Multilingual Church is not about “Them and Us”
Making multilingual church work means breaking barriers
The word “them” is one of the most dangerous words for any church, When we ask “what will we do about them?”, “how long should we wait for them to learn English?” or even “what should we provide for them?”, we start off in completely the wrong direction. Among Christians, there can be and should be no “them” and “us”. If we are one in Christ, there is only ever “us”. When we start from that point, things get much easier. Let’s talk practically.
Making Decisions with “them” and “us”
If we keep thinking in terms of people we understand and are like (“us”) vs. foreigners, who are strange (“them”) then that will affect our decision making in some very specific ways. Automatically, we will always put the interests of “us” before the interests of “them”. We start saying things like “we have to prioritise the people already in the church” or “we don’t want to upset the people who have been here their whole lives” or “we really need them to contribute more before we commit”.
Very quickly this leads to the people we are like receiving far more resources than people who join us from other countries. We make sure the preaching is in “our” language, run all our groups in ways that suit people like us and wait for “them” to fit into “our” church.
Whether we want to admit it or not, when we think like that, church is less about becoming like Jesus and much more like becoming like us. We might dress it up in culturally acceptable language but that is the truth.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Big Concepts to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.