A Multicultural Church: God's Original Idea

By Oscar Ramos

The numbers tell us where we are...and the Bible where we need to go.

US Population 2000 (in thousands) White alone Black alone Asian alone All other races

282,125 228,548 35,818 10,684 7,075

Hispanic (of any race) White alone, not Hispanic

35,622 195,729

The United States now has the second largest Black population (after Nigeria), and the fourth largest Spanish population of any country in the world (Appleby, 1986).

As anticipated, the Indiana’s Hispanic population has grown substantially, from 99,000 in 1990 to 250,000 in 2005, for growth of 151,000 or 151%. Hispanics are now the 4.0% of the total population in Indiana. Counties showing the largest numeric growth in their Hispanic populations include: Marion, Lake, Elkhart, Allen, St. Joseph, Tippecanoe and Porter counties. Together these counties accounted for 70% of the state’s Hispanics population and for 68% of the state’s growth in Hispanic population.

"At this time we, the church in the U.S., are a great disappointment in terms of manifesting the new community founded in Christ Jesus and called to worship the King of the kingdom in the ministry of reconciliation…in this world of ever increasing diversity" Ortiz (p. 45).

Consequently, Americans have developed organizational theories and models without being sufficiently aware of non-U.S. contexts, models, research and values, thus imbuing management science with implicit, and inappropriate, universalism. The American church suffers from parochialism. The cultural values of the United States underlie and have fundamentally framed many of our current models of church structure and leadership.

Parochialism means "viewing the world solely through one’s own eyes and perspective. A person with a parochial perspective neither recognizes other people’s different ways of living and working nor appreciates that such differences have serious consequences" (Adler, 1997, p. 10).

To reach the people of many nations that God is sending to America, we must change our ways. American-based church structure and leadership theories must be altered to become applicable in a ministry context that is becoming increasingly multicultural. The profound consequences of culture demand such a radical transformation.

The Goodness of Multiculturalism

God intends His church in America to be multicultural, and there are great potential benefits in this. Alder (1997, pp. 100-101) notes the following organizational benefits derived from multiculturalism:

1. Multiple perspectives.
2. Greater openness to new ideas.
3. Multiple interpretations.
4. Increasing creativity.
5. Greater flexibility.
6. Improved problem-solving skills.

Thus, a true multicultural unity will build upon the foundation of unity in Christ with bricks and mortar that reflect the cultural diversity of the participants. The pursuit of such a unity will mean great blessing for the church, but also new challenges. This multicultural unity, however, does not mean uniformity. As Spencer and Spencer (1998) wisely note, a multicultural unity that is biblical will be "inclusive to all people, [but] exclusive to one Supreme God" (p. 19). According to Rhodes (1998), a biblical diversity "assumes that we hold a common truth but express it in different ways. Thus, in Christ, the church has no real "choice" in the matter. God has called the American church to embrace those of other cultural backgrounds and to seek unity with them.

According to Paul Hiebert, a multiethnic (or multicultural) church is "a church in which there is (1) an attitude and practice of accepting people of all ethnic, class and national origins as equal and fully participating members and ministers in the fellowship of the church; and (2) the manifestation of this attitude and practice by the involvement of people from different ethnic, social and national communities as members in the church" (Ortiz, 1996p. 149).

In a day of increasing ethnic and cultural diversity in America, congregations that are multicultural, rather than homogeneous, will be in a "unique position to reach the rich diversity of God’s people who live in our communities, and also to model for our culture what it means to live in unity amid diversity" (Rhodes, 1998, p. 17). "The year 2056 is the magic date cited by sociologists as the moment when the majority of the US American population will be nonEuropean, nonwhite. As it is now, Asians, Africans and Hispanics make up one-fourth of the population." (Sweet, 1994, p. 176)

Call me if you are interested in developing a Hispanic or Multicultural Ministry in your local church to respond to God’s will to embrace the people in the world and the future He is calling us to.

Rev Oscar Ramos, 6344 Harrison Ave Hammond, IN 46324, Ph 574-596-4533 Email: orgallardo@msn.com