the things that we’re really intentional about is the diversity on the platform, not just in culture, but in age. We want to make sure that we have that diversity. And so she’s done a great job in finding songs where she can sing in multiple languages. And when she does those songs, oh my goodness, there is not a dry eye in the church. You know, even though your culture is not being sung in that song, you cannot help but cry because you’re hearing a song that you’re so used to in English, being sung in Spanish or Russian or Portuguese, or Filipino.”
Healthy Leadership
In seeking to identify why Church in the Valley has experienced such healthy and vibrant growth in numbers and in diversity, Nim identified three elements:
- Leaders’ focus on mission: “The way our leaders have everyone focused on mission. That’s why they don’t fight, you know… There is no in-house fighting. I’ve never been to a church with no in-house fighting. Like it is a breath of fresh air leading this church. And it’s the founders, you know, the vision that they put together, their focus on the vision, they’re so focused on community outreach, they don’t have time to fight with each other. So all these different races that are cultures that are coming in, are coming into this beautiful culture of empowerment, of discipleship, of service… it was made very clear that when we plant churches, we want it to look like, you know, multiracial church planning, you know. We don’t want to just go in and reach one people group, we want to make sure we reach everybody that we can.”
- Listening well: “Listening, you know, that’s the key thing. And because I’m a Samoan, you know, in my culture, you’re taught to listen. So I go to these different people groups, when they have their side gatherings, I attend them, I sit with them, and I do their celebrations with them. And because they see me, they see that I’m present, I’m not just this head on the platform, but I’m with them in community, understanding what they’re doing, spending time listening to them. And if there’s something I learned that we can implement in our leadership or church or on the platform, we implement it, because it’s going to help them be seen. And it felt like they’re a part of the community as opposed to just an add on. And so listening to people is critical that I found in trying to lead a multiracial church and keep the unity of spirit and mission within that.”
- Raising up leaders within people groups: “When people come in, if they’re Russian speaking, the Russian speaking leaders are going to be able to build community very quickly and make them feel safe, make them feel that this can be their home at this church. But what’s more important is that those leaders will quickly disciple them to be a part of the [larger] church. That this is all of us, you know… And so that happens through a leader that can speak their own tongue and goes to things listening and having key leaders in those people groups has really helped us maintain that unity.”
At a recent international luncheon, people from 32 countries came dressed in their cultural garb and brought food from their home country. In each of our increasingly diverse cities, may God likewise empower us to make disciples of all nations!
You can watch the entire interview with Nim here.
