In yesterday’s post I closed by posing the questions, “To what extent, if any, should we be adopting the multicultural mindset in our congregations? What stand should we take on promoting context driven ecclesiology and missiology in place of assimilating our churches into one larger, more generic church culture?” I asked this in light of recently made comments by religious leaders in Britain that multiculturalism was actually leading more to segregation than to the diverse and socially cohesive society it envisioned.
You may wonder why I ask this question, what questions of national civic identity theories have to play inside the mission and work of the church. But I ask, are we not a nation? Do we not, as the Church, have a specific national civic identity which we are to share? Peter informs us that we are “sojourners and exiles” on this earth (1 Peter 2.11), with Paul remarking that this is because “our citizenship is in heaven” (Philippians 3.20). The idea that believers in Christ are citizens of a specific place, of the New Jerusalem if I may, is one that can be traced throughout the New Testament, starting in John 15 and going all the way to Revelation 21 and 22. So, the question then becomes, if we in the church are all “citizens of heaven,” how should we approach multiculturalism among our congregations? What level of context driven ecclesiology and missiology should we pursue?
To be honest, I have really been racking my brain on this one. I find the issue is difficult for so many reasons. Foremost, our citizenship in heaven is of a different nature than our earthly allegiances; it is spiritual whereas our earthly citizenships are physical. Also, my personal bend is towards context driven local churches and I find Scriptural evidences for this in the various ways that we see the Gospel presented across the book of Acts. Whenever the apostles wandered into a new situation, be it in front of Jews in Jerusalem (Acts 2-7), Gentiles in Asia Minor (Acts 10), or intellectuals in Greece (Acts 17), they adapted their message, in context not content, to be most effective among the people with whom they witnessed. However, as much as I favor this move towards contextualized ecclesiology and missiology, I must find a way to deal with the criticisms of segregation as well as the various fires which seem to be arising in opposition to context-driven Christianity (see my post Dirty Words and Beer for one such conflict).
My decision finally rested upon the fact that I believe their is a key difference between our physical citizenship and our spiritual citizenship. I concluded that when it comes to our ecclesiology and missiology, the multicultural, context driven approach is what we find in Scripture and is what should be modeled in our congregations. However, when it comes to preaching and the administration of kingdom affairs, we should strive to be of one identity. We should avoid harmful distinctions of theology having to do with our context, such as is the habit of some to eschew authority in the church because their context believes authority to be bad. God instituted the leadership in the church and no context has privilege to remove that. Similarly, I do not believe we should segregate large churches into multiple smaller ethnic congregations. The magnificent picture we see of God’s chosen people in the end is that there will be one “assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven” (Hebrews 12.23). Our local church should strive to resemble the universal church as much as possible, and dividing up the gathering in a single location based on cultural distinctions does not serve this purpose. Neither does the generational idea of distinct contemporary or traditional services being offered by one local body.
This seems to be a hard line to establish, but I don’t think we have to look too far for those who have crossed it. Along with the above examples, think about the prevalence of liberation theology among African-American or South American congregations. This is a multicultural approach to theology which is inappropriate (not to mention highly unbiblical). If the preaching and understanding of God’s revealed truths differ in one location over another because of culture then we’ve gone too far. It is one thing to fashion a church service or an outreach plan around the physical characteristics of a specific people group, but in our functioning as kingdom citizens, our worshiping God as his called out people, our hearts should be striving towards a single identity, one that is fully submitted to Christ and the authority of God’s Word in Scripture.
Please let me know what you think as I feel this is one of the pressing practical questions of our day.
