Are there biblical and theological rationale for ethnic-specific ministries? Are just as vital to the church as multi-ethnic churches? In this conversation for the SOLA Network, SOLA Editorial Board member Moses Lee interviewed Dr. Andrew Ong and Dr. Gray Sutanto to answer these questions. Their discussion touched on the theology of Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck, the catholicity of the church, and the church as seen in Revelation 7. You can watch the video below or listen to it here. Below is a lightly edited transcript of their conversation.
Moses Lee: Welcome to the SOLA Network. My name is Moses and I serve on the SOLA Editorial Team. Today I have the great privilege to introduce to you today’s guests. First we have Dr. Andrew Ong. He serves as a director of pastoral care and discipleship at Christ Church in Berkeley, California. He received his Masters in Divinity at Westminster Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. in World Christianity at the University of Edinburgh.
Next we have Dr. Gray Sutanto. He’s the assistant professor of systematic theology at Reformed Theological Seminary in Washington, DC. He also received his Master of Arts in Religion from Westminster Theological Seminary and his Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh under the supervision of James Eglinton, focusing on the 19th-century Dutch Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck.
Today’s conversation is a follow up to a recent interview we had with Dr. Alexander Jun and Pastor Thabiti Anyabwile on the importance of ethnic-specific ministries. We want to continue that conversation with these highly respected Asian American scholars and discuss the biblical and theological rationale for why ethnic-specific ministries are just as vital to the church as multi-ethnic churches are.
Andrew, I’ve shared with with you this before, but I truly believe your peer-reviewed article, “Neo-Calvinism and Ethnic Churches in Multiethnic Contexts” for the Journal of Reformed Theology is the most important peer-reviewed article that’s come out over the past decade on ecclesiology. It’s the article that I wish I wrote, but I knew I would never get to. So for those of us who haven’t read it yet, would you mind just summarizing for us?
Andrew Ong: Wow, thanks, Moses. I appreciate those kind words. I was trying to get into the conversation about multiethnic churches and ethnic churches since multiethnic is so hot right now. Coming from the ethnic church and having such a high view of what ethnic churches offered to people like myself, I wanted to ask the question: Should multiethnic churches be so advocated for that we no longer have room for the ethnic church? Is there really no place for the ethnic church in multiethnic contexts? I wanted to address that from my theological perspective, which is this neo-Calvinist perspective, which some would argue, has a racist history. So I wanted to engage with that question.
Moses Lee: That’s fascinating, because, like you said, so many people, missiologists, and most academics were advocating for multiethnic churches. As you were studying this, I’m sure you notice that there’s even sociological data showing maybe that’s not the only way or the best way for churches to move forward. So what made you so interested in studying the theological basis for ethnic-specific churches?
Andrew Ong: In my gospel communication class at Westminster, we got to write sermons and the text that my group chose was the Tower of Babel. I was going through the commentaries, and the Alan Ross commentary on Genesis kind of picks up on this theme that God’s intention was actually diversity. What Babel was was a uniformity against God’s cultural mandate and his desire for pluriformity in the world. I thought that was fascinating and affirming. I thought that could nuance the discussion of multiethnic versus ethnic churches. It blew the gates open for me.
Moses Lee: Gray, in light of what Andrew has shared, and maybe even the core theological foundation for his article, what exactly is neo-Calvinism and how is it distinct from Calvinism?
Gray Sutanto: That’s a massive question, Moses, and that’s a really, really good question. Neo-Calvinism was a 19th-century, early 20th-century theological movement, specifically the theology of Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck, coming out of Holland, Netherlands.
Neo-Calvinism refers to their attempts to rehabilitate Calvinism and reform orthodox confessional Reformed theology for modern Dutch culture. What they were trying to say is that confessional Reformed theology is not going to be a hindrance for the flourishing of what they saw around them, which was pluralization, the coming of the age of knowledge and science, and also the coming of the recognition that the world is a much bigger place in that what they had considered. So they actually argued: Calvinism is not going to be a hindrance to that; Calvinism would be helpful for that. That’s why there’s the “neo” in neo-Calvinism — there was a reassertion of Reformed theology for the modern world.
What was really interesting from their own perspectives, and is this maybe what’s most relevant for what Andrew just said just now, is that they actually argued very, very strongly against a church-state model that said that there should be a theocracy, but rather, we should actually see culture as shaped by Christian principles. What that means is that in the era of God’s common grace, God has patience with the differing worldviews that are present here today — the different cultures, ethnicities, and races that are here today. God desires for the Christian gospel to be persuasive to this context of plurality.
What Kuyper actually argued as a statesman was that the state doesn’t have a responsibility to enforce a single worldview — that would be a uniformity principle. But rather the state’s responsibility is that all the peoples in that particular nation will be able to freely pursue their own visions of good. There would be, in Kuyper’s vision, Islamic schools next to Catholic schools next to Christian schools. There would be secular schools and modernist schools as well.
So people take Kuyper’s famous quote out of context — every square inch belongs to the Lordship of Jesus Christ — and they think that Kuyper was a theocrat and he wants to make Holland into a completely theocratic Christian nation. But what Kuyper meant by that was very different. Kuyper actually meant that to say that Christ is Lord over everything, but it doesn’t mean that Christians are Lord over everything. So he actually made space for the freedom of conscience and made space for pluralism to flourish. He argued that this was a Christian principle — Christian principles meant that there should be a plurality of worldviews in the public sphere, even though he didn’t endorse every single worldview.
Kuyper and Bavinck also argued that the church, interestingly enough, had a plurality to it. The church’s plurality is going to be witnessed by the fact that the church will have its own distinct character in every culture, time, and space. We shouldn’t, therefore, look to the past as if there’s a kind of golden age for the present. And we shouldn’t, therefore, look to the past and say, the church has to look like one particular culture, even if it’s Geneva, even though they loved what Calvin had done with Geneva, even if it’s historic Israel, whatever it might be. They argued against that and said that the church should have its own distinct character in every age in every time.
This is seen clearly when Bavinck came to America, for example. He argued that America didn’t have a rosy future for Calvinism. America was way too capitalistic, too strong-willed, too pragmatic for them to embrace the predestination vision of Calvinism. And yet, he said, that’s okay. We shouldn’t expect American Christianity to look like Dutch Reformed Christianity. He even said that Calvinism isn’t the only truth, which is a very potent, controversial statement there.
That’s really consistent to his views even before he came to America. In 1894 he wrote an article called, “The Future of Calvinism,” and he argued there that if you really believed in the freedom of the churches — we see this diversity of confessions (Dutch Reformed have their own confessions, the Westminster standards had their own confessions) — we should expect each nation’s culture to produce a confession of their own.
He’s not going to say that we should have contradictory confessions, but there’s a certain character to it, and therefore, each church and each church’s culture could and should look quite different from one another, and we shouldn’t impose one culture to another culture. He makes a very strong distinction there between the gospel and the culture.
So that’s a rough outline of the pluriformity of the churches, and Andrew made mention of the uniformity of the churches. That’s what I think we sometimes think of when we just see a bunch of people coming together — we’re all uniformly the same. But Bavinck had a unity and diversity model where different ethnicities, different cultures are in one, same church, but they’re all reflecting God in a diversity of ways.
Moses Lee: So is what Bavnick is trying to say is that when we’re all in heaven, we’re not only going to be speaking English, right? That’s not the ideal goal, or nor is it something that we should be striving for today as we strive to be a sanctified church. It seems like what you’re saying is that neo-Calvinism advocates for a variety of cultural expressions, and they all can be good.
Gray Sutanto: Yeah, absolutely. We take the Tower of Babel narrative as both a blessing and a curse. God punished them by dispersing them and giving them multiple languages, but at the same time, it’s a blessing because now the people are forced to follow what God commanded that for them individually — to be fruitful and to multiply. What Bavinck would argue is that if people were diversifying all over the globe, then naturally there will be different dialects and different languages.
Here’s where Christianity differs from Islam. In Isalm, the Arabic language is almost like a divine language where God had chosen this particular language to communicate His revelation. For Christianity, it has always been a project of ours to translate the Bible into different languages. The Bible itself has a diversity of languages and a diversity of cultures from presented there — Hebrew, Greek, Roman, and so on. So there are lots of ways in which the Bible should be communicated to all these different cultures, and so the gospel transcends the cultures and transforms the cultures.
Moses Lee: Andrew, I know neo-Calvinists have a little bit of an icky part in their history, so how is our desire to affirm ethnic-specific ministries different from apartheid in South Africa, where Calvinists in that country pushed for this policy of segregation?
Andrew Ong: That’s a very important question because we don’t want to repeat history’s mistakes. Apartheid in South Africa, which enforced segregation between the Afrikaner culture and the Black community in South Africa, has very deep theological roots. A lot of people point to this Abraham-Kuyper-neo-Calvinist tradition to say that it is the reason why there was such segregation and so much racism in South Africa. In my paper, I talk about how there is something to that.
But I would say that Reformed theology practiced in the best way and in the most holistic, consistent way is very much against apartheid. As Gray mentioned, we want to say that Calvinism does affirm that God intended for a multiplicity of ethnic cultures to flourish. It’s good for a Chinese person to understand his Chinese-ness. It’s good for a Nigerian to understand their Nigerian-ness. That’s the beauty of what God preserved at the Tower of Babel, even as he judged the people there.
That valuing of someone’s Nigerian-ness, someone’s Kenyan-ness, someone’s Korean-ness doesn’t need to automatically lend itself to racism and segregation. The difference between apartheid in South Africa and what I would want to advocate as the affirmation of ethnic churches is that, first of all, when you affirm ethnic churches, you’re not necessarily excluding multiethnic churches. I believe that ethnic churches are good, that God blesses them, and they’re legitimate churches. I also serve in a multiethnic church myself, and I’m happy about that. The multiethnic church has its place as well in the Kingdom of God in a multiethnic context versus apartheid, where they said, “No, just segregation. This is the only way.”
The difference is, and I think Gray used this word, there’s freedom. There’s freedom of conscience and freedom of worship. There’s a voluntary aspect to: “Yeah, do I want to be a part of the church? Or do I want to be a part of a multiethnic church?” With apartheid, there is no choice. There is no freedom to do so. That’s a huge difference.
Moses Lee: On top of that, in the apartheid experience, there was also the element of power, like social power, political power distribution, and how unevenly that was incorporated into South African society. So apartheid was more oppressive towards non-Whites, and that could be a danger too, right?
Andrew Ong: Definitely, that’s a huge other example that we need to mention. When we talk about the legitimacy of ethnic churches in the United States, we’re not talking about the legitimacy of, Anglo churches in America. We’re talking about: “Is it okay for a Black church to be a Black church? Is it okay for the African Methodist Episcopal Church to exist? Is it okay for the Boston Chinese Evangelical Church to exist?” versus in South Africa, where you have this dominant, White, powerful group, saying, “No, you have to have your Black church, and we have to have our White church and there can be no intermingling. We have to be segregated.” You’re right. The power dynamics are super important there.
Moses Lee: So then going back to what you’re talking about earlier, it sounds like what neo-Calvinism is teaching you isn’t so much that one is better than the other — ethnic-specific or multiethnic isn’t better than the other — they’re actually two sides of the same coin in terms of how the church can be expressed on Earth.
Andrew Ong: Yeah, I would say that just goes with the pluriformity and catholicity of the church. There are many different ways to do church and many different expressions of the church, and no single local church is the very perfect expression of what the church is in God’s eyes.
Moses Lee: Gray, could you define for us what the doctrine of the pluriformity of the church is in the context of Herman Bavinck’s theology?
Gray Sutanto: Bavinck would actually argue that the pluriformity of the church is a distinctly reformed Catholic position. Again, I would point readers to “The Future of Calvinism” article, where he really teases this out. He specifically argues that if you’re a reformed Catholic, you’re distinguishing yourself from being a Roman Catholic, right. And he argues that Roman Catholicism is a contradiction in terms.
Why? Because catholicity says that the church is universal — that the church could be all over the world, the church could be expressive of different cultures and ethnicities, and even have different shades of theological confession that you’re adhering to.
But if you’re a Roman Catholic, you’re actually saying that the catholic Church is going to be manifested in just one particular church-nation principle, namely in Rome, and also in a single line of the papacy. Bavinck actually argues that’s a contradiction in terms.
So if you’re a reformed Catholic, immediately what you see in the Reformation movement is that every single country that adopted the reformed principles took on their own character. So he says that, again, the Dutch reformation was very different from the Scottish reformation and the British during the English reformation. Also, that’s also very different from what you get in Germany, what you get in Switzerland, and so on. So, the referendum, the reformational principle, in other words, not only permitted, but also encouraged this diversification. You see that especially in the different confessions that were written at the time, not only the Westminster Standards but the Three Forms of Unity, the Genevan Standards, and so on — these are all different shades of the truth for their particular nations and peoples.
So he argues that when the Reformation Period came out, Christianity came to its own. Why? Because it’s no longer now limited to one particular expression, namely the Roman expression. Now the whole world can take a hold of this leavening power of the gospel, and each culture could therefore take it into a different direction, even though they’re all gonna be united by the Lordship of Jesus and the Bible.
This reminds me of what Tim Keller said. He argues that, when, therefore, you’re evangelizing to someone of a different ethnicity, you’re not calling for them to be Americans first, or Dutch or Indonesian. Rather you’re actually calling them to be Christians first, which means that if you were an African polytheist, you’re not being called to become an American, first and foremost, but rather, you’re going to be called to be an African Christian. If you’re an Indonesian, you’re not going to be colonialized into following Dutch culture as if Dutch culture is more advanced than Indonesian culture, which is the mistake of the colonial desire of the Netherlands in the 19th-20th century — and Bavinck was very critical of that. Heactually argued that they should actually follow their own culture and their own version of Christianity. So we should not become Dutchman, but rather Indonesian Christians. And Johan Bavinck, Bavinck’s nephew, also had strong thoughts about that.
That’s incredibly important, and then allows us to really be critical about how we think about communicating the gospel to different ethnicities and distinguishing our own cultural preferences to what the gospel essentially really is.
Moses Lee: Let’s tie this back to Scripture a little bit. What are some misconceptions of Revelation 7? How do some advocates for multiethnic ministries misunderstand that, and how do neo-Calvinists understand it differently?
Andrew Ong: When people think of Revelation 7, it’s this eschatological vision of the end of time, and they think, “If that’s the ideal, if that’s where we’re gonna end up, why doesn’t my church look like that?” That’s very simplistic.
I think it’s a well-intentioned desire to follow the trajectory of Scripture — this biblical theology of the people of God and this beautiful vision that’s placed before us in Revelation 7. But I also think it too highly estimates our local church. Maybe because of the American Baptistic or congregationalist kind of understanding of the church, there is a lack of understanding of the connectionalism of the church and what it means that the church is catholic.
Moses Lee: So what you’re trying to say is that we can’t look at the individual congregation to be reflective of Revelation 7, but all of the churches across the world should reflect Revelation 7. So it might mean that some churches are ethnic-specific, but others might be multiethnic, and they’re both okay.
Gray Sutanto: Andrew, you made a really good point there. Emphasizing the catholicity of the church is so crucially important here. Just because your local church doesn’t look like Revelation 7, it doesn’t follow that the whole church doesn’t look like Revelation 7. We can actually say that the church, because it exists globally, already looks a little bit like Revelation 7 — not perfectly, but it really anticipates it.
I think there is a kind of narcissism there too. We’re like, “Oh, my church doesn’t look like Revelation 7 so revelation seven. So better for the church isn’t like Revelation chapter seven. Well, zoom out a little bit and look at Christianity all over the world. It represents so many different nations and cultures.
Moses Lee: In Revelation 7, it talks about the nations, tribes, and people speaking all languages worshipping Christ. But it doesn’t also tell us how they’re arranged. How does John know that they’re different tribes and peoples unless maybe they’re even congregated together in heaven, and he sees the separation of cultures? We don’t know, ultimately. So maybe it’s a bit presumptuous to assume Revelation 7 is a multiethnic picture of what the church ought to be. Am I understanding that correctly?
Andrew Ong: Exactly. It’s imperfect but I like to use the analogy of a bowl of Skittles. Is Revelation 7 a mixed bowl of Skittles? Or is it a bowl of Skittles that’s arranged with all the reds, greens, and the oranges together? In one sense, we don’t know what that picture is in Revelation 7, but we know that they’re all there.
Moses Lee: Taking a bit more practically, as you guys minister, shepherd and raise up pastors in the seminary context and in the local church context, what would you say to an Asian American pastor who is leading a church that’s predominantly Asian American? Would you encourage him or her to continue to intentionally become more multi ethnic? Or should they continue to stay and serve in the Asian American context? Is there a right or wrong answer then? And how can they know?
Andrew Ong: Asian American pastors who are pastoring Asian American churches will have different callings, and their contexts will be a big part of their callings. There are multiple levels to this question because there’s a level of discipleship: Who are my people now? How do I best disciple them?
If my church is still with Chinese people, I want to disciple Chinese American Christians. At the same time, there’s also the outward facing elements about like, Who are we trying to reach? who’s not here? So there’s the question: Should we just reach those who are of our own kind? Or should we reach outwards?
That is a question for elders and pastors to really wrestle with and to seek the Lord about. I don’t think there is a one-size-fits-all answer for every single church or even for one church in different seasons. Like it was good that some of these immigrant churches focused on ministering to, you know people in their own language. But now, some of them have English ministries now, and that’s an opportunity, right? There are tons of dynamics to consider.
Gary Sutanto: Another thing that comes to my mind is that your church should at least reflect the particular city or town that you’re in or particular town. So if the town is predominantly Chinese town, then I don’t think you should feel guilty at all that you’re not in a multiethnic church. You’re ministering to that people.
I also think, therefore, that the church should really reflect the city that it’s in. If the city is really diverse and your church is only catering to one particular race or ethnicity, I do think there should be some hard questions to ask.
This is a particular issue when it comes to let’s say, an immigrant-based church. Back in college, I actually went to an Indonesian-speaking church with an English ministry. The pastor was a first-generation Indonesian and a lot of the first attendees and members were first-generation Indonesian immigrants there as well. What began to happen is that as they had children, they were going to English ministries. Those children grew up, and they couldn’t identify with the main Indonesian ministry. Those first-generation folks found that their church simply couldn’t grow because they were dependent upon more Indonesian immigrants coming through. When there weren’t any Indonesian immigrants that were coming through, their church simply stayed the same and it didn’t grow.
They were in a particular town that was mainly Hispanic. So a question that I would have in mind is: How do you reach out to these people who are Hispanic who are in this town so that we’re not completely dependent upon those who happens to come here for school, who happens to come here to get a job in the United States, and actually reflect that particular town that we’re in.
There’s a place for churches who are for that immigrant community, but at the same time for the longevity of the church and for the mission of the church, you should also seek to minister to those in that particular town that they happen to be in locally.
Andrew Ong: I would qualify what Greg just said, though, with the catholicity of the church. There’s a sense in which we are wanting to be contextual and realistic with our gifts and our strengths. So I don’t think that it’s impossible that a Latino person might walk into that Indonesian church that Gray was a part of. But I also think that there are ways that the Indonesian church could serve Latino churches, or that the Indonesian church could serve the Latino population in ways that aren’t just simply, “Let’s start a Spanish speaking ministry,” or “Let’s just throw all our eggs in this basket of reaching this Latino community.” There are creative ways to be about that.
Again this speaks to the importance of connectionalism. We need to be partnering with other churches in our area. Sure you might have a metropolitan area that is super diverse. Does every single church need to have the same ratio of demographics in each church? No, but if there is a large population of Latino people, I would hope that there is a place for them, even if it’s not in a multiethnic church. I would hope that the Chinese church in the area supports the Latino church there that is reaching out to this population, even if the Chinese church is not perhaps well-equipped to reach out to them. So there are creative ways to do that, and again, it speaks to the catholicity of the church.
Gray Sutanto: So in other words, Andrew, you’re saying that we should all be Presbyterians to do this.
Andrew Ong: (Laughs.) Connectionalism is is quite important. I think I’m okay with parish-church connectionism. (Laughs again.) But I love the city-to-city model, where you got Baptists and Presbyterians and egalitarians and complementarians getting together and wanting to reach their cities.
Moses Lee: Just one final question. We talk to church planners or pastors, and they often talk about wanting to reach a specific ethnic group. How can we help them to discern their heart motives? Are they being motivated by good theology? Or are they just being purely pragmatic? Or are they even being patronizing: “We have the money, and we have the resources. Let us go help those poor people that happen to be a certain race or ethnic group.” How can we help them to discern that?
Andrew Ong: That’s a really good pastoral question, and I don’t think there is an easy answer. Good church planters, when they’re going into areas that they’re not a part of, they get to know the churches that have already been established in the area that they’re seeking to minister to. I think that church planters should do that, instead of saying, “Hey, you know, there are a ton of Asian folk in this area, and we’re just going to go get ‘em.” Gray used the term earlier: that’s narcissistic.
Moses Lee: It’s like they’re saying, “We can finally do the work that’s been missing,” while they’re completely neglecting the fact that there are people already on the ground having been doing the work.
Andrew Ong: Yeah, and you see this all the time. Some kind of flagship megachurch sends a highly resourced core team into a city to do something. Meanwhile you have these ethnic churches that have been there for forever, faithfully ministering with much less resources, just kind of saying, “Hey, perhaps we could have done better with those resources than you guys.” You see that all the time, and I think we need to be more careful about that. We need conversation with other faithful Christians to help listen to the Spirit and discern: “Is this kind of a narcissistic way of going about ministry? Or is this truly of God and should we be pursuing this?”
Moses Lee: Thank you for your time. This is incredibly helpful, and I hope that our listeners were also blessed by this. It is great seeing how your theological training has also practically shaped the way the church can look like, what teachers can look like, and how pastors and church players can frame their way of targeting people and reaching their community. So thank you guys again, so much for your time and your wisdom.