This
blog series presents a series of questions which arose out of a recent visit
with two prospective church planters. My initial intent was to post a new question each week...well, extensive travel in October/November blew that program out of the water. So much for good intentions. In any case, these are the prior questions:
Part 1 "What is our church’s track record with
Otherness in our community?"
Part 2 "Do we see those with different languages,
cultures and beliefs as a threat to cohesiveness in our
community?"
Part 3 "How does God want us to relate to Others in our neighborhood?"
Question 4: If mission among our Neighbors is biblical (and
not just recently biblical with the sudden interest in ‘missional’ ministry),
why are we not already in relationship with Others in our midst?
If we have come to conclude that multicultural body life is an
accurate representation of biblical character, we must acknowledge as well that
it has always been biblical! This begs
the question, if a multicultural congregational character is biblical, then why
is our church not already diverse? In
other words, what are the pathologies in our church which have kept us from
this vision and perspective up until now?
There are three realms of abiding denial—racialization,
cascading demographic change, and Christian segregation—realities which American
churches rarely acknowledge...except in conversations of economic and political
alarm. And we wonder why there is such
missional paralysis in our churches!
These “elephants” trample around us daily while our indifference
cloisters us from social realities. John
Perkins aptly challenged, “Can a gospel that reconciles people to God, and not
people to people, be the gospel of Jesus Christ?” Absolutely not! But, our friendship networks tell a different
story... Much more can be said, but not now. However, I will leave you with an thought provoking series on racialization from Paul Louis Metzger.
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