This is part 3 of a four-part blog series on racial and cultural diversity. The material here is excerpted from a book I have coming out next year called Gaining by Losing: Why the Future Belongs to Churches that Send. Be sure to read part 1, part 2, and part 4.
Many majority culture believers say they want a multi-cultural church, but when you get down to it, they really don’t. They want a group of people of different races coming together to worship in their preferred style. You might say (as my friend Vance Pitman often does), they want a multi-colored church, not a multi-cultural one.
Do you want to know how you can know you are in a multi-cultural church? Sometimes you feel uncomfortable. If you’re not feeling uncomfortable, chances are you are in a church dominated by your own cultural preferences. I once had a white college student tell me that he wished our church were more multi-cultural. I told him to keep praying about it. A few weeks later he told me that he didn’t like how one of our worship leaders jumped around on stage and told everyone to raise their hands, and wanted to know if I could tell him to quit. I suggested to him that maybe he didn’t really want a multi-cultural church after all, just a bunch of different-colored people acting like they grew up in his culture.
The majority culture must learn to sacrifice its preferences, too. In fact, they should lead the way. God tells his church in Philippians 2:1–5 that they are to follow the example of Christ in considering others’ preferences more important than their own. Wouldn’t that include preferences of culture, too? Christians in positions of strength, including cultural strength, are to leverage it to serve not themselves but those in weakness. Majority cultures in churches don’t have to give up their cultural preferences in order to grow, but if they are following Jesus, they will want to serve the minority cultures around them, which means elevating some of their preferences above their own. Do I sound like I am contradicting my previous point about needing to adapt the ministry to the majority culture? Maybe I am, a little. You have to balance the two.
It Is and Isn’t About the Music
On that note (no pun intended), let me address what is probably the thorniest issue churches deal with in cultural adaptation: music and worship style. Here’s something important I’ve had to learn about diversification, in all its contradictory glory:
Diversity is not just about the music. Some people say, “Well, you want black people in your church? Play gospel music. Want Latinos? Play salsa music.”
Not only does this sort of mentality reinforce the differences between us, it also nearly never works. Cultural unity is about far more than agreeing on a preferred music style. It is primarily about relationship and a disposition of humility toward others, not putting together a product that satisfies everyone’s preferences perfectly.
At the same time, diversity is about the music. There’s just no getting around this: musical style seems to be the biggest practical sticking point churches encounter as they pursue multi-culturalism. Everybody loves her preferred worship expression, and we can’t understand people who don’t like what we like.
We have some traditional Southern Baptists at our church, and during the musical portion of the service, they’ll sing boisterously, occasionally putting up one hand shoulder high or, during a reflective song, putting out both hands in front of them like they are trying to carry a TV set. But that is as high as they’ll go. When I stand up to preach they pull out notebooks out and feverishly take notes, slipping in an occasional, rousing “Amen!”, especially when I alliterate something.
We have some black members who jump and dance during worship (and occasionally run) and attempt to carry on full conversations (complete with subjects and verbs) with me while I am preaching.
We have Korean believers whom I seriously think are going to hurt themselves during worship. They yell (not sing, yell) the songs, and sometimes I think they are trying to jump up to give Jesus a high-five as we worship. During the preaching, however, they don’t make a sound. They sit respectively and take notes. (I asked one why they are so demonstrative in singing and so demur during the preaching, and they said that in their culture it is rude to talk while someone else is talking, particularly when someone is giving a public address. So their silence is reflective of respect.)
Which of those behaviors is “best” in worship?
Well, Amen.
Some of the more expressive cultures in our church look with consternation at believers from the more unexpressive cultures and wonder how they can remain so unemotional in the presence of so great a God. They point out that we scream our heads off at basketball games, but we won’t do the same for the God of the universe? Why would King James (LeBron James) deserve a more rousing response than King Jesus?
On the other side, there are those who feel like aggressively “charismatic” worship leaders do little more than play on emotion, build crowd dynamics, and then unjustifiably label that “the Spirit.” Loud music, shouting, and a charismatic leader, they say, can get a crowd worked up regardless of the subject matter. Furthermore, unbelievers in the Western context are very skeptical of emotional moments they perceive as contrived—especially when you label those moments “the Spirit of God.”
Which culture’s concerns are more valid?
Umm… Well, again, Amen.
Both sides bring truths that must be balanced. What is wrong is for either side to declare the other’s concerns invalid. We must study our Bibles, analyze our given contexts, and be open to worshipping together with others who express themselves in different ways than we do. Again, the sign of being in a multi-cultural church is that sometimes you feel uncomfortable, because in a multi-cultural church there’s a strong chance that the person beside you, or on the stage in front of you, might be doing things differently from you.
The Staff Should Stay “Ahead” of the Congregation in Diversity
If we want to see multi-culturalism take root in our churches, we must prioritize diversity in our leadership. Leadership makeup sets a tone for the congregation to follow. The church in Acts 13 seems to have prioritized, and prized, diverse leadership. Eventually, the rest of the church followed suit.
Some people object, “But isn’t that just tokenism?” Tokenism, as I understand it, is when either (1) you have no intention of actually giving away authority and just want a face up front to make it look like your leadership is diverse—when in fact it is not and you have no intention of sharing authority; or (2) you put an unqualified person in a position of leadership simply because of their skin color.
But prioritizing diversity in leadership is different. It is deliberately attempting to send a signal about your intentions. “We may not be as diverse as we want to be, but this is where we want to go.” I once visited a large, all-black church with a white friend. I think my friend and I were the only white people in the whole place, and I felt like everyone was looking at me asking, “Why are you here?” They were extremely friendly to us, but I still felt like I was out of place. Later, reflecting on my experience, I realized that if just one white person had walked across the stage, I would have felt like, “Oh, I’m welcome here.” Maybe I shouldn’t have felt that way, but I did. It helped me realize how African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, or Arabs feel when they step into our church and feel overwhelmed by all the whiteness around them. We try to have minority presence in positions of leadership in every service at The Summit Church, and we have elevated several new pastors and elders of color into senior leadership positions on our team. We have begun training numerous others for future leadership positions. We have seen the number of qualified pastors and leaders of color multiply as we do so. To date, 60% of our central worship staff is black, and of our eight campus pastors, four are non-white.
The point of pursuing diverse leadership is not to look good, or fill a quota, but to actually bring a diversity of backgrounds and perspectives to the table. This kind of cultural diversity will rarely happen without intentionality. Left to ourselves, we veer back to the ditch of homogeneity like a car severely out of alignment. The pursuit of diversity takes intentional gospel leadership.
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