As told to Jessica Hanewinckel, ethnic disunity is a significant benchmark sociologists use to analyze the landscape of modern ministry. However, the shift toward multiethnic congregations remains a primary focus for church leaders seeking to reflect the diversity of their communities.
A multiethnic church is defined by a clear sociological standard known as the 80/20 rule: no single ethnicity should comprise more than 80% of the congregation. In 1998, only 7% of evangelical churches met this criteria. By 2020, that figure grew to 22%, according to the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture’s Survey of American Political Culture. While it is encouraging that the number has tripled, it also highlights that 78% of evangelical spaces remain largely homogenous.
Not all multiethnic churches are the same, as there is a vital distinction between diversity and unity. Simply gathering people of different ethnicities in one room is not the ultimate objective. The true goal is for the congregation to walk in the oneness and unity for which Jesus Christ prayed. As evidenced in Acts 15, the church of Jesus Christ is not meant to be defined by ethnic homogeny—a message that many of our churches must champion today.
What we really want is an integrated multiethnic church. In this kind of church, there’s an equilibrium where there’s no master culture at work. One of the ways you can tell is in the singing in the church. There should be this sense of equilibrium, like, Oh, this song is my heart language, and the next song is, That’s not my cup of tea, but it’s honoring and blessing the person next to me, and because it exalts Christ, I can get with that.
Korie Little Edwards is a Jesus-loving Black woman who is Distinguished Professor of sociology at Ohio State University. She argues that homogenous churches entrench racism, and multiethnic churches are the primary vehicle God uses to deconstruct racism. Her argument is that we all have biases, so we need people in our lives who see things differently. That’s what the multiethnic church offers.
The average community that a church sits in, Little Edwards says, is 10 times more diverse than the church itself. The average school in a church’s community is 20 times more diverse than the church. So while I don’t believe every church should be multiethnic, I do think that with the diversification of our communities and schools, our churches should look like our communities and schools.
The church started out multiethnic. The apostle Paul didn’t start two separate churches, one for the Jews and one for the Gentiles. He started one church, put both groups in one church and called them to work out horizontally what God in Christ already accomplished for them vertically, which is reconciliation. And so the vision for discipleship must not be just individual-vertical. We need a robust discipleship vision that encompasses the individual-vertical and the communal-horizontal.
Bryan C. Loritts is teaching pastor at The Summit Church in Durham, North Carolina, and vice president for regions for the Send Network. His latest book is The Offensive Church: Breaking the Cycle of Ethnic Disunity (IVP).