Multicultural Churches that Work
Overcoming common barriers to relation
These blogs share highlights of our weekly podcast available at www.CrossCulturalVoices.org
In this blog, I want to address three common issues regarding multicultural churches.
First, not enough of them exist.
Second, many are too reflective of white culture.
Third, many establish worship but not community. That is, they bring people together for weekly programming, but those same people don't build relationships outside that weekly timeframe.
All three of these are growth areas. We have a lot to do. But over the last 20 years, we’ve made a lot of progress, and continue to make progress.
I do not believe that all churches need to be multiethnic. There are three kinds of monocultural churches that are very popular in the United States because they meet the need of a very specific audience. They are immigrant churches, primarily white churches, and African American churches. Each one has its own preferred styles of preaching, music, length of service, amount of emotion, dress code, kinds of food, and more. Not only do we need these monocultural churches today, we need to multiply them in the future, because there will continue to be groups of people who truly want those styles of worship.
However, it is clear that America’s demographic future is multiethnic. To reach our younger generations, we must multiply multicultural churches.
So let's address these three issues. The first one asks whether multicultural churches are growing in number. And the answer is absolutely Yes. In an article for Christianity Today, 2018, Kate Shellnutt says this:
Protestant churches in the US have become three times more likely to be racially diverse than they were 20 years ago. The percentage of Protestant churches where no one racial group makes up more than 80% of the congregation tripled from 4% in 1998 to 12% in 2012.
According to new research out this week from Baylor University, evangelicals and Pentecostals show even higher levels of diverse churches, up to 15% and 16% respectively. Overall, nearly one in five of all American worshipers belong to a multiethnic congregation.
The movement has become an established part of the conversation over the future of American Evangelicalism. No longer an idea pastors need to argue or defend, but one that many churches and leaders are eager to embrace.
Now let's talk about that second concern, that multicultural churches are too reflective of white American culture in their leadership and style.
This is a legitimate concern. Some multiethnic churches truly are white congregations with a handful of others sprinkled in. However, this is improving over time. In page 38 of his book, One Body, One Spirit, African American sociologist George Yancey says this:
With rare exceptions, multiracial churches generally are not merely Eurocentric churches that have somehow managed to attract racial minorities. Multiracial churches that tend to be successful are churches that attempt to meet the needs of members of all races. In this way, multiracial churches are not simply bastions of European American culture, but tend to be a mixture of different racial cultures.
All cultures change. It is a mistake to believe that there is a pristine Native American or Latino American culture that must be preserved against all external influences. All cultures are constantly changing over time and will change regardless of how little or great of an influence they experience from exposure to other cultures.
I argue that it is not wise to fight off all possibly changes that different cultures may experience. A healthier attitude toward interaction with other cultures is to learn from our cultural interaction rather than adopt a bunker mentality by which we attempt to maintain our cultural purity. This learning is more likely within multiracial churches than same race churches.
There are some who hold that churches must place significant emphasis on discussions about race in order to maintain a multiethnic audience. But Yancey understands that most people, Christians included, are tired of arguing about racism, and yet want to love those of other ethnicities. He continues on page 100:
Most Americans are either tired of dealing with racism or are frustrated at the lack of results we have experienced in removing racism from our society. Overt efforts to eradicate problems connected to racism and racial prejudice generally meets resistance from both whites and racial minorities. What may be called race fatigue has plagued contemporary efforts to deal with racism. Many individuals believe the best way to deal with racism is to ignore the social reality of race.
Whether or not Christians agree with the ideas of such individuals, it is still important to be ready to deal with them. Since people with such race fatigue will most likely make up a sizable amount of the resistance we face in maintaining a multiracial congregation, church leaders who want to create a multiracial ministry are wise not to put the main focus of their church on the effort to be a multiracial congregation.
In a 2015 article for Christianity Today, Sarah Zylstra shares how churches that foster equality tear down the misperceptions that structural inequities are barriers to the personal growth of minorities.
Large churches have grown both in numbers and in diversity. Evangelical churches with more than 1000 weekly attendees were five times more likely to be diverse in 2007 than they were in 1998. The bigger the congregation, the less likely you are to see that racial discrimination is a source of inequality. That may be a good thing, said Mark DeYmaz, president of Mosaix Global Network. Assuming these minorities are having a positive interaction with the church, that would inform their belief in this regard.
He said, in a healthy, truly diverse church, the structures of racism are eliminated. And so it makes sense that congregants would be more likely to believe that disparity is caused by individual choices. I think that's totally encouraging. He said that's what everybody wants. Those minorities are more likely to blame individual choices for disparity since they successfully navigated and overcame structural inequalities to achieve their success.
Zylstra’s point is that there are millions of Americans of all ethnicities who have done well in the marketplace despite the obstacles in front of them. When they come together for worship, they do not need to bring up those institutional structures as an item of discussion. As a result, multicultural churches are becoming less white without arguing about racism.
Now let's talk about that third concern, that multicultural churches are building worship but not community. That is, that people come together for the programs of the church, but don’t build relationships the rest of the week.
Let’s ask why anybody would want to attend a multiethnic church in the first place. As I said earlier, millions of people prefer monocultural white, black, and immigrant churches. If you ask a member of one of these churches to join a multicultural church, you’re asking them to leave styles of worship that they’ve loved for decades to join something new.
That’s a big ask. It’s going against the grain. But it is something that a minority of people will do. But those who do frequently see it as their mission for the Lord, something they give two or three hours a week to, then spend the rest of the week with their existing their family and friends.
We could ask them to stop spending so much time with their existing family and friends. They would need to make new decisions about Christmas and Thanksgiving and Mother's Day. The number of people ready to make such a commitment are few indeed.
What if you make the same request of a Gen Z friend? You’re asking them to do something multiethnic. For them, that’s not a change. Their schools, workplaces, and communities are multiethnic. You’re asking them to do what they already do everyday anyway.
And you may not be asking them to make a big relational change. They may not have to say goodbye to all of their friends, because their friends might enjoy a multicultural church. Maybe their friends already do go to a multicultural church. And when they walk in the doors, instead of saying to themselves, “Oh no, I've got to spend time with people who are really different than me”, they're meeting people who are multiethnic just like they are.
So if you are starting a multicultural church and you want strong headwinds, you want to invite American whites and blacks who are Gen X and older, plus first generation immigrants.
But if you want sociological tailwinds, so that membership recruitment and engagement is easier, focus on engaging:
children of immigrants
those who grew up overseas
those of mixed race
those in mixed marriages
those who are new to the faith (so they're not leaving an existing religious tradition)
those who are new to town (not just moving from one suburb to another, but out of state and needing new relational ties)
and especially our younger generations
May God raise up more healthy multicultural congregations to create a stronger future for American Christianity!