Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Emergent and Diversity

I haven't visited Dan Sheffield's blog in such a long time, but am glad I finally did tonight. At our Greenhouse meeting on Saturday, a meeting where at least 80% of those in the room were white males, we had a good starting discussion on the impact multiculturalism will inevitably have on coming generations of church.

It was so good and so necessary to talk about this, especially since so much of "emergent" church culture is heavily influenced by the white male. I'm not hating on myself here, I don't think that's entirely helpful, but I'm glad that conversation is starting to happen about what the emerging church might look like as the goateed, blogging, ibook-toting, dark-rimmed-glasses-wearing church planter is joined by people who don't conform to that picture:

Within a decade or so, the majority of Christians in the United States will be non-white. I can say that with confidence because all the sociological trends, all the ways the white church is declining and all the ways the immigrant church, the African American church, the Spanish-speaking church is growing by leaps and bounds.

Within a decade, in every metropolitan corner of the United States, we are going to see more non-white Christians than white Christians. Why is it that the leadership is still all white? Time magazine does an article on the top 25 evangelical leaders. Twenty-three of those spots are filled by white evangelicals. Why is it that the face of the "emerging church" is always white?

Full Article

2 Comments:

Blogger Pyrosapien said...

Wouldn't it be cool if Jesus had just founded a church while he was here in the flesh? He could have gathered a group of close, trusted, collaberators in his ministry. Then he could have chosen one of them to be a sort of "first among equals", the one who was to strengthen the others. These men could have then chosen others to succeed them in their ministry when there was a need for expansion or some type of vacancy, (due to a suicide perhaps). This Church could then encompass the whole world as Jesus intended. Perhaps they would call it the Universal Church?

If Jesus had come to Earth and given us the wheel would we still be trying to invent a device to make it easier, through mechanical advantage, to move stuff accross distances?

12:33 p.m.  
Blogger andrew said...

sounds like an interesting concept. perhaps you could be a bit more clear in explaining what you mean?

12:51 a.m.  

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