“…as I finally faced the identity I had tried to evade for so long, I was shocked to find peace and an invitation to bless the part of me I had longed to erase. God met me in my isolation, and showed me that all of me, including my ethnicity, was made in His image. He blessed the parts of me I had cursed. Slowly, my lost identity began to return.” – Naomi Lu
The inner work of reflection and identity formation that a multiethnic church planter does matters as much as the outer work of evangelism, discipleship, and justice.
This is because, as Pete Scazzero puts it, “as the interior life of the church planter goes, so goes the church.” I believe that the inner life of a multiethnic planter is tested even further, because in addition to the nakedness of church planting, one’s own racial/ethnic identity and relationships with other ethnic groups is continually revealed and exposed. So whatever insecurities, inadequacies, biases, and tensions are cage fighting within you will inevitably “leak out” as you relate to people who are similar or different to you. It’s like the inner battles from the Pixar movie Inside Out on steroids. And if you’re not comfortable in your own skin, the multiethnic congregation you lead likely won’t be comfortable in theirs, either.
So this article presents an opportunity to “walk in the light” as 1 John 1:7 says, so that “we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.” We are “doing our own work,” by reflecting on our own story, praying through how wonderfully and fearfully made we are, and finding communities of healing so we can lead in healthy, Christlike ways.
Biculturality in the Bible
If you’re planting a multiethnic church, you are at minimum bicultural – if not tricultural. There’s your own cultural background, the cultures of the people you’re reaching, and the broader American culture. Maybe those identities within you are competing with each other or even at war with each other. So let’s consider two biblical models of biculturality – one unhealthy (Moses) and one healthy (Daniel).
Moses was Hebrew by birth but raised with the privileges of Egyptian royalty. The inner tension between the two parts of his identity exploded when he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, identified with the Hebrew’s suffering, and killed the Egyptian. Not exactly healthy biculturality. Then it took him 40 years in the desert to do his own work before God called him back to Egypt as Israel’s deliverer. If we haven’t reflected in the desert of solitude on our own God-given identity and calling, righteous anger becomes unrighteous violence, and self-hatred turns into hatred of others.
Or take Daniel. He was an Israelite who was deported during the Exile to a foreign land (Babylon), given a new name (Belteshazzar), taught a new language (Akkadian), and given a new diet and customs. Everything was new.
Many immigrants (including many Asians and Latinos) are used to navigating multiple cultures. They take on “American” names, learn English or split time at home between English and their own language, and have to adapt in a myriad of ways to the dominant culture. They must also navigate generational and cultural differences within their ethnic specific churches. Even as foreigners and strangers in Babylon, Daniel and his friends steadfastly held onto their faith and stewarded their gifts and privileges as a witness to the power of the God of Israel. They remained grounded in God while navigating Babylonian culture and power dynamics.
To be effective leaders and multiethnic planters, we must reflect on our past and our story. Otherwise, history repeats itself. Hurt people hurt people. Or as Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” So we must prayerfully examine our inner lives. How do we do that?
Your Spiritual and Cultural Testimony
We’ve all heard of giving our testimony of coming to faith in Christ, but what about sharing how our cultural testimony intersects with our spiritual testimony?
Over the years I’ve found that many missional leaders – even those in diverse settings – have never overtly reflected on their own spiritual and cultural testimony, until they react (or over-react) to a certain, racially charged interaction in the church or community and are forced to ask why. So here are some deceptively simple questions to begin crafting your spiritual/cultural testimony so that God can bring illumination and healing. I encourage you to stop reading and take time to jot down your answers:
- Family Context: What ethnicity and nationality were your parents and ancestors, and did they express that?
- Racial Identity: When did you first become aware of your own racial identity? Of others’ racial identity?
- Communal Context: How did your family, church, and community shape your views on race?
- Spiritual Formation: How has your faith in Christ shaped my views on race over time?
Chances are, just like Moses in the desert, some insights into how you see yourself, how others see you, and how you see others came to light.
Sometimes, particularly for planters who are not from the majority culture, our own sense of the imago Dei needs to be recovered. We do not rightly see ourselves as the people and leaders that God made us to be. Over the last decade, I have experienced healing in all my roles – as an Asian man, as a church planter, and as Director of Fuller’s Church Planting Initiative. And I have found that the simple exercise of having another brother or sister speak a personalized version of Psalm 139 over you to be tremendously healing and impactful, and I encourage you to fill in your own name and details to personalize it:
Psalm 139 Personalized
O LORD, you have searched Len and you know him. You are familiar with all his ways, foods, and culture. Before a word is on his tongue you know it completely, O LORD. For you created Len’s inmost being; you knit him together in his Chinese mother’s womb. I praise you because he is fearfully and wonderfully made as an Asian man. Your works are wonderful, he knows that full well. Len’s frame and ethnicity was not hidden from you when he was made in the secret place. When Len was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw his body; All the days ordained for him were written in your book before one of them came to be.
When you can speak the gospel to yourself, when you truly know and trust and believe that you are wonderfully and fearfully made by our Father in heaven, your identity and ministry will become healthier, less performance-oriented, and more grace-filled. So may God bless the parts of you that you had cursed. And may your lost identity begin to return.
Inner Healing to Outward Impact
This will enable those around you to become who God made them to be as well. As this work takes place, you are then ready to answer and live into the final two reflection questions, which I also encourage you to write down the answers to:
- What aspects of my racial identity reflect God’s beauty?
- How might God use my particular racial story and background to plant a flourishing multiethnic church?
Fuller faculty Daniel Lee wrote to Asian Americans but it applies to all peoples that the goal is not to become more Asian American, but “to make sure that all of who we are is in Christ; to do that we have to own all of who we are.” As God forms us more and more in His image, rather than being conformed to the world or to white culture, we paradoxically become more ourselves – the true self that God created us to be. And that is good news for us, for our church plants, and for the communities we serve.
