Multicultural Worship Lesson 4

[music] As long as [singing] I'm [music] the Lord, [singing] oh my soul. [music] Praise [singing] the Lord, oh [music] my soul. I won't [singing] be quiet. My God is alive. I'm going to keep it [music and singing] inside the cloud.

>> Praise [music] the Lord, oh [singing] my soul. >> Welcome to multicultural worship. We're going to be on lecture four today. Mandates and commitments. A mandate is that we have an imperative to do something. And commitments are the ways that we make that happen. Mark Demas puts it this way, "Vision without commitment fades. Passion without structure burns out. If we want multithnic churches to thrive, we need more than inspiration. We need commitments."

What does that look like? It means that we are committed to being together. If the kingdom of heaven is not segregated, why on earth is the church? That's a valid question that we need to address because the kingdom of God is intended to be ga together together. We've heard over and over again. We're going to dig into it deeper about all nations, tribes, and languages being together. Why is it that way on earth that we're so segregated when in heaven we won't be? Romans 5:10 says, "For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son, then how much more, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life?" We've talked about this in previous sections that we are to be reconciled to God and therefore reconciled to one another. So, in order to do this, we need to have commitments that we are going to embrace each other, that we are going to be together. Uh sometimes it may just happen by happen stance and we'll talk about that a bit. But more often than not, it's got to be intentionality where we have commitments that get us from vision or wishing or ideals to things actually happening. What are going to be the steps that we need to take in order to make this happen? Well, let's look at some of those ideas.

Commitment is the hallmark of authentic disciplehip. John Sto says disciplem, disciplehip is an intentional process. It's something that costs us time. It costs us relationship. It may cost us money. But it is an important thing for the kingdom of God that we are to make disciples. That's the ultimate ca command that Jesus gave us in Matthew 28 right before he left the disciples. You're to go into all the world and make disciples. Well, in order to do that, you have to commit to it. You don't just stumble into it. If we want churches that resembles heaven's diversity, we must move from desire to design, from aspiration to application. I often talk to church planners about the difference between a dreamer and a visionary. A dreamer is someone who sits around and dreams about a better day and hopes for it. And a visionary is somebody who has that dream given by God, but then is willing to take the steps to make it happen.

How does that take place? It says in Ephesians 2, for he is our peace, who made both groups one and tore down the dividing wall of hostility. In his flesh he made of no effect the law consisting of commands and expressed in regulations, so that he might create in himself one new man. the two resulting in peace. He did this so that he might reconcile both to God in one body through the cross by which he put the hostility to death. His goal is to make the two one together in Christ. That's what God has told us to do.

>> The church is the church only when it exists for others. We need to understand that for us to truly be the church, we are a community. We are a fellowship. We are willing to put aside our own preferences, sometimes even our own needs for the sake of others. And that's when the church really becomes what God intended for the church to be.

God's promise to Abraham back in the beginning, and we've talked about this before, but we need to revisit it today to build on. all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you. This is God's promise. He told Abraham, you're going to be a great nation and you're you're going to bless the people of the world. And we know as we study the history of the Old Testament that that leads through all the times of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob through the times of the judges, through the times of the kings, the times of the prophet, and ultimately leading up to Jesus Christ himself. And that's how it's fulfilled is Christ says it's talks about Christ in Galatians. Now the scriptures saw in advance that God would justify the Gentiles by faith and proclaim the gospel ahead of time ahead of time to Abraham saying all the nations will be blessed through you. So what is that promise? The promise isn't just for Israel. The promise isn't just for America or Brazil or some single country or some single language. He says, "All the people, all the nations will be blessed through you." And the the word that's used here for nations means peoples. So, it's not just every country, but every people that's out there, every tribe that's out there will be blessed because of this promise given to Abraham, fulfilled in Christ. How can we say that we want to be more like Jesus, that we want to be a part of his family, and we're not willing to embrace that promise that it's for all of us?

In Revelation 7:9 says, "After this I looked, and there was a vast multitude from every nation, tribe, people, and language which no one could number, standing before the throne and before the lamb, meaning Jesus. They were clothed in white robes with palm branches in their hands. Everybody was there. All that every nation, tribe, people, and language was represented. It's not to be exclusive or exclusively done in a certain way. This is the core of who we are as a multicultural church and it's the core of what we do in multicultural worship to all be together.

The high priestly prayer that Jesus prayed before he left his disciples included this passage. Jesus said praying to the father, "May they all be one as you, Father, are in me and I and you. I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe you sent me." Jesus is praying in his final prayer. Let's imagine you knew uh that you were going to die and you had one opportunity to talk to God. You would probably talk about something pretty important. You would talk about something that was of ultimate concern to you. And Jesus said, "God, Father, make them together like you and I are together. Make them one as you and I are one so that the world may see that and believe that you sent me." Jesus himself prayed for unity. Unity therefore is not optional. It's missional.

What do we mean by that? The world segregates. The world stands for its own. And when we as the church come together and we are unified, the world cannot help but notice that we're different. And missional doesn't mean everybody's going to agree with us. Mishnal means we're going to put out there that this is the way God intended. Now, you have to deal with it. You have to embrace it. You have to join it or you have to reject it. One of the things that we teach about when we're sharing the gospel, and some of you, if you had my church planning and evangelism course before, you might remember that we are to lower all op all obstacles to the gospel except the gospel itself because that gospel is going to be wisdom to many and it's going to be stumbling block to others. And so, we have to put it out there and show God's love the way he intended. And part of that is for us to be together in a multicultural setting as part of the church. I realize there's churches of different languages and people so they can understand. But do we as the church take opportunities to be together, to love together, to serve together, and to worship together? That is a witness to the world.

Awtoer said, "Has it ever occurred to you that 100 pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other?" So 100 worshippers meeting together, each one looking away to Christ are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be were they to become unity conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship. Well, that's a long quote. What does it mean? Okay. Again, music major by background. Some people have what they call perfect pitch. There's a guy who used to tune our pianos for us. Uh he still does worship. I don't know if he's doing piano tuning much anymore, but he had perfect pitch. He could just play a note on the piano and tune it to the right pitch by ear. But most people that tune pianos use a pitchfork or nowadays they use a digital version of that. And a pitchfork in the old style would tune to A440. They would hit it and it would sound that perfect a note and they would tune the piano to it and then all the other keys to that A both up and down the piano. Now, if you took a 100 pianos and you did the same thing with the same pitchfork and you tune them all to that, now they're going to be in harmony. They're going to be unified. But if you were to try to just strive for unity, say, "Hey, let's try to get this together without having something that's the guiding note," they wouldn't get there. It's the same thing in an orchestra. Before the conductor comes in for an orchestra, the concert master, the usually a violinist will stand up and and will play or someone direct somebody to play some they they will use different instruments. Maybe a viola depending on the group, they play a note and everybody else matches to that pitch so that they're in tune with one another. They're not all trying to match to their neighbor. They're trying to match that one true pitch. And that's what it happens when we try to tune to Jesus. Instead of just trying to be unity conscious and say we just need to be unified. Well, how do we get unified? We get unified by focusing on Jesus.

Let me put it to you another way. Imagine you're learning to drive. Now, many of you may drive, some of you may not. We're finding more and more young adults don't want to drive and they never get their license. But most of us, if we've done this, we've taken driving lessons or we've had a parent or a friend teach us to drive. And what you find is when you're first driving, you're so worried about getting in the other lane that you're paying really close attention to those lines that are out there trying to keep in the lane. And no matter how hard you try, you find that you're tending to swerve to, on, or even over those lanes until somebody who's experienced says, "Well, that's not really how you do it." What you need to do is you need to look way out there. You need to find a point to focus on and drive for that point. And when you do, you go straight and you stay between the lines. That's the same thing. If we're focused on trying to, oh, we got to be unified. We got to be unified. We got to be unified. Instead of being focused on Jesus, we get out of bounds. We get out of our lane. We could cause an accident. So instead, what we need to do is focus on becoming more and more like Jesus. And then the differences don't become as great. Instead, we become more unified in where we're going. We have unity, not uniformity.

Ephesians 4:3 says, "Making every effort to keep the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace." Now, it's important to understand our task is not to manufacture unity. Unity is there. If we are like Christ, if we become like Christ, we have unity. But our responsibility is to maintain that unity. Don't let things get in the way of that unity. The spirit has already made us one. Our commitments determine whether that oneness becomes visible, viable, and obtainable. If we focus on Christ, it's doable. We need to be unified and maintain that unity by being unified in him.

So how did all this come about? How did this idea of the multicultural church or multithnic church, how did these things happen? Where did it first begin? Well, our first example of that is at the church of at Antioch. Think back to the church at Jerusalem where the church started. They were pretty unified. Now, yes, people came to Jerusalem from other countries, and there could have been some diversity there, but for the most part, it was the Jewish people in Jerusalem being unified. But when the gospel spread to Antioch, a gentile, meaning a non-Jewish city, things got different. Let's look at that a little bit.

Now, those who had been scattered as a result of the persecution. Now, let's stop there for a minute. It's saying those in Jerusalem were being persecuted. So they were scattered everywhere. So as a result of the persecution that started because of Stephen, meaning when Steven was stoned and then after he was stoned in Acts chapter 7, then Acts chapter 8 took place and they began to scatter other places and the gospel spread with them. They made their way as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except Jews. But there were some of them men from Cyprus and Sirene who came to Antioch and began speaking to the Greeks also proclaiming the good news about the Lord Jesus. So at first when the church scattered they were going to the Jews but then some went hey we we got other places to go. They went all the way to Antioch and began sharing the good news about Jesus with those who weren't even Jews. So it says in verse 21, "The Lord's hand was with them, and a large number who believed turned to the Lord." News about them reached the church in Jerusalem, and they sent out Barnabas to travel as far as Antioch. When he arrived and saw the grace of God, he was glad and encouraged all of them to remain true to the Lord with devoted hearts. for he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. And large numbers of people were added to the Lord. Then he went to Tarsus to search for Saul who later became Paul as we know. And when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year they met with the church and taught large numbers. The disciples were first called Christians at Antioch.

So what is this place Antioch we keep hearing about? Now think about Antioch. Antioch was the third largest city in the Roman Empire after Rome and Alexandria. Estimates had estimates had between a 100,000 and 300,000 people which for that time was a large city. It was a place of culture, of diversity, of ethnic and cultural differences. It was a worldclass city in many ways. And so when they went to the city, that's who they found. When you go to a place, you share with who who's there. And Barnabas goes there. And Barnabas is known as the son of encouragement. Some of you may have to have the gift of encouragement. If you if you were to look at my spiritual gifts, like sometimes we do a spiritual gift test or assessment where we answer some questions. My strongest gift usually comes out as encouragement. So, what that means is if you're having a bad day, you want to go to Chick-fil-A and have a iced tea with me or something like that because usually you're going to come out feeling better. Well, Barnabas was really that. He was extremely that so much that that was his name. He's son of encouragement. And Barnabas seeing what was happened there not only encouraged them but went to get his friend Saul and said Saul you got to come see this and help me get they got Saul came back to Antioch and the gospel spread. So the gospel here went to all and they didn't make they weren't discerners like okay you're of this people you're of that people you're of this religion you're of this status they were all equal as they received the gospel.

Billy Graham put it this way. He said the ground is level at the foot of the cross. Uh I don't have a better station than you. You don't have a better station than me. Uh because of ethnicity or language or education or wealth. We are all equal at the feet of the cross at the foot of the cross. Revelation 5:9 says, "You purchase people for God by your blood." Speaking of Jesus, from every tribe and language and people and nation, we are all sinners. saved by grace when we respond to the gift of Jesus. So some some of us aren't of a higher station than others and so on. We are all lowly. So if we are followers of Christ, we must be followers of his mission and his mission has always been multithnic.

So what does that look like? What does it look like for us to have that kind of diversity in what we do? Well, for one thing, we need to have diverse leadership as we followed God's direction. It says, "Now in the church at Antioch, there were prophets and teachers. Barnabas, Simeon, who was called Niger, Lucius ofSirene, Manan, a close friend of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul." As they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, "Set apart from me Barnabas and Saul for the word to which I have called them." Then after that, they fasted, prayed, and laid hands on them and sent them off. Now, I want you to pay attention to who we just heard about in the first part of this passage. It said there was Barnabas. Well, Barnabas is from Cyprus. He's a Levite, meaning he is he is someone who serves the Lord and what he does. He was a Jewish religious leader. Simeon called Niger, who is likely dark-skinned from Africa. Lucius ofSirene. And it says that he was a friend of Herod the tetrarch. In other words, he's a friend of royalty. So, he's somebody who's part of the the political and social elite. Uh, excuse me, I'm talking about Manan there. Lucius was the one from Libya. Manaman being the one that was a friend of Herod. And then there was Saul, which we know about, who was a Jews Jew, a Romans Roman. He was a Jew from Tarsus. And we don't think that what happened here when Luke who wrote the book of Acts was saying this, he was just stating facts for no purpose. He was pointing out the diversity of their background, their cultures, their experiences, and they were the leaders and and when God spoke to them, they took Barnabas and Saul, set them apart, meaning they said, "You have a special assignment." They laid hands on them and prayed and sent them out. that came from a diverse group of leaders. It wasn't all Jews that sent them out. It was this diverse group of people from Antioch.

So, some of the things that we see about Antioch is that's so amazing is that here's this diverse place that could be used to spread the gospel much more than maybe a place like Jerusalem, which was much closer to a monoculture. And so having a multicultural church actually can make you uh be in a better position to go and send people to the world. Uh I have a friend, a guy who was on my staff. We were pastoring together in Seattle. And uh when I started doing church planning, leading the new network, I wanted him to take over as the lead pastor. And he said, "No, I'm going to this church." He he moved to Los Angeles to be a part of a church where that was very multithnic. because he wanted to go be a missionary and he knew uh having that kind of experience would not only help him but it would also help those who were sending to recognize that he was serious about it. We can be so much more effective to the nations when we have that kind of approach.

We must learn to let learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools. Dr. King said the Antioch church got this long before Dr. Martin Luther King did. Their diversity became their platform for their mission. Antioch was the right launching pad for mission. They were able to send people throughout the world. And get back, think back to the passage. It says all these places they're from, but Luke makes note of this was the first place where they were called Christians. So they weren't called people from Niger or Cyprus orSirene or they weren't people from Jerusalem, they were called Christians, which literally means little Christ. So in instead of being identified going forward by their differences that they had, they were identified by who they were in Christ. They are identified by what made them unified.

Leadership diversity isn't about optics. It isn't about saying, "Hey, we got to have a diverse group just because it looks good." It's about obedience. It reflects the spirit's heart and advances his mission. This is not an add-on to theology. This is intentional that we work with people of other nationalities. Uh I am extremely blessed that I work together with people of more nations than anybody I know. Uh guys on my team along with me. We get to work with people of so many different people groups and language groups. And I know there's people in the world that get to do even more than I do. But just what an incredible blessing. And the goal isn't doing that because I get stuff out of it. The goal is do it because it's the calling. It's what Christ made us to be. But I have to tell you, I do get extremely blessed out of it. I do have amazing experiences out of it. As I told you before, I get amazing food out of it and amazing worship out of it and amazing relationships out of it. Why would we not want to be a part of that?

It says in Ephesians, for he is our peace, who made both groups one and tore down the dividing wall of hostility, talking about Jews and Gentiles. In his flesh he made of no effect the law consisting of commands and expressed in regulations so that he might create in himself one man new man from the two resulting in peace. We looked at that a little bit earlier. So what is that telling us? It says he did this so that he might reconcile both to God in one body through the cross by which he put the hostility to death. Again, God intends for the walls to be torn down. He intends for us to be one. Diversity is at the very center of the gospel's power. The dividing wall between Jews and Gentiles has been broken down for the sake of the gospel. Now, this was revolutionary for the time of the apostles and the young church. There was no other religion in the first century world that proclaimed equality across ethnic and social lines. Also some today some people look at the Bible and they think about the Bible even holding women back. What bi the Bible did to elevate women who were basically considered like property. Uh Jesus elevated them and the apostles elevated them in many ways. Yes, we're different. Yes, we have different responsibilities. Yes, there's supposed to be mutual submission and submission of of wives to husbands and husbands to leaders and and so on. But it was actually a radical new thing that act gave women and different ethnicities status. The intent is for us to collectively be one and all of us to exercise in our gifts. Paul insists that this mystery, this unity and diversity reveals God's manifold wisdom. And remember manifold is that idea of a multifaceted beautiful thing. his manifold wisdom to the rulers and authorities in the heaven. It is a witness to heaven and earth.

When we have that, the church is not meant to call men and women out of the world into a safe religious enclave. We're not supposed to be in a holy huddle. We're not supposed to go hide in a monastery. We're not to be called in this safe safe place to hide, but instead to call them out in order to send them back as agents of God's kingdom. We are to come together to be unified so that we can be stronger. So that we can have a better witness. So that we can be encouraged that our joys are doubled and our pains are halves. So that we can go out and be a witness to the world and stand against the tests that are out there. It is through the old creation that God reveals his glory to the universe. It is through the new creation, the church, that he reveals his wisdom. Throughout creation, God was showing this is who I am. And he was seeking to be in relationship with us. But when he gave us the church, he helped us have understanding we could never have because the the understanding we can have through knowledge is insufficient compared to what we can have in wisdom which only comes from the presence of the Holy Spirit.

So how is that wisdom displayed? Well, it's displayed and empowered by love. For this reason, I kneel before the Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named. I pray that he may grant you according to the riches of his glory to be strengthened with power in your inner being through his spirit and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. I pray that you being rooted and firmly established in love may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width and height and depth of God's love and to know Christ's love that surpasses knowledge so that you may be filled with the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do above and beyond all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us. To him be glory in the church in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen. Ephesians 3.

The goal is for us to know each other in love. Through love we gain wisdom. We gain understanding. We gain compassion and patience and forgiveness and joy that we can never get by knowledge alone. Unity cannot survive without love. We can put all the programs and structures and steps in place we want to create w unity but if there is not love it's not going to happen. Love is essential. Diversity without love leads to division. Love with without truth leads to compromise. But love grounded in the gospel leads to transformation. If we are diverse and we just want to stand for ourselves, that's where battles ensue. That's where we have conflict between different peoples. But if and if we love, we just say we're going to love, but we don't have the truth. That's where, forgive me, but we get some of the radical beliefs we have out there in the world today. We just got to love people. Yeah, we got to love them enough to tell them the truth for their their own sake. We don't control their lives, but if we don't tell them the truth, it's like seeing somebody rushing for a cliff and saying, "I don't want to tell them what to do. I love them too much. I'm just going to let them run off the cliff." Well, of course, that's ridiculous. We would never do that. But when we say we're just not going to tell somebody because we just need to love everybody, we're not really loving them. We're loving like the world loves, not like how God loves. And God is love.

By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples if you love one another. Now, we need to love the community. We need to love the lost around them around us. But if we don't love one another, they won't see that love as genuine. Our love for others who don't know Jesus flows out of our love for each other, out of our relationship for each other, to be on mission with each other. And then the natural outflow of that is to serve and to love those that are around us. A truly multithnic church is not built on strategy alone. It is sustained by supernatural love, agape love, which means God love. Programs can start toward a movement, but only love can maintain it. Yes, you can take action steps to try to put things in place, and you should, but if you don't have love at the beginning of it, if you don't have a peaceful relationship with each other, a loving relationship, a giving relationship, it's all going to be a bunch of rules and it's not going to be sustainable.

So Paul's vision of the church was to be radically inclusive, to have that kind of love where everybody was welcome. Not in the sense of lowering truth, but of raising belonging. We don't want to lower the truth of the gospel in order to get everybody in. We just we just got to love everybody. Let them believe what they want. Let them do what they want. Don't confront somebody who's living in sin. Just make it easy. That's not what the gospel is telling us because that's not really love. Instead, we want to raise belonging where we love and encourage and give and support, but also hold each other accountable and tell the truth. Telling the truth and love.

The Roman world divided people by birth, status, and citizenship. The church became the first community where those barriers no longer define belonging. Think about it. Think about other religions. Some that have cast systems or some that have certain classes of people or royalty are here and everybody else serves them. The church became the first community where those belong those barriers no longer define belonging. The same gospel that reconciles us to God reconciles us to each other. It removes the barrier between us and God and it removes the barriers between us and everyone that's a part of the body.

So if one member suffers in that then all members suffer with it. If one member is honored all the members rejoice with it. What does that mean? It means that if we are truly the body if you if you punch me in the arm my arm hurts but I hurt. And if you give me some ice cream with you know strawberry topping or chocolate shell uh my mouth is encouraged. I'm I'm the endorphins kick in and I'm fully encouraged. Uh the same thing is true for the body. If we are truly one, if one of us is hurting, we should all be hurting. And if you've ever been hurting and alone, you know, it's much worse than if you're hurting and people are there to comfort you and encourage you and console you. But the other part is, I don't know if you've ever had this experience. you have something really exciting happening in your life and you look around and there's nobody to tell. It kind of takes a little of that excitement off. It's like I got to tell somebody. And when we have that excitement and that joy and that victory and we're in the church, that victory is doubled. It's blessed.

So together we become something beautiful. As a matter of fact, we become a mosaic. Think back to the idea of the multi- uh multi- light, multiffractional, the beauty of things that are diverse. Well, we are all very different. We're all very broken people, but we are very colorful people. And God's intent is for those broken fe pieces to be put together. And when you take broken and sharp and jagged pieces of glass and you put them together in a beautiful tapestry, it becomes a beautiful mosaic. That's what the church is. The fact that we're different doesn't harm us. It makes us beautiful. The fact that we're different and we have different hurts and different failures. When we are able to become more and outrow those things because of loving and encourage one another, we become that beautiful mosaic. We become like a great stained glass picture with the light of God shining through. A monoethnic church or a church of just one people might be easier to lead but it is less able to display that power or if you will that beauty. God calls us to the harder holier work of reconciling people one to another. It becomes a much more beautiful thing in the eyes of the world and is appealing and drawing to them.

In Ephesians 4, it says, "Therefore, I, the prisoner of the Lord, urge you to walk worthy of the calling you have received with all humility and greatness with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to keep the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace. It takes effort. It takes work, but it's worth it. We are being challenged to come together in love with humility and gentleness and patience and forbearance. Those things cost you. Those things take effort. If you're like, "Well, I'll love somebody as long as they do what I want or I'll love somebody as long as they they they don't ever hurt me or they they don't ever look at me crosseyed." You know what kind of love is that? You know, I love a puppy that that gets excited to see me. Well, that's cuz he's excited. Uh, you know, that's that's not what we're looking. We're looking for a true giving, mutually uh helpful relationship in Christ.

Dallas Willard says, "The aim of spiritual formation is not uniformity, but harmony in Christ. A community of diverse saints whose unity radiates God's beauty." That's that's what we're striving for to become more and more like Christ who is beautiful and that reflects in us in our diversity and we are more beautiful as the church. So how do we get there? Um a number of the things of research for this and reading in this are from a book by Mark Demos. I've referenced that many times but we're going to dig into his stuff a little bit more deeply. I've actually got to know Mark recently and he lives this out. He's not speaking of theory. He pastors an extremely diverse church and he leads a network of churches that want to be multicultural. So he is an expert in this area. So let's hear what he has to say.

Mark Demas shares with us the mandate and the core commitments that must be there. We must have a mandate to to strive for this unity. And how do we do it? He gives us four core commitments. Number one, be intentional in leadership diversity. Uh what does that mean? Diversity and leadership communicates the gospel before a word is preached. When people see leaders who reflect their own backgrounds, they sense that the gospel includes them. Let me put it to you this way. Um I often tell church planners, you need to pay attention to how you do things even as much as how clean you keep your building when people come for worship for the first time and the grounds because people are human. Shocking revelation. What that means is they have reactions to thing. They make decisions about things a lot of times before they even really encounter it. Uh I won't name names, but uh I will say my wife, if we go to a restaurant and she goes to the restroom and that restroom is filthy, it wouldn't be the first time that she said, "I don't want to eat here." because that impression gave her a negative impression about the restaurant and their cleanliness for obvious reasons. The same thing is true when a church has filthy restaurants or restrooms or when you come to a church and there's garbage everywhere and the doors are locked. You can't find out how to get in. The shrubs haven't been trimmed for like three years and they're overgrown and uh the building needs paint and there's when you go in there's stuff stored in the hallways and door rooms of classrooms are open that are being used for more storage and everything just looks like nobody really cares. Well, you're thinking what's that got to do with what we're talking about? That's an initial impression. So when you walk into a congregation and you say we want to be a multicultural church and everybody is of one people group whether that's Hispanic or Anglo or African-American you're communicating to them we're not really multicultural. When all the pastors and the worship leaders and the people greeting and everybody's of the same group you've not communicated that diversity that you're saying you value. you've made that kind of negative impression for and here's here's what it says about this in scripture in James it's a very practical book it says for if someone comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and dressed in five clothes and a poor person dressed in filthy clothes also comes in if you look at favor on the one wearing the fine clothes and say sit here in a good place and yet you say to the poor person stand over there have you not made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts. James goes as far to say as when we treat people differently, uh, we are making evil judgments. Now, I'm not saying you're evil if your worship leaders are all of one ethnicity. I'm saying, have you really made the effort to make them feel included and make them feel valued as much as you would other people? And I understand that community might be 90% one people group. There are there are reasons why we have that. But when we have that opportunity, if we want to be multicultural, we need to take that effort when it comes to leaders and elders and worship leaders and speakers and all that.

The second core commitment is relational disciplehip across cultures. A multithnic church is not built on Sunday attendance alone, but it's built on Monday friendships. What does that mean? It means it's not just do we get together and worship but do we spend time together during the week. Micah 6:8 says mankind he has told each of you what is good and what is in it is the Lord requires of you to act justly to love faithfulness and to walk humbly with your God. He's saying you need to live a life that is right. You need to live a life that is for God. Well, that faithfulness and justice and humility carries on on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday and so on. Do we strive to be that? Do we really want to hang out with these people? Do we want to spend time with people and encourage them and bless them or is it always going to be a segregated thing?

The third thing it says is we need to have economic sharing and justice. It says, "Now the entire group of those who believed were of one heart and mind, and no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but instead they held everything in common." This is talking about the early church. Nobody went every It's all mine. You got to go f for yourself. Uh I don't see the church living this out as much today as I believe it should. We have people that are very wealthy and we have people that are struggling to feed their families and they're in the same church. Uh do we live out Acts 4 the way that God intended for us to do? Because look what it says in the next part. It says for there was not a needy person among them. They held everything in common. So nobody was lacking. They shared in the economy. They shared in justice and caring for one another. That's a core commitment.

And then the fourth core commitment is worship that reflects multiple cultures. So worship is the heartbeat of unity. When people hear their lang their languages, instruments and styles incorporated, they recognize their place in the body. Uh there's a joy and excitement when their music is taken place. I've been part of some incredible worship times where many cultures and languages have come together and they're often very diverse. Some are much more somber, some are much more celebratory. Uh some exciting things happen, some peaceful things happen, some rhythms happen, some instruments, some dance. It's it's all over the place. But when we do that, we are letting people know that they are valued because their culture is being represented. Let the peoples praise you, God. Let all the peoples praise you. Doesn't say some. It says, "Let all the peoples praise you. Let the nations rejoice and shout for joy, for you judge the peoples with fairness and lead the nations on earth. The Sunday gathering should be a foretaste of the heavenly blanket uh banquet, a place where the nations sing together before the throne. Wouldn't it be great if our Sunday worship was a good precursor, a good rehearsal for what it's going to be like in heaven that we get to experience that? I think some of us are going to get there and we're going to have a bit of culture shock because we've just never experienced that here on earth.

Now, I've got a couple more components from Mark. These aren't in his four core essentials, but these are important things he shared, too. I'm Adam that's five and six. We need cultural intelligence training. Churches that thrive cross-culturally invest in education. Awareness prevents assumption. Humility prevents harm. So what do we mean by this? We should learn things about certain cultures. Like there's some hand gestures, which I'm not going to do it here in case I offend any, but there's some things that we do in America as a positive hand gesture. And in some parts of the world, they're obscene. Uh, there's some cultures that you never show somebody the bottom of your feet because if you cross your feet or cross your legs and put the bottom of your foot towards them, you're saying you're beneath me. Uh, you're lowering them. There's some cultures when I've traveled that um like in America, we're it's pretty common for us to hug a friend. Uh, but in their cultures, hugging is very intimate. You only hug somebody that's like your spouse. Yet for them, holding hands and walking down the road is what you do with friends. Well, here in America, you hold hands with that special someone. Maybe it's your spouse, maybe it's your grandkids. You don't hold hands with somebody that's a friend usually. And I remember the first time I had this happen, I was in a foreign country and we had a young lady who was our guide. And we had become friends over the time. We just struck up a good conversation. She was our guide. She was learning English. Uh she was practicing English. She knew some English. She was learning better from us. And she just grabbed my hand and started walking down the street. And to me, that was very odd, very uncomfortable. I'm like, "Okay, nobody take pictures. I don't want to be in trouble here." Well, it was knowing those things cross-culturally. Uh knowing what was what was accepted and what was harmful. Well, those are kind of things those are just kind of fun, maybe even silly illustrations of the kind of things that can go on our church if we're just not aware. Uh like in some cultures you would never and here like if I pat my grandkids on the head I'm letting them know I love them. In some cultures that's extremely insulting. We need to be educated about those that were with whom we're interacting so that we are not causing undue harm or conflict and actually hindering our witness unintentionally.

The sixth thing is shared mission and service. [snorts] Mission trips and community partnerships bring people of different cultures together around shared purpose. This thing same thing is true even within the same ethnicity. When we talk to churches like a young church and an older church looking at maybe becoming one church, maybe one church is getting smaller and there's this growing younger church and they're looking at should we become one church. We don't tell them, hey, go do worship together. You're to start with your worship's going to be different. Save that for later. We don't even say go have food together. You know, because as I told you before, the older folks do all the kick cooking and the younger folks bring potato chips. What we tell them is go serve the community together. Because when you're serving the community together, conversations happen. And it's not about you, it's about others. And it creates the culture for opening that same kind of relationship with those whom we're serving alongside. We do the same thing when going to a community. We don't just serve a community. We have the community serve with us because it helps break down those barriers. That same thing is true between different ethnicities. Serve the community together.

So the church at Antioch that we've been talking about where a lot of this began and then spread has a few things we can learn from them. There's four of them. Number one, it's it was missional. Says in Acts 13:3, "Then after they had fasted, prayed, and laid hands on them, they sent them off." We heard about that earlier. them being a multicultural model made them be missional in sending the good news to others that didn't know Jesus, others who weren't like them. The second thing is it was relational. So it says for a whole year they met with the church. So he went and got Saul. They met with the church before they started doing a bunch of stuff. They built relationship. One of the important things in multicultural worship and in a multicultural church is you have to spend time together. It you have to build relationships. And the Bible is first and foremost a book about relationships. God wanting to be in relationship with us and wanting his people to be in relationship with one another. Their third thing was it was instructional. It says that and they taught large numbers. They taught a lot of people. They were teaching them about the gospel. And the gospel being about love will help them relate to one another in multiple cultures. And the last thing is it was spiritual. Says, "And they were worshiping the Lord and fasting." That's when the Holy Spirit said, "Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them." They didn't just get together and do the the activities or do the checklist. They got together to seek God, to worship him, to hear from him. And the church has advanced because of it. It's a spiritual undertaking.

So, let's kind of look at everything we've been going through. We're not going to rehash it all, but I want to recap a few things. Um, first of all, we need to be intentional. We need to have intentional leadership diversity if we are going to have a multicultural church with multicultural worship. The second thing is our task is not to invent multicultural churches. God's already designed it that way. Our job is not to get in the way of that. Our task is to align with his design. Unity is not a strategy. It's a sign of what God's doing. It points the world to Jesus. It is extremely evangelistic when the the world sees that we are truly who God intended for us to be. As we talked about before, it's like bringing the people back together who were separated back at the Tower of Babel that the Holy Spirit brought us together in Jesus Christ so that we're unified again and we can demonstrate that love and that unity to the world. In second Corinthians it says everything is from God who has reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. that is in Christ. God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them. And he has committed the message of reconciliation to us. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ. Multicultural church allows us to be who God wants us to be to the world. And remember, it was so important to Jesus this reminder that that's what he prayed. I in them and you are in you in me so that they may be made completely one that the world may know you have sent me and have loved them as you have loved me. That's Jesus prayer for us that we will be unified for our sake, for the church's sake and for the kingdom's advancement's sake to the world.

Commitment sustained vision. We have to be committed to this and structures serve the gospel but it's more than that. May our churches be like Antioch, diverse, spirit-led, and missiondriven. And as that happens, may the church on earth look more like the church in heaven, a people of every nation and language worshiping the lamb together. I heard every creature in heaven, on earth, under the earth, on the sea, and everything in them say, "Blessing and honor, and glory and power be to the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb forever and ever."

[music] [singing] [music] >> Praise [singing] the Lord of my soul. >> [music] >> Praise [singing] the Lord, oh my soul. [music] I won't be quiet. [singing] My God is alive. How can I keep it inside [music] the [music and singing] Lord, oh my soul?