Twenty years ago, my life seemed simple. I had one identity: Indian. It was not something I questioned, fretted over, or debated. It just was. But as I’ve grown, my view of self has taken on more layers–Indian, Immigrant, American, Christian–with each layer raising important and convoluted questions regarding my identity.
In a conversation a few months ago, I blurted out, “I do not need the multiethnic Church anymore!” The people in the conversation stopped and stared at me, and I realized that I said something on everybody’s mind and heart. I started to dig deep to consider where those words came from and if there was any other meaning behind it.
I had spent over two decades in spaces where I was one of the few people of color, and I had spent years in spaces where I was viewed as and considered myself a bridge builder. A wise mentor and friend once said, “Bridges are usually walked on, and people step on them. So, if you view yourself as a bridge builder, you better be ready for people to step on you and know there will be significant hurt.” As an immigrant, I’ve spent most of my life trying to assimilate, living in a liminal space, and wrestling with what I would want my community, my social circle, and my Church to look like. I’ve written about it and talked about it for so long that there are days when I am completely exhausted.
I have found it easy to move between cultures, diasporas, and communities, learning and engaging with others and sharing my experiences and stories. Lately I have been questioning myself and wondering if I can continue being a bridge. I came to the realization that while it was good to walk in the in-between liminal life, it was also okay for me not to carry this load alone.
Challenges and Complexities of Multiethnic Churches
Over the last decade, many churches and those in the majority culture have said they want their congregations to look like heaven. Pastors and leaders want to shepherd ethnically diverse churches and provide a multiethnic experience for their congregations. It’s hard to have a multiethnic experience when your congregation and community context is the white majority. I’ve walked in spaces where well-intentioned church leaders hire people from diverse backgrounds and represent diverse groups on their social media and website with a genuine desire to build a multiethnic church community. But over time, I’ve discovered that the path to a multiethnic church is not as easy as a 1-2-3 formula.
Being part of a multiethnic church was never my dream or life goal. Throughout my life, I have been in diverse communities across religion, ethnicity, social, and economic lines. But over the last two decades, choosing to be in multiethnic spaces has taught me that while we can have systems, representation, and diversity in our leadership, life in any part of a multiethnic church is much more nuanced and complicated. One cannot approach it as a technical change but needs to view it as an organic shift in the global church and our local community.
As I navigate my way through this space, I wanted to share some of my thoughts. Everyone quotes Revelation 7:9: “After this, I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people, and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.”
We want our churches to look ethnically diverse, and I will argue that this is a well-intended desire.
But what does that actually mean? Does that mean we have diversity represented in our senior leadership, our volunteers, our choirs, or the brilliant social media marketing our churches and ministries have when we showcase diversity on the grid, brochures, and even promos for our church?
Marketing does what it’s supposed to do. If we showcase diversity, the hope is to bring diversity into the building. But if our goal is to get people from diverse backgrounds and ethnicities into the church, we must ask ourselves, “What is at the core of a community of Christ followers who come together to form this multiethnic church?” Most of the time, we end up with a surface-level multiethnic representation instead of living multiethnic lives in deep relationships and close association with people from different ethnic, racial, educational, social, economic, and cultural backgrounds.
Challenges in Fostering Authentic Multiethnic Relationships
When we think of multiethnicity in our churches, are we asking people to focus on Christ as the common denominator that binds us all, or are we asking them to focus on the cultural aspect of the Christian faith? Do we have to “dis-belong” to one thing to belong to something else?
When we consider the multiethnic church, are we starting from a place where we look for similarities, where we agree that we have lots of things in common and can learn things together while not brushing our differences under the carpet? Or, are we starting from a place of difference, where we view each other as people with diametrically opposite perspectives and points of view and our similarities are insignificant?1
Where we start greatly impacts where the multiethnic journey will take us. Instead of assuming the stance of a knowledgeable expert who expects people from diverse backgrounds to assimilate into the majority/monoethnic culture, starting with the posture of a learner will help us grow. Who we are and where we come from absolutely belong in the church. Leaving bits and pieces of ourselves outside the church is quite complicated. When we talk about the multiethnic church or the theology of the intercultural church, we need to be able to bring our whole selves to the table.2
Living Out Multiethnicity Beyond the Church
To be a healthy multiethnic or intercultural church, we must start from a place of being, practicing, and living. All too often, those of us in ministry are passionate about the multiethnic church, but we do not live multiethnic lives. We might interact at work, the coffee shop or while taking out the trash, but we need to build genuine relationships and be willing to enter diverse spaces in every aspect of our lives. We might interact at work meetings, conferences, or now and then in our community. Still, we need genuine relationships or regular interactions with people from different backgrounds.
Members of monoethnic or white-centric churches who do not live multiethnic lives will find it challenging to move into multiethnic relationships only on Sunday mornings. Focusing on building ethnic diversity only one day of the week while comfortably living in majority spaces the remaining six days does not lead to a thriving multiethnic community of Christ followers. We need to be able to think, believe, and practice this thing we call the multiethnic church.
We must also understand the ethnic diversity in our communities before pursuing a multiethnic church. While strategy, planning and training is helpful, we need to be able to learn from those in our local community and build friendships and relationships. It needs to be more organic than top-down teaching.
The Church as a Living Organism
What we call a church is a living and breathing organism. It changes, moves, grows, shrinks, ebbs, flows, and multiplies. So there is no time for sitting and playing the blame game. If we desire to pursue a multiethnic church with gospel intentionality, the only way we can pursue it is to approach it from a relational aspect. The ideological desire might be good, but it won’t stand the test of time. Relationships of flesh and bone, blood and skin, those are the ones that matter. People make up a church; people are the church, and if we desire diversity because we believe the gospel is for all, then we need to put some skin on this game. Growth in ethnic unity happens when we share lives–when we seek to understand each other’s backgrounds and the nuances of their personal convictions and philosophies.
Building Deep and Meaningful Relationships
When my white American friends understand the cultural nuances in my Indian arranged marriage, then I know they have understood my background and upbringing. I don’t need to explain it to them over and over. When I can describe the challenges of immigrant parenting in suburban America and the people around me understand the complexities and how what is the norm for them is not the norm for me, I know that we have deepened our relationship and truly understand each other. Rich conversations and intentional discussions can be tricky, but relationships can flourish, and we all reap the benefits.
Reflecting on Revelation 7:9
Revelation 7:9 is commonly quoted during sermons where we teach and preach about the need for a multiethnic church. Multiethnic churches have grown in large numbers over the last twenty years. While all churches have struggles and conflicts, multiethnic churches have steeper challenges: the type of worship service, music style, language, preaching style, etc. It can be very complicated for church leadership to find the balance that satisfies everyone in the congregation. Pastoring a church that wishes to be multiethnic has layers of challenges and complications.
Personal Struggles with Assimilation and Diversity
But when we consider Revelation 7:9, do we understand the magnitude of the verse? Does it apply to every nation, tribe, people, and language? Can we be comfortable with people from different backgrounds in our little bubbles?
Honestly, I am not sure if I would be comfortable. I love life in my little American suburb. I often say I am a city girl at heart, but if I ask myself, “Can I live there day after day dealing with traffic, noise, pollution, and neighbors just a wall away”, I would much prefer to be in my bubble, driving to the local Whole Foods or ordering from Costco online. I would rather have public parks with plenty of space for my children to run and play without fear of them being hit by a car or worse.
I don’t always like multiethnicity, especially when it makes me uncomfortable. I have spent two decades of life in this country and have assimilated. Brand new immigrants tend to annoy me. I want them to assimilate quickly. Yes, I am guilty of the same tendencies many of us have!
When I enter spaces in my hometown today, which are overwhelmingly Indian, I feel out of place. I have become a diaspora Indian! I have assimilated to a large extent while also becoming acculturated. I want others to be like me. I am comfortable around those who are like me. I find myself frustrated by those who retain their “Indianness” and are not willing to divest it.
So, if an immigrant like me finds it challenging to be around those who technically come from the same background as herself, how much more difficult would it be for those who know little about other cultures?
Encouragement for Multiethnic Churches
I am more compassionate in how I talk about the multiethnic church today. Before, I would have expected the majority culture to do a complete 180-degree change to understand and embrace all other forms of diversity and ethnicity wholeheartedly.
But today, I look at the whole picture and feel for those in the majority culture who are faithfully walking this journey, learning, educating themselves, and trying to make incremental changes, not simply for the sake of change but because they believe it is the gospel mission. They do it because they genuinely love God and people. Multiethnic churches that are thriving are Biblical and Christ-centric do exist.
Their members engage in diverse, deep, and authentic relationships. They live multiethnic lives. They practice what they preach on the other six days of the week. They engage not just in ethnic diversity, economic diversity and multi-generational relationships.
It is easy for churches to develop systems and strategies to promote multiethnicity and make it their vision or part of their mission statement. One can hold onto that vision while inside the walls of the building, in youth ministry, Sunday school, or even adult Bible studies. However, it is harder to live out that vision when one leaves the building and returns to regular, daily life. Parenting and marriage experiences vary extensively from culture to culture, but those ideas don’t cross our minds when our church plans the youth curriculum.
Final Thoughts
So, this is my encouragement to the multiethnic church today:
I affirm the mission and vision you have for the church. Being multiethnic is Biblical and Christ-centered and part of the global church. I applaud your efforts thus far to live out the vision in your local church and community. But I encourage you to cast the vision wider with your congregants to live multiethnic lives to understand the breadth and depth of different cultures. We cannot live and understand the multiethnic vision of the church without living a life that reflects that in every area. For communities where the majority culture is still normative, we need to make every effort to understand the cultures reflected in our community so it can become the norm versus something just “ethnic”.
This is the tip of the iceberg for us as Christ’s followers.
When we start to practice living a life of intentionality with intercultural theology, it will automatically flow into other areas of our lives, like politics and how we affect grassroots politics and policy. Our vision for a multiethnic church is not just local but national and global. What we believe, how we live out, what we believe, and our decisions and choices all start with the relationships we build at a community level. The vision of Revelation 7:9 is not limited to just the local church. It is a mission cast over a much broader scope.
I have hope for the local church in every community and every church with a multiethnic vision. I have this hope because I see the faithful who love God and love people make efforts daily in every walk of life. However, some churches do not need to be multiethnic. They don’t need to strive to be something they don’t have to be in their community. It is easier to take the time to understand, learn, and grow from an organic space of being instead of strategizing church culture from a top-down model. Multiethnic or intercultural theology is a journey. It is not a box that needs a checkmark next to it. It is a practiced theology that we often tend to turn into practical theology.3
Revelation 7:9 needs to be something that we consider all the time. It should be a verse that challenges us on a personal level, not just for use on Sunday mornings. How do we behave daily, and how do we understand the depth of global culture? How does that culture impact and change us, creating a moving body of believers to create this global church?We are made up of differences and diversity as God intended it. But we need to practice the theology we believe in.
Photo Credit: Scott Webb