“It is no longer a question of whether we like or want diversity. The church is diverse. And congregational worship should reflect the diversity of God’s people, even if a local congregation itself is not diverse.”[i]
I don’t know quite what to do with
this statement from author/pastor/worship leader Sandra Maria Van Opstal. I agree completely that “congregational
worship should reflect the diversity of God’s people.” I am praying, thinking about, hoping for, and
working toward greater diversity in the congregation where I am the lead pastor. I am visiting with pastors who serve in
multiethnic contexts. I am listening to
non-white people in ministry to hear their perspectives. I have heard
perspectives of whites all my life and I am one. I am trying to see through the eyes of others.
So, I agree with Van Opstal, don’t
I?
I think I do. I then think about the little church my
family visited in Penhook, VA a few years ago.
When we walked into this rural congregation in a quaint, inviting
country sanctuary with our adopted black children, the church was instantly integrated. Prior to that it was a group of white people
worshiping God together. It is highly
unlikely that non-white people are there very often; maybe only when we show
up. They were extremely hospitable to
us.
How
would that church’s worship reflect the diversity of God’s people?
Maybe, as a part of their communal
prayer life, they could focus on the worship of Christians in other parts of
the world, say Namibia, or Bolivia, or Vietnam.
Believers in those places look very different than those in
Penhook. Those country folk in Virginia
could expand their sense of God’s people by praying for believers. Maybe there are other ways they could reflect
that diversity.
However, there is a particular
cultural timbre in southern Virginia.
Should that be compromised in worship so that the church goers have a
greater sense of God in the world? Maybe the answer is yes. But one culture is not superior to
another. God can be glorified in the
warp and woof of life on the farms that make up Penhook. The people who live there will most likely
hear God when God speaks in ways they can understand. That speaking
by God begins in worship that is done in familiar cultural expression.
This is challenging for me because
one of the foundations of my own faith is the willingness to plunge into the
unfamiliar and the uncomfortable. I don’t
believe a person can grow in Christ until he or she willingly gives up his/her
tastes and preferences and fully (even if temporarily) enters another’s
cultural world. I think those white,
rural worshipers should do partnership ministry which would involve trips to
Ethiopia or Bolivia, or at least to the sections of Roanoke, VA dominated by
African Americans. Just as I recognize
their need for worship in familiar language, I also see their need for new
experiences. In the new experiences, we
grow into a bigger sense of just how big God is.
It is both. We need times when church feels like church
(in our own understanding of church).
And we need to see church happen in ways we never could have imagined
and in people who are new (and maybe strange) to us. I’ve only just begun my engagement with Van Opstal’s
ideas, but I have to say, I am very excited to read her book as a part of my
Sabbatical journey and as a part of my exploration of the possibilities of developing
our congregation as a multi-ethnic church.
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