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Message from Pastor Bill – July 2009
Antioch-A Multicultural Church
As a semi-scholar of the book of Luke-Acts which is my favorite gospel bi-volume, I am always fascinated by the place where Christians were given their name. Many churches pay homage to this place being Antioch—a church model that we can look at for social change and multiculturalism.
Apparently, in Antioch, people of different ethnic backgrounds began to cross the interior walls of the city to hear the gospel and join the church. The Jerusalem church heard about this and sent Barnabas, the trusted Cypriot who had sold his land to purchase food back in Jerusalem (Acts 4). When he came to this city-center church, Barnabas built a pastoral team that consisted of Simeon the Black (an African); Lucius of Cyrene (a North African); Manean (possibly a slave of Herod’s father); Saul of Tarsus (native of Asia Minor, the land bridge to Europe) and Barnabas himself (from Cyprus).
The first large city-center church we know anything about had a five-person team from three continents. This is the climax of Pentecost. In Jerusalem they spoke many languages; now in Antioch they were fleshing out multiculturalism in the structure of the pastoral team. For me the principle is profound: the local city church staff should increasingly match the ethnicity, class and culture of the church’s members. This does not merely mean having someone on staff for the sake of identification with a given community but a deliberate commitment in transforming the culture, church and community to reflect the emerged culture which is undoubtedly African descent.
For so long, I thought that this model that we are proposing as a church was innovative but the model that can be used for the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America of having ten percent minority in the Church can be found in examining the church at Antioch.
Antioch was the impetus for Paul and Barnabas and for us in beginning to plant more churches embracing multiculturalism in our synod and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. Paul and Barnabas looked, as we do, to one kind of church. It was a church with a powerful gospel that transcended all the enclaves of the city and drew very diverse kinds of people into discipleship and mission. Paul talks about the ethnic walls between Jew and Gentile being torn down in Christ (Ephesians 2:19), and how, according to his metaphor, the church itself is built together not through assimilation but a city of strangers becoming a holy temple animated by God’s Holy Spirit.
For St. Matthew and for Luke, Barnabas and Paul, it is our challenge and mission mandate to be committed, as the Antioch church was, to no longer being geographically distant but rather culturally relevant in our emerged community within the shadows of the spires of our church.
Peace and Power,
Pastor Bill
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