The biggest single challenge in planting a multiracial church is that you look diverse but operate under only one culture.
A church may appear diverse on the surface with different races sitting side by side. But if everyone is expected to assimilate into a singular dominant culture, what is the point of having that variety of voices and cultures present? How can those diverse groups express their distinctive gifts?
As Efrem Smith warns, “just because your church is diverse…it still doesn’t mean that that’s an….inclusive church. Because a church can be diverse and have a culture of assimilation.” Savaen Cameron echoes this concern when she says we can end up with “performative diversity without real inclusion.”
So how do we plant multiracial churches that truly reflect the diversity of the body of Christ without defaulting to the lowest common denominator? It turns out that the crucial work starts by understanding the community you’re planting in before there’s even a congregation. Here are three “L’s” to plant multiracial but not monocultural churches:
1. Longevity: Learn from Those Who Came Before You
Many church planters rightly start by thinking about the diverse core team they want to recruit. But in many non-white cultures in the U.S., values like honoring elders, keeping traditions, and learning history are key values. That’s why, even before starting with a core team, it’s important to seek out and learn from pastors and community leaders who have served the community for the long haul. This is an opportunity to honor their legacy and to discern how God has already been working in that community before you arrived. And it’s how we name the community’s strengths and recognize its brokenness.
When Nehemiah was called to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, he first went on a reconnaissance mission, “examining the walls of Jerusalem, which had been broken down, and its gates, which had been destroyed by fire” (Neh 2:13). Similarly, church planters need to become keen observers and historians.
When I returned to my hometown of Pasadena, California in 2014, I began seeing it with “planter’s eyes.” There was so much need that I had never noticed before, especially the tremendous need for ministry to students on the Caltech campus and the impact of court-ordered desegregation of the Pasadena school district. For instance, John Williams, who has a long history in Pasadena and now leads the Center for Restorative Justice, became a guide to me, hosting racial reconciliation workshops that helped me understand how deeply Pasadena’s history and present-day housing issues had been shaped by racial injustice.
Here’s the point: Multicultural church planters that understand the history and racial dynamics of their city will know how to minister to various racial groups in the church, not ignoring their distinct stories.
Reflection: How can I honor the wisdom and history in the community I’m planting in? Which long-time pastors in our area can I seek out, learn from, pray for, and partner with?
2. Location: Where You Land Determines Who You’ll Serve
As you learn from locals, you’ll grasp that where you plant often determines who you’ll become. The dynamics of the particular corner that your church is on are a statement about who and what you care about. As embedded missionaries in our location, we begin to encounter several types of diversity – not just racial, but socioeconomic (rich and poor), generational (young and old), vocational (blue collar and white collar), and more.
We begin to see and understand things like how the proverbial railroad tracks separate our city, and why certain schools are performing better than others. This informs our sense of why some cultural groups are drawn to one part of the city and not another. In turn, God uses all these factors to deepen our own sense of the bridges our church plant is called to build, and the barriers we’re called to break down.
Paul names the unity in Christ of the Galatian church without erasing their differences in Galatians 3:28: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile (ethno-religious diversity), neither slave nor free (economic diversity), nor is there male and female (gender), for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
Reflection: Have I walked the streets of the city I’m called to plant in? Do I know which cultural groups live in which neighborhoods and why? How might the gospel bring reconciliation to the divisions in the neighborhood where we’re called?
3. Leadership: Build a Team That Embodies Reconciliation
Once you’ve engaged deeply with your context (its longevity and location), the kind and variety of leadership your church plant needs will come into focus.
Hopefully, this process of listening and learning will have already introduced you to both believers who could become part of your launch team as well as to unbelievers who inform your vision for outreach. The process itself will attract the kind of people who have an awareness of how you hope to integrate evangelism and justice.
Ideally, the overall makeup and diversity of your launch team emerges organically from the way you’ve embedded in and invested in your community prior to launching worship. You can see how different this is than selecting token diversity on your leadership team.
Reflection: Do our co-planters and leadership team reflect the people group we’re called to reach? Are they people with a heart for all the people in our city? Will they lead in a way that embodies the Kingdom of God in our neighborhood?
Keeping the Culture in Multicultural
If we’ve incorporated the three “L’s” into our launch process (or even if we haven’t), how then do church plants enable the beauty of the various cultures to be expressed in the life of the church? In a truly multicultural context, the distinctive elements of the various cultures are not ignored or erased but rather highlighted. To use Soong-Chan Rah’s illustration, if the congregation is a salad, don’t just pour salad dressing over the whole thing and lose all its variety.
Efrem Smith points out that in multiracial churches that merely seek to assimilate people into the dominant culture, “It’s diverse, but you’re assimilating into a predominantly African-American culture, or you’re assimilating into a predominantly Anglo culture.” Instead, in a healthy multiracial church, “There are multiple cultures, ethnicities, generations that can find their voice, find their place in that space, and be authentically who God created them to be.”
The way that shows up in your church plant will itself be unique. There’s no one-size-fits-all formula. So rather than be prescriptive, here are three areas where cultural distinction can be embraced rather than diminished:
1. In Discipleship
A common theme in healthy multicultural plants is that discipleship must be story-driven. Scripture is itself a story made up of Jews and Gentiles, women and men, Samaritans and centurions. So by designing discipleship pathways and small groups around the narratives in scripture and in the lives of people in the congregation, we see how the good news of Jesus shows up in the stories of long-time locals, international students, undocumented immigrants, and others. Hearing the multiplicity of stories demonstrates the breadth of the gospel and the richness present in the congregation.
Our church has participated in and led racial history tours of Pasadena to help members connect discipleship to justice and to place. When we recently commissioned a member who was moving away, he commented that the tour of Pasadena had deeply impacted him and inspired him to learn the history of the city in Illinois he was moving to. David Wade’s church plant in San Diego hosts Race and Belonging cohorts that allow diverse people to tell their story.
2. Through Meals
Few things express culture as powerfully or joyfully as food. Shared meals from different family backgrounds and cultures builds bridges and creates koinonia or community. It’s a chance to learn and bond over the differences in cuisine. Whether it’s the food you share in homes, the food you cater for volunteers, or the restaurant where the staff lunch is held, these are all opportunities to celebrate the delicious dishes from various people’s families or countries of origin.
3. In Worship
Every element of the worship service presents an opportunity to highlight the diverse traditions in the congregation. For instance, the Fuller Chapel regularly includes sung worship in English, Korean, and Spanish. Prayer styles can include silence, or Korean-style of prayer known as tongsung kido where the whole church prays aloud at the same time. My church does a monthly “Show and Tell” time where a member shares their spiritual and cultural testimony of how they came to Christ alongside how they are coming to embrace their own God-given cultural identity.
In the end, the essential trait of a multicultural church planter may be curiosity – an eagerness to learn how God uses people’s distinct stories to form a people for himself. When we stay curious, we cultivate diverse church plants that display the fullness and beauty of how God so loved the world.
