Yesterday,
I spent the whole day in church. The whooooole stinkin day. And yes, I’m still
here. Now, I confess I strongly dislike church services. I’ll go for the
people, but the services generally make me want to sleep, check the “free”
section on craigslist, and write incendiary blog posts all at the same time.
But today, I went to 3 very different churches here in the UK: a traditional
Pentecostal Ghanaian church in Birmingham, a contemporary pan-African
Pentecostal church in Nottingham (beautiful, but no sheriff as far as I could
see), and a beskinnyjeaned (off)white pseudocostal church in Trent. For me,
they represented three very unique cultures and approaches to ministry within
broader British society (which necessarily includes a tremendous kaleidoscope
of cultures.
Maybe
some backstory is due? Okay, I hate backstory. But I bet you’ll love it...
Harvey
is a someone I met in Minnesota while he was a student working on his PhD and I
was a substitute teacher working on getting kids to please please quiet down
and listen for just a sec guys. He was a blossoming African scholar that hadn’t
been to Africa in years. I was a dumb American with lots of curiosity some
recent experience in Africa. I suppose we were both cultural oddities and it
just worked.
Last
September I suggested he fly down from England to meet me at a big
missions/discipleship summit in Ghana, which he did. We met at the alarmingly
huge convention center of what may be Ghana’s most powerful single religious
movement today: the Church of Pentecost. This conservative, strongly-regimented
network of churches has high structure, incredible resources, and an
ever-expanding reach through it many churches in exile throughout the West.
Through that conference, Harvey developed a friendship with the Church of
Pentecost in Birmingham where he was living. Harvey recently put on a
conference called “Missio Africanus”, a network designed to missionalize the
African church in the West... (did I mention I was one of the first members?)
and by some miracle, he got the Church of Pentecost chairman (the top dog
himself) to be a keynote speaker. The chairman, in turn, poached Harvey.
Feeling
the growing pains of being a culturally-rooted Ghanaian church movement losing
its young members in droves (most services aren’t even in English), the Church
of Pentecost engaged Harvey and Missio Africanus to lead a cross-cultural
missions conversation and help the churches adjust to their European context.
They also bought the properties of Birmingham Christian College and are
renovating it to become the training hub for all their European ministers. In
case that doesn’t land heavily on you, then let’s just take a moment of silence
together... An African church just bought a big chunk of a British University
to be designated as a bible college for hundreds of students, including its
sizeable contingent of ministers in Europe. And guess who they put in the
missiological drivers seat of this thing?
So
Harvey now has the unenviable task of integrating his
Malawian-yet-not-quite-Malawian self into a staunchly Ghanaian movement, teaching
at the school, and leading these Ghanaian congregations out of cultural
self-isolation and into a missional relevance trying to revitalize Christianity
in 21st-century Europe (which happens to be the thrust of his
excellent new book on reverse mission). Sounds exciting, but... hard.
Church
#1 demonstrated that point well. It was everything I’ve come to expect from
African Pentecostal churches with a special national (in this case, Ghanaian)
flare. A small rented room draped in the green, gold, and black of the Ghanaian
flag. The pastors and honored members sat on stage facing the congregation while
the worship band sang (sometimes completely butchering) contemporary praise
music from 30 years ago in typical African fashion: the worship leader starts
singing and the keyboardist noodles around til he finds the right key. Then he
has a short midstream conversation with the bassist after which he breaks out
in loud 1,4,5 African polka (no matter how soft the song) which the drummer
dutifully follows with something vaguely reggae until the song ends. An elder
got up and had a quasi-theological discourse with the congregation about grace,
creating some grace/works confusion along the way. Luckily, the pastor
straightened out neatly. The pastor’s wife preached a lovely sermon on Esther (the
main points of which I can’t recall at the moment). Then it was announcements
and another small sermon or two. The people were gracious and welcoming enough.
But any African not from Ghana (much
less a westerner) would be hard-pressed to find a home there.
Church
#2 was an interesting mix of Malawian, Zimbabweans, and South Africans meeting
in a tiny old church in the heart of Nottingham. There can’t have been more
than 30 people there, but I was immediately struck by the music: an incredibly
talented band of all Africans playing Hillsong and other contemporary “western”
worship with striking skill and passion. I was surprised by this but even more surprised when I noticed everyone
young and old (myself included) connecting deeply with this expression of worship.
I later sat down with the keyboard player (who gave me an impromptu lesson in
jazz piano). He talked about that music as a “universal style” which differed
from American rock worship. It was something he told me resonates deeply with
Christians worldwide. As I thought about it, I realized there really are no
comparable secular genres for that style of worship music in America: it is
distinct and apparently becoming a lingua franca for globalized Christians
around the world.
The
preaching was (let us be frank) horrible. In the absence of their pastor (who
was recovering from a stroke), the lay leadership limped along with half-baked
gospel presentations full of “amen” and “hallelujah” fillers (which sounded better
than “um”), and uncomfortably exuberant pontificating on the importance of
giving. It was all pretty tasteless. So when Harvey and Nancy’s adorable
16-month daughter, Rochelle, got restless, I volunteered myself for nursery
duty. I took Rochelle upstairs with all the second-generation immigrant African
kids speaking in perfect British accents, possibly less African than I am!
After the service, everybody was exceptionally warm and inviting in ways the
Ghanaian church had not been. They told me how they were reaching out to the
community with their food pantry and trying to be a blessing to Nottingham
(imagine that). I felt that if the preaching was better and the church was a
little bigger, I really could feel at
home in a place like this. Even though I stuck out like a sore thumb, I felt
comfortable, accepted.
Church
#3 was the Trent Vineyard. This one just knocked me over. It was featured on
the BBC as one of the few churches that is growing in the UK while most
churches are folding. And boy is it growing. Walking into the huge pristine warehouse,
I began to see why. A beautiful full-service coffee shop adjoined one side of
the sanctuary while the church’s famed bar (yes, a fully licensed bar) opened
to the other side of the room. The main hall was designed perfectly: industrial
chic with calming grays punctuated by tasteful art pieces alluding to the
spiritual nature of that community: a painting of a large crown of thorns,
snippets of poetry, a bible verse. Perfect lighting, sound, couches in the
back. The band played western rock worship (Tomlin along with several
originals) that had the thousand-strong crowd of cool young Britons raising
hands, jumping, crying, and closing their eyes in the private emotional
cloister of their personal encounters with God.
I
admit I was awed, then drawn in. And while I think both the band and most of
the church was being genuine in their expression of worship, an eerie
realization dawned on me: every element of this experience from the coffee
shop, to the guitar-playing, to the color palette, is designed to appeal to my
young, white, middle-class sensibilities. It’s a carefully crafted atmosphere
made just for me; to cause me to exhale when I come to church and say, “ah....
now I feel better.” But it’s not just the atmosphere: the church offers dozens of
small groups, special activities, even a pudding
party (what even IS that?!) to connect otherwise isolated people to a
strong community with a culture that offers a distinct and refreshing
alternative to what’s available in the mainstream. The sermon, though boring,
was also crafted for the timid white Christian professional: basically, “find
natural ways to share Jesus with friends and colleagues without being rude,
nosy, or obnoxious.”
Having
been in Vineyard churches in America, I could taste, feel, almost smell that culture when I walked in the
room. It’s a culture where I once found tremendous belonging and spiritual momentum.
And while I applaud their incredible intentionality in reaching out to young
white students and professionals in Britain, something told me I had moved
on... that my own emerging Africanness was pushing me away from that culture
and not into it. And certainly as I looked over at Harvey and Nancy I could
tell they were underwhelmed, that they felt their differentness keenly. Interestingly,
at one quiet moment during worship, Rochelle shouted “Daddy! Daddy!” which one
woman later told the congregation was (she felt) a word from God.
Also,
after getting a beer from the nice Christian fellas at the bar, I told Harvey
that if I ever planted a church, half our revenue would come from liquor sales.
He laughed and said, “nothing quite like harnessing your American capitalism
for the sake of the kingdom.”
“Oh
come on!” I ribbed. “We can make nice with capitalism for Jesus’ sake can’t
we?”
“Of
course,” he grinned. “I agree with that!”
I
suppose as I reflect on my experiences yesterday, the main takeaways have
become an argument for multiculturalism. I’ve never really understood the point
of multicultural congregations. They’ve seemed forced, driven by idealism or
guilt, and poised for conflict or a watering-down that never quite pleases
anyone. But on another level, maybe I’ve never understood the need for
multicultural communities because I’ve never understood the need to live deeply
with other peoples’ stories, the stories of other communities. I was raised in
a homogeneous church and though I never liked it, though I always knew
something was missing, I never thought that one of those somethings might be a
multiplicity of cultural voices. Like the dutiful rationalist I was, I figured
our community could (in theory) reason through any problem or deficit it
encountered within itself, even if it chose not to. But my growing conviction
is the family of God is incomplete unless all the family members are present.
And while I value deeply-contextualized attempts to reach a single culture, I
believe we can, and should, find a common Christian language peppered with our
own stories, our distinctiveness. Heck, if Coke can do it, why not the church?
It’s a language bound together by scripture, an authentic encounter with God,
and the humility and love to press into our differences.
Once
we find that language (which can only be accomplished in a global community),
we can open our doors and our relational space to the strangers in our
community, the cultural minorities (or majorities) in our midst. Not just
because they need us but because we
also need them. They’re not optional guests at a graduation party. They’re
needed family members at the dinner table. We don’t do diversity for tolerance
brownie points. We do it for wholeness. The Church of Pentecost can NOT
continue to grow spiritually without the British. The Vineyard NEEDS Malawians
and Indians and poor whites if it wants to grow deep as well as wide. The
Anglicans need immigrant voices to revitalize their faith. We need those voices
not only in our congregations but in our lives, our community, our group of
friends. If we can welcome those voices, make friends with them, learn to trust
them, we will find ourselves growing. Our faith will grow, our humility will
our, our compassion will grow.
The
African philosophy of Ubuntu teaches that you must welcome the stranger because
you never know what the stranger might bring to you, what he might contribute
to your life, your community. Similarly, we have not yet understood what the
stranger in our midst has to offer. But I daresay it is much better than we
have dreamed.
