The True Church

As one who was pastor of a multiracial church for 20 years, I can say that there must be a strong intentionality about affirming, valuing, and expanding the multicultural nature of a congregation. Part of that is that one must go the "extra mile" to evangelize and enlist minorities; they will wonder about the comfort level they will feel unless and until the pastor and/or a number of church leaders demonstrate interest in them.

I preached from time to time on aspects of reconciliation and of God's all-embracing love, and would arrange for people of different races and national backgrounds to participate in worship by reading Scripture, offering prayer, etc., particularly on occasions like Epiphany or World Communion Sunday, when there was a natural focus on the universality of the Gospel.

But, even so, we were not as successful as I would have liked. Though I am white, the congregation is more than 90% black, and so we reached very few new white members during my tenure, and also failed to retain some black folks who decided that our worship style was not what they wanted. But, with 500 Baptist churches in the Washington, DC, area, you cannot win them all, and I was/am glad we could serve a niche of people who really wanted the multicultural experience.

 

I'm seeing progress all around. We have many black families, several asians, and a few European immigrants.

A church near us, located in lily-white, affluent suburbs of Birmingham, called a black pastor as their senior pastor. The congregation at the time of his calling was 95% white. The area is almost all-white.

I think we're finally starting to look past pigment. There's only a couple of bigoted pigs in our church, and they are not put in leadership for that reason.

Our views of race improved after a great revival and a dozen or so funerals.

 

I am from New Hampshire and belong to a church that has a mixed membership of whites, blacks, asians, latinos' etc. Although there are some churches in our area that aren't as racially diverse, I didn't know why till I spent some time in Texas.

I was down in Lewiston Tx on business. I found a good Independant Fundamental, KJV, Baptist church to attend. The service was great. Felt like home. On the way back to my hotel I noticed another baptist church within 2 miles of the one I attended. They also ran buses. I found out that this was a black church. I called the pastor of the one I attended to find out why the two churches were so close to each other. In other words why step on each others feet?

He explained that it wasn't a prejudicial issue. The whites weren't excluding the black folks and the blacks weren't excluding the white folks. Both were equally welcome. It was simply what they preferred. Aparently they were the same kind of churches and the people themselves preferred segregation.

 

Folks, I have been to a few united Pentacostal services in my time, and have noticed that they don't seem to have the problem we have in this area. What is the difference? Is it as simple as this: they don't hang up on issues like how to play what kind of music with which instruments?

I don't know...

 

You can't make someone attend a church they don't want too. We do not have a lot of different races in our area, white, black, a limited number asians and hispanics, and maybe some middle easterners(who are RCC not muslim)
We have several people of different races in our church. But most asians here are not christians (hindu, muslim), we have a hispanic ministry at church and a we have a hispanic chuch in Cave City we opperate (most of them do not speak english and our pastor does not speak spanish).
There are several black churches in the area, and most blacks will not go to a white church, doesn't matter if they are SBC or not, as long as there is a black church availabe. I think most of it is worship style, even though we are comtemporary, they are even more lively in worship and prefer that over what seems mild to them at our church.

 

Long ago, in a place far, far away (New Jersey), I moved to a new town. I started looking for a local church, so one Sunday I simply followed the signs to a Baptist church. I got there a little early, and as people filed in, I realized I was the only white person in the entire place. I don't think I can do justice to the way people reacted. On the one hand, they were grinning from ear to ear as if to say, "Wow, you sure picked the wrong place." On the other hand, I never felt more welcome to a church on the first day than I did there. This was a long time ago, so I don't recall why I decided not to go back there. Maybe I was just overwhelmed and just didn't want to get so much attention. But in retrospect, I wish I had stayed.


​

 

The best example I ever knew of a multi-cultural church was a church of Christ in Shreveport, Louisiana: church of Christ - North. It has had bi-racial leadership since its beginnings almost 40 years ago.

Les

 

That is an honest statement they made. Fact is, even at work one will notice this.
Blacks prefer to go with Blacks. Whites with Whites. Latinos with Latinos. Indians with Indians. Pakistanis with Pakistanis. Chinese with Chinese, and so on.
Given the choice, that is what is more likely than not to happen.