Diversity 5 - Areas of church life to examine:

Following on from the series of four postings on Diversity issues from Nov/Dec, here are some practical matters to consider.

Community:
Here we need to have a good laugh at ourselves!

For the white community: our home is our castle. I go in with my nuclear family and I close my front door. If you want to do friendship with me you’ve got to get your diary out! So we e-mail round ‘Need to get together, I can do Friday in 4 weeks time’…‘I can’t make that’… ‘OK, find a day you can make’…
If someone just turns up on my door it can be ‘What are you doing here? I’ve got things to do today – don’t cut across my agenda. I’m busy…’

For the black community: it’s family and friendship – there are aunts and uncles, cousins everywhere and if anyone turns up, everyone is fed. All are welcomed and the whole day rearranged if necessary! You can stay to midnight and beyond, while I, being white, go to bed at 10pm. And for ‘fellowship’, the white community has the ‘small group system’ at 8pm on Wednesday eve where we ‘share together’. Our black members go, ‘Huh?’ They want a central Bible study at the church led by one of the teachers… a massive difference in expectations.

It is important for us to encourage our black community to step in – white leaders sometimes say that black members don’t come to certain things and are therefore ‘not committed’. This can be a major misreading of what’s going on.

To learn more about establishing multicultural churches in the UK… Understanding Worldviews and Cultural Strongholds Conference… at King’s Church… Sat 14th March… Speaker – Dave Devenish…Further details elsewhere on the King’s website…Booking forms available from office@kingscentre.org.uk and 020 8690 4646