Jesus is our common denominator. Just because a church is populated does not mean it is healthy. Three primary marks of a healthy church is that of biblical authority, the worship and the sacraments, and commmunity. The third of these can make or break a church just as much as abuse of one or both of the other two. I love community like I love the word preached.

Hi Tim,

Helpful post. Do you have any suggestions on biblical ways to build diversity in a church? My concern is that my current church seems to have gotten a little overly focused on cultivating diversity. It seems like it’s almost all we talk about now. In the past 9 months I think I’ve heard 15-20 sermons focused on becoming a more multiracial church and maybe 1 sermon that made the gospel explicitly clear. Any thoughts?

The church-universal is diverse. The church-congregational, is NOT, which is the condition you are exposing. However, it seems to me that the issue is not necesarily the oftentimes homogeneous appearance of the people who worship in any given church, but rather, the heart attitude of the pastor and congregants with respect to “inclusivity” versus “exclusivity”, not relative to watered down doctrine that embraces deviant behavior, but as relates to welcoming people who differ racially, culturally.

I was intrigued by the first commentor above, who wants to outreach in the interest of diversity. I wonder if he has considered joining a church defined by a race other than his own to accomplish diversity, rather than trying to outreach to balance his own semi-segregated place of worship.

The issue I see Tim bringing up here goes beyond mere racial diversity. If I am right, and correct me if I am not, Tim seems to be questioning the legtimacy of targeting any sect of the population in doing church - not simply race or national origin, but also particular sects within a particular culture.

For example, I think Tim’s primary concern is that churches/church planters should not say build their ministry around ministering specifically to the trendy college population in a city. This may or may not have racial implications, but this seems to be his focus.

That being the case, I don’t think we can simply relegate all concerns to ministering to a particular aspect of any culture to the trash in the name of promoting diversity in the church. The facts are the facts, when you look at churches the predominant attendars in that ministry are those to whom the ministry is driven. There are exceptions to the rule, but white churches that play the top 100 on ccli.com in their worship services with a pastor under 40 will not be able to help but attract a population of white young couples and college students. The pastor who is over 55 who plays primarily hymns with an organ and wears suits on sundays will naturally, and always, attract an older more sophisticated crowd.

You can want diversity all you want, but how you do things will have an inevitable consequence as to those who attend your church. Unless God moves to bring in diversity, the natural course by which things work will naturally result in a general commanality between people in a given church.

Whether or not a church picks a particular sub culture to reach out to or not is not really that big of a deal. Every time a church gathers it is reaching out to a particular group, there is no such thing as a church that reaches out to every group - not only is it impossible, but it would lead to confusion.

We can want diversity, pray for it, do what we can given our context to work toward it, but lack of diversity within a church is natural. Whether or not this is always the result of sin or failure to be faithful in ministry may or may not be the case (or simply the result of being in a place like rural Iowa!).

Community in scripture is not community because of the number of differing cultures of people who meet together; community happens because whatever people are meeting are walking together in unity and love, serving together and one another to the glory of God, who would include any person of any differnece who loves Christ to join them in that walk.

Tim,

I hope all of us can learn to appreciate the strengths we bring as individuals and as denominations.

One of the things that concerns me in the Godblogosphere is the ease in which we fall into ghettos of belief. Anyone from a denomination outside our own soon becomes suspect, as if nothing can be learned from their faith tradition. Not every belief another Christian has is heretical. Our willingness to learn from them is one way we can show diversity and genuine Christian love.

I once received an e-mail from someone who stated that my blog’s sidebar book recommendations showed that I was obviously spiritually confused and double-minded. That sidebar includes classic books by Jonathan Edwards, A.W. Tozer, Watchman Nee, C.S. Lewis, Francis Schaeffer, and Dallas Willard. Intrigued, I went to this brother’s site and, sure enough, all his recommended books were from one narrow stream of Christian thought. So much for hearing ideas outside of one fragment of the faith that is Christianity!

That’s one way in which we can show diversity—by the books we read and recommend to others.

In the same way, I think we need to be willing to learn from other denominations. In my own walk with Christ, I learned grace from the Lutherans, the authority of the Word from Presbyterians, the power of the Holy Spirit from the Assemblies of God, service to others from the Vineyard, and what it means to be a saint from the Pentecostals. If I had said along the way that these widely differing denominations had nothing to teach me because I was so entrenched in my own denominational ghetto, then I’d be greatly impoverished as a Christian today for the want of their unique visions in my life.

Lastly, we must acknowledge that different personality types tend to flock together. I think this has as much to do with the plethora of denominations as anything. We have churches that attract scholars and we have churches that attract artists. Some churches are loaded with introverts and others extroverts. Wealth separates us, too. I’ve been a part of wealthy Presbyterian churches where the average household income was in the high $200,000s and poor Pentecostal churches where most people worked blue collar jobs and barely made enough money to survive.

We are drawn to people who are like us. One of the mysteries of the early Church was it had no choice (due to its small size) but incorporate a wide variety of people, prostitutes, wealthy land owners, thieves, vagabonds, the political elite, and so on. It truly was cosmopolitan.

Today, with Christianity so prevalent in the West, our very numbers allow us the false “luxury” of congregating with our choice of people. Church hopping anyone? I mean, let’s face it, Tim, neither you nor I would be a perfect fit in a black holiness church in Mississippi. But we need to be. Because heaven’s going to be filled with people of all types and personalities and nations and on and on.

Better we start thinking diversity now or heaven may be a shock to some of us!

Los Angeles is a better anticipation of heaven than Tulsa, Oklahoma. Let the church, strengthened by the grace of God, live out now, as largely as possible, what she will one day be.

I’ll throw out a suggestion to anyone seeking first-hand experience in diversity within the body of Christ: go on a few short-term mission trips. Or, if you can’t go, get involved in the lives of missionaries. Support them, communicate with them, learn from them.

I am very blessed to attend a church (in Texas) which has sent and established our own missionaries in places such as Russia, Kenya, Argentina, Mexico and China. We are continually sending short-term teams from our congregation to support the work of the full-timers in these places and others.

I love hearing the reports of our short-term teams upon their return. I enjoy the occasional visits from our long-term missionaries when they are back in the states. I am always blessed by seeing the differences and similarities between our congregation and others in far off places.

I have been to Mexico once and South Africa three times. These trips radically transformed my thinking about church. Hearing and seeing the reports from our missionaries in other places around the globe has also helped me form a broader understanding of how Christ is glorified in a wide variety of cultures.

Perhaps understanding other cultures and experiencing them first-hand is the first step to gaining wisdom in this area of diversity within the local church. I fear there are still many people in my own congregation who are simply ignorant of “how church is done” (so to speak) in other contexts. At some point it sinks in that although these people are really different, they are truly worshiping the *same God*! And He is truly glorified by it, as strange as the dress, language, locale or customs may seem. I think you just have to be there to really *get it*. And once you come home, you’ll never look at your own church or your own community the same way.

While experiencing diversity is not the reason for global missions, it is certainly one of the many blessings God pours out upon those who choose to go.

Even if your church is not a sending agency, you have plenty of opportunity to go on a trip through another church in your area or any number of para-church missions organizations.

Okay, that’s my plug for worldwide missions. ;) Back to your regularly scheduled comments…

I’m not trying to say anything deep here, and I’m not exactly sure what the point would be, just my experience. In general, the most diversified churches I’ve been in have been Catholic churches. For various reasons along the way I’ve been to mass serveral times in my life and I’ve always been impressed with the obvious wide variety of folks there. Here in Florida that would include persons of Hispanic, African, Asian, and European descent.