The Intercultural Church’s Calling to be Explorers.
Welcome. There has been a rush of interest in ‘intercultural churches’, reflected in this coming Monday’s Church Times conference, and fuelled by Bishop Martyn’ Snow’s book and the March Conference of the Anglican Network for Intercultural Churches. So this blog isan attempt to throw down some guidelines.
Principles.
‘You have never been this way before’ (Joshua 3:4, NIV) was part of the Lord’s instructions to Israel as they prepared for the unknown crossing of Jordan into the Promised Land. Britain’s transition into a society with deep-seated cultural differences over the past 75 years has led both the country and the churches into the unknown. We are inevitably explorers. So how should the church conduct itself as it moves forward in that journey?
‘Flexibility’. Explorers have to survey the situation as best they see it, take initiatives with both conviction and yet at the back of their minds hold the possibility they have got it wrong.
‘Humility’. Initiatives can fail. Science proceeds through a succession of failed experiments as much as the occasional success. We need to recognise our mistakes and learn from others. We are all on slightly different journeys and our discoveries may well not help others. Dogmatism and formulae are out of place.
‘Learning’. The possible pathways to becoming a church that holds together people from several different cultures are varied. In the conclusion to his MA thesis on Multi-Cultural Churches (2014) David Baldwin of Oak Hill College urges ‘Be persistent, patient and flexible – there is no single blue-print for the integrated church’. So it is good that there is an increased level of sharing on this topic.
Considerations.
The nature of the local community.
One obvious issue is language. In a mainly ‘black’ community this may not be a major issue.
But where there is a strong South Asian community, or with the increasing growth of other micro-minorities then serious thought needs to be given as to how such groups might become part of the church, which is explored in the Approaches section below.
Educational and social levels are also significant. People whose work or tertiary education has inducted them into a degree of cultural flexibility will more easily handle transition between different cultural expressions in a church service in comparison with those for whom uniformity gives greater security. This is as true for white English people as for ethnic minorities.
The church’s resources.
Are there people from different ethnic backgrounds able to lead, both in policy making and in liturgy and preaching? If it is essentially the project of a sole white leader then the likelihood is that the diversity of church life will be shallow. It is probably unwise to push too far towards intercultural worship and church life until there is some strength of leadership from the varied ethnic groups in the church, and a leader’s first responsibility is to nurture that diversity of leadership before moving towards diversity in other areas.
Because music is often both central to our worship but also an important carrier of cultural identity then it is plays an especially crucial part in developing an intercultural identity. Musicians who are able to adapt culturally are a great blessing (as conversely, resisters can become a great hindrance). Leicester Diocese’s appointment of an Intercultural Ministry Director is important in this respect, whilst ‘Resonance’ can provide important help in developing multi-cultural worship.
How far should ethnicity be foregrounded?
I once passed a church in north London which advertised that the service in the coming Sunday would be taken by African members of the congregation. Plagiarism is an essential quality for clergy, so I thought our church should do something similar and we had services at different times led by African, Sri Lankan, African Caribbean people and so on. Whilst this worked well, two people from ethnic minorities expressed unease at high-lighting ethnic diversity in this way, as opposed to our unity in Christ. I think there is merit in both approaches since the church will forever have to work out how we emphasise respectively our foundational unity in Christ set against the various, and – as Rev 7:9 implies - enduring, cultures that have formed us.
Too great an emphasis on our oneness risks that in our worship only one culture prevails; too great an emphasis on diversity risks focussing on our separate selves and not on the Lord Jesus at the centre of our worship. Thus the journey of being an intercultural church means finding the balance appropriate for thiscongregation at this time.
Sustainability.
Cultural variety in worship can be an exhilarating entry into the rich variety of cultures amongst God’s people, and close encounter with Christians of other cultures soon opens our eyes to important elements of worship and discipleship which are underplayed within our own cultural contexts. But as ever the peaks of Christian experience need to lie upon a substratum of regular, everyday devotion and obedience. An occasionally inspiring patchwork of different cultural expressions becomes exhausting and distracting if it is a regular diet (the analogy with food works well).
Churches therefore need a clear judgement as to what level of cultural variety in worship and church life is appropriate. If we aim too low then our capacity to draw in people from a variety of cultures may well be seriously limited; if we aim too high then in the end the constant cultural shifts in worship fails to nourish a regular and settled walk with God.
Approaches.
1. Just do what you are doing.
Churches with a very strong identity and distinct worshipping tradition may need to change very little. These things provide a strong central focus which are taken for granted as normative and besides which varieties of cultural expression fade into insignificance – the important thing is we all belong to the church. The Anglo-Catholic church where I currently worship I think falls into this category. The congregation is mainly of African Caribbean or African background, plus white English and a small number from other ethnic backgrounds. But a strong emphasis on the given-ness of the liturgy, plus singable mainly traditional but with some more recent hymns, plus straightforward, relatable preaching is sufficient to hold a very varied congregation. The clergy are white, though most lesson readers and servers are black. Ethnicity is not attended to, nor do people seem to expect it to be.
Many Roman Catholic groups would fall into this category, as do sectarian groups such as Jehovah’ Witnesses. But ‘take it or leave it’ approaches are only viable where churches have a strong confidence in their own distinctiveness. Where this is lacking then newcomers of different backgrounds are unlikely to feel drawn to belong. Nonetheless the examples of the effectiveness of such approaches raises a question mark for those of us who believe that expressing cultural diversity is always necessary. Referring again to David Baldwin’s study of multi-cultural churches, he observes: ‘Surprisingly, two of the most diverse churches claimed that their multi-cultural composition was not due to any intentionality on their part towards increasing diversity’. He then raises the question of what might be the ‘key factors’ in such churches in distinction to those churches who are finding becoming multi-cultural a struggle. I suspect that straightforward love for the stranger plays a central role.
2. Express cultural diversity in combined worship.
This is at the heart of what is in mind when people speak of being an intercultural church. The sort of issues raised in ‘Considerations’ above will affect the myriad of choices made not just about languages and music, but also issues such as time-keeping, display, celebration of festivals, place of story and testimony, topics for intercessions and so on. Also important is the level of cultural gear-shifting that a service can sustain. It is best to begin with minor changes to music or language. Too much change too soon can be ultimately destructive. (My Grove booklet ‘Worship in a Multi-Ethnic Society’ W236, looks in detail at the issues involved, especially section on ‘Principles for United Worship’ and ‘Expressing United Worship’).
3. A place for separate ethnic expressions within the one church.
There are different ways of doing this. It may be that the need to evangelise those who don’t speak English requires a minority language congregation, where the loss of reducing inter-cultural interactions needs to be considered but it may be a necessary cost of obeying the mandate to preach the gospel to all the cultures in your community. Further as with any congregation, minority language congregations can be too comfortable in their cultural identity and lose sight of the church’s overall calling. But one very important role of ethnic-specific fellowships or congregations is that they provide safe spaces where leaders can develop, especially if leading in the central, predominantly white meeting place seems a too intimidating first step.
As well as evangelism there can be other advantages in gathering together ethnic specific groups meeting outside of Sunday worship. They can be an entry point for people of that ethnicity beginning to encounter Christians, they can be a support so that those with limited confidence in English can find teaching and advice that connects more appropriately with their circumstances. Or they can provide an opportunity to focus on ‘back home’ issues, possibly providing charitable, financial help or praying over serious issues such as civil war, oppressive government, or the repression of Christians. Or simply, that it can be occasionally refreshing to be with ‘your own kind of people’.
Evaluation.
Explorers need to check every so often where they are getting to. What are intercultural congregations aiming to do? It is possible to so focus on the trees of having a variety of cultural expressions in one service that we lose sight of the wood of a growing, ethnically varied church.
So the following questions need asking:
Are we seeing minority ethnic leaders emerging?
Intercultural churches have an important responsibility to be nurturing minority ethnic leaders for the whole church. Thus they need to be involved in planning and decision-making, including with their voices recognised and valued, and indeed prevailing, over white leaders. Whatever else happens, a church is not truly intercultural until that is expressed in leadership.
Is the church growing?
A fundamental reason for intercultural churches is that they are powerful means of fulfilling the great commission of making the gospel known throughout the world. It is important that when a stranger visits a church that they can see people of their ethnicity joyfully worshipping God, and hopefully having some sort of responsibility and leadership. The aim of your church being a comfortable spiritual home for all the varied ethnicities in your parish is a huge, and unlikely to ever be perfectly fulfilled, but always standing as a challenge and a goal.
As well as growth in numbers, growth in faith also needs monitoring. Does expressing cultural diversity over a period detract attention away from God and simply have the aim of ‘being intercultural’ so that people no longer feel spiritually nourished and drift away from the church. As ever finding balance between expressing diversity and yet maintaining a spiritual unity that holds that diversity together in ‘the bonds of peace’ is a testing exercise requiring honest perception, a readiness to change and a refusal to accept fixed formulae.
Under Joshua the children of Israel were breaking new ground. Daunting, dangerous, with testing times where they often failed. Yet the Lord went before them. So we too have the demanding yet exhilarating opportunity to forge ways of being church in a society which in less than a century has moved from being very largely mono-cultural to being radically and extensively multi-cultural. As we explore and learn from each other we can trust the Lord to lead us to the fulfilment of his purposes.
Blogs on this topic – this is a constant theme of the blogs, but these are the most relevant, especially # 79.
Books on Leading Multi-Cultural Churches. # 36.
Starting Minority Language Congregations. # 41.
Developing Minority Ethnic Leaders. # 57.
Nine Steps to Building Multi-Ethnic Churches. # 79.
One Church, Many Cultures – Different Models. # 95