You’ve probably never heard of Shelby Park. It’s an ethnically diverse neighborhood in Louisville, Kentucky, and home to Sojourn Church Midtown. It’s where the two of us—one of us Black, the other White—serve as pastors.
You probably have heard about an apartment building about nine miles south of us. On March 13, 2020, the Louisville Metro Police Department executed a no-knock warrant on a unit in that building. In the botched raid that followed, twenty-six-year-old medical technician Breonna Taylor was shot to death. The resulting wave of demonstrations and counterdemonstrations lasted for months. There were vigils and protests and prayer walks. Most were peaceful, and we participated in some of them. But there was violence as well.
The high-profile deaths of Breonna Taylor, Michael Brown, Sandra Bland, Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, and so many others have revealed fault lines in our culture and triggered seismic eruptions in cities across the United States. All of this has left lasting scars in our community, in our church, and in us. And yet . . .
CHASING GOD’S VISION
. . . we’re still here. A multiethnic band of pastors leading a diverse congregation that loves Jesus, the gospel, and the city of Louisville. We’ve lamented as we’ve seen some members leave, we’ve mourned as many well-intended plans have fallen short, and we’ve seen our hair grow grayer. Yet we have no plans to give up our vision for this place because we’re filled with hope in Christ and hope for you.
Our vision is to pursue a life like heaven.
For us, that means watching this church grow into a diverse, gospel-driven, Scripture-saturated community and equipping other congregations to do the same. What we envision is a future filled with ethnically and socioeconomically diverse churches in every corner of race-torn America. It’s a vision that our friend and fellow pastor Jarvis Williams has termed in his book by the same name “redemptive kingdom diversity.”
Despite the wounds of the past few years, God has been at work among us, turning brokenness into wholeness. At the height of tensions in Louisville, we shepherded our people through a sermon series titled “The Gospel, Race, and Justice” that has had an impact far greater than what we expected. Messages from the series ended up reaching churches far beyond Louisville. Years later, we still hear regularly from pastors who are using these messages to shape their churches’ responses to racial injustice.
But this vision isn’t merely our vision.
It’s also God’s vision.
Before time began, God planned to forge humanity into a multiplicity of ethnicities. He crafted Adam and Eve in such a way that their descendants would develop into a kaleidoscope of colors and cultures that would fill the cosmos with reflections of his glory (Genesis 1:28; Acts 17:26).7 Long before that moment when our primal parents rebelled against him, God’s design was to draw a diverse humanity back together in communities that would teem with different colors and cultures.
According to the apostle Paul, a richly varied church that’s united in Christ reflects the richly varied wisdom of our God. To cultivate multiethnic, multigenerational, and multi-socioeconomic cultures in our churches is to declare to the world the riches of God’s wisdom in Christ.
It’s not surprising then that when the apostle John describes the heavenly people of God surrounding the throne of God, he depicts ethnic and cultural diversity. This community is so beautiful that it causes heaven itself to erupt with praise for the wisdom of the one who designed it all. Listen to these words from our brother John:
There was a vast multitude from every nation, tribe, people, and language, which no one could number. . . . And they cried out in a loud voice: “Salvation belongs to our God, who is seated on the throne, and Introduction to the Lamb!” All the angels stood around the throne, and along with the elders and the four living creatures they fell facedown before the throne and worshiped God, saying, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and strength be to our God forever and ever.” (Revelation 7:9-12)
Perhaps what is most striking about this vision is how God’s people aren’t described in this text.
John could have highlighted their social statuses or their economic standing or their human families—but he didn’t. Instead, the Spirit of God led the man of God to spotlight the ethnic and cultural diversity of the people of God.
According to Jesus, marriage and childbearing will not persist into eternity (Matthew 22:30; Mark 12:25; Luke 20:34-36). Our socioeconomic statuses certainly won’t last past the coming of God’s kingdom. And yet, our ethnic and cultural identities apparently will. That’s significant when it comes to how we think about ethnic diversity.
You don’t need to check your ethnicity at the door of God’s kingdom. Your ethnicity and your culture are part of God’s plan for his praise. But what relevance does this have for churches here and now? Sure, John’s vision describes a gloriously diverse future for God’s people.
But there’s no reason to think that God meant churches to grow in ethnic diversity in the present, right?
It all depends on what you think it means to pray, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
We understand this prayer as a plea for God’s revealed will to be practiced on earth no less than it is in the heavens. And so, if it is God’s will for “a vast multitude from every nation, tribe, people, and language” (Revelation 7:9) to gather together in the heavens, whenever we ask God’s will to be done “on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10), part of what we’re praying for—even if we don’t recognize it—is kingdom diversity here and now.
Of course, the diversity in John’s vision will never be completely realized in this life, just like our own holiness won’t be completed until God glorifies us at the end of time. Still, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive for both diversity and holiness now. Just as the promise of perfect holiness in the future compels us to pursue holiness in the present (1 Peter 1:3-15; 2 Peter 3:11-14), the certainty of John’s heavenly vision in the future should drive us to strive for a life like heaven here and now.
So is ethnic diversity in the church a future hope? Or is it a present calling? Yes.
Adapted from In Church as It Is in Heaven by Jamaal E. Williams and Timothy Paul Jones. ©2023 by Jamaal Williams and Timothy Paul Jones. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press. www.ivpress.com.
