In the 1980s a new church was ini­ti­ated in the north-​​west Greater Toronto Area. It was devel­oped as an essen­tially white, Anglo-​​European back­ground con­gre­ga­tion. Early on, how­ever, peo­ple from other cul­tural back­grounds began to attend largely because of a per­ceived com­mon denom­i­na­tional her­itage. In the mid-​​90s the con­gre­ga­tion went through a lead­er­ship hem­or­rhage that left the group with a largely Caribbean-​​background mem­ber­ship. For almost a decade they have been led by an Anglo-​​European back­ground pas­tor with a degree of inter­cul­tural sen­si­tiv­ity. Now their con­gre­ga­tion is at a cross­roads and the pas­tor is won­der­ing how to engage his lead­er­ship team in a dia­logue about becom­ing an inten­tion­ally mul­ti­cul­tural com­mu­nity. One leader spelled it out: “we are multi-​​ethnic in com­po­si­tion, but it’s really only one cul­ture group that influ­ences the decision-​​making.”

What Kind of Change?

What would lead a con­gre­ga­tion to want to con­sider becom­ing func­tion­ally mul­ti­cul­tural rather than just remain­ing rooted in one par­tic­u­lar cul­tural milieu? There are sev­eral direc­tions from which this desire might emerge.

Some con­gre­ga­tions may have become grad­u­ally aware that their demo­graphic makeup is chang­ing. In prac­ti­cal terms, they are no longer a com­mu­nity of essen­tially one cul­tural back­ground. What does it mean to come to terms with their already observ­able dif­fer­ences, prac­ti­cally? Another con­gre­ga­tion, or pas­toral leader, may be wrestling with the the­o­log­i­cal impli­ca­tions of Scrip­ture regard­ing cul­ture and the Body of Christ, in pas­sages such as 1 Corinthi­ans 12:12–14 and Romans 5:9–10. What does it mean to come to terms with God’s accep­tance of all nations, tribes and lan­guages, the­o­log­i­cally? Some Chris­t­ian lead­ers are also ask­ing how a “mis­sional ori­en­ta­tion” to their com­mu­nity will result in engage­ment with the dif­fer­ent cul­tures already present there – even if peo­ple from those cul­tures are not yet feel­ing wel­come in their church. Does becom­ing mis­sional change how a Chris­t­ian com­mu­nity relates to dif­fer­ences in worldview?

What is culture?

Mis­si­ol­o­gist Paul Hiebert gives a stan­dard descrip­tion of cul­ture: “The more or less inte­grated sys­tems of ideas, feel­ings and val­ues, and their asso­ci­ated pat­terns of learned behav­iour and prod­ucts shared by a group who orga­nize and reg­u­late what they think, feel, and do.“1 In this case, Lati­nos from Colom­bia have a com­mon cul­ture because they have acquired a web of mean­ing about how to think about life and ways of doing things because they have learned these things from fam­ily, friends, school, church, and government.

Anthro­pol­o­gist Clif­ford Geertz has a slightly dif­fer­ent twist: cul­ture is “an inher­ited sys­tem of sym­bolic forms that oper­ates as a set of con­trol mech­a­nisms – plans, recipes, rules, instruc­tions – for gov­ern­ing behav­iours.”2 As an exam­ple of this approach, multi-​​generational Cana­di­ans have inher­ited “hockey” as a sym­bol of their cul­tural iden­tity. Cana­di­ans have learned the rules, skills and behav­iours so that an adult will play the game “intu­itively” – with­out even think­ing. But hockey also becomes a metaphor or sym­bol for how cit­i­zens think about them­selves as indi­vid­u­als and a nation – rough and tough, at ease with the cold envi­ron­ment; a team game with lots of room for indi­vid­ual attainments.

These two views of cul­ture help the reader to under­stand what it means when peo­ple of diverse cul­tures come together in a social set­ting – such as church. Two Chris­tians who have been raised in dif­fer­ent cul­tures will have dif­fer­ent “webs of mean­ing,” or ways of see­ing the world, for almost every­thing. They will have dif­fer­ent “sym­bols” which intu­itively mean dif­fer­ent things to each per­son. Chris­tians often end up judg­ing or eval­u­at­ing peo­ple (and their spir­i­tu­al­ity) based on “our view­point” rather than step­ping into the shoes of fel­low believ­ers and “see­ing” from their cul­tural van­tage point.

If Janet sug­gests that Maryam should release her world­view for the pur­pose of “fit­ting in,” she has essen­tially denied Maryam her con­nec­tions with her cul­tural iden­tity. This attempt to min­i­mize dif­fer­ence – per­haps for the sake of “Chris­t­ian unity” – is a denial of an aspect of her sov­er­eign iden­tity. That is, in God’s prov­i­dence, Maryam was born and raised in Egypt, so there must be some­thing about Maryam’s cul­tural iden­tity with which God is well-​​pleased.

If these cul­tural dif­fer­ences are valid frame­works for inter­pret­ing one’s world, how do Chris­tians func­tion in com­mu­nity when peo­ple of diverse cul­tures come together?

That is the dilemma, because many con­gre­ga­tions in urban areas can “look” very diverse but not actu­ally address the issues that develop a mul­ti­cul­tural com­mu­nity. It should be noted that there is a dif­fer­ence between multi-​​ethnic and mul­ti­cul­tural. The multi-​​ethnic, mono­cul­tural church has many peo­ple of dif­fer­ent ethnic/​cultural back­grounds present in the con­gre­ga­tion, but the lead­er­ship processes fol­low one par­tic­u­lar culture’s way of doing things. The multi-​​ethnic, mul­ti­cul­tural church acknowl­edges dif­fer­ing cul­tural frame­works and inten­tion­ally draws those cul­tural per­spec­tives into the life and lead­er­ship processes of the congregation.

This arti­cle, how­ever, is not a dis­cus­sion regard­ing the nature and func­tion of mul­ti­cul­tural con­gre­ga­tions but an exam­i­na­tion of the tran­si­tion process toward becom­ing a mul­ti­cul­tural community.

Multicultural/​Intercultural?

It may be help­ful to pause and com­ment on the use of ‘mul­ti­cul­tural’ and/​or ‘inter­cul­tural.’ Prac­ti­tion­ers in the field of inter­cul­tural com­mu­ni­ca­tions use ‘inter­cul­tural’ as a descrip­tor of a process of dia­logue between peo­ple of dif­fer­ing cul­tures. That is, it is pos­si­ble to acquire skills in pass­ing ideas and infor­ma­tion between per­sons of dif­fer­ent world­views for the sake of find­ing com­mon mean­ing. Some­one who is inter­cul­tur­ally com­pe­tent is, there­fore, able to effec­tively and appro­pri­ately use com­mu­ni­ca­tion tools to elicit mean­ing in a spe­cific cul­tural envi­ron­ment, even if not their own.

‘Mul­ti­cul­tural’ is lan­guage used by edu­ca­tors and social philoso­phers as a descrip­tor of a process for includ­ing the per­spec­tives of dif­fer­ing cul­tures into a col­lec­tive under­stand­ing of the world,  and in par­tic­u­lar its diverse com­mu­ni­ties. That is, the voices of peo­ple func­tion­ing with dif­fer­ing world­views should be accepted (not just tol­er­ated) as valid con­tri­bu­tions to a community’s identity.

A faith com­mu­nity will mutu­ally adjust its prac­tices, so that dif­fer­ent val­ues and expres­sions find their way into shap­ing the ethos of that com­mu­nity. To put it another way, a func­tional, accept­ing, adapt­ing, mul­ti­cul­tural con­gre­ga­tion is made up of indi­vid­u­als who are inter­cul­tur­ally com­pe­tent. In fact, inter­cul­tur­ally com­pe­tent lead­ers are required, or nec­es­sary, to mutu­ally sort out those cul­tural val­ues which do not find their source in bib­li­cal, king­dom val­ues – in both the dom­i­nant and minor­ity cul­tures.3

How does change hap­pen
in an orga­ni­za­tional culture?

Churches are, in fact, micro-​​cultures of their own. That is, par­tic­u­lar con­gre­ga­tions have beliefs, val­ues, and sym­bols that orga­nize the way they think and act – they deter­mine con­gre­ga­tional roles and behav­iours. These beliefs, val­ues, sym­bols and behav­iours are passed from one gen­er­a­tion to another, so that churches main­tain cer­tain ways of under­stand­ing and doing things. Some of these things are good and right, if rooted in bib­li­cal the­ol­ogy. Some of these things are just “the way we have always done it” and may have cul­tural mean­ing rather bib­li­cal. And that’s not wrong either, if those cul­tural val­ues and prac­tices don’t steer the con­gre­ga­tion away from bib­li­cal val­ues and prac­tices. When some­one “from another cul­ture,” how­ever, enters such a con­gre­ga­tion with their own set of val­ues and prac­tices – some bib­li­cal and some cul­tural – then the culture-​​shapers have to decide how they will respond.

Orga­ni­za­tional cul­ture, or “the way that our church does things,” is rooted in a set of beliefs about how mem­bers of the com­mu­nity think the world oper­ates. Chris­tians believe in a liv­ing God who is at work in the affairs of human beings – a belief which sets Chris­tians apart from a lot of other social and even reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions. They also have beliefs about what it means to “be a Chris­t­ian,” some of which are rooted in Scrip­ture and some of which are not. Some of those “beliefs” at the cen­tre of a Chris­t­ian com­mu­nity are shaped by the dom­i­nant culture’s way of under­stand­ing things, rather than Scrip­ture or bib­li­cal the­ol­ogy. This mixed-​​bag can be viewed as an “oper­a­tional the­ol­ogy” – that is, the things the con­gre­ga­tion really believes. Built upon these sys­tems of beliefs and val­ues, con­gre­ga­tions develop ways of orga­niz­ing them­selves. Churches develop assump­tions and expec­ta­tions for how things should hap­pen and how their mem­bers should con­duct them­selves, based on their beliefs and world­view. Often these behav­iours or activ­i­ties no longer have a mean­ing that is under­stood, they are just acted out.

Change hap­pens in orga­ni­za­tional cul­tures when lead­er­ship begins to ask the hard ques­tions, chal­leng­ing their assump­tions: What are we doing? What results are we hav­ing? Why are we doing this? Is this really what we believe? This is the begin­ning of orga­ni­za­tional change. To explore a congregation’s devel­op­ment toward becom­ing an inten­tional, func­tional, mul­ti­cul­tural con­gre­ga­tion, lead­er­ship must become more cul­tur­ally self-​​aware. This involves becom­ing aware of how cul­ture impacts what they do, in one way or another. Cul­ture must be brought to the table, not left parked out­side the door of the church board room.

The devel­op­ment of inter­cul­tural sen­si­tiv­ity comes via an increas­ing capac­ity to per­ceive dif­fer­ences. This capac­ity is built upon actual expe­ri­ence com­bined with reflec­tion on that expe­ri­ence. Cul­tural knowl­edge is not the same thing as inter­cul­tural sen­si­tiv­ity. Inter­cul­tural com­pe­tence requires increas­ing expe­ri­ence of dif­fer­ence cou­pled with reflec­tion and inte­gra­tion of insights.4 Thus the tran­si­tion toward an inten­tion­ally mul­ti­cul­tural church can only hap­pen as lead­er­ship becomes increas­ingly more self-​​aware regard­ing their expe­ri­ences of cul­tural difference.

A Dialec­ti­cal Model
for Con­gre­ga­tional Transition

This glimpse at the place of inter­cul­tural self-​​awareness and orga­ni­za­tional cul­ture aids under­stand­ing of the process for tran­si­tion­ing to a mul­ti­cul­tural con­gre­ga­tion. It should also be noted that as “change” hap­pens around a con­gre­ga­tion, “tran­si­tion” is the mean­der­ing path through the time of dis­ori­en­ta­tion toward desired, mis­sional out­comes..”5

In April 2008 a group of min­istry prac­ti­tion­ers and edu­ca­tors from Canada and the United States gath­ered in St Louis (USA) to look at best prac­tices in devel­op­ing multi-​​ethnic/​multicultural con­gre­ga­tions. From that dia­logue emerged the devel­op­ment of a dialec­ti­cal for­mat for under­stand­ing tran­si­tion to a mul­ti­cul­tural con­gre­ga­tion..”6 The dialec­ti­cal model sug­gests that each move for­ward is pre­cip­i­tated by an encounter or dis­tur­bance to the sta­tus quo. The fol­low­ing out­line gives an intro­duc­tion to this process of mean­der­ing, ongo­ing engage­ment, reflec­tion and development.

Cycle One: Become Conscious

The process of change nor­mally begins with some sort of cri­sis. It may be a grad­ual decline in atten­dance or per­haps a change in who is actu­ally attend­ing ser­vices. Either sit­u­a­tion may cause long-​​time mem­bers to wake up and become con­scious that some­thing has changed. This moment of awak­en­ing must be used as an oppor­tu­nity to exegete the change or cri­sis. Explore what has been hap­pen­ing to pro­duce this point of self-​​awareness. Are we con­cerned about this sit­u­a­tion because there is no one left to teach Sun­day School? Are we con­cerned because we are uncom­fort­able with “those” peo­ple, or are we con­cerned because we have lost our sense of mission?

This will undoubt­edly lead to a need to exegete the com­mu­nity sur­round­ing the church. Explore what is actu­ally going on: demo­graphic changes, social needs, phys­i­cal, town-​​planning changes in the neigh­bour­hood. Who is liv­ing in the neigh­bour­hood these days? What are the needs that no one is respond­ing to? What long-​​term plans does the city have for this area?

The final explo­ration in this stage is to exegete the con­gre­ga­tion – what have we been doing that led us to be obliv­i­ous to the changes around us? What have we become that has pro­duced such dis­con­nec­tion between our­selves and our neigh­bours? What is really impor­tant to us? What do we believe? What do we value? This exer­cise is cru­cial for exam­in­ing the orga­ni­za­tional cul­ture of the con­gre­ga­tion as well as the inter­cul­tural self-​​awareness of the lead­er­ship core.

Cycle Two: Develop Consensus

The next tran­si­tional cycle of dia­logue requires the devel­op­ment of con­gre­ga­tional con­sen­sus about the direc­tion of unfold­ing min­istry. Does the con­gre­ga­tion want to do the work to become a mul­ti­cul­tural church, engaged in mis­sion in their diverse neigh­bour­hood? As a con­gre­ga­tion seeks to develop a new con­sen­sus, the dis­ori­ent­ing encounter is with Scrip­ture – a re-​​examination of famil­iar pas­sages and themes in light of new real­i­ties. In essence the con­gre­ga­tion needs to hear a new story, rooted in Scrip­ture, of God’s engage­ment with all cul­tures in the course of devel­op­ing a new human­ity cen­tered around Jesus.

The encounter with the God of Scrip­ture must then lead into lis­ten­ing prayer and spir­i­tual dis­cern­ment. God, what are you say­ing to us? These things that we have become con­scious of in our com­mu­nity, are they of con­cern to you? Please God, give us insight and dis­cern­ment as we seek your pres­ence and activ­ity in our neighbourhood.

Scrip­ture sug­gests that God hears these kinds of prayers and will not leave a dis­cern­ing lead­er­ship com­mu­nity with­out wis­dom. Wis­dom devel­oped through col­lab­o­ra­tive engage­ment with the peo­ple of God will lead to Spirit-​​guided direc­tion. A draft, pre­lim­i­nary, con­cep­tual plan about where to start will emerge.

Cycle Three: Engage Cul­ture – Build Trust

As soon as a lead­er­ship core begins to move from research, lis­ten­ing, and devel­op­ment to action, dis­e­qui­lib­rium will auto­mat­i­cally reap­pear. They are talk­ing about, and tak­ing action, to reori­ent their con­gre­ga­tional cul­ture. The most com­mon ini­tial reac­tion to change and dif­fer­ence is defense of the exist­ing cul­ture. Lead­ers seek­ing to help a church tran­si­tion to a func­tion­ally mul­ti­cul­tural con­gre­ga­tion must pre­pare for per­sonal and cor­po­rate sac­ri­fice. Lead­ers will be crit­i­cized for this – they are seen to be tak­ing more inter­est in “the other,” than “us.” The con­gre­ga­tion will lose peo­ple who can­not, or will not, make this transition.

As a con­gre­ga­tion seeks to engage with peo­ple of other cul­tures, trust and rap­port must be built – this is only done through devel­op­ing authen­tic inter­cul­tural rela­tion­ships. Tran­si­tion to a mul­ti­cul­tural con­gre­ga­tion will only hap­pen to the degree that a lead­er­ship com­mu­nity has rela­tion­ships of friend­ship, under­stand­ing, trust and mutual cri­tique with peo­ple whose cul­ture and world­view they do not fully com­pre­hend. These rela­tion­ships are built upon the devel­op­ment of inter­cul­tural com­pe­tence – acquir­ing skill in inter­cul­tural dia­logue. Inter­cul­tural com­pe­tence requires com­ing to under­stand how a per­son of a par­tic­u­lar cul­ture thinks and behaves; to under­stand the val­ues, cus­toms, norms and behav­iours of a friend’s cul­ture – from her per­spec­tive.7 And she must under­stand yours. Then a lead­er­ship com­mu­nity has the grounds for dia­logue and mutual cri­tique. With these ele­ments in place, and increas­ing, the tran­si­tion­ing con­gre­ga­tion starts to have an “all-​​by-​​itself” environment.

Cycle Four: Employ Critique

This fourth cycle may seem counter-​​intuitive – if every­thing is mov­ing along as it should, why eval­u­ate? A con­gre­ga­tion, how­ever, should be eval­u­at­ing what they are doing. It was likely a lack of reg­u­lar eval­u­a­tion for years, per­haps decades, that required this inter­ven­tion in the first place. And it must be reit­er­ated that when an orga­ni­za­tion embarks on a process of eval­u­a­tion, dis­e­qui­lib­rium will emerge again, because human beings nat­u­rally resist hav­ing per­for­mance evaluated.

The first area to assess and eval­u­ate is inter­cul­tural com­pe­tence. How are we doing in the devel­op­ment of rela­tion­ship, expe­ri­ence, under­stand­ing, accep­tance and adjust­ment? There are sev­eral use­ful tools for con­duct­ing this kind of self-​​awareness assess­ment. Hon­estly exam­ine how far the lead­er­ship core, and the con­gre­ga­tion, has come, iden­tify where the com­mu­nity is at presently, and dis­cern for­ward direc­tion for growth in inter­cul­tural competence.

Results from this kind of assess­ment may lead to the need to adapt and refor­mu­late the con­cep­tual plan. Now that the con­gre­ga­tion has more inter­cul­tural expe­ri­ence and com­pe­tence it is quite pos­si­ble that many of the pre­lim­i­nary notions of how to develop a mul­ti­cul­tural con­gre­ga­tion need to be reworked – as other voices are actu­ally being lis­tened to and per­spec­tives incor­po­rated! This in turn will lead to the need to adjust min­istry prac­tices and inter­cul­tural com­mu­ni­ca­tion pat­terns.

Poten­tial Bar­ri­ers and Hindrances

This out­line of a process for tran­si­tion to a mul­ti­cul­tural con­gre­ga­tion comes out of the hearts and minds of a group of expe­ri­enced prac­ti­tion­ers – lead­ers who have been work­ing at this kind of min­istry, in some cases, for decades. What these prac­ti­tion­ers know is that this work is not as sim­ple as a dia­gram or an out­line in some arti­cle. In par­tic­u­lar, a lack of com­mit­ment or pri­or­ity placed on this move­ment toward becom­ing more inten­tion­ally mul­ti­cul­tural can slow down the process for years. Con­gre­ga­tion mem­bers will see that your lead­er­ship doesn’t ‘walk the talk’ and may opt to leave. In some cases eth­no­cen­trism or fear will rear up, often from unex­pected direc­tions. This should push lead­er­ship back to exam­ine the basics of where prej­u­dice comes from, as well as inter­cul­tural com­mu­ni­ca­tion and devel­op­ing trust. Con­flicts between dif­fer­ent cul­ture groups may emerge in a con­gre­ga­tion that is rooted in decades – or cen­turies – of his­tory in another land, for which pas­toral lead­ers have no skills or under­stand­ing. Even with the best of inten­tions logis­ti­cal bar­ri­ers may work against rela­tion­ship build­ing, pre­vent­ing con­gre­ga­tion mem­bers of dif­fer­ing cul­tural back­grounds from actively engag­ing with one another. And it is more than pos­si­ble that scarcity of the fruit of the Spirit, such as patience, kind­ness and self-​​control may affect the devel­op­ment of a healthy mul­ti­cul­tural con­gre­ga­tion as well.

The con­gre­ga­tion men­tioned at the begin­ning of the arti­cle has a lead­er­ship team desir­ing to begin this tran­si­tion jour­ney, to engage more proac­tively with their chang­ing cul­tural con­text. They need to ini­ti­ate the process of becom­ing con­scious – exeget­ing their com­mu­nity and con­gre­ga­tion, by start­ing to under­stand what they are feel­ing – about being ‘out of place’ some­how. Exeget­ing their cri­sis requires look­ing at them­selves – becom­ing more aware of how their own expe­ri­ences of cul­tural dif­fer­ence have pre­pared or hin­dered them from going any further.

Orga­ni­za­tional change and tran­si­tion always begins with lead­er­ship becom­ing more aware of who they are and how they func­tion; that is, com­ing to under­stand their own cul­ture. Then they are able start to envi­sion­ing becom­ing some­thing different.

Notes

1 Paul Hiebert, Anthro­po­log­i­cal Insights for Mis­sion­ar­ies (Grand Rapids: Eerd­mans, 1985), p.30.

2 Clif­ford Geertz, The Inter­pre­ta­tion of Cul­tures (New York 1973), p.44.

3 cf. William Kym­licka, “Mul­ti­cul­tural State and Inter­cul­tural Cit­i­zen,” The­ory and Research in Edu­ca­tion (2003), Vol 1 (2): 147–169.

4 For a fuller dis­cus­sion of inter­cul­tural devel­op­ment see, Dan Sheffield, “Assess­ing Inter­cul­tural Sen­si­tiv­ity in Mis­sion Can­di­dates and Per­son­nel,” Evan­gel­i­cal Mis­sions Quar­terly 2007, 43 (1), 22–28.

5 Alan Rox­burgh, The Sky is Falling: lead­ers lost in tran­si­tion (Eagle, ID: USA, 2005), pp. 38–51.

6 I want to acknowl­edge the par­tic­u­lar input of Brian Seim (SIM Canada), Howard Olver (Free Methodist Church,Canada), Ken Baker (SIMUSA), Dana Roberts (Grace Chapel, Mass,USA) and Donna Mil­lar (Sal­va­tion Army,Canada).

7 G. Chen & W. Starosta. Foun­da­tions of Inter­cul­tural Com­mu­ni­ca­tion.Lon­don: Allyn and Bacon, 1998.