Stephen Rhodes observes how, during the civil rights struggle, the church in the US essentially said to its culture: “Do as we say, not as we do.” He explains:
We said to culture that it was a moral imperative to integrate our schools, workplaces and neighbourhoods while simultaneously preserving the segregation that we practice in services of worship. By refusing to embody the truth claims of the gospel that we preached to our culture, we lost our credibility.
Rhodes believes that in a postmodern world the development of multicultural congregations creates the possibility of the world reconsidering the gospel’s plausibility: “Before the church can ask our culture to believe the gospel, we must show our culture that we believe it by how we live together.”
While commending the above I would add one qualification, namely that what are needed are multicultural church communities in which unity in Christ is eloquently expressed across linguistic, ethnic and cultural boundaries. Such a model might involve distinct language services. For various pragmatic reasons that are not at odds with biblical theology, there may be strong limitations on what can be achieved with respect to developing multicultural congregations, as desirable as such models may be.
Source: Where the Nations Meet (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1998)
Posted September 22, 2010
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