Good Different

The Australian cultural landscape is changing, and changing rapidly.   More than 20% of Australians speak a language other than English at home.   1 out of 4 Australians were born overseas.   50% of Australians have an overseas parent.    Australians identify with over 270 ancestral backgrounds.   And all of this in a country is home to the world's oldest continuous cultures.   Visit the downtown of any major city or travel to specific suburbs all across Australia and you have this sense that the typical Australian is by far in the minority.   And I say all of this as a Canadian born Australian citizen having made our home down under.

So how do we as churches respond to the changing cultural landscape around us?   Alan Hirsch, in his book The Forgotten Ways  makes the point that the church today is going after, and nearly fighting for, the 40% of the wider population that already has cultural proximity to the church and her message and nearly ignoring the 60% or more that do not.  In other words, as churches we are trying to reach out to people who are culturally like us -- while all around us there are people from a growing number of different cultures.

When I was involved in church planting back in the late 1980's I was asked to speak to the leadership of a once large congregation that was dwindling rapidly in numbers.   They wanted my advice how to reverse the trend.    I helped them to see that when they built their church the community around them was largely white immigrants who moved out from the city core to the suburbs for a cheaper lifestyle.   At first the community around them was very similar to the people of their church.   But over a few decades the community changed.   It had become very different.   Now the people around their church were over 80% Asian.   The church had to make a choice.  If they really wanted to impact their community they would somehow need to embrace the cultural differences around them.

As churches we are committed to do whatever we can to reach the lost for Christ.   In our GROW strategy we point out that "each congregation consider how they can reach out to unchurched groups in their community, for example, unbelieving spouses of church members and the unchurched among single people, professional people, high rise or gated communities, ethnic communities, sports clubs, young people in shopping centres, workers in the hospitality industries, shift workers, the illiterate, young mothers, retired people, and the like."   One of the groups listed is "ethnic communities".    This is a real opportunity for us as Reformed Christians.   We do not have to go overseas to reach out to a multitude of people from "every nation, tribe, people and language" (Revelation 7:9)   We just have to go our backyards.

And this is a good different!   As Duane Elmer writes in Cross-Cultural Conflict, "It was God who authored human diversity.   This fact calls all of us to deal with cultural diversity, see it as he sees it -- as good -- and honor it as the handiwork of the wise and sovereign Creator.... In the process of learning about other cultures, affirming our various ethnic heritages and honoring (if not celebrating) diversity, we enlarge our appreciation for God, who in authoring diversity was trying to tell us about himself." (23-24)

So what do we do as churches to consider how to reach out to the growing number of ethnic communities around us?    Alan Hirsch suggests that "to reach beyond significant cultural barriers we are going to have to adopt a missionary stance in relation to the culture."  (The Forgotten Ways, 62)   Think of a missionary going overseas to a completely different cultural group of people.   What does she do?   She begins by learning about the other culture.   She goes to the people she is trying to reach, listens to their stories, shares their meals, and lives among them.   She listens before she speaks.    

Reaching beyond cultural barriers is not easy.   But a place to begin is simply reaching out to those who are different around us, establishing community and friendships with people unlike us.   As Elmer points out, "In most cultures of the world, friendships and community are among the strongest forces for bringing people to faith in Christ. "(31)   And as we learn about and from other cultures we begin to learn more about our Triune God.   And this a good different.   For this is a foretaste of that day when we will be gathered together from every nation, tribe, people and language, a multitude too numerous to count, bowing in worship to our God.   Good different.