7 Principles of the New Culture: Part 1

This is part 1 of the seven articles in the “7 Principles of the New Culture” series...

I can vividly remember a conversation I had several years ago with a friend who was a national director of a large ministry.  We were talking about their organization and how they planned to address the increasing amount of ethnic diversity in the locations where they were active.  He explained how they were creating separate ministries for each ethnic group in those locations in order to “most effectively reach them with the Gospel” because “most people want to be with their own ethnicity”.  When I asked if they had plans to eventually try to bring the different ethnic groups together into a multi-ethnic group he explained that they did not because it would “create an extra barrier to the Gospel” and then stated emphatically, “There is no biblical mandate for bringing people together of different ethnicities.”  Do you believe that is true?  How would you respond?

In our conversation, my friend stated several of the most common objections to bringing Christians together of different ethnicities:

• It is more effective to reach people with the Gospel through culturally-homogenous groups.  This is also known as the “homogenous growth principle”.
• Most people feel more comfortable around people of their own ethnicity.  If we form multi-ethnic Christian organizations it will create an additional, unnecessary obstacle to people coming to Christ and getting connected in these groups.
• The Bible doesn’t teach that people of different ethnicities should come together.

For answers to these and other objections which are often raised to the idea of multi-ethnic Christian community, I encourage you to see the large and growing section of resources on our website.  For example, Chapters 6-8 in United By Faith and Chapters 1-3 in Building a Healthy Multi-Ethnic Church do an excellent job of addressing these objections and presenting the Biblical basis for building multi-ethic Christian community.

It is God’s Will

I believe the most persuasive reason for pursuing multi-ethnic Christian community is simply this: it is God’s will.  Discussions about things like… read the rest of this article