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This morning, Antioch Bible Church and Pastor Hutch were featured on the 700 Club as an example of a multicultural church. (Click here for the article and video.) The news segment was basically suggesting that cultural diversity is some kind of new trend in American churches. A couple of hours after this story aired, Pastor Hutch sent an e-mail to his Prayer Warrior list, simply saying, "Praise God, the 700 Club program went very well! Now let's pray that God will use this to show how church should be done!"
Okay, well, I agree with Hutch that churches should be culturally diverse and that God wants us to welcome people into the church who are different from us. But here's the thing. I highly doubt there are very many church leaders out there going, "Wow, we've been doing it wrong all this time, I thought we were supposed to be an all [insert ethnicity here] church!" I don't think the problem is so much that churches don't want to be multicultural, but rather that they just don't know how. Harvest Community Church, the predominantly Asian-American church that I attended in California, always wrestled with this problem, as I'm sure many predominantly white churches do. We were always welcoming people of all races, but the fact remained that anybody who walked into the church who wasn't Asian immediately felt different. Because of this, a small group of Asians will just attract more Asians, and you have a snowball effect. (Actually, I guess that would have to be white people to have a snowball; Asians would be more like... hmm, a yellow snowball? Never mind, that's gross.) So in order for churches like Harvest to follow Antioch's model of cultural diversity, they'd need to first figure out how to break the snowball effect. And I have yet to find anyone who's figured it out.
Antioch never had a snowball problem because it started as a diverse church and has been ever since. So most of Antioch's members, as evidenced by those interviewed in that news segment, probably haven't got a clue, either. They just take it for granted that they found a church that's diverse, and that's where they get their multicultural exposure. The only advice that I've heard from Antioch's pastors about this is, reach out to those who don't look like you. But if that's all there was to it, wouldn't more people have figured it out by now? Are most people actually not doing this, or is there something else going on that's preventing churches from becoming more diverse? I think a deeper investigation into this would be needed for any church that wishes to take on Antioch's model of cultural diversity.
Okay, well, I agree with Hutch that churches should be culturally diverse and that God wants us to welcome people into the church who are different from us. But here's the thing. I highly doubt there are very many church leaders out there going, "Wow, we've been doing it wrong all this time, I thought we were supposed to be an all [insert ethnicity here] church!" I don't think the problem is so much that churches don't want to be multicultural, but rather that they just don't know how. Harvest Community Church, the predominantly Asian-American church that I attended in California, always wrestled with this problem, as I'm sure many predominantly white churches do. We were always welcoming people of all races, but the fact remained that anybody who walked into the church who wasn't Asian immediately felt different. Because of this, a small group of Asians will just attract more Asians, and you have a snowball effect. (Actually, I guess that would have to be white people to have a snowball; Asians would be more like... hmm, a yellow snowball? Never mind, that's gross.) So in order for churches like Harvest to follow Antioch's model of cultural diversity, they'd need to first figure out how to break the snowball effect. And I have yet to find anyone who's figured it out.
Antioch never had a snowball problem because it started as a diverse church and has been ever since. So most of Antioch's members, as evidenced by those interviewed in that news segment, probably haven't got a clue, either. They just take it for granted that they found a church that's diverse, and that's where they get their multicultural exposure. The only advice that I've heard from Antioch's pastors about this is, reach out to those who don't look like you. But if that's all there was to it, wouldn't more people have figured it out by now? Are most people actually not doing this, or is there something else going on that's preventing churches from becoming more diverse? I think a deeper investigation into this would be needed for any church that wishes to take on Antioch's model of cultural diversity.
Anybody have any thoughts?
--Wayne
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