The multi-ethnic church conversations are popular in Christian circles these days. However, by multi-ethnic church, Christians from the majority group often mean they want minorities to attend their worship services, and assimilate within their dominant culture.

Some from the majority culture within the church planting movement have even sought to colonize minority urban contexts with their suburban, mono-ethnic, and dominate cultural worldview by planting churches that expect minorities to assimilate within the majority culture.

Church Plantations
Social psychologist and professor at Duke Divinity School, Christena Cleveland, has boldly written on this issue . Borrowing language from an Asian American scholar, she employs the term “church plantations” to describe the efforts of certain church planters within the majority culture when seeking to plant a so-called multi-ethnic church in a minority culture context.

She contends when some people from the majority culture seek to colonize the minority culture and assimilate it within the norms of the majority culture, those from the majority culture create a multi-ethnic church plantation (diverse minorities under majority leadership in a minority context) instead of a multi-ethnic church plant.

Assimilation
In my own work in the area of racial reconciliation, I’ve observed that many Christians talk about racial reconciliation and the desire to build a gospel-centered multi-ethnic church. But, regardless of the ethnic posture of the churches, it’s difficult for mono-ethnic churches to make the necessary multi-ethnic negotiations for a multi-ethnic gospel. By multi-ethnic negotiations, I mean the cultural preferences (e.g. style of music, style of service, delivery style of the preacher), etc.) within different ethnic communities. As a good friend of mine and a pastor of a multi-ethnic church once said to me, “Multi-ethnic churches have multi-ethnic problems.” And one of the many challenges facing multi-ethnic churches is the different cultural preferences unique to different cultural communities.

Instead, many mono-ethnic churches simply want the minority group (regardless of the ethnic posture of the minority group) to assimilate within the majority culture. But mono-ethnic colonization occurs also in certain minority congregations. There are African-American, Latin-American, Asian American, and other minority churches that are unwilling to negotiate their ethnic preferences for the sake of the multi-ethnic gospel, but would rather those outside of their culture assimilate.

Though difficult, the gospel calls all Christians to deny self, take up the cross, and follow Jesus (Luke 9:23). Christians must be willing to negotiate their ethnic preferences for the sake of the advancement of the multi-ethnic gospel; Christians are a new race in Christ filled with many different races from every tongue, tribe, people, and nation (1 Pet. 2:9; Rev. 5:9).

Why Multi-Ethnic Negotiations for a Multi-Ethnic Gospel?

The bible supports that racial division is a universal power that rules and reigns because of the historic fall of Adam and Eve (Gen. 3-4, 11; Rom. 5:12-6:23). Adam and Eve were part of the human race (Gen. 11:6). Their transgression resulted in both a vertical (Gen. 3) and a horizontal curse of the entire cosmos (Gen. 4). The vertical curse separated humans from God and the horizontal curse separated them and their offspring from each other, evident by Cain’s murder of his brother Abel in Gen. 4. This murder represents the first violent and hostile act between the human race in the bible (e.g. Gen. 1-2; 11:6).

Paul generalizes racial division as Jewish and Gentile division in a few of his letters. He calls the Ephesians “Gentiles in the flesh” (Eph. 2:11). Racial division between Jews and Gentiles in the Old Testament and continuing in the New Testament was based on Torah, not the color of one’s skin. Jews and Gentiles came in all shapes, colors, and sizes in the ancient world—just read, for example, Gentiles describe the complexion of other Gentiles in numerous ancient texts.[1] “Gentiles” (ethnē) were separated from the commonwealth of Israel when they were dead in transgressions and sins prior to their association with Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, because they were not Jewish (Eph. 2:1-11).

As descendants of Abraham, the Jewish people received circumcision as the sign of participation in the Abrahamic covenant (Gen. 17:10-14). Without this sign, Gentiles were racially separated from God’s promises to Abraham to be fulfilled through Israel’s Messiah (Eph. 2:11). This sign eventually became part of the Mosaic Covenant (Lev. 12:3; Jos. 5:2-9).

Ephesians 2:12 affirms this interpretation with the words “without Christ,” “alienated from the commonwealth of Israel,” “strangers of the covenants of promises,” “without hope,” “and those living without God in the world.” “Gentiles” were separate from God’s promises of salvation to God’s covenant people (Rom. 3:1-2; 9:4-5; 11:1-2; Phil. 3:4-6), separated from access to God’s Messianic promises given to Israel in the Old Testament (2 Sam. 7:11-13; Ps. 2, 110), separated from God’s covenantal promises made to Abraham regarding land, seed, and a universal blessing (Gen. 12:1-4; 13:14-18; 15:1-21; 17:1-21; Eph. 2:11-12), separated from the promises to David regarding a descendant to reign over his kingdom forever (2 Sam. 7:12-17; 23:5; Ps. 89:3, 27-37, 49), and separated from the promises to Israel and Judah regarding a future restoration (Jer. 31:31-34; Ezek. 36-37).

Sin vertically alienated humanity from God and horizontally from one another (Gen. 3:15). However, the law further divided Jews and Gentiles from one another when it entered history, because the law revealed a knowledge of sin (Rom. 4:15; 5:13; 7:1-25; Gal. 3:19) and because it served as a dividing wall between the children of the covenant (Jews) versus those who were outside of the covenant (Gentiles). In Eph. 2:14-16, Paul describes the law as a dividing wall, and a source of enmity between Jews and Gentiles. Yet, God’s covenantal promises anticipated the inclusion of the Gentiles from the very beginning (Gen. 12:1-13; Isa. 42:6-9; 49:6; 60:1-3). Moreover, Paul states that Jews will receive those promises only by means of faith in Jesus Christ (Rom. 9:1-5; 9:30-10:13; Gal. 2:11-5:1). However, Jews at least had an ethnic connection to the Jewish Messiah with God’s promises to Jews and Gentiles (Gen. 49:10; Deut. 18:15; 2 Sam. 7:12-13; Ps 2; 45:3-5, 5, 17; Isa. 40-66), unlike the Gentiles (Rom 2:14).

Paul states in Ephesians that God accomplished reconciliation for Jews and Gentiles. Paul asserts that Gentiles were brought near God’s promises of salvation “by the blood of Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:13). Paul interprets Isa. 9:6; 52:7; and 57:19 in light of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ to emphasize this reconciliation (Eph. 2:13-18; cf. 1:15-23). The proclamation of peace in Eph. 2:17 is a reference to the proclamation of the gospel. In Isa. 9:6, “peace” refers to the Jewish Messiah. In Isa. 52:7 and 57:19, “peace” refers to the salvation (=the good news) that YHWH promised to bring to Israel through the Jewish Messiah.

According to Eph. 2:13 and 2:14-16, the good news of the gospel is the Jewish Messiah, Jesus, died so that he would put an end to the dividing wall of hostility (=the law of Moses) between Jews and Gentiles, so that he would reconcile Jews and Gentiles to God and to each other, and so that he would create Jews and Gentiles into one new man into one body through the cross (Eph. 2:14-16). By means of Jesus’ death (Eph. 2:13, 16) and resurrection and exaltation (Eph. 1:15-23), God recreated Jews and Gentiles into one dwelling place of God, in whom the Spirit dwells (Eph. 2:18-22). And Jesus himself provided the model for this racial reconciliation in that he preached this gospel of peace (=reconciliation) to Jews near the promises, and to Gentiles far away from those promises (Matt. 15:21-28).

Christians from every racial stripe have a very important role to play in removing the stain of racism from Christian churches. We must recognize that just as mono-ethnic Anglo churches must make the necessary multi-ethnic negotiations for the multi-ethnic gospel, minority mono-ethnic churches must too be willing to make the necessary ethnic negotiations for the multi-ethnic gospel.

Because of the universal power of sin and because of how sin and society use racism, white, black, and brown people have the sin of racism in their hearts. But the gospel of Jesus Christ requires and demands all Christians to make the necessary multi-ethnic negotiations for the advancement of the multi-ethnic gospel in order to build a gospel-centered multi-ethnic church in the truest sense of the phrase.

[1]For example, Byron Gay, Symbolic Blackness and Ethnic Difference in Early Christian Literature: Blackened by Their Sins: Early Christian Ethno-Political Rhetorics about Egyptians, Ethiopians, Blacks, and Blackness (London: Routledge 2002).