September 2016 – Rapidly shifting demographics in the U.S. have brought new faces to the subdivisions, stores, gyms, apartments, restaurants, public areas, and parks of main street America – but not into most established churches. The percentage of non-white groups in the U.S. has swelled dramatically from 15% in 1960, to 37% in 2014, and is projected to be as high as 57% by 2060. But surveys have repeatedly revealed in the last few years that less than 15% of churches are ethnically diverse.

“Churches are 10 times less diverse than the neighborhoods they sit in,” Rice University sociologist Michael Emerson reported to PBS’s Religion and Ethics Newsweekly in 2009.

Missing the goal
In the 1960s, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “At 11:00 am on Sunday morning is one of the most segregated hours, if not the most segregated hour, in Christian America.”

That statement still holds true in many worship services today, and church leaders are not blind to the fact. LifeWay Research found in 2014 that 85% of pastors want more diversity in their churches. Still, even with a glut of diversity building strategies, the desire fails to match reality. Is there an oversight somewhere?

Perhaps the issue is quite straightforward. Diversity is not the final aim – evangelism should be the driving force. Surprisingly, churches can be deficient in this core area long before they ever get to the intricacies of multiethnic ministry.

David Olson, church planter and author of The American Church in Crisis, documents that from 1990 to 2007, church attendance grew by little more than half a million, while the total population saw a net gain of 52 million through birth and legal immigration.

When the church fails at outreach, it is not only diversity that suffers. The church declines, and the community misses out on the gospel.

Name that church
Thom Rainer, president of LifeWay Christian Resources and long-time church consultant and commentator, shared an example he said is all too common:

“In a drugstore catty corner to a certain church, I asked the clerk who rang up my products, ‘Do you know where [the name of that church] is located?’ Keep in mind that the church was visible from their parking lot, and she responded, ‘I never heard of that church.’ Now that tells you something, when a church is so close to someone, and she does not even know it is there.”

As Rainer pointed out, a scarcity of minorities suggests a lack of outreach if a church is in a multiethnic region, but diversity can be represented – or absent – in a myriad of ways depending on the makeup of the community.

“If an Anglo church in an African-American community, or an African-American church in an ethnically diverse community, remains all one race while the community around it changes, the church has become an island in the midst of the community,” he said. “And it’s not limited to ethnic or racial overtones. If the church is reaching out, it will reflect the community: socioeconomically, racially, ethnically. The question is does the church look like the community?”

When diversity happens
As churches find themselves in the midst of inner city neighborhoods, ethnic migration, or economic transitions, they are challenged to find creative ways to carry out the responsibility of local evangelism to those from unfamiliar cultures.

Consider these examples from three churches:

Reach out – One First Baptist Church in a small southern town, steeped in traditional dignity and filled with comfortable, middle-class, respected, white citizens, began a community outreach for those who had never before been part of the church’s audience: low-income African-American teens living on welfare in government “project” housing. Soon, some of the families were visiting church functions and sitting in the pews on Sunday mornings.

“At first, some people didn’t like it,” admitted a volunteer in the outreach. “But we found that as we invested in and prayed for families as a church body, our hearts changed – we truly cared for and welcomed our neighbors.”

The church simply took on the Great Commission in the context of its own neighborhood, and diversity is easing into the church as the natural outcome.

Accommodate – Once a suburban church, Lilburn Baptist in Clarkston, Georgia, now exists in one of the most diverse neighborhoods in America. It structures the unique needs of a large refugee community into the church’s operation. The billboard out front lists a dozen ethnic services – each one with its own native pastor, language, and worship style.

“But if you visit our service, a church member sitting nearby will voluntarily translate for you,” the pastor of the Arabic service said.

Integrate – At least half the congregation of Metro Church in Memphis, Tennessee, is made up of minorities, but the first impression is not multiethnic. The word that comes to mind is fellowship. Differences are not ignored, but neither do they divide. Instead, all take part in acknowledging and investing in the unique gifts of each one.

“I never thought about if my church was black, white, or any other shade or mixture of colors,” Joy said. “It was simply church, and family.”

Usually the ideal for multicultural ministry, the integrated church is built on the power of the gospel working in the hearts of people to reflect God’s eternal kingdom.

“Jesus’s epic salvific work creates a third ethnicity of people called the church,” writes Derwin Gray, author and pastor of Transformation Church in Charlotte, North Carolina. “This new ethnicity is a multiethnic people who are one in Christ. This new ethnicity in Christ is a glimpse into eternity.”

Whether diversity develops gradually and organically in a church as the product of outreach, or is intentionally planted into the structure of a church, it is a fruit of a church’s vigorous exercise of the Great Commission in devoted declaration of God’s good news to all people.   

My friend identified himself as Catholic, but admitted he didn’t enjoy attending church.

“Come to my church,” I offered.

“Well, but it’s hard, with the language … I don’t understand well.”

I confidently promised to help him find a Spanish-language service in the area.

I came back empty-handed. Despite a sizeable Latino population in town, no local evangelical congregations were purposefully reaching out to them. My town is not alone.
— Stacy Long

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Tips for outreach 
▶ Know the demographics of your community. Do you see those people in church?
▶ Consider what models best suit multicultural ministry in your area. Do you need outreach programs, qualified ethnic leaders, language appropriate resources, church planters?
▶ Do more than assume people will just come. Are you reaching out, and working to insure people feel respected and welcomed to be part of the church?
▶ Beware of long-sightedness. Are you as eager for evangelization in your own town as you are for overseas missions?
▶ Ask what your church looks like. Does it look like the community or does it just look like you?

How can your church minister to the unreached in your town? Consider:
▶ Ethnic or religious groups
▶ The disabled, poor, or homeless
▶ The college student or elderly

Helpful websites
thomrainer.com
derwinlgray.com
lifewayresearch.com
theamericanchurch.org