Ministry in a multicultural context.
Case of New City Fellowship in South City.
One year ago when I was hired by New Fellowship church as an intern pastor for the south worship site, I was not quite sure about what the practical ministry among brothers and sisters from many places of the world would look like. It did not take me a month to realize how complex, difficult, challenging but exciting the ministry was. After a year of ministry to Africans, mostly from Liberia, Congo, and Togo, but also to white Americans, black Americans and a few Latinos, I came to the conclusion with more conviction about God’s commitment to bring salvation, reconciliation, restoration and his kingdom to all nations. It is only possible by God himself. Jesus said, “without him we can do nothing,” and I can testify that this is true. Many obstacles could have prevented us from continuing to try to reach out for the sake of the gospel, but praise the Lord that he said, “ I will built my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it”. Therefore we must pursue his kingdom among all nations by his grace. From what I have seen, heard and done, I want to present some key points that might help us in our effort of reaching people from other cultural backgrounds in the context of the United States.
My journey started the day I went to visit a Liberian family in South city with the senior pastor of New City Fellowship. This family had come to United States a year before and was really struggling to understand the American culture and way of doing things. We met an old woman, possibly in her 70’s, with her 40 year old son and 6 or 7 grandchildren in an apartment with one bed room. In addition, there was a pregnant teenage girl from another family living with them as well, because the father of the pregnancy (another teenager) was the grandson of the old woman. I could not believe what I saw that day. How could they all live in one bed room? The church’s concern was really how to assist this family. While the senior pastor was trying to explain the implications of being a pregnant teenager in the United States, the family did not seem to really worry about the situation. I knew this because I can relate to them as an African. After 30 minutes of difficult communication, we finally left the house with no idea of what the outcome of the situation would be. From that experience I saw the necessity of one point that we need to understand if we really want to reach other people who are different than us. It is all about culture. But before digging in to that point, I want to lay out some realities about immigrants that can help us understand these brothers and sisters.
First of all, we need to point out some key elements of their historical journey. Many of the immigrants that I minister to came from Liberia and Congo RDC, with Liberians being the largest population of these immigrants in South Saint Louis. Most of the adults had had a war experience. They flew from Liberia when the war broke out in the 1980‘s. Families were separated and the basic structure of the family couldn’t work in this context of war. I met a lady who was separated from her daughter for 18 years, and both of them thought that the other had died. They finally met in the United States with the help of the U.N. program. Many Liberians who are now living in the United States came with refugee status. When many of them flew from Liberia, they went to Sierra Leone, Gurnee, and the biggest of the refugee camps which was in the Ivory Coast. The majority of them stayed there for more than 15 years in the context of a camp not like home. That is the reason why for the most part the teenagers and young men from Liberia don’t know their country. The only place most of them know is Abidjan, the capital of the Ivory Coast in the famous refugee camp, Djiglo. The question we can ask ourselves, which I believe is critical, is what kind of person can someone be who has had such an unstable and insecure life. Many of them escaped from gunshot, and even saw some of their parents or friends killed in front of them. Some of the children saw their mothers raped in front of them. In short terms I will say that these brothers and sisters came out of very difficult circumstances. How can we minister to people who are broken and who still carry with them their horrible past life? Praise the Lord because he alone can heal the heart and bring us to a place of deep transformation. Many strategies and techniques can be planned, but without God’s intervention in our lives I don’t know how these brothers and sisters will be able to open their lives to us to help them in their daily lives.
Back to my paper topic: working in a context of a multicultural church like New City Fellowship, I will say that the Africans’ presence in my church has had a huge impact on how we do ministry in the church, mainly because their demand is consuming and many efforts need to be directed specifically toward them. At the same time the other ethnic groups are not a small piece. The brokenness is a universal thing with all human beings, even if that does not look the same in every human, or groups of people lives, there is always sin impact in every person’s life. In my job description the main focus is Africans, but also to the whole body of the south city church. It means in my agenda I need to minister to the whole body, not only just to Africans. This started the struggle of how to function in such a context. I will confess that I am still learning to find out how I can really be efficient in my ministry and care for people who have different backgrounds. I can thank God for his faithfulness and his care for his church. Even the gates of hell will not prevail against it.
How then can we be efficient in a multicultural context? The first thing I believe to know and understand is that God is the one who called us in this specific context; therefore, we must go back to him and seek his will in the matter. He knows better than we do how people can be receptive to his word in such a context. Our dependency on God by his Spirit is crucial. We will fail if we put our trust in our strategies, plans and methods alone. This is sometimes uncomfortable to us because we are on some level used to having control of things that we are involved in. Not knowing the full picture of things puts us mostly in a very uncomfortable posture, and this makes it hard to stand firm. I can see the South Spring area where refugees from Liberia and African Americans from there are really struggling with their lives, and I have no idea of how these people can make it. I don’t know how these young men from Liberia can stand in this messy environment of drugs, alcohol, violence and hatred. I don’t know, but God does and this is molding me to depend more and more on God’s power to help us see how we can speak into peoples’ lives. Many of the white Americans who are involved with us in this ministry are also struggling to find out how to love and care for these brothers and sisters. Some people thought that if we came up with money, material support, and even our time to the children in my neighborhood, the kids would go to school and probably make it. This approach is not working as we thought because these kids are sometimes facing many challenges and most of the time we don’t know what is really going on in their lives. Having young men like these kids in the church is not easy at all. The only hope for us and for them is God himself. The point I am making here is about our need of total dependency upon God also in our ministry. This is the reason why every week we spend time in prayer on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays in the Church with other staff people and team members. We can not do this ministry unless God is with us.
The second key point of this ministry is culture. We have to be culturally sensitive. As a church of reconciliation, many races and ethnic groups are expressing themselves. The question is how can we work together? I must confess that I was shocked by the race-centered image of the church during my first days in the United States. I could not understand the race issue even in the church. I believe that many factors are playing in this issue and culture is probably one of these factors. It is easy to observe that a black church and a white church are culturally so different. The contents of the services can be similar but the forms are different. In my opinion, I don’t think this is a sufficient reason for Christians to have separate congregations. The body of Christ is one and we are called to be one no matter the struggle. But I do agree that putting more than one culture together is a difficult task and that is the reason why I strongly believe in God’s power to help us in ministry and even in the context of many cultures. New City Fellowship church in South City is aware of the real challenges and difficulties we face as we learn how to walk together as one body in Christ, but we believe that it is God’s call for us to keep doing the work of reconciliation among nations regardless of our own prejudices, sins and judgments. In the past year when I started leading the call to worship and preaching, I interviewed a couple of brothers and sisters about their appreciations and concerns with New City’s vision and practice of that vision. Many were honest to tell me it was a real struggle for them at the beginning, and they are still struggling to know how they can fully embrace the vision. And I believe as human beings this is logical and normal. But these same people when asked if they wanted to go to church and worship somewhere else, they told me nothing in the world would make them go. They came to the point where they can see the beauty of this multicultural way of doing ministry, even if it is hard.
As an illustration, every Sunday we make sure that we sing different songs from more than one cultural background. When an African song is on the screen, the Africans’ response to that song is so vibrant, and our brothers and sisters from other parts of the world are following with some hesitation because of the language barrier. It is the same thing when we sing African American, Hispanic or Anglo Saxon songs. This is who we are and there is nothing wrong with that, I think. I am not expecting my brothers and sisters from other cultures to become who I am, but we can still learn how to work together. I witnessed a meeting where some brothers from Africa where complaining about how Americans were behaving even in the church with their wives or husbands, holding hands, laying on one another in the church, or drinking coffee in the church. African men don’t show love to their partners in public, and I believe Americans are causing us to question, why don’t you show your affections or your love to your partner in public even by holding hands? What do we do as a church? Any position can be misinterpreted and therefore we need wisdom from God to face each situation. When I am preaching, Africans can easily understand my illustrations and applications. When my brother Pastor Bill is preaching my brothers hardly can understand his message. So do we separate? We believe no, because each party must love others by doing some sacrifices. So during the month, two times I am preaching to the whole congregation, and two times Pastor Bill is preaching. Our commitment to do so is really a gift from God. We also have house churches where we fully express our cultural identities every week but we are committed to work together. When we preach the word on Sundays, we are not intentionally preaching to our race group, but to the whole congregation. Yet who we are cannot be separated from the message that we preach. It is hard and challenging but at the same time it is so wonderful. Our cultures can be used as good tools to learn from one another and also to know and understand other people.
Finally we need to understand that in any ministry patience is very helpful. It is another good application of Galatians 5, where Paul mentions the fruits of the Spirit. Without patience in ministry I don’t know how we can fulfill our call. This point again is taking us to the main point of this paper: it is God himself. We can be patient by the work of the Holly Spirit in us. A person’s conversion, repentance, and salvation is by the work of the Holly Spirit, so we must follow God’s timing and not our own sinful agenda and plans. Reconciliation among different groups can take many years and our role is to be faithful to our call. We quickly burn out when we see things and measure them according to our expectations. To be faithful will mean for us to be godly people as he calls us, and live out the gospel in our daily lives. The success of the ministry belongs to God. Particularly in this context of a multicultural church, where separation is the norm, we can be discouraged and then fail to do the work. Without patience the first leaders of New City Fellowship could have closed the gates of the church a long time ago, but by God’s grace and his care for the church I found a strong church when I joined the staff one year ago. Christ-centered preaching was and still is the main driving force of the church, and nothing else. By God’s grace leaders like Barry, Mike, and Suzanne patiently endured many pains and sufferings in the past and even today. We don’t know the future, but patiently we want to trust God who calls us for this glorious work among nations.
I want to end this paper with hope and trust in the Lord who call us to this ministry. To work in the context of a multicultural setting is a call of the great commission as mentioned in Matthew 28, to go to all nations and make them disciples of Jesus Christ. It is true that the work is very difficult, demanding a lot of time, patience and energy, but we can’t move ahead unless God himself is with us in the ministry. Culture plays a key role in the process and we need to be open-minded, and willing to learn from others who are different from us. Taking the risk to do such ministry in a country like the United States is not an easy task, because the norm of many churches and the society as a whole is still race-oriented Isn’t it beautiful to see all nations together worshipping the King of kings, even with their differences? As believers and brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ let’s take seriously the words of John in Revelation 7, 9-12, “After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: ‘Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.’ All the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying: ‘Amen! Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever. Amen!’"
At the church of New City Fellowship, south site, white Americans, black Americans, Africans, Latinos, Korean, and Japanese are learning how to be together and worship our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We put our hope and trust in God who can work all these things in us and through us. We need the gospel every day.
One year ago when I was hired by New Fellowship church as an intern pastor for the south worship site, I was not quite sure about what the practical ministry among brothers and sisters from many places of the world would look like. It did not take me a month to realize how complex, difficult, challenging but exciting the ministry was. After a year of ministry to Africans, mostly from Liberia, Congo, and Togo, but also to white Americans, black Americans and a few Latinos, I came to the conclusion with more conviction about God’s commitment to bring salvation, reconciliation, restoration and his kingdom to all nations. It is only possible by God himself. Jesus said, “without him we can do nothing,” and I can testify that this is true. Many obstacles could have prevented us from continuing to try to reach out for the sake of the gospel, but praise the Lord that he said, “ I will built my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it”. Therefore we must pursue his kingdom among all nations by his grace. From what I have seen, heard and done, I want to present some key points that might help us in our effort of reaching people from other cultural backgrounds in the context of the United States.
My journey started the day I went to visit a Liberian family in South city with the senior pastor of New City Fellowship. This family had come to United States a year before and was really struggling to understand the American culture and way of doing things. We met an old woman, possibly in her 70’s, with her 40 year old son and 6 or 7 grandchildren in an apartment with one bed room. In addition, there was a pregnant teenage girl from another family living with them as well, because the father of the pregnancy (another teenager) was the grandson of the old woman. I could not believe what I saw that day. How could they all live in one bed room? The church’s concern was really how to assist this family. While the senior pastor was trying to explain the implications of being a pregnant teenager in the United States, the family did not seem to really worry about the situation. I knew this because I can relate to them as an African. After 30 minutes of difficult communication, we finally left the house with no idea of what the outcome of the situation would be. From that experience I saw the necessity of one point that we need to understand if we really want to reach other people who are different than us. It is all about culture. But before digging in to that point, I want to lay out some realities about immigrants that can help us understand these brothers and sisters.
First of all, we need to point out some key elements of their historical journey. Many of the immigrants that I minister to came from Liberia and Congo RDC, with Liberians being the largest population of these immigrants in South Saint Louis. Most of the adults had had a war experience. They flew from Liberia when the war broke out in the 1980‘s. Families were separated and the basic structure of the family couldn’t work in this context of war. I met a lady who was separated from her daughter for 18 years, and both of them thought that the other had died. They finally met in the United States with the help of the U.N. program. Many Liberians who are now living in the United States came with refugee status. When many of them flew from Liberia, they went to Sierra Leone, Gurnee, and the biggest of the refugee camps which was in the Ivory Coast. The majority of them stayed there for more than 15 years in the context of a camp not like home. That is the reason why for the most part the teenagers and young men from Liberia don’t know their country. The only place most of them know is Abidjan, the capital of the Ivory Coast in the famous refugee camp, Djiglo. The question we can ask ourselves, which I believe is critical, is what kind of person can someone be who has had such an unstable and insecure life. Many of them escaped from gunshot, and even saw some of their parents or friends killed in front of them. Some of the children saw their mothers raped in front of them. In short terms I will say that these brothers and sisters came out of very difficult circumstances. How can we minister to people who are broken and who still carry with them their horrible past life? Praise the Lord because he alone can heal the heart and bring us to a place of deep transformation. Many strategies and techniques can be planned, but without God’s intervention in our lives I don’t know how these brothers and sisters will be able to open their lives to us to help them in their daily lives.
Back to my paper topic: working in a context of a multicultural church like New City Fellowship, I will say that the Africans’ presence in my church has had a huge impact on how we do ministry in the church, mainly because their demand is consuming and many efforts need to be directed specifically toward them. At the same time the other ethnic groups are not a small piece. The brokenness is a universal thing with all human beings, even if that does not look the same in every human, or groups of people lives, there is always sin impact in every person’s life. In my job description the main focus is Africans, but also to the whole body of the south city church. It means in my agenda I need to minister to the whole body, not only just to Africans. This started the struggle of how to function in such a context. I will confess that I am still learning to find out how I can really be efficient in my ministry and care for people who have different backgrounds. I can thank God for his faithfulness and his care for his church. Even the gates of hell will not prevail against it.
How then can we be efficient in a multicultural context? The first thing I believe to know and understand is that God is the one who called us in this specific context; therefore, we must go back to him and seek his will in the matter. He knows better than we do how people can be receptive to his word in such a context. Our dependency on God by his Spirit is crucial. We will fail if we put our trust in our strategies, plans and methods alone. This is sometimes uncomfortable to us because we are on some level used to having control of things that we are involved in. Not knowing the full picture of things puts us mostly in a very uncomfortable posture, and this makes it hard to stand firm. I can see the South Spring area where refugees from Liberia and African Americans from there are really struggling with their lives, and I have no idea of how these people can make it. I don’t know how these young men from Liberia can stand in this messy environment of drugs, alcohol, violence and hatred. I don’t know, but God does and this is molding me to depend more and more on God’s power to help us see how we can speak into peoples’ lives. Many of the white Americans who are involved with us in this ministry are also struggling to find out how to love and care for these brothers and sisters. Some people thought that if we came up with money, material support, and even our time to the children in my neighborhood, the kids would go to school and probably make it. This approach is not working as we thought because these kids are sometimes facing many challenges and most of the time we don’t know what is really going on in their lives. Having young men like these kids in the church is not easy at all. The only hope for us and for them is God himself. The point I am making here is about our need of total dependency upon God also in our ministry. This is the reason why every week we spend time in prayer on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays in the Church with other staff people and team members. We can not do this ministry unless God is with us.
The second key point of this ministry is culture. We have to be culturally sensitive. As a church of reconciliation, many races and ethnic groups are expressing themselves. The question is how can we work together? I must confess that I was shocked by the race-centered image of the church during my first days in the United States. I could not understand the race issue even in the church. I believe that many factors are playing in this issue and culture is probably one of these factors. It is easy to observe that a black church and a white church are culturally so different. The contents of the services can be similar but the forms are different. In my opinion, I don’t think this is a sufficient reason for Christians to have separate congregations. The body of Christ is one and we are called to be one no matter the struggle. But I do agree that putting more than one culture together is a difficult task and that is the reason why I strongly believe in God’s power to help us in ministry and even in the context of many cultures. New City Fellowship church in South City is aware of the real challenges and difficulties we face as we learn how to walk together as one body in Christ, but we believe that it is God’s call for us to keep doing the work of reconciliation among nations regardless of our own prejudices, sins and judgments. In the past year when I started leading the call to worship and preaching, I interviewed a couple of brothers and sisters about their appreciations and concerns with New City’s vision and practice of that vision. Many were honest to tell me it was a real struggle for them at the beginning, and they are still struggling to know how they can fully embrace the vision. And I believe as human beings this is logical and normal. But these same people when asked if they wanted to go to church and worship somewhere else, they told me nothing in the world would make them go. They came to the point where they can see the beauty of this multicultural way of doing ministry, even if it is hard.
As an illustration, every Sunday we make sure that we sing different songs from more than one cultural background. When an African song is on the screen, the Africans’ response to that song is so vibrant, and our brothers and sisters from other parts of the world are following with some hesitation because of the language barrier. It is the same thing when we sing African American, Hispanic or Anglo Saxon songs. This is who we are and there is nothing wrong with that, I think. I am not expecting my brothers and sisters from other cultures to become who I am, but we can still learn how to work together. I witnessed a meeting where some brothers from Africa where complaining about how Americans were behaving even in the church with their wives or husbands, holding hands, laying on one another in the church, or drinking coffee in the church. African men don’t show love to their partners in public, and I believe Americans are causing us to question, why don’t you show your affections or your love to your partner in public even by holding hands? What do we do as a church? Any position can be misinterpreted and therefore we need wisdom from God to face each situation. When I am preaching, Africans can easily understand my illustrations and applications. When my brother Pastor Bill is preaching my brothers hardly can understand his message. So do we separate? We believe no, because each party must love others by doing some sacrifices. So during the month, two times I am preaching to the whole congregation, and two times Pastor Bill is preaching. Our commitment to do so is really a gift from God. We also have house churches where we fully express our cultural identities every week but we are committed to work together. When we preach the word on Sundays, we are not intentionally preaching to our race group, but to the whole congregation. Yet who we are cannot be separated from the message that we preach. It is hard and challenging but at the same time it is so wonderful. Our cultures can be used as good tools to learn from one another and also to know and understand other people.
Finally we need to understand that in any ministry patience is very helpful. It is another good application of Galatians 5, where Paul mentions the fruits of the Spirit. Without patience in ministry I don’t know how we can fulfill our call. This point again is taking us to the main point of this paper: it is God himself. We can be patient by the work of the Holly Spirit in us. A person’s conversion, repentance, and salvation is by the work of the Holly Spirit, so we must follow God’s timing and not our own sinful agenda and plans. Reconciliation among different groups can take many years and our role is to be faithful to our call. We quickly burn out when we see things and measure them according to our expectations. To be faithful will mean for us to be godly people as he calls us, and live out the gospel in our daily lives. The success of the ministry belongs to God. Particularly in this context of a multicultural church, where separation is the norm, we can be discouraged and then fail to do the work. Without patience the first leaders of New City Fellowship could have closed the gates of the church a long time ago, but by God’s grace and his care for the church I found a strong church when I joined the staff one year ago. Christ-centered preaching was and still is the main driving force of the church, and nothing else. By God’s grace leaders like Barry, Mike, and Suzanne patiently endured many pains and sufferings in the past and even today. We don’t know the future, but patiently we want to trust God who calls us for this glorious work among nations.
I want to end this paper with hope and trust in the Lord who call us to this ministry. To work in the context of a multicultural setting is a call of the great commission as mentioned in Matthew 28, to go to all nations and make them disciples of Jesus Christ. It is true that the work is very difficult, demanding a lot of time, patience and energy, but we can’t move ahead unless God himself is with us in the ministry. Culture plays a key role in the process and we need to be open-minded, and willing to learn from others who are different from us. Taking the risk to do such ministry in a country like the United States is not an easy task, because the norm of many churches and the society as a whole is still race-oriented Isn’t it beautiful to see all nations together worshipping the King of kings, even with their differences? As believers and brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ let’s take seriously the words of John in Revelation 7, 9-12, “After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: ‘Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.’ All the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying: ‘Amen! Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever. Amen!’"
At the church of New City Fellowship, south site, white Americans, black Americans, Africans, Latinos, Korean, and Japanese are learning how to be together and worship our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We put our hope and trust in God who can work all these things in us and through us. We need the gospel every day.
Macklann Basse ( August 29 th, 2006
posted by Macklann at 4:13 PM
1 Comments:
Bien fait Macklann, je suis d'accord bien sur.
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