Ethnic Blends: Mixing Diversity into Your Local Church
As far as books about the church go, this is one that ought to be required reading! I thoroughly believe their thesis, that to effectively speak into culture (and to maintain some kind of relevance and authority) the church must become a heterogeneous body composed of every ethnicity, not the homogenous body it currently is. This is the image of heaven, when people from “every tribe, tongue and nation” will be joined together as one, being the body of Christ and enjoying Him forever. As background, I work at a church that has very little (like two to four people out of 200) diversity. On an average Sunday in our little town, we have one to three Hispanic individuals, one Asian, and possibly one other race represented. Are there a couple of Anglo's who add diversity to our congregation because of their immigration? Yeah. Do we do a lot of things to allow us to build bridges (how many churches that are 90+% white and English speaking invite Mexican pastors who speak very litt...