A New Testament Perspective on the Challenges and Opportunities on Inter-Cultural Mission. # 115. 25/04/2023.
Out of Many, One People.
Welcome. This week’s blog is my article in the inaugural Oxford Journal for Intercultural Mission, issue 1, which has just come out. Its aim is to ‘build confidence and competence’ in intercultural ministry, which is exactly the same as the aim of these blogs. The articles cover range of both theological and practical issues. It can be accessed at Oxford.anglican.org/ojim.
A New Testament Perspective on the Challenges and Opportunities of Inter-cultural Mission.
One quarter of the population of England and Wales are from ‘minority ethnic’ backgrounds according to the 2021 Census figures. Numerical growth has also promoted wider geographical spread. When I wrote a booklet on ‘Building Multi-Racial Churches’ in 1994 it could be (and was) seen as being of niche interest to a slim minority of parishes; by now, with the Latimer Trust re-publishing it, mildly revised, in 2020 the topic is important to virtually every parish in the country.
By ‘Inter-cultural Mission’ in the title of this paper I have in mind that the church, both globally and as regards the Church of England, is ‘inter-cultural’: that is, it includes people whose cultures – assumptions about how we think and what we do – are significantly different from each other, and yet who are called to take forward God’s mission in our societies together, united in love and in the Holy Spirit. By comparison, using the phrase ‘inter-racial’ is rightly often frowned upon as giving unwarranted significance to the noticeable differences in physical appearance between groups of people. The phrase ‘Inter-ethnic’ puts us on stronger and more biblical grounds, as pointing to the ‘people groups’ of the world, usually with shared ancestry and place of origin, whose specific identity manifests in different behavioural and thought patterns. ‘Inter-cultural, as I understand it, focusses on these patterns as they are manifested in here-and-now behaviour and relationships happening in our society and churches.
Thus inter-cultural mission can be described as: mission to all the diverse cultures in an area by churches with culturally diverse members and leaders. (This could also serve as quite a good definition of the parish system).
‘Inter-cultural mission’ is in contrast to the approach of what is termed the ‘Homogenous Unit Principle’ (from Donald McGavran’s 1980 book ‘Understanding Church Growth’) which argued that church growth happens fastest when particular evangelists and congregations focus exclusively on specific ethnic groups. McGavran’s emphasis on the evangelistic utility of such an approach does at least warn against the facile opposing error of thinking that ‘inter-cultural’ involves a fairly easy melding of skin-tones, food, dress and the like without having a realistic awareness of the importance of much deeper differences concerning values, authority, family, truth which can easily trip up the unwary. (There are various ways of conceptualising this: I find the ‘iceberg’ illustration in Patty Lane’s ‘A Beginner’s Guide to Crossing Cultures’, 2002, illuminating).
A foundational theological basis for inter-cultural church life and mission is, when addressing the combination of Jews and Gentiles who made up the Ephesian church, Paul writes of Christ ‘that he might create in himself one new humanity in the place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross’ (Eph 2:15,16). It is hard for us, who give decreasing attention to the significance of the material and physical, to appreciate the importance that Jews gave to such material matters as food eating as a clear, unbreakable distinction between themselves and pagan Gentiles. Peter’s withdrawal from eating with Gentiles, described in Galatians 2, was treated by Paul not just as bad manners, or even racism, but so important a denial of the gospel’s purpose that the courtesies due to colleagues had to be over-ridden by the need to maintain eating together: one table, one gospel; two tables, no gospel.
Our context - marked by major, deep-seated cultural differences between a wide variety of ethnic groups – is different from that of the New Testament, but I believe the following challenges and opportunities are still significant.
Challenges
a) The challenge to leaders – inter-cultural awareness.
‘I have become all things to all people, so that I might by any means save some’ (1 Cor 9:22) was Paul’s summary of his mission strategy. For Paul this meant the pagans of Lystra (Acts 14:8-20), the philosophers of Athens (Acts 17: 16-34) and the hedonists of Corinth (Acts 18:1-17). (Interestingly, while Lystra was geographically close to Paul’s home-town of Tarsus and Athens far away, one senses that he felt more congruence with the intellectuals of Athens than the rural people of Lystra.)
It could be said that Paul was advocating what has come to be formulated as ‘Cultural Intelligence’ (CI or CQ) by writers such as David Livermore. One emphasis of Cultural Intelligence that I find illuminating is ‘switching off cruise control’; in other words, in situations of cultural congruence we can be rather like relaxed motorists, we don’t need to think too deeply about what we are saying or doing. We know instinctively. But in relating to other cultures we need to ‘wake up’, to start thinking carefully, creatively about our ministry. Thus Paul’s sermons at Lystra and Athens (or at the synagogue at Antioch in Pisidia - 13:16-41) were all radically different.
For our ministries this might raise questions such as:
* How far are these sermon illustrations relevant to people of that background? And what would be more relevant?
*Does baptism, or marriage, have different significance in this culture; and do I need to adapt my procedures?
*What difference does an honour/shame culture make to the way leadership is exercised?
Leaders who may have operated very effectively in culturally congruent situations may well find transitioning to culturally diverse congregations difficult, unless they can develop the capacity for the more abstract thinking that sees behind outward patterns of behaviour to recognising the deeper currents and forces that generate such behaviour. This can be a particular challenge for people whose ministerial practice has been formed in one quite specific context; such as with a diasporic congregations, or in student ministry.
b) The challenge to congregations: inter-cultural sensitivity.
Paul wrote to the Romans: ‘Each of us must please our neighbour for the good purpose of building up the neighbour. For Christ did not please himself’ (15:2,3). The context here was over what was acceptable in terms of food consumption and holy days, especially Sabbaths to Jewish and Gentile Christians. (Tom Wright suggests that Paul’s use of ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ was perhaps a tactful way of veiling the ethnic differences – ‘Romans: The New Testament for Everyone’.)
These are not controversial or painful issues in most multi-cultural churches today, but Paul’s basic principle – a restraint that accedes to the concerns of others most certainly is.
In a study of several multi-ethnic churches in Britain, David Baldwin, lecturer in mission oat Oak Hill Theological College, found that the biggest cause of controversy and disagreement was different expectations of worship, especially with music. There is something of a consensus on this topic from those who write on multi-cultural churches ranging from theological conservatives like Bruce Milne to theological liberals like Michael Jagessar. (I list some of them on p 11 of my Grove booklet W236 on ‘Worship in a multi-ethnic society’). Thus, the black American church planter, David Anderson: ‘I have concluded that although I wish I could be all things to all people, that is not realistic. On most Sundays the majority of people get most of their spiritual needs met, but never all’ (Multicultural Ministry: Finding your Church’s Unique Rhythm’, p 177).
In fact, when churches are too effective in meeting the individual expectations of members the result can be that people can fall away if they move house – the next church ‘is not the same’; or indeed even if ‘their’ church changes in ways not to their liking. Experiencing a strain of discomfort or disconnect in any church we are part of is an essential ingredient for both personal, spiritual maturity; and for the long-term growth of the whole church as flexibility is inculcated into people’s church experience.
Opportunities.
a) The opportunity of faithful diversity
In Acts 20:4 Luke gives the names of the people who went with Paul to carry to Jerusalem gifts from the churches he had planted: Sopater, Aristarchus and Secundus, Gaius, Timothy, Tychicus and Trophimus; coming respectively from Beroea, Thessalonica, Derbe and Asia. The importance of the gift is underlined by how earnestly Paul refers to it in his correspondence. Why was it important to him? And why did he gather such a large group to carry it with him? The reasoning is easily missed on a casual reading, until we see that the names signified different ethnic backgrounds. Had they been called Praful, Ibrahim, David, Jurgen and Bolaji we would have quickly got the point. In fact, they were an enacted fulfilment of Isaiah’s prophecy of the nations coming to Jerusalem to worship the Lord (Is 60:3).
The practice of the early church from the start shows that this was a central focus. In Acts 2 Luke lists the variety of places that Peter’s listeners came from. When the cultural differences between the local Hebrew widows and the more cosmopolitan Hellenic widows caused tensions, the apostles took practical steps to ensure just treatment and prevent fragmentation (Acts 6:1-7). When Luke chooses ‘conversion stories’ to illustrate Paul’s ministry at Philippi he introduces to a God-fearing Greek businesswoman, Lydia, a possessed slave-girl, and the gaoler, probably a Roman veteran (Acts 16:11-40). Paul rebukes the wealthy well-fed church members at Corinth for their ‘divisions’ and lack of respect for the poor at their eucharistic feasts (1 Cor 11:17ff).
In all these instances we see the early church navigating the complexities of social and ethnic difference, with a principled, theologically driven commitment to visible inter-cultural unity and witness.
b) The opportunity of relevant witness.
Jesus told his disciples after washing their feet: ‘By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another’ (John 13:35). In his ‘Theological Commentary’ on this passage David Ford writes: ‘This opens up the horizon of our loving towards the whole world . . .entering as deeply as possible into contemporary situations and challenges, searching for ways of loving that echo the loving of Jesus; and doing all this within a horizon of thinking, imagining and praying that relates to God, all people, and all creation. . . The mission of the church is inseparable from the sort of community the church is’ (p 266, italics Ford’s).
This ‘global horizon’ (Ford) is a particularly important way in which the church today ought to be speaking spontaneously, relevantly and challengingly to our world. In political discourse, casting for films, employment and leadership appointments across every sector, even tv adverts, there is a strong (even neurotic?) anxiety to have ethnically varied representation. The New Testament makes it plain that ethnic diversity should be inherent to the nature of the church; and it is to our deep shame that racism and cultural arrogance have often so powerfully inhibited this. Yet it is central to the gospel’s convincing power:
‘As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me’ (John 17:21).
When a borough councillor said that he thought our church was the only organisation that united together the three broad ‘racial’ groups of the area (South Asian, black, white) he was seeing in practice the gospel’s potential. Inter-cultural mission speaks directly to an aching concern in our society.
c) The opportunity of maturing spiritually.
Christians of all cultures need the challenge to our assumptions and procedures that comes from honest inter-cultural relationships. Iron sharpens iron. Without contact, indeed conflict, unbiblical aspects of our own culture become established in the church. Paul’s conflict with the Corinthian church, described in 2 Corinthians 10-12, arose from the re-emergence within the church of such major cultural values (‘human standards’, 10:2) as eloquence and bravado (apparently to the neglect of adherence to strict morality); in fact, the sort of ‘big man’ syndrome so opposite to the servanthood of Jesus and of Paul.
Today, it is not difficult to track the ways in which culturally homogenous churches not only reflect but often even augment the failings of their background culture. Cultural diversity is indeed a ‘means of grace’ by which we are gifted an outsider’s view of un-noticed aspects of our own culture which are in need of amending.
For the New Testament church inter-cultural mission was a theological given that gave authenticity to its claim of a unique Saviour and shaped their obedience to a universal Lord.
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Add Ons
Professor Anthony Reddie is lecturing on ‘From Black Theology to Black Lives Matter and Back Again’ on Thursday 25th May at 6.30 pm at St Margaret’s Church, Westminster. Tickets to be booked on the Westmister Abbey web-site.
Waking up to and addressing Whiteness in the Anglican Church is a day conference on Tuesday, 17thOctober at St Martin-in-the Bullring, Birmingham, organised by Reconciliation Initiatives. Details on their web-site.
‘Black, Christian and Conservative’ is an interesting and provocative interview of Delano Squires on Glenn Loury’s ‘Glenn Show’, available on You Tube, including Squires criticism of what he calls the ‘Afristocracy’ (politicians, pundits, professors, performers, preachers) for failing to support the true interests of black people.
Thanks John, I just found your substack via https://Oxford.anglican.org/ojim and look forward to catching up on your posts here while I wait for my copy of your book to arrive.