Rooted Together With Your Neighbors. How Your Anglo Church Can Start an Ethnic Church in Your Community.
Our community is over 60% nonwhite.
Our church was started almost twenty years ago.
About twenty-five years ago, our community began receiving a few families ethnically different from the traditional people who had lived here since around World War II. Our Eastern European ethnicities began receiving South American, Mexican and Puerto Rican ethic groups. The latest wave has even included Vietnamese.
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Such is the way in America.
The last twenty-five years have brought to our local community a new wave of immigrants from other parts of the world, fleeing conflicts and issues, looking for a better life. They started businesses, got educations, married into the cultures, and made lives for themselves. But some ethnicities have not learned to speak American English, even if their children are multilingual. The new churches have also not kept up with the transformation of our local community.
This allowed us to recognize that we were not effectively reaching our WHOLE community for Jesus. What to do with the Gospel mandate of Matthew 28?
What do you do when you are called to reach the world…And the world comes to you?
You start an ethnic fellowship, a church plant for people from that majority culture who now live in your neighborhood. Eventually, you embrace the indigenous church principle: people of the same culture, ethnicity, and language reaching their own people in the area of the world that they now, for a whole generation, have called home.
But how do you do it?
Here are some simple steps we learned along the way.
- Pray like it matters: Develop a heart and soul for the whole community through prayer, attendance at ethnic events, walking through ethnic areas of the community that you usually do not go through, eating at ethnic restaurants different from your background, and attempting to converse with people from the ethnic population, your church would like to connect with. Ask questions about their beliefs and if they would attend a church if it were in their language and culture.
- Let people know your vision: First, communicate it to a small group, an elder board, or a few people from that ethnic group, asking them to pray with you and ask for instruction and wisdom. From there, begin sharing outside of the group with other leaders who might be able to lead you to ethnic leaders in the community who are called to reach people from that background who speak the same language, and values.
- Legally think it through: Ensure through relationships that the leadership team is made up of U.S. Citizens or people in the process of gaining U.S. citizenship through legal means. Ensure that they are sincere about moving forward legally in the United States. Also, make sure that they are credentialed with your denomination. Trust, but verify with your denomination or fellowship that they are people of integrity. Be sure all of their legal 501c3 documents are in order, that they are people who keep their word, and that there is appropriate accountability in place. Find the right people in every way to be healthy leaders and examples to the ethnic community. Consider partnering with an established ethnic church in another community that has already been planted, and see if they will set up a campus or multi-site location of their church in your community.
- Don’t assume: Let them teach you the nuances of various cultures and dialects from the place they are from. You may assume that even their food is the same from one culture to another, which is always a mistake.
- Let the mother church pay the freight: Don’t immediately demand rent payment, reimbursement, or a monthly stipend if they will meet in your building. They are a new church learning new things. Twenty years ago, our church was started. What a blessing if the facility we were meeting in had said, “You don’t have to pay rent immediately or even at all while you are getting started.”
- Accept-language challenges: There WILL BE barriers or a lack of understanding between the churches, and all involved must exhibit patience. Translator services can only go so far. However, do not be reactionary if misunderstandings happen; find ways to communicate politely among the churches and respect each other’s cultures.
- Don’t expect a clone: If their cultural practices, how they raise their children, or how they practice their worship style look different than your established church, that is alright. Let them lead their church as long as they align with the beliefs and practices of your denomination or fellowship. Do not complicate things by planting outside of your fellowship or denomination. If they are a campus of an established ethnic church, communicate with the central campus leadership and multi-site leaders. Remember, unlike your established church, they will reach people you never will because they express a culture and a language in your neighborhoods that you do not.
- Communicate clearly with leadership: Resources will need to be shared. Communicate to your teams that things may get broken, moved, or added to the environment. Encourage grace as if this new church were a guest in your home. Communicate changes: If a service time needs to be moved or classes need to meet in other parts of the campus, communicate that beforehand. Ensure that the correct communication paths are established and who either church needs to go to if there are issues.
- Prepare financially: Expect that this will cost your church. You may have to spend more on facility custodial services; you may lose people from your church who disagree personally with the presence of people from another ethnic group meeting on your campus or using the church resources. Prepare financially for this reality. Expect it to cost you.
- Consider long-term relocation: Has your community transformed ethnically and culturally over the last few decades? Is it time for you to gift or sell the building to this new church plant that can effectively reach the community while you discover God’s will for your church in another community location? Many Anglo churches have done this over the years.
- Bilingual Signage: Embrace the reality that EVERY sign on the campus should represent both churches’ majority language, so every person is welcome to know where the bathrooms, kids’ church, and other facilities are located on your campus.
- Celebrate them! Bring the churches together now and again to celebrate God’s goodness! Give your established church examples of how many people are getting baptized and how many children attend the new church. Build relationships by taking the pulpit with a translator and giving space to preach to each other’s congregations. Help one another out with outreaches!
These are just a few steps to take when starting an ethnic fellowship or a church plant different from your established church.
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Title contributors:
Art Serna Jr., CEO @ City on a Hill, Milwaukee.
Dan Serdahl MAT, New Testament; my sort of retired friend.