Perhaps.
Yet
stronger resolve, clearer convictions, and/or young Bible-believing,
Jesus-following leaders, as Driscoll suggests is needed to counter
church decline, will not in my view bring about the resurgence for which
he is looking. In fact, it’s not resurgence the church needs today but reformation, as I’ll explain in a moment.
To be clear I do not believe the church is dying.(1)
However, I have no doubt that the local church and its message of God’s
love for all people has been severely weakened by more than forty years
of misunderstanding and misapplication of what is known as the
Homogeneous Unit Principle (HUP).
The
original principle suggests that it’s easier for people to become
Christians when they do not have to cross barriers of race, class or
language. Yet in 1972, it was co-opted by church leaders in America and ever since promoted as the modus operandi for those who would plant or grow a “successful” church; i.e., as
a strategy for church growth. This fed an all-too-American spirit of
independence and competition among church leaders who have ever since
measured their success by numbers, dollars and buildings. It’s why,
still today, the first question most often asked of church planters by
network and denominational leaders, alike, is, Who’s your target audience?
You may be surprised to learn, however, that the HUP was never intended
by its progenitor, Donald A. McGavran, as a strategy for reaching
believers, or to grow a church in the sense of how we think of it today;
but rather as “a strategy to reach unbelievers—a missionary principle.”(2)
Likewise, the term “church growth” was originally applied to a movement
seeking to share the gospel cross-culturally and, consequently, to add
new believers to the church through evangelistic efforts overseas.
Sadly,
then, misunderstanding and misapplication of the HUP through the years
has played right into the natural, all-too-human, desire among pastors
for their churches to become real big, real fast: and it works. In other
words, target a specific people group: give them the music they desire,
the facilities they want, in the neighborhoods they like, etc., and
they will come. The fact is, churches do grow fastest when they’re
homogeneous and soon fill with people of similar ethnic and economic
background. But, the question remains, Is this really the biblical way? And more pragmatically, Is this the real reason the church is not thriving today?
According
to the latest research, 86.3 percent of all churches (Catholic and
Protestant) are racially segregated, failing to have at least 20 percent
diversity within their attending bodies.(3)
In addition, churches today are ten times more segregated than the
neighborhoods in which they reside, and twenty times more segregated
than nearby public schools.(4) This
in spite of changing demographics and the latest U.S. Census figures
that confirm America's continuing evolution into a multicultural nation
where no single race or ethnicity represents a numeric majority.(5) Surely
it breaks the heart of God that so many churches throughout this
country remain segregated along ethnic and economic lines and that
little has changed in the more than one hundred years since it was first
observed that eleven o’clock on Sunday morning is the most segregated
hour of the week. Brothers and sisters, it should not be so.
As it stands, segmented by
race and class, the American Church – the local church – remains a far
cry from what Christ envisioned (John 17:20-23), Luke described (Acts
11:19-26; 13:1), and Paul prescribed in the book of Ephesians. To put it bluntly, for far too long institutional racism
has been an accepted reality in the church – an unintended consequence
of the widespread propagation of a faulty understanding of the HUP.(6)
While the church may not be dying,
it is for this reason perhaps more than any other – namely, local
church segregation along ethnic and economic lines – that the church is
not thriving in our time. For an increasingly diverse and cynical
society is no longer finding credible the message of God’s love for all
people as it’s proclaimed from segregated pulpits and pews.
To be clear, I’m not at all
suggesting that individual people or pastors within the American Church
are personally biased or, more pointedly, racists. God forbid!
Nor am I suggesting that the desire to grow a church quickly is anything
less than a desire to reach as many people for Jesus Christ as possible
and, thus, to be used greatly, significantly, for His glory throughout
our short time on this earth. I, too, share this desire, and value
the effort of every well-meaning church planter and pastor, missionary
and movement leader alike who is attempting to reach as many people with
the gospel as possible in his or her lifetime. But I believe the
primary question we should concern ourselves with is not, How fast can we grow a church? Rather it should be, How biblically can we grow a church?
I have come to understand, then, like Donald McGavran, the principle’s
progenitor, that the HUP is a valid, biblical, strategy for the purpose
of evangelism, discipleship, and leadership development, but a strategy
misapplied to church planting, growth and development. If the goal is to
evangelize, then by all means target a people group and provide them
with the Word of God in their own language. Sing to them in a musical
genre they understand, and become incarnate in their culture so that the
gospel is expressed through customs, mores, and traditions they readily
embrace. But things change once you commit yourself to establishing a
local church. You are no longer at liberty to create a congregation of
exclusive worshipers — that’s just not a biblical option.
Let
me be perfectly clear on this point. I’m not arguing against those who
would extend the love of God (the gospel) to people with a similar
background. Rather, I am suggesting that nowhere in the New Testament
will you find the apostle Paul or anyone else encouraging you to plant,
grow or develop a church that is focused on a single people group.
Of
course, planting a homogeneous church is something we more readily
understand — and something that is much easier to do. Compared with
multi-ethnic ministry, it can be a more comfortable experience for
everyone involved. But it is not a question of what we want or what
makes us comfortable. Christ expects us to align ourselves, and our
churches, with his agenda; anything less is unacceptable. In the future,
then, I believe we will all need to grow increasingly comfortable with
being uncomfortable in order to be more biblical in this regard.
For
this reason and more, though I wish Mark Driscoll and the 2013
Resurgence Conference well, I believe the conference to watch on
November 5-6 is not the one promoting resurgence, but the one promoting reformation: the 2nd
National Multi-ethnic Church Conference in Long Beach, CA. Indeed, it’s
this historic conference more than any other that gives me real hope
regarding the future of the American Church. In Long Beach, more than
sixty thought-leading multi-ethnic church pioneers will be speaking and
conducting workshops; an amazingly broad and deep line-up of men and
women of diverse ethnic/economic background (60 percent are non-White)
and ministry experience. And there’s still time to register. For more
information, visit www.mosaix2013.com.
Again,
in my view, it’s not resurgence we need but reformation. Only by
returning to the principles and practices of first century churches – in
which men and women of diverse ethnic and economic background walked,
worked, and worshipped God together as one so that the world would know
God’s love and believe – can we hope to reach an increasingly diverse
and cynical society with a credible witness of God’s love for all
people. Only then can we reasonably expect the church to thrive in the
21st century.
___________________________________________
1 For more concerning the American Church today, see Ed Stetzer: The State of the Church in America. Hint: It’s Not Dying. This article can be read at http://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2013/october/state-of-american-church.html, accessed October 4, 2013.
2 Gary McIntosh. The Life and Minsitry of Donald A. McGavran: A Short Overview. This article can be read at http://churchgrowthnetwork.com/free-resources/2010/05/25/the-life-and-ministry-%09of-donald-a-mcgavran, accessed October 4, 2013.
3 See Scott Thumma: Racial Diversity Increasing in U.S. Congregations. This article can be read at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-thumma-phd/racial-diversity-increasing-in-us-congregations_b_2944470.html, accessed October 4,2013.
4 Statistics presented by Michael O. Emerson at the 1st National Multi-ethnic Church Conference in San Diego, CA, November 2-3, 2010.
5 Ibid.
6 I am using the term as colloquially as defined at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_racism: “Institutional racism (also called structural or systemic racism) describes any kind of system of inequality based on race. It can occur in institutions such as public government bodies, private business corporations (such as media outlets), and universities (public and private). The term was coined by Black Power activist Stokely Carmichael in the late 1960s. The definition given by William Macpherson within the report looking into the death of Stephen Lawrence was ‘the collective failure of an organization to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their color, culture, or ethnic origin,’ (Jones, J. M. (1997). Prejudice and Racism (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill."
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