Multiethnic Church: Why Bother?

January 18th was a day to remember at our church. We had an energetic crowd, the Lord was moving, and I finally was able to unpack what we mean when we say that Relentless Church is part of the multiethnic church movement.

The January 18th message was going to be one that we referred back to in the future, one that we would ask new people to listen to so that they would have an idea of our identity as a church. For reasons outside of our control, the message did not record successfully. The 18th was such an important Sunday for us and being part of this movement is so core to who we are, I wanted to write this blog to give a brief overview of that message. All we have from that Sunday are two incredible videos that we showed, one before the message and one after. The videos are simply a conversation that we believe is helpful to move us in the right direction, and we have posted both videos on our website under the messages tab as well as at the bottom of this blog. One day there will be more people in our church that did not hear that message than did, and we will preach it again. Until then, here ya go:

First off, let me say that we are not mad at any other churches. Some churches do not feel the conviction that we do to showcase Christ exalting diversity. Some churches could not be multiethnic if they tried due to the particular demographics in their part of the country. We are not here to make judgments on other churches, we are here to be the church God called us to be.

We thought about starting the conversation with our church by inviting everyone to go see the movie Selma together. After viewing the movie with two dear brothers, their wise counsel was to start the conversation with the gospel instead of starting it with a movie that was not necessarily trying to advance the gospel. That being said, I would still encourage people to go see Selma, it is well done and from my vantage point the more people who see it the better dialogue we can have. So, we decided to start the conversation with a simple message about Christ exalting diversity. By any definition, the church in America is still very much segregated. There are a lot of reasons and variables of why this is the case, which I will not dig into here, lets just begin by agreeing that for the most part our country attends church along racial lines. It has been that way for years, and although we have integrated schools, local governments, sports leagues, and so on, the American church has for the most part been silent and still on the subject of integrating the church. The sad reality is that for almost all of our 240 year history as a nation, a diverse worshipping body has been the extreme exception. We are not at peace with that, and we don’t believe that our God is either. We desire to be a multiethnic church, where the diversity of our city and area is mirrored in our people. We have a long way to go, we know there will be some hardships and complications, and we are learning by the day. Our vision to be a multiethnic church is not a whim, it is not a fad, and it is not a trend. We are in the infant days of a pioneer movement of God, a movement that I believe will change our country. The gospel centered church should lead the way in racial reconciliation, after all our God wrote the book on reconciliation. On January 18th, I shared the two main reasons we seek to be a multiethnic church:

#1 It is the heart of God! Looking at pictures of heaven given to us in Revelation 5 and 7, we see clearly that in heaven we will be united in worship together across tribes, languages and nations. There will not be white churches, black churches, hispanic churches, or asian churches in heaven, instead we will all unite together in worship of our great God. The most known prayer in the world is the Lord’s Prayer, which says that our Father’s name is holy, that we should pray for His kingdom to come, and His will to be done . . . on earth as it is in heaven. It is the job of the church, to bring the will of God from heaven to earth. In other words, we ain’t waitin on heaven to unite across racial lines! When you combine the glimpses of heaven with the picture we have of the first churches recorded in the book of Acts, you again see God’s heart is for His church to be diverse. From the group of people he gathered in Acts 2, to the racial makeups of the early churches planted by Paul, it is clear that God desired His church to be multiethnic.

#2 It is a byproduct of the gospel! We define the gospel as the incredible news of our rescue by the grace of God through Jesus. When people realize the particulars of this rescue, meaning from what, for what purpose, how, when, and why, it changes everything. The gospel is so powerful that it unites across all kinds of lines that would divide us outside of the gospel. The best text for this is Ephesians 2, which walks us through Jesus killing the hostility that existed between Jews and Gentiles. Paul teaches that Jesus came and made peace between races, making us all one through the blood of Christ. It goes on to say we are members of God’s household. What do you call members of a household? Thats right, family! What kind of family spends all week together but then splits up to worship on Sunday? It was never the goal for us to be equal or to coexist, the God ordained goal is that we would be reconciled, meaning made right and brought together, first to God and then to each other. We are so thankful and excited that God has given us something that is big enough to unite us across racial, economic and political lines. It is all about the gospel, and we believe as people understand and allow their hearts to be shaped by the gospel, Christ exalting diversity will be the result.

Other points:

We ended the service by asking people to start the conversation. We do not want a diverse crowd, we want diverse relationships. We meet in a movie theater, there are diverse crowds in a theater all the time, we don’t want to be one more. Instead, we want to develop diverse relationships, built on the gospel!
We don’t use the term “colorblind,” although well intentioned it minimizes the color of skin that God designed. Since our race and ethnicity was ordained by God, we don’t want to be blind to it, we want to celebrate it. We believe it is possible to celebrate it and at the same time allow our race and culture to be secondary in importance to the gospel.
Our country needs us like never before, we may be more equal in a legal sense than anytime in our history but the last 6 months have shown us we are far from reconciled. The goal of racial reconciliation can only be accomplished through the gospel of Jesus!
We have way more questions than answers. We don’t have a blueprint outside of what I’ve already shared. We haven’t done anything to force the diversity that exists in our young church. We are trusting God and leaning on the experience of some other multiethnic churches that are a little further down the road and who are gracious to allow us to learn from their victories and mistakes.
There was a multiethnic church conference held in Memphis, TN in April. Last year was the first ever such conference, it was a joy for me to attend. The hard part was I attended alone, this year we are taking a group. We have already bought tickets hoping that some of our Relentless people would want to join us. This year’s conference is about the “how” part of the multiethnic movement. You can read more about the Kainos Conference at kainos.is. If you would like to join us, we will leave April 21 and return April 24th. Please email at info@relentlesschurch.cc if you would like to know more details.
Finally, as I write this I am getting ready to head to Winston-Salem to celebrate the life of my wife’s grandmother who we all knew as Gong Gong. She was an amazing lady who lived an amazing 90 years on this earth until her death on January 27th. During those 90 years, she saw unspeakable racism of all types and forms. She died without seeing the American church embrace it’s destiny to lead us down the road to racial reconciliation. If I were to live to be 90, or 80, or 70, or even 60, it would be my great hope and prayer that the America that I leave would be one where nothing is more normal than a multiethnic church filled with Christ exalting diversity.