Sacred Space: Becoming an “Every Tribe” Church

Every Friday in Sacred Space, Brad Williams explores the place of popular culture in the local church.

In my last column, I picked on the idea of niche churches, and I singled out the Cowboy Church in particular. The resulting commentary did not make me sorry for what I had written, but it did make me think that I should go ahead and poke the de facto “white middle class” niche church so we could continue the conversation by making everyone uncomfortable. The goal is to help us all be aware of our own cultural biases and idiosyncrasies so we can work towards overcoming them.

I do not believe that every cultural preference needs to be overcome. Far from it!  In Revelation 7:9, we see that every tribe, language, and people are gathered for worship before the throne of God. John points out the diversity there, so I think it is safe to say that some of our cultural identities are still present in heaven. The goal of evaluating a particular church culture is not to stamp out that church’s individuality, rather it is to broaden the character.

Let’s say that I am a member of a mostly white middle class church in a community that is around 30% Hispanic with the majority of those being unchurched. We could tackle this one of two ways: we could set our sights on planting a separate Hispanic church. The services would be in Spanish, the songs would have a definitive Latino flavor, and we would rent a space very close to the more predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods. This is the strategy that is embraced by most churches today. I applaud this effort, and I thank God for it. I think, however, that this is the easy way out.

What if, instead of trying to plant a Hispanic church, the white middle class church read Rev. 7:9 and thought, “Why don’t we make an effort to bring them here instead of planting a separate church? What if we worshiped together instead of separate?” This would take major effort from the mostly white middle class church, but here are some things that they would have to consider.

First, they would need to make certain that once outreach began, if any Hispanics actually showed up for worship, then they would feel welcomed. That means that some white people are going to overcome sinful prejudice. It also means that the church will have to act like their guest is expected. Maybe they could hire an interpreter for the service and hand out little headsets to any guest who didn’t speak English. They should have English/Spanish welcome bags. If mostly white middle class church spent energy into doing things like this, then the Hispanic visitor would feel like a guest, not an invader.

By God’s grace, if church begins to become more Hispanic, then a minister should be hired of that ethnicity. The worship service ought to begin to reflect more of the Hispanic influence, not in order to attract more Hispanics, but to the end of being authentic to the new church culture. If a church could do this, they would still have a white middle class flavor, but the overall character and beauty of that church would be enhanced by the Hispanic verve.

Staying homogeneous around any facet of culture leads to stagnation. But if a church can build community around the gospel, there is no end to the character it can take on and foster, and that is the goal we ought to be aiming for. It is harder work, but in the end, it pays off in a kind of worship that will make the local body of Christ a little more heavenly.