Shouldn’t every church be multiethnic? Is there a place for ethnic-specific churches or are they unbiblical? Do we even need ethnic-specific churches anymore?
People involved in ethnic-specific ministries have heard questions similar to these. Sometimes they are posed by others, while at other times these questions come from themselves. To help us think through this relevant topic, SOLA Editorial Board member Daniel K. Eng interviewed Rick Hardison, lead pastor of Lakewood Ranch Baptist Church, who completed a PhD on the topic. His dissertation is called, “A Theological Critique of the Multiethnic Church Movement,” and contains research and analysis on different types of churches.
We have split their interview into two parts. In the first half, Daniel K. Eng and Rick Hardison discuss:
- Where we get the idea of the “multiethnic mandate”
- What the Bible does (or doesn’t) say about multiethnic churches
- How to think about ethnic church “divisions”
- The stories of the Tower of Babel and Pentecost
We hope this conversation will lead to more conversations about ethnic and multiethnic churches and be an encouragement to the universal church. Here is Part 2.
Editor’s Note: Below is a lightly edited automated transcript of their conversation. There may be typos or grammatical errors.
Daniel K. Eng: Well, hello, everyone. This is Daniel here at the SOLA network. And I have with me, Pastor Rick Hardison. He’s at a church in Florida. And one of the things that I wanted to talk about was this topic today. And so for many of us who are involved in ethnic-specific ministries, we’ve heard things like, “Oh, well, shouldn’t every church be multiethnic?” and so on. We’ve heard comments and questions like that.
So today, I have here, Pastor Rick Hardison. He actually has a PhD in this topic. He’s written and researched this topic for his PhD. And he called his dissertation, “A theological Critique of the Multiethnic Church Movement.” And so I want to introduce everyone to Pastor Rick. Tell us a bit about where you are, what do you do, and so on?
Rick Hardison: Yeah, first, Daniel, thanks for the privilege of being on the podcast. Happy to have this conversation with you and for anyone interested in tuning in. So yeah, I’m in Sarasota, Florida, where I’m the lead pastor of Lakewood Ranch Baptist Church. Seminary was in Southern Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. Married to Stacey and we’ve got three kids. And it was really while I was in seminary, I was confronted with this topic head on. And that’s why I pursued a PhD in the study of evangelism in church growth, which led me to study ethnicity. But not an academic. I’m a pastor of a Southern Baptist Church of about 500 people. And I’ve been here about five years and really loving what God’s doing in this corner of Florida.
Daniel K. Eng: Well, as you did you, did you set out for your PhD to like to research this topic? Or was this something that developed or you know, what brought you to this topic?
Rick Hardison: The short answer is evangelism. I was leading evangelism teams in a very ethnically diverse portion of Louisville. Just evangelism teams, not a part of the seminary, just part of our local church. I was not on staff, not a notre just going out on Saturday mornings and doing contact evangelism.
And the response that I got, when those people, those who were willing to come to church with me, they would say to me, Rick, I’m a black man, or fill in the blank, and they would cite a cultural difference. They were fine with the heavy, hard stuff, the preacher was saying, but they kept citing culture, how we would mingle after the service they didn’t like or something like that. And it helped me to think, Alright, well, I want to reach these people, I care, maybe we should plant a church or something like that, with a leader that looks more like him, and has a background similar to them. And then I quickly realized, that disagrees with the elders’ vision for the church, the vision for that church, still, it’s a great church, Immanuel Baptist Church, thankful for them played a big impact in my life, but their vision is building a community from all cultures where Christ is king.
And so I had my evangelism instinct said, this would be what works in the vision of the church that I love. And that was a part of something different. And I thought, well, I’m kind of at a crossroads here. So because I simultaneously bought into that vision and had problems with it. And so that’s why I pursued a PhD was simply because I was asking these questions at the end of my master’s and wanted to, I knew that ethnic diversity wasn’t going away as a topic. And I wanted to know, as I’m in an urban area, what are my options as a pastor in terms of reaching the city, so it was just an effort to do outreach and realizing how that didn’t square with a significant portion of evangelicalism that led me to pursue this issue.
Daniel K. Eng: If you were if you were in an elevator with me, and you had two minutes, can you summarize your research.
Rick Hardison: That the Bible never implicitly or explicitly commands all churches, all churches to be as ethnically diverse as their communities. In brief, it’s just not in the Bible. It’s not a commandment. It’s not a mandate. Therefore, churches are free to pursue that. Same way a church is free to pursue a prison ministry, or a couple is free to adopt someone, or interracial marriage is a great thing. It’s a matter of Christian freedom. It’s just not commanded.
We should not elevate it to a mark of a healthy church. It’s not up there with baptism. It is instead a simple characteristic that some churches may have others may not have. I’d liken it to whether or not a church has a building or if it chooses to stay 100 people and then multiply or become a large church. There’s just freedom on the issue and the Bible doesn’t settle it one way or the other.
Daniel K. Eng: Okay, well, thank you. Thank you. Pastor Rick. So just for the record, you’re not against the multiethnic church.
Rick Hardison: Oh, no. I mean, I know everyone listening to thinks I’m a racist right now. Because that’s the view that if you’re somehow not on the bandwagon that says everything has to be multiethnic, that you’re it’s almost, you feel a little bit afraid to say that out loud.
That yes, someone will think that you don’t love the Lord or that you are a racist. But no, I begin my work by outlining many of the benefits of multiethnic churches. And there are many recently, as I was going through a membership interview at our congregation, I asked one of the hardest questions I asked when someone’s joining a church is, I say, what are some concerns you have about our church? And the answer that I got, the other evening was a concern about ethnic diversity, not enough diversity, this person is an international, they’re not from this area.
And so I thought, one of the benefits of a multiethnic church is that people who are a part of minority culture feel more at home. People who are in interracial marriages, feel more at home, often people who are who’ve adopted internationally, often feel more at home, the arts community is very diverse, the college communities very diverse and these diverse communities, it’s just in the air they breathe, and they they naturally want that so many people feel more at home, in a multiethnic church. It can, it brings the nations to your doorstep, there’s a cross cultural competency that can be explored and accelerated in that context. Mission trips take a different feel when you’re going to, you know, the deacon’s home country. And so there’s a lot of benefit to that.
I think another benefit of why I love multiethnic churches is the church ought to be economically diverse. That’s not up for debate. In my mind, I think that’s commanded in Scripture. And ultimate ethnic diversity brings that James 2 kind of vision together, where you see different income levels coming together under the same roof worshiping the same lord and multiethnic churches are excellent for a lot of reasons. I just don’t think they’re commanded in the Bible.
Daniel K. Eng: You know, briefly, why do you think there’s such a negative reaction to a local church that’s predominantly one ethnicity or similar ethnicity?
Rick Hardison: You know, I think there’s a lot of answers to that. I think there’s it’s not surprising that the church in America is I think, the center of those conversations. And I think that our own racist past is influencing our exegesis.
Daniel K. Eng: Can you say that, again?
Rick Hardison: I think our I think America’s racist past is influencing our exegesis of some passages and making us think that this there’s this mandate in Scripture to be multiethnic, where it’s really not there. I think that’s part of it.
And I think that I can tell you that as a preacher, and I know, we’ll get into some of these passages. But as I come across passages of Scripture that talk about jew, gentile unity, or you’re fishing for application. You want the text to bear on people’s lives. And we, you know, it doesn’t, for me to go to my congregation Sunday morning and just preach with my heart out saying, I promise you don’t have to be circumcised to go to heaven. That doesn’t land well on our congregation. It’s like, how do you apply Galatians 3?
Daniel K. Eng: There’s a disconnect there. Yeah.
Rick Hardison: And so I think just good hearted pastor, somebody trying to fish for relevant application. For New Testament passages. Sometimes I think the text says more than it does.
I’ll tell you another reason. I think that’s how the conversation got started. We just America has a very sad track record on race. But I think it’s being furthered. Because a whole generation of pastors have been raised hearing from very influential voices. If you’re not pursuing multiethnicity, you’re missing out on God’s best. You don’t understand the trickle down effects of the gospel.
And so I think that a lot of people are not doing it because they they grew up under Jim Crow, because most alive today did not instead, many of them are simply that’s all they’ve ever heard, and they’ve never questioned it. And so they pursue it out of instinct.
Daniel K. Eng: You know, you know, for me as a, as a Bible professor, and as a pastor, I think this is not this is a topic that, you know, I thought about a lot and I just, and I, you know, I everyone I came across Rick’s dissertation, I said, Rick wrote, and did a great job, about something he wrote about something that I’ve been thinking about a lot. I feel like, I feel like, you know, as I as I teach people about biblical interpretation, I wondered where, I wonder where do we get this idea? The biblical of a that there’s a biblical mandate that, that every local church must be multiethnic. So can you can you briefly summarize that multiethnic mandate for me?
Rick Hardison: Yeah, I mean, the multiethnic mandate by those who support it, is the belief that all churches need to be as ethnically diverse as their communities. Even the most ardent proponents would recognize that some communities are not multiethnic. And if a community is not multiethnic, the church can never be multiethnic. But that term, multiethnic is defined by no more than 80% of the people are majority culture or one ethnicity. So really, I shouldn’t say majority culture is just no more comprised than 80%. If you have 81%, Caucasians, and then everything else is five, five and 4%, or something that’s not multiattribute, you have 79%, Anglos. And then, you know, 21%, African American, you know, that then you meet the threshold, according to church growth studies of those who are multiethnic.
Daniel K. Eng: So, so you mentioned, you know, just if it’s mostly white, but what about if it’s, you know, mostly Latino, or the historically black church or the Asian American church?
Rick Hardison: Yeah, I mean, those would. Almost all the authors would say that that’s unacceptable. That your Korean church is off the table. Your Hispanic church off the table. Interestingly, there is one comment by Keller, Tim Keller on a blog, I think, where he said that he thinks ethnic specific congregations are acceptable, but not a white one. And I thought that was really curious of, I don’t know that I can defend why he says that. But if you look at the literature, they kind of treat a white church and African American church, all the same, that no church should have a label like that.
Daniel K. Eng: I’m going to go through some common arguments that I’ve heard that and you actually wrote about them in your in your PhD dissertation. So I’m gonna go go through some common arguments that I’ve heard, and I just want you to briefly respond to them, you know, you’ve done the research, you know, time doesn’t allow us to have a kind of a deeper dive into each one. But if you can give kind of a short response to each, I think that would help out and it would serve us and are here so. So the Bible says there’s no distinction, you know, Galatians 3:28, there’s, there’s no Jew or Gentile. Shouldn’t shouldn’t every church be multiethnic because of that?
Rick Hardison: Yeah, I mean, you could add to that Colossians 3, where Paul uses a very similar language about commonalities between differences. The short answer is no, though. Galatians 3:28 is a beautiful passage, praise God, that there is no distinction between male or female, slave or free, Jew or Greek. Praise the Lord for that is simply that that has very little say little to say about ethnic distinctions in North America today.
Very simply, the reason there’s not a direct correspondence, there’s not a one to one between Jew, Gentile and Black White. To use that as an example, is simply because there was a strong soteriological context that govern why Paul was writing Galatians. Galatians 3 is in Galatians, the book of the Bible about justification by faith, and in his argument, Paul is trying to show that Jews and Gentiles alike bear the spirit and enter in the kingdom the same way, you don’t have to return to the law first. And so that’s the point that he’s making. And so to really understand the Jew Gentile argument, you have to look at the context.
The Jerusalem council helps us go to Acts 15 verse one. And it literally says that people spoke up saying they had to be circumcised in order to be saved. In verse seven, it says, some Pharisees stood up and said, We need this return to the law. For the idea that that’s what it would take to enter into the kingdom. And when people when Paul was reporting the Gentile inclusion, in the later chapters, people are like, whoa, what’s going on? In these mid mid chapters of Acts, Gentiles are coming to know the Lord.
And so we have to remind ourselves, if I’m a first century Jew, living in 1855, I’m genuinely surprised that Gentiles could go to heaven without first becoming a proselyte. Like that was new information. So if there actually to be a correspondence between ethnic diversity today and the Jew Gentile relationship in the first century, there would have to be churches or denominations saying, you know, I’m not sure Chinese people can go to heaven without first becoming Anglo, or any other combination of that.
And so the the issue is, no one’s saying that no one at all is having any parallel statements that says anything similar to that today. And so we have to see this because context is all about soteriology, that when Jews and Gentiles, they had to have table fellowship in the first century because table fellowship equals acceptance, table fellowship, equal approval, table fellowship, said, you and I, and eat the last banquet together we will be at the supper together. Oh, it’s a common understanding of salvation. But that just fails. Because in all my research, I’ve never found one person even hint that another ethnicity can be saved.
And so that’s why all these Gentile unity passages simply don’t command multiethnic churches, what they say is we must be united on the gospel message: justification by faith alone.
Daniel K. Eng: So I’m thinking about Ephesians, where it says the dividing wall has been broken down between Jew and Gentile. Is that, would that apply here as well?
Rick Hardison: Absolutely. I was in Anaheim this past week for the Southern Baptist Convention and from the stage, a great effort but to try to create more ethnic diversity in churches. There was that same passage read Ephesians 2:14. I think the dividing wall of hostility has been torn down. And I think that because in our a generation ago, they observed the Berlin Wall crumbling, like we see this, we have a correlation in our minds that the tearing down of a wall equals the uniting of people and it just seems so wonderful and harmonious and preachers can unthinkingly say, you know, the dividing wall of hostility is racism. The dividing wall of hostility is monoethnic churches. Therefore, faithfulness to the gospel means pushing against that.
The problem is you just have to read Ephesians. To keep reading the verse is clearly the dividing wall of hostility is the Mosaic law. It is the law and the ordinances of the Mosaic Covenant. And that’s what’s torn down. That’s what’s removed. What’s removed are these dietary restrictions that prevented them from uniting around the table. What’s removed is the command not to intermarry. There was a dividing wall of hostility is called Joshua was command to go conquest Canaan, that was hot, there was legit hostility between Jews and Gentiles. And that’s what’s been put to bed in Christ that said, the way of salvation is the same. And so I’m pretty passionate about this. Because when people go to Ephesians 2 to defend the multiethnic mandate, what they’re doing is they’re making God a racist. You have to say, who built the wall? There’s a dividing wall of hostility between who erected the wall? It was God. Yeah, God wrote these passages that said, in Israel with a you’ve married Gentiles, you need now to repent of that and get divorced. God came up with that. Right? Right. God said, you all for the sacrifices, they’re not for these people. That was God’s plan. And so we need to make sure that we’re not making God put God on the hook for our bad exegesis.
Daniel K. Eng: You know, and I’ve heard that, you know, with, and this goes along with the Gentile argument. I’ve heard that, you know, if you have a church, that’s mostly one, you know, one ethnicity that, you know, why are you divided from each other? Would you say?
Rick Hardison: Well, you know, why are we divided? I think the, the question assumes that the division is on the part of the church, or the leadership, not on the part of the outsider.
Daniel K. Eng: Go on.
Rick Hardison: Like, here’s a thought experiment. Let’s say you get a bunch of elders in a church who are passionate about multiethnicity, and they do their level best to try to create that labor for year after year after year. And then they look up one morning, and they realize they haven’t accomplished it. It’s, it’s not big. And I think there’s a lot of churches where that fits the bill. And it’s not because of their lack of interest, or willingness to compromise or bend. Perhaps it could be because minorities say, that’s not what I want, right? That’s not my, I don’t want to raise my family. I don’t want to be fed in that context. I prefer a different context.
And so a lot of times, people will, will blame the lack of diversity on majority culture, when maybe, maybe, if I’m from a certain area, I prefer to worship in a church that identifies with that area, because worshiping God taps into the core of our beings. And someone who understands us and helps me to worship in a culturally specific way, frees my heart to engage the Lord in a really special way. And that shouldn’t be. No one should pour cold water on that that’s a good thing to celebrate.
So when people say, why all the division I think that it’s, you know, Babel was God’s idea. He divided humanity into lots of different pockets of people. And America is a melting pot of a lot of different kinds of people. And so I think that’s why there’s division. A lot of times, it is not, this is not 50 years ago, the divided church in America is not because of racism predominantly, I don’t think I think it’s because of cultural preference. And so if you let people take a free market approach to their church, the net result will be that the majority of churches are going to be monoethnic.
Daniel K. Eng: Yeah, you know, and Rick, I’m wondering if they’re if they’re thinking that there’s hostility between these churches, and I’m not necessarily seeing that, you know, if they’re saying this division why is there, you know, but that doesn’t mean there’s hostility between these two local churches.
Rick Hardison: Yeah, you know, one of the words that I choose to avoid in my thesis, but you cannot avoid it in the literature is the word racial reconciliation. Almost inevitably, the pursuit for ethnic diversity will not be called that. Instead, it’s going to be called racial reconciliation. And I find the term problematic for a few reasons. The main one is this. It assumes that there’s discord like my wife, and I only need to be reconciled after an argument. I only had to be reconciled to God because of sin. Because there was true separation. Most Hispanic churches have never had conflicts with Asian churches. I mean, I don’t know my world history well enough to know if their ancestors may have you get the point, like a lot of people are in their own pockets doing their own thing, not because there’s any animosity toward the other group, just because that’s their preference. And that’s the net result of letting people form their own churches, you know.
Daniel K. Eng: But again, it’s called division, like, why is there division?
Rick Hardison: So yeah, I mean, it sort of be like saying, you know, Why is Paul divided from the Romans when he wrote it in from Ephesus. His geography separates people. If geography can separate people and not be a part of the same church, then culture, I think it also separate people.
One of the thought experiments I like to do with people is, imagine there’s, you go to a tribe in Africa and plant a church, and the Gospel says, you have a church of 100 people, all of one ethnicity all within this one tribe. And I think everyone would celebrate that it’s a glorious thing. Well, then, what if, five years later, through war, or famine, through demographic shifts, all of a sudden, another people group moves into the area, and now 30% of the population is composed of that people group.
They’re proponents of the multiethnic mandate, who would first praise the monoethnic church for the gospel advancing among this tribe who would now say that they don’t understand the gospel. So in one context, they’re doing great being monoethnic, but the sheer fact of demographic shifts now means they’re being unfaithful. So the trickle down effects of the gospel. So I think that the assumption that division is bad, is pretending to know the heart behind people. And that’s just not a charitable posture towards everyone else.
Daniel K. Eng: I want to go back to that in a bit. But one of the things that comes up is, well, heaven is going to be a multiethnic congregation, shouldn’t shouldn’t our local churches reflect that? I mean, didn’t Jesus say that we should, that we should pray that Your will be done on earth as it as it is in heaven?
Rick Hardison: Yes. Amen. We should pray that way. Yeah. And so I think that I know, I’ve stood on the front porch of people who look different than me and said, Look, I know you might not feel at home in our church, because we’re a bunch of white people. But we want you here because heaven is this way. Our church wants to be this way. And obviously, that’s not where I am today. My thinking has progressed. But I know the heaven argument has won me in the past. I have found it to be persuasive because of the instinct of the Lord’s Prayer. In short, I think we have to understand that there is simply discontinuity between the new heavens and the new earth and the local church in America.
So, you know, the church in America has married people in it. In Heaven, we won’t be married. The church in the church in America has pastors, I’m not sure we’ll need pastors, maybe I don’t know, probably not. We’ll have Jesus directly.
So there’s discontinuity, there’s also points of continuity. The church in of heaven will be fully holy in our character will be cemented. Well, we should pursue holiness, the church in Heaven will not have sickness or poverty, so we should seek to avail. Combat sickness and poverty. So there’s elements of continuity and discontinuity between the church above and the church below.
The question then becomes on the issue of ethnicity, does it fall into the bucket of continuity or discontinuity? And I’m going to argue that it falls in the bucket of discontinuity primarily, simply because we see things related to ethnicity happening in Revelation that are not happening in America right now. For instance, in Revelation 7, he talks about that that scene of myriads gathered around the throne,
Daniel K. Eng: The uncountable multitude.
Rick Hardison: And it’s multiethnic for sure. And it says if you read the text carefully in Revelation 7 it says they will pray praising God with a voice. There is one voice. So evidently, this white kid from Macon, Georgia one day is going to speak two languages. I’m not just going to speak English, I’m going to speak a heavenly language. I don’t know what that’s going to be. But I’m going to be bilingual, at least maybe multilingual, I’ll have a lot of languages under my belt.
So you see a capacity in the glorified body of worshiping in a multiethnic context where everyone has understanding. When someone prays to receive Christ, they don’t all of a sudden learn a new language. In other words, our soul is regenerated, but our capacity to have cross-cultural competency, or to converse across language barriers doesn’t all of a sudden change. And so I think if you look, what are the clues to whether ethnicity is in the discontinuity bucket or the continuity bucket? I think it tilts toward the discontinuity bucket. So I think that because of that the multiethnic mandate is an over realized eschatology
Daniel K. Eng: That there are things that are not going to happen on earth in this life. That will happen in the next.
Rick Hardison: Amen. Amen. And it’s going to be like, I want to be clear, like, I celebrate the ethnic diversity of the last age. Any person who looks at like if if you agree with me and believe that all churches don’t have to be monoethnic, I don’t think that means your heart is numb toward this issue. Or I should say, every, every church doesn’t have to be multiethnic, that it’s okay to be monoethnic. There, there should be a longing in your heart for something to change, because the Kingdom is not. It’s already but it’s not yet. There are aspects that are still future and we should long for that day. It’s just not here yet.
Daniel K. Eng: I appreciate how you put that, especially as we, as we long for the next age, as we look forward to Jesus returning.
You mentioned Babel earlier. And so, you know, you know, there’s a view that, that God caused that separation of language groups and people groups at Babel because of their sin because they were proud. And they and they wanted to be like God. And so it’s, you know, I’ve heard that I’ve heard it said, you know, if we have a church that primarily reaches one demographic, then that’s the sin of Babel.
Rick Hardison: Yeah, there’s, there’s some variations of how Babel is used. So some people will say that Babel, not only was the product of sin, but it is reversed at Pentecost. And so you see, confusion happening at Babel. And in Pentecost, when the Spirit shows up, you see clarity, you see division and dispersion and you see unity. And so if Pentecost reverses Babel, then the work of the Spirit in our lives ought to be, to oppose the division of Babel.
And honestly, at first sight, I think it’s a nifty biblical theology argument, you know, where the New Testament ties off a nice little bow from the Old Testament. The problem is, I just don’t think it works. If you actually look at the details. Pentecost is not a reversal of Babel. Babel, you go from one language to many languages. Well, you don’t go from many languages to one language at Pentecost. You go from many languages to many languages, just with understanding. So it’s not a reversal at all.
New Testament scholars debate the connection between Babel and Pentecost. Some argue that there isn’t a central connection in Luke’s mind. Others say not so much. I tend to think that what’s happening in Pentecost is largely a fulfillment of God’s promises to the Jews to see a regathering of the Jews in Jerusalem. That’s what some of the prophets foretold, you see, Luke make specific reference to all the different areas of Israel. In other words, you see the northern and southern kingdoms coming together all represented, you see diaspora coming home multiple times. And Peter speech he says Men of Israel, Men of Judea, he’s making specific reference to the Jews here. So I think there’s some fulfillment of the prophetic language going on in Acts 2. And I think that’s the background probably not Genesis 10 and 11.
Nevertheless, if even if it is, the background of Genesis 10, and 11, it’s important to realize that if you look at Babel and Pentecost, let’s say pentecost does have reference to Babel. We have to understand this as an argument for why monoethnic churches should be permitted, because it shows that the Spirit loves to let people worship in their heart language. They all spoke Greek. Peter is preaching in Greek. They all knew the trade language of the day, so to communicate the gospel, he did not have to. The Spirit did not have to fall in a special way. Yet it did. and people heard the mighty works of the Lord in their own tongue. And to me that tells me that God cares about my heart language. God cares when I go to a missionary context that I don’t just ask people to learn English, that they can hear the gospel in a language that they understand. And so Babel introduces diversity into mankind. Pentecost says that that diversity is not a bad thing, it actually salvation can happen within that diversity.
Keep in mind Babel, you have to understand the the sin of Babel was pride. The sin, the sin of Babel is not diversity. The sin was an arrogance. And God had previously told them to scatter the earth to be to multiply and go out, probably to expand the garden. And that paradise, they didn’t do it, they all coagulated right there Babel. And so God says, I’m going to give you this means of grace, this confusion of language, so that you’ll finally do what I had asked you to do the whole time.
Daniel K. Eng: You’re saying it’s an act of mercy on them?
Rick Hardison: I do. I think it was an act of mercy, because the net result of Babel was just they scattered the earth. And I believe that was the fulfillment of what God had told Adam and Eve to do, from the beginning.
Daniel K. Eng: To multiply.
Rick Hardison: Not just multiply, but to multiply and to scatter. I think that’s consistent with the fill the earth language of Genesis 1 in the cultural mandate.
Daniel K. Eng: And supposed to be renewed after the after the flood.
Rick Hardison: For sure.
Daniel K. Eng: I’ve heard about the the hospitality argument, you know, doesn’t the Bible say that we should show hospitality to others, you know, if we, if we’re, if our church is just really reaching one demographic, that’s not really obeying the commandment to love our neighbors? What do you what would you say?
Rick Hardison: Yeah, well, the first thing is to say, you might be right. You know, there is such a thing as sinning by not being hospitable enough. And, you know, if God has brought the nations to your doors, you should, I think, try to exercise hospitality toward them. We should love our neighbor as ourselves. And sometimes my neighbor might look differently than me. So love takes on a certain form. I think Christians should take seriously those demands. I think even the Old Testament law about welcoming the sojourners had something to say about how we interact with people who don’t look like us.
So the first thing to say is, yeah, they might be onto something. But then it’s an entirely different matter to suggest that because we’re called to welcome in the sojourner, or to simply love our neighbor, that we have to have a church that is multiethnic. Very simply because love doesn’t have to be multiethnic to be love. I mean 1 Corinthians 13, outlines what love looks like. And it says it’s many things, but it never says it’s multiethnic. Probably the verse that you’ll hear most along these lines is Jesus’s words, in John 13, or maybe John 17, where he says, this will be how they know you’re my disciples, by your love for one another.
Daniel K. Eng: Yeah, that’s the high priestly prayer.
Rick Hardison: And the argument goes, well, you know, how’s the world going to know that we’re legit? How’s the world gonna understand the gospel, they’re gonna look at all the diversity here and see, the only thing we have in common is Jesus Christ, and then the watching world will be oh it all makes sense. But the problem is, Jesus gave that prayer, in reference to a very homogenous group of disciples. And so in Jesus’ context, the love that he was going for was not multiethnic, just read the gospels, you’ll see the disciples bickered like little children, they needed to love one another. And even the early church, when it was still more homogenous before it really understood Gentile inclusion, it had its own struggles with division.
And so you know, this is just a classic example of wanting the Bible to say something, and then finding a generic command and forcing that on it. So yeah, let’s love one another, let’s be hospitable. But let’s not pretend that we are falling short of the biblical standard of love. If we happen to be loving someone that looks similar to us. Just Just go pastor a church, and you will need these commands about love and hospitality. And resolving conflict, even in a when everyone is majority culture, like me.
Daniel K. Eng: So just to recap, you know, showing love to a neighbor can mean it’s cross-cultural, but it doesn’t necessarily mean.
Rick Hardison: Yeah, I think for me, showing love to a Chinese neighbor might mean, where would this person most thrive spiritually? And if that’s sincerely in my church, they should I should invite her into my church. If that’s sincerely in a sister congregation, then I should try to connect that person with them. To me, that’s the most loving approach.
I worry that this idea that everyone has to come to my church, because we’re asking multiethnic, really might be more self promotion. I know people don’t mean that way. But this one size fits all. This church will serve all the needs of the area.
You know, I think a more humble posture would be to say, you know, we’re only going to be, we’re in general, we’re going to be effective among these people. And to the extent we’re not, we’re really open for to see where the spirit leaves in other areas.
Editor’s Note: End of Part 1. Here is Part 2.