By Jim Tune
Three years ago I planted Churchill Meadows Christian Church (CMCC) in a suburb of Toronto, Canada””the world”s most ethnically diverse city according to a United Nations report. Our prayer was that God would show us how to reach the nations through our new church. We worked hard to reflect our community”s diversity right from the start. In our small launch team of five families, three of those families came from countries outside the U.S. and Canada. Our core group of 20 people included four Filipinos, five Jamaicans, three Guyanese, and one Korean.
Today, three years later, Churchill Meadows is a thriving church of 400 with more than 20 nations represented on any given Sunday! While this great diversity brings with it the challenge of navigating cultural differences, various religious backgrounds, and diverse worldviews, we have been blessed beyond words through this beautiful mosaic. Not only do we cherish and celebrate the rainbow of colors and cultures in our church family, God has provided opportunities for outreach to all of the world”s great peoples. Several members and attendees at CMCC come from nations that are closed to the gospel and Western missionaries.
Chances are, your church has real opportunities to reach people in your community like Mustafa and Sheela in ours (see related story at end of this article). Your town may not be the multicultural mecca that Toronto is, but statistics show that throughout Canada and the U.S. ethnic populations are the fastest growing. During the last decade, while the general U.S. population grew by 6 percent, Asians grew by 107 percent, Hispanics grew by 53 percent and African Americans by 28 percent. More than 100 million Americans claim African, Hispanic, Asian or other ancestry. The world is here! Is your church ready?
The Wal-Mart Test
Occasionally I will visit churches that are almost entirely Caucasian or monocultural. From time to time I will comment on the lack of diversity, only to be told that there aren”t any “ethnics” in that community. I often ask if there is a Wal-Mart within a 20-minute drive of the church. If there is, I might challenge them to go inside and see if the ethnic composition of shoppers and employees reflects the makeup of their congregation. You can probaly guess the answer!
My question is, if Wal-Mart can crack the code, why can”t the Christian church? Whatever diversity you find at your local Wal-Mart should also be present in your congregation.
Intentionally International
At CMCC, we try to be intentionally international. We reflect the diversity of our community by choice. Let me briefly share several lessons from our experience in Toronto.
“¢ Build conviction about diversity. Effective multicultural churches are both strategic and intentional in their approach. They understand the biblical case for multicultural churches (see Revelation 7:9-12; Acts 6:1-7; 11:19-26; 13:1-3; Matthew 28:19, 20; Ephesians 2:14-22; Galatians 3:26-28). In the Restoration Movement, the second chapter of Acts informs much of our theology and practice. We should also remember that Acts 2 describes a multicultural Pentecost gathering where the Holy Spirit took more than 15 different ethnic groups and languages and brought them together in a freedom, unity, and joy that could otherwise never be experienced.
“¢ Aim for a multicultural church, not just a multicolored church. Many churches are awakening to the need to broaden their diversity in light of the new multicultural reality in their community. While this is a good thing, churches frequently want to be multicolored but not multicultural. In other words, we want different color faces in our pews but we really don”t want it to affect or change our culture, music, budgets, boards or traditions. We want different cultures to join and adapt to us so that we can have this diverse rainbow, but our culture remains unchanged.
At CMCC, being intentionally multicultural means we reflect that diversity in our musical style, dress code, leadership, and staff composition. In our services and on our stage, visible minorities figure prominently””not because of an affirmative action philosophy, but because our church is truly a microcosm of our community at large. People of other cultures and races know their unique gifts and cultural nuances will be appreciated and celebrated.
When visitors come to your church they are scrutinizing the platform asking themselves, “Is there a place here for someone like me?”
“¢ Move from accommodation to celebration. It is not enough to tolerate or simply accommodate different ethnicities. At CMCC we not only embrace diversity in our regular services, we also create occasions to celebrate multiculturalism.
Every year we host an “Inter-national Weekend” in our community. It kicks off on a Saturday with an international dinner featuring an enticing array of international dishes. People dress in the native costume of their place of birth. We feature stories, music, dance, and games from around the world. It”s a lot of fun, inexpensive, and is thoroughly enjoyed by both the church and the community. At our last dinner we had more than 100 multiethnic guests from the surrounding community who were not churchgoers. The celebration continues on Sunday morning with a special worship service.
We regularly plan other events including “Caribbean Christmas” and worship services with a “Latin flavor.” We have featured African choirs and other international musical groups.
“¢ Make multiethnic outreach a priority. As few as 20 years ago “ethnic outreach” meant world missions. Today, mission is now “local-global.” Through multiethnic outreach in our cities and towns it is now possible to impact the whole world!
At CMCC multiethnic outreach takes various forms. For example, during our prelaunch phase we distributed a series of four different postcards to 30,000 homes in our community. Of the four cards, three featured ethnic families. This spoke to people about our openness to every nation.
Immigration assistance, ESL, Spanish-speaking small groups, and Bible studies have all figured prominently in our local outreach. Diversity can be seen on our Web site.
This coming September we are launching our first daughter church. We have assembled a launch team that includes families from Ghana and Venezuela, as well as individuals from Columbia, Korea, and Poland. During prelaunch, we are hosting a 5-kilometer run benefiting AIDS orphans in Tanzania. We are expecting as many as 1,000 novice and serious runners to participate in this event. The mayor is firing the starting gun. In this way our richly diverse community can participate in our concern for the nations.
Another exciting way for your church to get in the game could be to partner with a church-planting ministry on a multiethnic church plant in your city. One way or another we must be prepared to meet the challenge of world impact in our own backyards.
The world is here! Is your church ready?
SIDEBAR: How One Family Came to Christ (and Churchill Meadows)
Mustafa and Sheela”s story is similar to that of others who come to North America in search of a new beginning. Both Mustafa and Sheela were born in Tanzania. Mustafa was raised as a devout Muslim. Sheela was brought up in a Hindu home.
The two met and fell in love while they were still in school. Their relationship was strongly opposed by their families, but Mustafa and Sheela married nevertheless. Almost immediately they were forcefully separated by their families who were greatly distressed they had married outside of their religions.
Sheela was threatened with physical violence if she continued her relationship with Mustafa. Her parents sent her to live with relatives in the United Kingdom.
Heartbroken, Mustafa left his home and began a new life in Kenya. After several years Mustafa had saved enough money to move to the U.K. and begin the search for his wife. They were reunited in Scotland and finally made their way to Canada.
Sheela had formed friendships with Christians while living in the U.K. and was very open to the gospel. Mustafa was still cautious but was willing to “check out” CMCC when postcards featuring ethnically diverse families began arriving at their home, announcing our opening.
Mustafa later said attending church in a school felt like less of a betrayal of his roots than entering a church with traditional symbols or ornate architecture. When he visited, he was relieved to see the ethnic diversity and the climate of acceptance.
Within six months Sheela was baptized into Christ. Mustafa was still resistant, but his heart was growing softer toward the Lord. His confusion about Christ stemmed from the Islamic teaching that “God does not beget, nor is he begotten.” Christ”s deity and sonship were major obstacles to faith.
Nevertheless, Mustafa loved the sense of community and multicultural flavor he felt at church. He began to seek, attending an Alpha class and our church Discovery Classes. Seven months after his wife”s baptism, Mustafa gave his heart to the Lord and was baptized, confidently declaring, “I believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God!”
I am still moved by that moment.
Jim Tune ministers with Churchill Meadows Christian Church in West Toronto, Canada, and serves as director of the national church planting organization Impact Canada.
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