Church of Mirrors

What we’re about is creating space for one more person.“ Erwin McManus, cultural architect of the highly creative and multicultural Mosaic (mosaic.org) in Los Angeles, addresses the crowd of people who have weathered the Southern California rainstorms to gather on Sunday evening at Club Mayan, one of downtown L.A.’s busiest dance clubs transformed into a house of worship on Sundays.

McManus continues as he tells his captivated audience about Mosaic’s new expansion plans to increase its number of services and add two new venues.

“We’re going to take a spiritual sword and cut a path right through the heart of the city,“ he explains.

The 6-year-old church of 2,000 worshippers is out to reach and transform its diverse and ever-changing community—defined by McManus as the 12 million residents of greater Los Angeles. When people who have either lost touch with church or never accepted Christ enter a worship service at Mosaic, McManus hopes they’ll see themselves there. Like looking in a mirror, maybe they’ll feel at home among the various cultures that resemble their own. Like a mosaic, maybe they’ll stay to add another piece to the broken bits of humanity that join together in Christ to become a work of beauty there.

Across the world, a growing number of churches are hearing this same calling— as increasingly “one more person“ is added to an ever-changing mix. They’re realizing that being multicultural is not necessarily about including numerous ethnicities, but rather about reaching through cultural differences created by a number of factors such as age, socio-economic status, sexual orientation, marital status and even occupation.

Congregations are now discovering that in order to be churches of their community, for their community, they must learn to be a church of mirrors, reflecting their surrounding neighborhoods.

“If your community is white suburbia, then you need to be reaching white suburbanites,“

McManus told Outreach. “If your community is Asian, then you should be reaching Asians. We’ve been called to reach Los Angeles, so we need everyone. People are not our project; they’re our passion.“ McManus continues: “Actually, I think it’s more of a challenge for a congre- gation to be homogenous. If the community around your church is diverse in any way, then you’ve actually got to do something to keep people different from you out.“

A BIBLICAL MANDATE

Being a church of mirrors is not a new paradigm or idea. As more pastors read and study a scriptural depiction of the New Testament Church, congregations are learning to follow a biblical model and directive.

The church at Antioch, the “sending“ church for Paul and Barnabas, offers an example of biblical diversity, as its members welcomed people of all cultures—Barnabas of Jerusalem, Simeon called Niger (The Dark), Lucius from the African nation of Cyrene, Manaean, who’d grown up with Herod and Saul, among others.

Moreover, Paul led his own ministry team through a number of changes in ministry approaches. And in his letter to the Corinthians, he conveys his readiness to alter his ministry style: “I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some“ (1 Cor. 9:22).

The Antioch model was the impetus for starting a church of diversity for Redmond, Wash., Pastor Ken Hutcherson. A former NFL player, Hutcherson recalls how his study of the scriptures led him to a new life and a new vision of the Church.

“After studying the Word for about 25 years or so, I got fed up with what I was looking at,“ he says. Previously, the African-American pastor was involved in a predominantly white church. Now he’s the leader of Antioch Bible Church (abchurch.org), where he’s seeing his dream and vision of opening a church for all people fulfilled.

“The original New Testament Church abounded in diversity and multiple cultures,“ he says. “The reality is that tradition, culture and denominationalism have shaped the Church more than the Word of God has.“

Over the last two decades, Hutcherson’s church has grown from 15 people in 1984, to 4,000 today, but perhaps even more impressive than the growth is the ethnic diversity in the church. The congregation is now about 60% white, 20% to 25% black or mixed race, and 15% to 20% other races. Overall, more than 35 different ethnicities are represented.

Hutcherson adds to the voices of other churches reflecting their communities, saying that the leadership in a church, as well as the music and worship styles, must be diverse to foster more congregational diversity. But he believes the No. 1 way to nurture those differences in the church is to understand the biblical mandate.

“When you think diversity is essential to your ministry, and you believe that it’s a biblical standard, you’ll find people in your community that are different from you,“ he says.

Other churches have learned from Hutcherson and his congregation’s scriptural focus, as they also dream about and strive for a diverse body. Rev. Mark DeYmaz who leads Mosaic Church (no relation to Mosaic Los Angeles) in Little Rock, Ark., a daughter church to Antioch, believes that the biblical idea of Christian unity is the best way to reach the unchurched.

Recently, DeYmaz preached a sermon on biblical unity: “On the night before Jesus died, He delivered to us the most effective means of reaching the world with the Gospel,“ he told his congregation. His text was John 17:23b, Jesus’ prayer for the believers: “May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.“ The scripture has served as a key verse in shaping the new congregation.

The Little Rock church, (mosaicchurch.net) DeYmaz explains, was an experiment in evangelism based on the idea of biblical unity that brings people to Christ. “I guess I’m just crazy enough to believe that,“ he says. Whether or not churches can translate the gospel message and the Church into other languages and cultures is an important litmus test for biblical churches, says Hutcherson.

“If we can’t take what we’re doing into any community or country in the world and translate that, then what we’re doing is not biblical.“

LOCAL HEROES

For New Song Community Church in Oceanside, Calif., the Great Commission and a desire to be a church that “joins God where He’s at work,“ says Executive Director Steve Foster, are the primary reasons why the North County San Diego congregation has become known by its military community as the “church for Marines“ stationed at nearby Marine base, Camp Pendleton.

After hosting a one-day event called “Operation Yellow Ribbon“ on the base of Camp Pendleton, the 12-year-old church began to see the real needs of its military community. In addition to regular Family Fun Days on base that often include large giveaways and even fresh fish, the church has presented financial seminars geared specifically to military personnel, as well as marriage conferences for the military (70% of Marines are divorced in the first three to four years of duty).

And in weekend services at New Song (newsongchurch.com), Pastor Hal Seed regularly asks, “Has anyone recently come back from the field? We just want to say thanks.“ When someone raises a hand, invariably the congregation is on its feet in applause, Foster says. The church is currently praying about and considering the idea of developing, growing and funding a staff position that would oversee its outreach and ministry to the military.

The congregation is now a mixture of civilian and military cultures, as a large influx of Marines, both single and married, visit and find their church home at New Song. Still, the process of reflecting this unique culture and community is ongoing, Foster says.

“As often as we can, we try to ask, ‘How can we do this more meaningfully? How do we serve this culture?’ “ Foster says. “We really want to be a church that if we weren’t here next week, our community would weep for us. Embracing and serving these Marines and their families is one of the ways that’s actually happening.“

NEW HOPE

In San Rafael, Calif., 17 miles north of San Francisco, a man wearing a shirt buttoned low sits down in a group of 150 people, his chest sparkling with glitter. But in this group, accustomed to reaching out to its surrounding community, the man and others like him are welcome.

At Church of the Open Door (opendoorsanrafael.net), caring for homosexuals through Frank and Anita Worthen’s New Hope Ministries (newhope123.org) is part of what the church is about. The ministry, Anita says, has two principle goals: to rescue and to prepare a place.

“We present the truth to those who come to us and nurture those who will surrender to the will of Christ, pointing the way to change,“ she says, explaining New Hope’s first goal. The second goal is about educating the Church on how to meet the needs of those making such a life-altering decision, she says.

New Hope is a continuation of the ex-gay ministry Love in Action that Frank Worthen, an ex-gay and an associate pastor at the church, founded in the ‘60s. The ministry continues to work “arm-in-arm“ with the church, Anita says, serving the community around it.

The Church of the Open Door has many ex-gays in its congregation. “Our young people have grown up with people of all kinds of backgrounds and have seen how our church nurtures the people in our community,“ Anita says. “We’re known all over the world as the little church that could.“

THE INDIGENT AND THE INFLUENTIAL

At Mosaic Church in Little Rock, a diverse crowd of 400 people worship together in an 80,000-square-foot abandoned Wal-Mart.

Each week, Pastor Mark DeYmaz sees his vision for a church that reflects its diverse community come alive in a vibrant ministry to both the indigent and the influential in the area.

“In my view, a multicultural church has to be a work of God,“ DeYmaz says. “I have watched [U.S. Senator] Mark Pryor sitting next to an alcoholic homeless man taking communion from an immigrant. When you see that, that’s the church. They are one in that moment because of the power of the Gospel.“

The 3-year-old church has seen its congregation diversify and grow as a result of steady and focused work on the front end. Mosaic replaced the buzz of a new church plant that often results from billboards, direct-mail pieces, and radio- and TV-advertising with a full immersion into the lives of the poor. The congregation purchased a trailer in a run-down park, and leaders went door to door to assess the physical and material needs of the community.

“Then we started meeting those real needs, and the people responded to that,“ DeYmaz says.

According to Dr. John Perkins, author of multiple books and co-founder of the Christian Community Development Association (ccda.org), this may be the first step toward justice for people who have been disenfranchised not only by their society but also by the Church.

“The key to restoration is committed Christians and their families living in communities of need, working alongside the community, modeling healthy lifestyles,“ he says.

Before launching Mosaic, DeYmaz was in ministry for 21 years, serving mostly affluent white churches. He saw a lot of good intentions toward a more inclusive church, but little proactive work. “It doesn’t happen with good intentions,“ he says.

“I guess it breaks my heart when I come across people who are otherwise spiritually mature but they don’t get it and all they want to do is give free Christmas presents to the poor people.“

The Southern church also has attracted a significant number of both new believers and Christians who had been disenfranchised from church.

“There are two things visitors say about our church,“ DeYmaz says. “No. 1 is how friendly everyone is, and … No. 2, they couldn’t stop crying through the service.“

MULTIETHNIC REFLECTIONS

Probably one the most talked about and debated issues related to diversity in the Church today is multiethnicity. As the number of foreign-born Americans continues to increase (34.2 million in 2004; up by 2.3% since 2003 according to the U.S. Census), churches are faced with reflecting a community that has ethnically diversified, perhaps two or three times. At Central Baptist Church in Inglewood, Calif., the neighborhood has changed from white to black to Hispanic, says Pastor Luther Keith.

A couple of years ago in South Barrington, Ill., the leaders of 17,000-member Willow Creek Community Church (willowcreek.org) recognized that while the Latin population now comprises some 19% of the area around the church, the primarily white Willow Creek congregation has not reflected that change.

“We’re not reaching our own backyard the way we’re called to,“ says Mark Ashton, Willow Creek’s pastor of spiritual discovery. And as that backyard continues to diversify, Ashton says, “We’ve got to reinvent.“

So the Chicago-area gigachurch debuted a new Spanish service, Casa de Luz. What began as an extension of a seeker small group for Spanish-speaking people, Ashton says, has grown into a small congregation. This year, Willow Creek plans to hire a full-time minister from Mexico for the group.

Other churches are also finding that a church-within-a-church concept acts as a good first step toward cultivating a multiethnic congregation. This type of outreach falls somewhere in the middle of a multicultural continuum of homogenous groups on one end and thoroughly integrated groups on the other.

At Wayside Baptist Church (waysidemiami.org) in the multiethnic hot spot of Miami, the language of the Sunday service is English; but Wayside also hosts services for Brazilians, Spanish-speaking groups and Haitians. In all, the 1,000 people who attend the church represent 40 different nations.

Chapel Hill Bible Church in Chapel Hill, N.C., has seen a similar evolution. The church began a multicultural outreach by expanding its vision for the local college community— including international students in its focus. As a result, the church within a church has grown from 20 people meeting on the University of North Carolina campus to now 1,700 in its own building.

And today, some 35 different nations are reflected in the congregation, in part due to the ministry of the International Christian Fellowship outreach at the university. Jim Thomas, Chapel Hill Bible’s part-time pastor of cross-cultural mission, hopes that more international and intercultural ministry will happen throughout the church.

“Being cross-cultural is inherent to being a Christian,“ Thomas says. “If you want to know the fullness of life that Jesus offers, you need to escape the gravitational pull of your own culture.“

Chapel Hill Bible (biblechurch.org) also partners with a number of international churches and works with an on-staff African minister to foster diversity. The church offers a new Spanish Bible study on Sundays and other ministries to accommodate the fastest-growing Latino population in the country. And a Chinese outreach meets in the building. Moreover, Chapel Hill teams with an inner-city African-American church in the area—the type of partnership many churches look for when they seek to diversify their congregational outreach.

Thomas says he’s working to “mainstream missions,“ adding that one of the difficulties in developing a multicultural church is overcoming the stereotypes about what outreach may be. Recently, he saw a video at a missions conference that portrayed photo after photo of white people teaching and giving to people who were not white.

“That reinforced this notion that the white American Church has the answers and resources we need to be giving to others who are not like us,“ Thomas says, adding that the white American Church still has a lot of receiving to do.

“We need people of other ethnicities in our local congregations to challenge our cultural assumptions and identify our blind spots. We also need to learn from their spiritual insights.“

BEYOND US AND THEM

As multiple factors such as urbanization, globalization, age, lifestyle and vocation continue to impact communities nationwide, churches and their leaders are discovering the multitude of “others“ in their midst.

Crossing cultures has been the lifework of Dr. David Anderson. In addition to pastoring Bridgeway Community Church (bridgewayonline.org), a multicultural church in Columbia, Md.,

Anderson consults other churches through the BridgeLeader Network (bridgeleader.com). He is also the author of books on the subject, including his latest, Multicultural Ministry (Zondervan). Anderson recommends four cornerstones for transforming a homogenous congregation into a more diverse group, whether that diversity is ethnic, socio-economic, generational, cultural or any other factor:

Intentionality. Placing yourselves in environments where people are different from you.
Identification. Building bridges through common-ground connections.
Insight. Learning to listen rather than label.
Instruction. Leading those around you through discipleship and teaching.

The first cornerstone, intentionality, has been the most challenging, he says, as well as the most rewarding aspect of his ministry over the last 12 years at Bridgeway. For him, the effort to be more inclusive has yielded a new understanding of God.

“Multicultural ‘proactivity’ actually produces a whole new level of experiences that cause us to feel and see God in a totally different way,“ Anderson says. “I’m convinced of it.“ I

t isn’t only that God looks more diverse on the faces of different races in the Church, but that the Christian culture transcends the multitude of human cultures that come together to find unity in Christ.

“There’s a difference between being multicolored and multicultural,“ Anderson explains.“It costs to be multicultural, and most people don’t want that.“ Being multicolored is a good first step for churches, he says, but including people of differing cultures—socio-economic groups, ethnicities, worship styles, etc.—must be a burden or calling in a leader’s heart. The multicultural vision some churches have adopted impacts nearly every aspect of ministry, from curriculum and leadership to worship and music.

Anderson suggests that leaders view worship style for a multicultural church in the same way they may think about what to serve if they invite new friends over for dinner: “If they’re not Korean, you’re probably not going to make kimchi,“ he says. “Choose something that’s safe like beef or chicken, common food, then pepper it with ethnic side dishes. They don’t mind kimchi on the table when it’s something new to try, but find out what your meat and potatoes dish is.“

REACHING ONE CULTURE

Making church relevant has been the primary focus for McManus at Mosaic. The mostly young and single congregation has grown from a couple of hundred to a couple of thousand. Other Mosaic churches have been planted in Seattle, Miami, Atlanta, Dallas, Berkeley, Calif., and Manhattan, N.Y. And there is a move to plant Mosaic in every major city in Europe.

But none of that was intended to update the church the way you might update a wardrobe. McManus is outspoken on the vision of Mosaic—not to be the coolest church in the city of angels—though it definitely contends for that honor, but to be the most relevant. That means it must be effectively reaching one culture—the unchurched. That outreach also comes through relationships.

Some church leaders have asked McManus how he cultivated a multicultural, multiethnic congregation, 40% of who are Asian. “Here’s the secret,“ he says matter-of-factly. “I actually like Asians, you know … I have friends who are Asian and they have, guess what, family who are Asian.“

For McManus, church isn’t about diversity, but about reaching the unchurched in a community that’s already diverse. “I don’t just want to reflect communities. I want to transform them.“

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