What is a Multicultural Church?

by Stuart Murray Williams

What is a multi-cultural church? How do you go about planting such a church? These are questions some within Urban Expression are currently pondering.

Most of our church planting teams are working in culturally diverse inner-city communities. Some are intentionally building friendship and partnership links with members of other faith communities. Some have rejoiced to see people from various ethnic, religious and cultural backgrounds coming to faith in Jesus Christ. But the teams themselves, though not entirely monochrome, have not been formed as self-consciously multi-cultural.

Is a multi-cultural church desirable? The recent trend in emerging church circles and the ‘fresh expressions’ of church around the fringes of inherited churches is actually away from multi-cultural church and towards niche-church, targeted church, church in sub-cultures, networks and friendship groups. The homogeneity of such churches can be advantageous (and is often no more problematic than many inherited churches that are homogeneous by default rather than design), but there are significant theological and strategic questions to be asked. How do such churches model the reconciling work of Christ, who breaks down cultural barriers through the cross? What kind of witness are such churches in fragmented communities? Though such churches may initially grow quickly, are they sustainable over the long haul? Even if there remains sufficient justification for such churches, maybe intentionally multi-cultural churches are also needed as alternative responses to a multi-cultural society.

Is a multi-cultural church feasible? How many cultures can one church embrace? Multi-ethnic churches may be fairly common, in which there are members from many different cultural backgrounds, but multi-ethnic is not the same as multi-cultural. How can the distinctives of many cultures be honoured and combined in a single church without becoming absorbed into a cultural composite that no longer truly reflects any of the constituent cultures? Even if the leadership of the church is multi-cultural (and not just in a tokenistic sense), even if the style of worship and teaching draws on many cultural influences, even if the various cultures are experienced through the food, architecture, programme, languages, mission priorities and governance structures of the church, what happens as the church grows, matures, loses members and gains others? Won’t one culture inevitably dominate the others, or a new and indistinct sub-culture result? These are challenging issues.

We do not pretend to have the answers to such questions – but we are convinced the issues are important and that planting multi-cultural churches could be a healthy and necessary alternative to the planting of many different mono-cultural churches. So we are hoping to recruit and deploy a self-consciously multi-cultural team, with a brief to plant a multi-cultural church.

We welcome insights that readers of the Root and Branch emails may have – and enquiries from anyone interested in becoming involved.

News from Urban Expression

- We are looking forward to deploying an eighth team in London. Following an interview last week, we have a new team leader and a place in mind for this new team. However, we are not able to give further details yet: significantly, for the first time we will have a team leader who is already a Baptist minister, who will be giving up a salary and manse to plant a new church. He will be telling his church about this very soon.

- The team on the Ocean Estate, led by Nick & Kerry Coke, are in good heart at present. Nick writes: ‘On Easter Day a student from China, who became a Christian after wandering in on our day of prayer at the university chaplaincy, was baptized and enrolled as a member of The Salvation Army. He brought twelve of his friends with him – none of whom had been to church before. It was a great opportunity for him to share his story and new belief and life in Jesus Christ with those who had never heard about such things. One of the visitors remarked, “Why do Christians not tell us about this? It sounds like my friend has made the best decision he could for his life.” Since then, two of his friends have attended church. Please pray for us as we respond to this God-given opportunity.’

- Wapping Community Church is running a children’s holiday club, called Peacemakers, in the summer. One of our trustees, Kathryn Copsey, has seen the material and is very impressed with it. She writes: ‘The material for Peacemakers has been written by Ruth Carter and Karen Stallard and is brilliant! It is based on a circus theme, featuring the Tower Hamlets State Circus. The circus will meet everyday for five days and will be open to children from ages 3 to 11. Each day the programme is based around a story about the Tower Hamlets State Circus that highlights a theme for the day. This theme is explored through songs, drama, games, crafts and learning circus skills.’ If you are interested in seeing (and maybe using) this material, contact ruth@e-carter.freeserve.co.uk.

- The first year of the Crucible course is nearing its end. A total of 45 people studied on the course this year and feedback has been very positive. We are now accepting bookings for the 2006-07 course starting in October. For further information see www.cruciblecourse.net.