What is the subject on which all these people are like-minded?
Building and growing multi-cultural churches. At Good Shepherd, we call it going full color — people from every race and tribe and tongue under one roof worshipping the one true God.
Here’s something interesting: the churches where “full color” happens tend to be non-denominational and charismatic/pentecostal. Across the country, the ethnically diverse churches are new congregations without denominational ties but with expressive worship.
What’s the irony in that? The main line denominations (Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Lutheran, and, yes, Methodist) have talked such diversity for years. In fact, the United Methodist Church has a number of denominational-level boards and agencies that issue proclamations about race relations in the church and in the world. We even an internal monitoring agency to ensure that all of our denominational meetings are fully “inclusive” in terms of race.
And then all those Methodists leave their “inclusive” meetings at the bureaucratic level and return home to their single-race churches. It’s all backwards.
Isn’t it better to focus our energy on having racially inclusive & diverse congregations?! I for one am much more interested in what happens in a local United Methodist Church than I am in what happens at a three day meeting on the national level.
That’s why we’re part of Mosaix. Because we’re going full color. On this level, the local church.