Posted 548 days ago
Building Community in a Multicultural Church
by Efrem Smith, senior pastor of The Sanctuary Covenant Church
I have the awesome privilege of being the Senior Pastor of The Sanctuary Covenant Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In just over four short years, this ministry has grown to become an inter-generational, hip-hop, multi-ethnic, reconciling, and urban community of 1000 in weekly attendance. For a church that is intentionally evangelical, multi-ethnic, and urban, this is no easy feat. We have an intentional multi-ethnic Elder Board and staff made up of African, Asian, and European Americans. Our weekly attendance by ethnicity at the time of this writing is about 55% European-American, 35% African-American, and the rest a mix of Latino and Asian. Many who attend our Experience of Corporate Worship on Sunday morning comment, “This is what church is supposed to look like.”
As an African-American male getting close to 40, I wonder often how I came to pastor this amazing church full of the signs and wonders of God living in the spiritual warfare of a racially segregated society. The Sanctuary Covenant Church is unique in a society that is still trapped in the historic framework of the church in Black and White. Our hope at The Sanctuary is to create a movement that leads to the reconciling multi-ethnic church becoming the norm in the United States of America. You might think this is impossible, but if we use the demographic criteria presented in the book United by Faith, it’s very possible. The authors consider a church multicultural if the dominant group is no larger than 80 percent.1 I want you to get a clearer picture of what this can look like through the lens of the church I pastor. Let me begin by taking some time to guide you through an experience of corporate worship at The Sanctuary.
Our experience of corporate worship has focused on racial reconciliation for the last seven weeks. The hope is that by focusing on reconciliation and stewardship, we would own the core values, purpose, and vision of the church collectively as a community. Last Sunday, the praise and worship began with our Experience of Corporate Worship Director Sherrie Jones giving an opening prayer and then leading a time of praise and worship that included the sounds of hip-hop, soul, and rock. We have a multi-ethnic group of singers and hip-hop emcees, which enables us to worship God through song in various styles in order to reach our multi-ethnic congregation and surrounding community. Though we have the ability to worship in song in a variety of ways, the sound most often heard is a very soulful and urban one.
One might ask why we do this instead of presenting a mix of genres and styles to reach a multi-ethnic congregation. If you’re trying to develop community and family in a multicultural congregation, why not present all their styles of music? I feel that the African-American, urban music sound has been a universal sound that has brought people of many cultures and ethnicities together in America. Jazz, Motown, and now Hip Hop has been able to influence and bring people together across race in a way that other music styles have not. Mix this reality with something more important—a desire to lead a multi-ethnic congregation in a corporate experience of worship—and you have something pretty powerful! It’s interesting to me that our church is 55% European-American, and yet most Sundays our praise and worship style is hip-hop, neo-soul, and urban gospel. In many ways this is just proving my point about the influence of African-American and urban music and how it is actually becoming Post-Black music and emerging as the music of America and the music of the world. Through this style of praise and worship, we have been able to grow in just over five years into an inter-generational and multi-ethnic community of 1,000, with a membership of close to 400. I mention inter-generational because the children do not depart to our Royal Hood Children’s Ministry until after our time of praise and worship. We feel it builds a strong community and a sense of multi-ethnic family, by having whole families worshipping together. Also, I should mention that because of our contemporary and relevant approach to the experience of corporate worship, youth stay in the experience the whole time. There is a Spirit-led, organic “something” that takes place at The Sanctuary Covenant Church that is very difficult to put into words, but I believe if we are willing to live into this “something,” it will lead to the future of the church on a larger scale in the United States of America and beyond.
After the praise and worship last Sunday, we had a “meet and greet” time, which is important when it comes to attempting to move from being an ethnically and racially diverse crowd to a reconciling multi-ethnic community. Before the sermon, members of our Reconciliation Design Team presented a dramatic, spoken word piece entitled “Where I’m from.” The piece was presented by a multi-ethnic group of women and men that told their unique ethnic stories of their upbringing, faith, and personal take on the world around them. They ended the piece by asking in unison, “Where are you from?” The point here was to proclaim that though we desire to live in a Christ-centered and reconciling community, which equips and empowers us to advance the Kingdom of God, we celebrate our diversity. We hope this again develops a sense of community and family among us.
After the spoken word piece, I preached a sermon entitled “Reconciliation and Worship,” which ended with an altar call with people of all different backgrounds committing to becoming ambassadors of reconciliation. As I looked at the people praying in front of the stage of the high school auditorium at Patrick Henry High School where we met, I was overcome by the picture before me. I was awed, speechless, frozen, warm, and for a moment, even removed from the fact that I’m the senior pastor of this church. I looked up at the larger group of multi-ethnic people, and I said to myself, “How did this happen? Thank you, Lord, for the opportunity to be apart of this!”
The weekly corporate experience of worship is one way that we seek to build community and family, but it is not the only way. We also have Community Groups that meet in homes. Some of these groups meet weekly and others monthly. Our goal is that the majority of them would be multi-ethnic. We also have a monthly initiative called Love Minneapolis. This very multi-ethnic initiative meets on a Saturday and begins with breakfast. After that the group goes into a community and serves for the day. We have served at homeless shelters, community centers, and alternative schools. We just desire to bring the love of Jesus to the city as God leads us. Whole families in our church have showed up to serve in this way. We also have annual potluck meal and worship times together where we handle the business of the church such as approving the budget for the upcoming year. These are just a few of the ways that we experience community and family together in a multicultural church.
Notes
1. Curtiss Paul DeYoung, Michael O. Emerson, George Yancey, and Karen Chai Kim, United by Faith: The Multiracial Congregation As an Answer to the Problem of Race (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).
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