Church and Culture

With the great movement of people all over the world -- unknown in previous generations -- the Church's approach to multiculturalism becomes more important. There are at least four basic ways of dealing with diverse cultures in a Church:

• Deliberately celebrate the differences
• Level the Church to the same cultural norms
• Separate out the different cultures
• Erase culture as an issue in the Church 

In the case of the first two, Prof. Chuck van Engen (who once visited one of my Churches) warns of “an over-emphasis on particularity” and “an over-emphasis on universality”. My Church in city ministry had no majority cultural group (culturally we were very mixed), and we adopted the fourth position above. What mattered was worship and ministry, not cultural expressions of the same. Yet notice that we did not adopt the second position, to level culture to a single set of cultural norms for Church. OBSERVATION: Today, I would not erase culture as an issue to the same extent. It is an issue that often occupies people's thoughts.

POSTSCRIPT: Some may wonder about the third point above. It is still very much alive, known as homogeneous unit principle (my link disfavours it).