Featured Advertiser Visit our Christian Business Directory

Source: TCN / George Georgiou
Date Added: 2022-10-12
Category: General News,  TCN News,  Issues - General,  Issues - Racism, 

People of colour are filling the pews, the boardrooms and the leadership ladders and it’s the most exciting sign of hope for our nation and our churches - If we can find the formula to flow with it. 

Let me share an anecdote about diversity I use when training pastors, and often at my own church community vision and values sessions.

It’s a humorous summary of 25 years of leading volunteer-based organisations.

There are different cultural approaches to volunteering: When a white person says they’d like to get involved at church, this usually means the start of a process. We’ll meet for coffee. At first, just the husband or wife and me.

We’ll chat about options and ideas, and they will chat to their partner, pray about it and get back to me. We’ll pick up the conversation after church in a week or two and have coffee again, with the partner.

A few more questions and talk of a start date. We all head home to pray about it, and land on an area of involvement after the school holidays, perhaps in early Feb.

When black people get involved it’s a chat after church: “A few of my friends and I like coming here and we want to get involved.”

This is my cue to get them involved in the church community: “What about kid’s church? Or perhaps the welcome team? There are also some gaps in the band?”

“No problem, we’ll start next Sunday”.

Coloured people get involved boldly. A brief rundown of their church experience and an invitation to me to take up their offer to help.

One new congregant summarised the approach brilliantly. “Pastor can rest now. I can help with prayer team, marriage courses, worship and some preaching too.”

Then there’s the growing Indian community in church. This conversation will happen over a meal at their home.

You’ll enjoy a mind-blowing feast of food, and the priority will be, “how can we look after you, pastor?”

I’m sure I’ve left some out, but the anecdote isn’t intended as a research paper.

There is a valuable lesson here. It would be easy to pick a favourite. One may be tempted to stick to the group you’re most comfortable with. But then we miss out.

Just like the love languages book (The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate by  Gary Chapman), the goal is not to insist that everyone speaks your language, it is to learn the language of the person we’re speaking to.

Knowing that someone prioritises acts of service as a language while you prefer quality time is only half the assignment.

The other half is caring enough to use the language of your audience, workforce, neighbour or community. The Bible refers to this attitude as “honouring others above ourselves”. (Romans 12: 10)

All of this is often ignored in business, politics, and, sometimes, church.

Trying to legislate diversity is not the only, or even the best approach. Success comes when we work together, not because we have to, but because we want to.

The church is a perfect model. Everything about church is optional.

A study of the history of spiritual awakenings and diversity reveals how often the two came hand-in-hand. “I have a dream” was declared by a preacher.

Some of the largest gatherings in South Africa during apartheid were led by American evangelist Billy Graham, who took almost a decade to finalise arrangements because he insisted that the stadiums were open to people of all races.

Churches like the Durban Christian Centre opened in the centre of town in 1979 to a non racial congregation of tens of thousands.

The post-pandemic church is filling up again and I’m struck by the power of its diversity.

This gives us a unique opportunity to shine the light on how it’s possible to be better together.

The vision of people of many nations and tribes assembled together in worship is Biblical after all:

“After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, 10 and crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne’” Revelation 7: 9).

Here’s how we could make this work.

1. Show up and be present physically rather than watching online services from elsewhere in the world: There’s much to be said about church for Africa by Africans.
    
2. 2. Learn a new language: A young man whom I’ve mentored since he was in junior school went through initiation to become a man as defined by his culture.
   One of our Xhosa-speaking elders pulled me aside to educate me.
   “That young man doesn’t have a dad. He looks up to you.
   “You can’t just send a WhatsApp. That’s a white thing.
   “When he returns there will be a celebration. You need to dress up, show up, and come with a gift.” I did, and it was life-changing in so many ways.
    
3. Fight for our future: When speaking recently at a local high school, I was so impressed with the character of those young people!
   I asked about diversity and was told its going better and better.
   But, to be honest, it was difficult to find black teenagers among what seemed to me to be a thousand young people.
   I asked around and it seems there’s a subtle trend in an uncomfortable direction. Some schools are becoming the “coloured” school, or a “black school”.
   It’s not usually malicious or intentional. It is force of habit.

But we can break habits and form new ones and fight for a future shaped by a new normal.

If we do, we’ll find our nation’s gold isn’t in the ground. It’s in our people.
 
George Georgiou
Lead Pastor at Father's House Church

Source: TCN / George Georgiou
Date Added: 2022-10-12
Category: General News,  TCN News,  Issues - General,  Issues - Racism, 

• Index of news reports on our site
• News on Social & Moral Issues
• Old News Articles from 2012 and before

 

Christian News to strengthen God's people at www.gatewaynews.co.za News that is fresh, relevant, edifying and which glorifies Jesus!