Diversity 9 - Successful Multi-Racial Churches

I’d like to recommend a book - One Body, One Spirit by George Yancey. It lists what he sees as the key principles of successful multi-racial churches. The USA has greater experience of this and therefore, more models to draw from. Yancey cites seven principles and I will comment on a few:

1. Inclusive Worship
2. Diverse Leadership
3. An Over-Arching Goal
4. Intentionality
5. Personal Skills
6. Location
7. Adaptability

Diverse Leadership: All the principles are important, but this one serves as a foundation that makes it easier to implement the others. The right people in place will shape the church. A leader needs to have a cross-cultural gift and inter-personal skills. As I travel around to different churches, some of the ‘issues’ I see are essentially team dynamics between white people. If we add in the pain of the cross-cultural legacy we can misread a situation or miss some signals completely.

An Over-Arching Goal: There is a goal beyond diversity – for us, the missional vision of growing a 1000 member church predominantly through seeing people saved. We are reconciled to God and then reconciled to one another – this is the biblical picture. If not, then we wouldn’t bother to build to one another. In reaching people and needing to build them together into a family, diversity is the outworking of the gospel.

To learn more about building multi-cultural churches in the UK… Understanding Worldviews and Cultural Strongholds Conference… at King’s Church… Sat 14th March… Speaker – Dave Devenish…Further details at www.kingscentre.org.uk/downloads/Conference_Leaflet.pdf

Diversity 8 - IMPORTANT!

Most white people, including myself, have thought that we have a level playing field. We have believed that legislation in the 70s and since has taken away any bias and may have thought that some people had a chip on their shoulder…
It’s not true. It is not a level playing field and the evidence for this is found in the areas of employment, interaction with the police, educational opportunities, wealth and inheritance. When we touch these areas, we find ourselves dealing with issues of pain and anger.

While in South Africa, I visited Nelson Mandela’s cell on Robin Island. Our guide was a young black man who had been in prison on the island and was released after the fall of apartheid. I asked him why he still worked on the island and he told me that on his release he had gone back to his township home, but he was not famous, there was no counselling for him, no-one understood what he had gone through and there was no work. And this was the only job available. He was a free man but was living on an island that had been his prison. That was his legacy.

To learn more about building multi-cultural 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

Diversity 7 - ... and more issues!

Prayer:
Francis is one of our African members – when he prays, God agrees! His exhortations are stirring! He and others with him have brought a different style to our prayer meetings, convincing others of us that we need to loosen up a bit! We may have thought that they would join our church and do it our way but we now know better. Some time ago Francis and some of our African men asked to meet and pray on Fridays for a half night of prayer. But we already met on Wednesday at 8pm for prayer. For a while – I was telling people they couldn’t pray! (Good leadership, Steve!) But – the thing I didn’t want was one prayer meeting on this day that was black and another that was white. We now see black and white together at our half-nights of prayer.

Life moments:
Baby dedications! I have learned that there is another way to do these things! We are sometimes invited to go round to someone’s house on the 7th day after the birth of a baby and take part in a naming ceremony – our filters as to ‘how it’s done’ have had to be changed. The pastoral issues and legacy issues from slavery, colonialism and ongoing racism, are huge.

To learn more about building multi-cultural 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

Diversity 6 - Further Areas Requiring Awareness...

Worship
We need to look at this radically. Our song lists and our style of worship need particular examination. Another of the major examples of this at Kings has been the Choir! I was adamant - we don’t do choirs, we are into body ministry - not presentations. Simon Pettit was very helpful to me on this. In the end I decided that we wouldn’t call it a choir but ‘a singing group’ – because we don’t do choirs! I realised that I was being picky about terminology when everyone reflected back to me - ‘We’re having a choir!’ So… we have a choir now for major events and still have prophecies etc. But we have a long way to go on this, primarily because as a movement we ‘do’ white Newfrontiers songs – the Brighton conference platform is our prime example. Sometimes the only model of anything else would be children’s action songs – a small slice of the variety we could reflect.

Raising money:
The white community tends to give by banking standing order. The black community is more likely to respond to an inspirational style of exhortation. We have come to realise that our black members are often financing extended family back in their home countries –there are legacy/heritage issues here, multiple demands are often being made upon their finances.

To learn more about building multi-cultural 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

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

The Newfrontiers UK Team

I recently met up with the UK team which is under the leadership of Dave Stroud. The members of this team oversee and represent the national life of our churches within the Newfrontiers movement.

There is always a large agenda and a mixture of challenge and progress! The highlight of our time together is praying for our nation and the mission God has given us. National strategy springs from such times of waiting on God, strategy serving our aim - to reach the lost and establish churches the length and breadth of the UK.

Butlins!

What an amazing experience it was to be at Butlins with over 3600 Christians from Newfrontiers churches in our region and to worship and listen to great teaching together! The whole weekend far exceeded my expectations, and I am already planning towards next year, probably with 2 weekends (22nd-24th Jan, and 29th-31st Jan 2010) so we can include even more people from our churches. As those who went this time talk to their friends back at home, I anticipate we will easily fill the venue twice!

There were many highlights - Terry Virgo teaching on Jonah and Dave Stroud on being salt and light, for starters. Phil Varley and Tim Brown did an excellent job as they led us into God’s presence in worship - and the rap on the Sunday morning will stay with me for some considerable time! Being able to meet up with people from our churches across London, Surrey and the home counties was just brilliant. To top it all off, the offering of £95K was another testimony to the faithfulness of God and the generosity of our churches.

All in all, a great success! See you next year!!

Leading in a Time of Financial Crisis 4

Rudolph Giuliani, the mayor of New York City during the 9/11 bombings, makes a telling comment in his book, Leadership. ‘By its very nature, budgeting requires one to predict the future’.

It has been our pattern at King’s to budget on the basis of past trends and taken into account our numerical growth. In the last 3 months I have reflected on this practice at considerable length, and although it is difficult to let go of a growth strategy that has proved successful, and even to go against one of our well-tried principles, ‘staff for growth or even over-staff for growth’, different times call for a different leadership strategy.

The future has become so much less predictable that we have to adjust to the new economic reality. Therefore, at Kings we have changed to a more cautious financial planning position. I summarize below.

Rather than staff on the strength of the current growth curve and past trends, we are operating on a new basis – ‘See the giving increase first, and then employ the new staff.’ This could mean we staff 12 to 18 months later than we would have done historically.

Research has shown that Christian giving holds up well in times of recession, as Christians give out of income, not from borrowing. However, in a situation where up to 10% of a congregation could be made redundant, regular giving to the church may plateau or even decline.

In the face of all this, I am no less confident than before that God will provide - we know that we always have a responsibility to play our part in stewarding His resources well. If we do this we can lead our churches through uncertain times and emerge all the stronger at the point where we begin to see all the economic indicators moving upwards – however long that might take. And it is our intention to revert to our original leadership strategy, 'staff for growth', once the economic climate improves!