2013 Multi-ethnic Church Conference

2013 Multi-ethnic Church Conference

On Sunday afternoon I met with a leader from our church over coffee and our conversation turned to an upcoming sermon about worship.  This African American woman and I discussed the many different levels of complexity when it comes to worship in a multi-ethnic church.  She pointed out some of the generalizations that are often made about the worship preferences of different cultures and ethnicities; I wondered about the potential for spiritual formation when we submit to forms of worship that are not initially comfortable.  As we left the coffeeshop I mentioned how grateful I am to belong to a church community that expects these kinds of discussions, questions, and sermons.

In fact, I’ve come to take these conversations for granted though they are probably rare for most pastors and churches.  Despite the many challenges of a young, diverse church, such conversations – and their applications – are surely one of our greatest gifts. Pastors and church leaders who serve in less diverse circumstances must look elsewhere for the theological agitation that is necessary for forming churches that faithfully reflect Gospel reconciliation.

Thankfully, the upcoming Mosaix Multi-ethnic Church Conference will provide one such forum.  With sessions on theology, church planting, sociological trends, best practices, and more and with seasoned and competent leaders like John Perkins, Choco DeJesus, Michael Emerson, and conference organizer Mark DeYmaz, the conference will be full of thoughtful information.  But as I look at the list of speakers and consider who else will be attending I know that it will be the conversations, like the one this past Sunday, that will make those days in Long Beach so fruitful.

The conference is November 5-6 so you’ve got plenty of time to register.

CCDA Conference Recap

There were quite a few highlights from the CCDA conference last week.  Like I mentioned before, this was my first CCDA conference and I wasn’t sure what to expect.  I bumped into a few friends from around the country, got to room with my dad who was there with a couple of folks from his church in New Jersey, and ate delicious arepas – the Venezuelan food of my childhood – from a food truck.

The session on urban church planting I helped with seemed to go well; it was a smaller group which allowed for a lot of conversation and brainstorming around questions raised by the participants.  My favorite plenary session featured Rev. Dr. Ray Rivera preaching about captivity theology including four biblical responses to ministry in the context of captivity.  Rev. Rivera is from NYC and is a mentor to a couple of church planter friends from that city.  I’m looking forward to getting into his new book, Liberty to the Captives.

I arrived in Minneapolis on Wednesday morning in time for my session and left Friday afternoon for my flight home so I missed the final 24 hours of the conference.  All in all it was a great introduction to CCDA and I’m grateful for the many, many folks who worked to put on this excellent event.  Interestingly, the session that has provoked the most follow-up thought, in addition to Rev. Rivera’s sermon, was one I found myself disagreeing with.  I’ll come back to that in a subsequent post.

A New Sunday Home

For the first couple of years of our church’s short existence we’ve meet at an elementary school on the northern edge of Bronzeville.  It’s been a great place for us in so many ways, including a partnership with the community at the school.  The only downside was the massive rent that we paid each month, an amount set not by the school but by the larger bureaucracy.  For about a year we’ve kept our eyes open for a new location that would allow less of our church budget to be spent on the facility.  Earlier this summer we located an excellent space in a park district facility – on the southern edge of the neighborhood – and this morning we made the move.

Putting together our storage shed. Photo by Esther K.

The move went exceptionally well and in some ways symbolized something important about our church: we’re in it together.  There were a few time this morning when I couldn’t find something to do; everyone pitched in and in less than three hours we were done.

Tomorrow we begin weekly worship at Kennicott Park.  It will take a few weeks to get used to our new home but, if you’re local, I hope you’ll visit us one of these Sundays.

Church Planting Lessons: Gospel-Centered Churches?

This is the fifth in a series of posts about what I’ve learned about multi-ethnic church planting as New Community Covenant Church in Bronzeville enters its second year.  You may be interested in parts one , two, three and four.  I’ve added a photo or painting from Bronzeville in each of these posts.

There is a phrase I’ve noticed in the few years I’ve been immersed in the church planting world, a label used to describe the need for new churches.  Gospel-centered churches – or some variation – is language meant to describe a need, as in, “There are no gospel-centered churches in that neighborhood.”  I’ve been to enough church-planting related events to notice how often this language is used as a rallying cry to start new congregations.

"Storefront" Baptist church during services on Easter morning. Russell Lee, April 1941

By identifying a church plant as gospel-centered, the church planter (denomination, church-planting network) is differentiating between this new church and the churches that  already exist in the targeted neighborhood, suburb, or – for the truly ambitious – city.  Inherent to this phrase is the belief that many or all of the churches in the targeted area are not gospel-centered.

I’m learning just how reckless this claim really is.

Planting a gospel-centered church means caring deeply about the Gospel.  No problem so far.  The confusion comes in defining the Gospel and in understanding how other, existing churches are faithful to the Gospel.  In my multi-ethnic, urban context the possibilities for misunderstanding are endless. Those church planters, like myself, who are white, male and often not from the area where they are planting are subject to certain blind spots that hinder the ability to discern whether theirs will truly be the only gospel-centered church in town.

Theological difference is the most obvious possibility for missing existing gospel-centered churches in a given neighborhood.  Those church planters who are wedded to an understanding of the Gospel that comes from a specific church tradition (usually a historically European or white American denomination) will often struggle when interacting with those who don’t share their theological history or jargon.

Less apparent to many of us is the massive impact of culture on how Christians talk about the essentials of our faith.  Those of us from the majority culture tend to view our culture and our theology as neutral.  The way we talk, think and articulate our beliefs aren’t culturally bound (so we think or, at least, behave).  When it comes to those from other cultures we also downplay the significance of culture.  I’ve watched this play out more than once with white, male church planters who desire to start gospel-centered churches.  Their sincere conviction is that they have the culturally neutral, theologically correct version of the Gospel that should be embraced by those with different theologies.   Unnoticed is how they (and I) have translated theology through cultural lenses.

A final reason misunderstanding takes place is the nature of the questions being asked by different churches.  For example, historically the questions asked of the Bible and answered with theology by White and Black American Christians have often been different.  It’s not hard to imagine why this is the case.  African-Americans with a history of experienced oppression and broken promises have a view of the cross and empty tomb that will elude most of us with a privileged existence.  Claiming the need for more gospel-centered churches is a claim about having the right theological answers to the right theological questions.

There are certainly churches that have little or no interest in proclaiming and embodying the Gospel of Jesus.  I have no doubt about this.  However, when we make claims as church planters about the need for our gospel-centered church we are surely saying much more than we mean.

Does acknowledging that there are more gospel-centered churches than we first imagined arrest church planting urgency?  I don’t think so.  We plant churches not because God needs us to (because of a lack of gospel-centered churches or any other reason), but because God calls us to.  And when we answer this call with the expectation that the Gospel of Jesus is already at work, whether we can initially see it or not, we are best positioned to move forward with the humility befitting our task.

Roadside Sabbath

Do you ever pay attention to the highway median when you’re on a long road trip?  The space between a divided road and the few feet of no-man’s-land just beyond the blacktop have intrigued me since reading A Sand County Almanac in college.  I’ve lost my copy but, if memory serves, Aldo Leopold sees in these forgotten strips of dirt the remnants of the way things used to be.  These useless pieces of land contain glimpses of the great prairies that originally covered much of the Midwest, land that was long ago plowed under for wheat, soybeans, and Walmarts.  By examining the highway’s margins we discover the land as it was before we remade it for our purposes.

Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ciscel/2913257480/

Leopold’s observations about the marginal prairie have come to mind as I prepare to preach about Sabbath-keeping.  Sabbath is that ancient practice of  stopping weekly to rest after the pattern of a God who rested and was refreshed on creation’s seventh day.  I wonder if a weekly rest is similar to the prairie grasses, flowers and bugs that cling to the sides of highways.  A Sabbath rest allows the margin to remember the way life was meant to be lived.  How it was in the beginning.

Six days shall you travel the highway, making progress and watching the scenery pass, but on the seventh day stop and notice the prairie.  Remember what was true and is still true.

A couple miles north of our home, along Lake Shore Drive, the city has planted a native prairie.  The tall grasses and subtle flowers stand out from carefully cut lawns and park benches.  Prairie is being reintroduced, integrated into the modern landscape.  I wonder if the analogy holds together.  Does a weekly Sabbath spread from it’s once-a-week practice to a posture that carries throughout the week?

In his Diary of Private Prayer John Baillie offers the following petition for Sunday evenings.

Grant, O heavenly Father, that the spiritual refreshment I have this day enjoyed may not be left behind and forgotten as tomorrow I return to the cycle of common tasks.  Here is a fountain of inward strength.  Here is a purifying wind that must blow through all my business and all my pleasures.  Here is light to enlighten my road.

A light to enlighten my road and strips of prairie to renew my trust in the God who was, who is, and who is to come.