That future will not be what we now know. That future will involve recognition, acceptance, and adaptation to changing demographics. White churches will fade, diversity will arise, and churches will have to adapt – including mergers. Bob Smietana’s new book,
I feel somewhat despairing about the possibility of there truly being racial harmony in the US, when so many people deny that race is even a thing or an issue. But I trust in the God of reconciliation...
So, our experience in Germany is interesting in light of this. We attend a church that is and attempts to be an international church. Our previous pastor was German and mich of the congregation comes from the global south and southeast Asia, who are in Germany for employment in tech companies. There is also a strong contingent of students, and roughly 1/3rd comes broadly from the West.
The pastor pastored according to his cultural context. His instinct was to be vulnerable, honest, and authentic. He wore casual clothes, was team oriented and sought consensus. Pretty soon the non-Western people from became very dismayed and began to let their displeasure be known. Why? Because in their context the pastor has to be older and experienced, he needed to dress ‘as a pastor should,’ and he needed to exert authority as the head of the church.
He ended up having to leave because the expectations for what a pastor did not mesh with the way a pastor in northern Germany was to behave.
The truly multicultural church, I believe, does not exist without recognizing that we come with a unconscious, default cultural assumptions of what is ‘obviously true’ and ‘biblical’ and embracing the very hard work (which church is by and large too busy with the expectations of their congregants and too uninterested to put the effort in) of understanding what drives us and learning new ways of being church.
So though I also think that the best way forward to solving these issues is the local church, I don’t think a church can be larger than about 35 people to truly know one another and be known, to take the time to eat at one another’s tables, to grow friendships that are safe places to make mistakes.
I feel somewhat despairing about the possibility of there truly being racial harmony in the US, when so many people deny that race is even a thing or an issue. But I trust in the God of reconciliation...
So, our experience in Germany is interesting in light of this. We attend a church that is and attempts to be an international church. Our previous pastor was German and mich of the congregation comes from the global south and southeast Asia, who are in Germany for employment in tech companies. There is also a strong contingent of students, and roughly 1/3rd comes broadly from the West.
The pastor pastored according to his cultural context. His instinct was to be vulnerable, honest, and authentic. He wore casual clothes, was team oriented and sought consensus. Pretty soon the non-Western people from became very dismayed and began to let their displeasure be known. Why? Because in their context the pastor has to be older and experienced, he needed to dress ‘as a pastor should,’ and he needed to exert authority as the head of the church.
He ended up having to leave because the expectations for what a pastor did not mesh with the way a pastor in northern Germany was to behave.
The truly multicultural church, I believe, does not exist without recognizing that we come with a unconscious, default cultural assumptions of what is ‘obviously true’ and ‘biblical’ and embracing the very hard work (which church is by and large too busy with the expectations of their congregants and too uninterested to put the effort in) of understanding what drives us and learning new ways of being church.
So though I also think that the best way forward to solving these issues is the local church, I don’t think a church can be larger than about 35 people to truly know one another and be known, to take the time to eat at one another’s tables, to grow friendships that are safe places to make mistakes.