multicultural unity in christ

We long for our church to be a community from all cultures where Christ is King. We want to proactively pursue diversity through the gospel: ethnic diversity, age diversity, and socio-economic diversity. Ephesians 2:14-15 declares that Jesus has torn down the wall of separation that once divided Jews and Gentiles, and that through his death and resurrection he has created “one new man in place of the two.” Elsewhere, Paul declares that in Christ “there is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female” (Gal. 3:28). We are all united together as one. The work of Jesus has made enemies into friends. 

In the book of Revelation, the Apostle John describes a glimpse of heaven he was given through a vision. In that vision he saw was a great multitude of people “from every tribe and language and people and nation.” What John’s vision unveils is that heaven will be filled with people from every corner of the globe. It will be full of various languages and dialects, skin pigments, hair textures, eye colors and body shapes. It will include young and old, and people of various personalities. Heaven will be a smorgasbord of diversity! And yet, everyone will have one thing in common: we will all be there because of Jesus. The people of heaven will be those who have been redeemed and washed by the blood of Christ, who have confessed Him as Lord. 

Heaven will be a place of unity in Christ amidst diversity, and we long for our church to be a glimpse of heaven on earth right now. To that end, we value diverse relationships in our personal lives–to fight against the natural tendency of homogeneity. We also desire to appoint diverse leadership in our church, and to pursue expressions and styles of worship that represent the diversity of we long for in our church body. Admittedly, this takes time and will not happen overnight, but we are committed to the pursuit of multicultural unity in Christ.