Building a Multiethnic Church

A Gospel Vision of Grace, Love, and Reconciliation in a Divided World

Derwin L. Gray

• Publisher: Thomas Nelson
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781400230556
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

America has become a beautiful mosaic filled with many colors and ethnicities—but does your church reflect this change? Are you longing to be a cross-cultural leader who can guide the church into a multicolored world for the sake of the gospel? If so, Building a Multiethnic Church will give you the tools to embrace an invigorated community of grace, love, and reconciliation.

In Building a Multiethnic Church, bestselling author and pastor Dr. Derwin Gray calls all churches and their leaders to grow out of ignorance, classism, racism, and greed into a flourishing, vibrant, and grace-filled community of believers.

Drawing on wisdom from the early church and the New Testament, Gray will help you

• understand that planting and transforming churches into multiethnic communities is a biblical calling; 
• identify and implement the best practices to help build multiethnic churches; and
• recognize that reconciliation between ethnic groups in the church is not just a social issue, but a theological issue that cannot be ignored.

-- Previously published as The High-Definition Leader, now revised and updated--

FOUR

SEEING CHRIST JESUS AND GOD’S ETERNAL PLAN

And this is God’s plan: Both Gentiles and Jews who believe the Good News share equally in the riches inherited by God’s children. Both are part of the same body, and both enjoy the promise of blessings because they belong to Christ Jesus. . . . This was his eternal plan, which he carried out through Christ Jesus our Lord.

—EPHESIANS 3:6, 11 NLT

THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE SNOTTY-NOSED RACIST

As I finished my closing prayer one Sunday, I noticed a White gentleman get up from his seat. I turned to greet and high-five some people, and the next thing I know, this guy is sprinting down the aisle toward me. As he is running, I see snot dangling from his nose and tears flooding down his face. In the next three seconds I had all kinds of crazy thoughts, including wondering if I would have to defend myself if this dude attacked me. Then I thought, What would Jesus do? Well, for one thing, Jesus would do a miracle and make that snot disappear! Before I knew it, we were face to face, and he was hugging me, snot and all. Then something amazing happened.

As he hugged me, he said, “I’m so glad someone invited me to this church. I never thought I’d ever be in church. Jesus is changing my life. And my pastor is Black! And I don’t even like Black people!” Yep. You read that correctly. The White dude said, “And my pastor is Black! And I don’t even like Black people!” So here’s the scene: a Black pastor and a thirty-something White racist hugging in God’s house. Yes, it was an eptastic (simultaneously epic and fantastic) moment.

Jesus transformed this White racist into a gracist. I still get goose bumps when I think of this moment. But more importantly, I experienced the power of Jesus and his cross that reconciles people unto himself and to each other.

Typically, when we study the life of Christ, we talk about Jesus being 100 percent God the Son and 100 percent man; we talk about him being the ultimate Prophet, Priest, and King; we talk about his birth, sinless life, death, resurrection, and ascension, but we seldom talk about how Jesus, Israel’s Messiah, created a new ethnicity of people of Jews and Gentiles through his finished work and how this new ethnicity is called God’s church.

The apostle Paul wrote:

And this is God’s plan: Both Gentiles and Jews who believe the Good News share equally in the riches inherited by God’s children. Both are part of the same body, and both enjoy the promise of blessings because they belong to Christ Jesus. . . . This was his eternal plan, which he carried out through Christ Jesus our Lord. (Ephesians 3:6, 11 NLT)

Jesus carried out God’s plan; therefore, I am more determined, more committed in my pursuit of building a healthy, thriving multiethnic church and helping other pastors and denominational leaders do likewise, because the local church is God’s grand prototype that displays to the world how humanity is to love one another. The power of Jesus’ cross is greater than the power of racism. As an illustration of this statement, let me give you the backstory of the racist-turned-gracist.

THE BACKSTORY

A few months before Austin ran down the aisle, a woman who was a member of Transformation Church invited Austin’s girlfriend, Amber, to one of our Easter services. The Spirit opened Amber’s broken heart as the gospel of grace was preached. Amber received Jesus as God and King that Easter.

Before Amber was at Transformation Church, she had spent four years in prison for various crimes. When she was a little girl, her father and other relatives, male and female, physically and sexually abused her. During her teenage years, her family disowned her. In high school, Amber experimented with marijuana and then progressed to alcohol, crack, and, finally, to heroin. To support her addiction she became a stripper and prostitute.

After her stint in prison, Amber met Austin. He came from a middle-class Midwestern family. Growing up, he had everything he needed, but in high school, he, too, started smoking weed, which led to harder drugs like heroin. When Austin and Amber met, they both were a mess. And in the midst of their mess, God sent a missionary from Transformation Church into their lives.

After that Easter service, Amber became a regular attender at Transformation Church, but Austin refused to go hear a “n—preacher!” But Austin couldn’t argue with how Amber’s life was rapidly transforming. Finally, Austin agreed to come to a service, and Jesus wrecked him. I baptized both Amber and Austin the following Easter.

As Austin and I grew in our friendship, I asked why he had resisted attending a service with Amber. He said, “Because I didn’t like Black people, and I expected you to be shuckin’ and jivin.’” (I have no idea what shuckin’ and jivin’ is.) Then he said, “I tried with everything in me not to like you or your sermon, but the more you preached, the more I felt God’s love touch my heart in places I didn’t even know I had. At the end of the sermon, I just knew I wanted Jesus.”

After a year or so of being faithful participants of Transformation Church, Austin and Amber approached me to ask me if I would perform their wedding. The Transformation Church care team took them through a premarital counseling class. As we approached the wedding date, Amber asked me a beautiful question: “Pastor Derwin, my father is not in my life. He disowned me a long time ago. Would you please walk me down the aisle and give me away?” In an intimate gathering, I walked Amber down the aisle, and with each step we could see the tears streaming down Austin’s face. It was a great honor to give Amber away to Austin and to officiate their wedding.

Amber and Austin became passionate missionaries and super servant-leaders at Transformation Church. Amber went on to get a master’s degree, and they both are sober and have great jobs. I believe Austin and Amber’s story is a microcosm of God’s heart for his church and how the work of Christ not only forgives people but makes them into a new people where hostilities are put to death (see Ephesians 2:16). The local church exists to be a community of healing and reconciliation. Healing from all kinds of sins like sexual abuse, drug abuse, and racism. But how can racists ever get transformed into gracists in homogeneous churches?

MESS TO MASTERPIECE

The local church is a community of grace where messed-up people become masterpieces. As Paul wrote, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10). In Christ Jesus, we are God’s workmanship, or new creation. Another way to say it is that, in Christ, we are a new ethnicity comprised of Jews and Gentiles who are created to do the good things God planned long ago.

According to Paul:

For Christ himself has brought peace to us. He united Jews and Gentiles into one people when, in his own body on the cross, he broke down the wall of hostility that separated us. He did this by ending the system of law with its commandments and regulations. He made peace between Jews and Gentiles by creating in himself one new people from the two groups. (Ephesians 2:14–15 NLT)

It’s as if Jesus rained down peace as his blood fell from the rugged cross. This precious, divine blood created a new multiethnic people. These new people of God are reconciled with God the Papa and reconciled with one another, producing local multiethnic churches progressively moving toward reconciliation, healing, and love.

God’s heart’s desire for Jews and Gentiles to love each other and be reconciled to one another didn’t start in the first-century Greco-Roman world. It has been God’s heartbeat—the rhythm of his dance—for all eternity.

THE DANCE-WITH-ME GOD

The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is a tripersonal being. The apostle John revealed a magnificent truth about the tripersonal God when he said, “God is love” (1 John 4:8). As we pull back the curtains of eternity, we learn that God has never been alone. God has always been a dynamic, interactive community of love. God the Father is the lover, God the Son is the beloved, and God the Holy Spirit is the spirit of love. Love demands relationship; therefore, God’s nature as a tripersonal being makes him eternally love.

But the God of the Bible is also a dancing God. Once again, the apostle John helps us see a beautiful, eternal truth when he wrote, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1).

The word with in Greek as used in John 1:1 is pro, meaning “to move toward.” This word implies a face-to-face relationship. It’s a term of deep intimacy. I like to say intimacy means “into me you see.” The early Greek fathers of the church also had a word for this: perichoresis. From all eternity, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit loved, adored, and rejoiced in one another.¹

From all eternity the tripersonal God has danced the dance of love, and out of his measureless, bottomless, boundless love, the tripersonal God created image bearers named Adam and Eve. When God created them, it was as if he said, “Will you dance with me? And because my life is in you, your children will dance with me, and one day all the people on earth will dance with me too.”

God, not out of need but out of love, fashioned Adam and Eve in his image to represent his limitless love throughout the earth. God desired that humanity would dance the dance of love with him and with one another. Earth was to be God’s dance floor where his image bearers would simply love him and one another. Earth would be a miniversion of heaven. But instead of earth becoming God’s dance floor, it has become his battlefield.

WHY DID ADAM AND EVE STOP DANCING WITH GOD?

Adam and Eve decided they didn’t want to dance with God anymore, and they chose to dance with the serpent instead. The serpent played some rhythmic, intoxicating music that captured their affections. They liked the sound so much, they stopped dancing with God and died. They fell off the dance floor, and so did all their offspring (see Romans 5:12–14).

But God invites all humanity to dance with him again. God played his beautiful eternal melody, and a pagan named Abram heard it and decided to dance with God. This music God played was the gospel. God preached the gospel to Abram before Peter, James, John, and Paul were ever born when he said:

Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. (Genesis 12:1–3)

Does it surprise you that God preached the gospel to Abram before the apostles?

THE GOSPEL PREACHED TO ABRAHAM

Pastor, church planter, leader, don’t miss this essential gospel reality that the apostle Paul reaffirmed when he wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit: “And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, ‘In you shall all the nations be blessed.’ So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith” (Galatians 3:8–9).

So, through Abram, whom God renamed Abraham, meaning “father of many,” all the families (ethnic groups) on earth would be blessed by the gospel and be included in Abraham’s family through faith in Jesus of Nazareth, Israel’s Messiah. Humanity would be able to dance the dance of love with God and one another. Through Abraham, the nation of Israel was birthed, and they corporately had the sacred vocation of being a “light to the Gentiles” (see Isaiah 42:6; 49:6; 51:4; 60:3).

Israel, however, failed in this task just as Adam failed before them. God in his omniscience knew that, which is why Jesus was slain before the world began (see Revelation 13:8; Ephesians 1:4–5). That was Jesus already on his way to save us. Before we ever called his name, he was already coming to rescue us.

PAUL’S PASSION FOR DIVERSITY

Through Jesus, the church now becomes the light of the world to reach those in darkness with the gospel message: “‘In you shall all the nations be blessed’” (Galatians 3:8). And Paul, a leader captured by God’s gospel vision, was convinced that local multiethnic churches were God’s covenantal fulfillment to Abraham (see Ephesians 2:14–22; Galatians 3:7–14). God saves people individually and transforms their lives for the purpose of creating local multiethnic churches that function as communities of reconciliation and unity.

To show Paul’s passion for multiethnic churches, look at how many times in his letters he talked about Jewish and Gentile local churches.

PAUL’S PASSION IN ROME

In the first chapter of Romans, Paul wrote:

Through whom we have received grace and apostleship to brin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword by Matt Chandler
• Introduction: What Is a Gospel-Shaped Leader?
• One: Gospel-Shaped Leadership
• Two: Seeing Life for the First Time
• Three: Seeing Salvation Through the Lens of Upward, Inward, Outward
• Four: Seeing Christ Jesus and God’s Eternal Plan
• Five: Seeing Missionally and Reconciliationally
• Six: Seeing the Beautiful Gospel Story
• Seven: Seeing the Church Through a Gospel Vision
• Eight: Seeing Discipleship and Leadership Through the Gospel
• Nine: Seeing the World to Come
• Conclusion: Are You in?
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• About the Author