Technicolor

Inspiring Your Church to Embrace Multicultural Ministry

Mark Hearn

• Publisher: B&H Books
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781433691737
• eBook ISBN: 9781433691720
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

By the year 2050, the United States will no longer have a majority ethnic group. The nation's population will be majority-minority.This future nationwide reality has already been a present reality in several cities, including many in the urban south, for nearly a decade. In a 2011 State of the City Address, the mayor of pastor and author Mark Hearn's city said there were fifty-seven languages spoken at the local high school.

Hearn left asking himself, How should our church respond? In the years that have followed, a phenomenal transformation has taken place. This transition has been chronicled in the Gwinnet Daily Post, the Christian Index, the Wall Street Journal, Lifeway's Facts and Trends, and the Atlanta Magazine. Now, Hearn shares the life-changing story through his own lens. By reading his firsthand experience of this transition as a pastor, you too can be equipped to make the shift to church in technicolor.

Section One

The Biblical Principles of Multicultural Ministry

Chapter One

Project 57

The Calling of Multicultural Ministry

Then He told them, “These are My words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about Me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. He also said to them, “This is what is written: The Messiah would suffer and rise from the dead the third day, and repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And look, I am sending you what My Father promised. As for you, stay in the city until you are empowered from on high.” (Luke 24:44–49)

In the fall of 2011 I devised a plan to communicate a ministry-altering statistic with my church. The statistic centered on the number 57. The number first appeared as an emblem no larger than a postage stamp in the church’s bulletin. With each passing week, the emblem grew in size and prominence. By week three, there were posters bearing 57 strategically placed all over the church facilities. Yet still there was no explanation to the mystery number. Eventually people began to ask the meaning of the now-obvious two-digit elephant in the room.

What is the significance of this number? I received a variety of suggestions to the now-infamous number puzzle. Some of them had suggested it may have been my first car. No, my first car was not a ’57 Chevy. My first car was a ’74 Ford Maverick. “Well, maybe it’s his favorite steak sauce,” some speculated. Actually, my favorite steak sauce is A.1., so it wasn’t that either. “Perhaps it’s his next birthday.” Wrong again; that would have been 53 at the time. I occasionally refer to my glory days on the gridiron as a high school football player. “Could it possibly be his high school football jersey number?” No, that would have been 51! More studious people had calculated that it was the exact number of days until Christmas. Although technically correct, this was still not the purpose of the mysterious number! However, the suggestion that caused me the greatest consternation was that the number somehow represented the average length of my sermons. I had no rebuttal for this position!

My question to the congregants was, When did you first notice it? It had actually been in the bulletin and the prayer guide for over a month. It was as if something had happened in plain view before them with no one having called attention to it. Therefore, no one knew if it had any significance to them personally. Some people were afraid to ask. “Well, maybe I missed that Sunday, so I’ll ask some other time.” Or maybe it was, “I’m ashamed that I don’t know. Surely everybody else knows what this 57 is all about. After all, it’s out on the church sign for everyone on the highway to see.” I challenged the entire church to come on an assigned Sunday to learn the meaning of the mysterious number in the morning message.

The Sunday morning of the reveal I received a phone call from Sunday school members that had taken a class retreat to the north Georgia Mountains. They did not want to be left out of the excitement, so they begged me for the information that would be forthcoming in the morning worship service. Due to the easy access to information on social media, I feared that one small slip could ruin the climactic discovery for all. Therefore, I informed them that the best I could offer would be an immediate phone call after the service. I knew then that the intrigue had created the necessary excitement for maximum impact from the information.

This number had been resonating in me for about a year. Something had been said in my presence that I had been unable to release. I believed it to be a significant calling placed on me as a spiritual leader in our community. And now, I was about to share the source of this number and its impact upon me with my congregation.

57 Languages

In February, I had attended the 2011 “State of the City” address by our mayor and First Baptist church member, Nancy Harris. I desired to support our local mayor and establish myself as a civic-minded leader in the community. In her speech, Mayor Harris gave a statistic that I could not fathom. In sharing about the diversity of the community in which we live, she stated that there are fifty-seven different languages spoken at Duluth High School. I could not imagine this being possible. I didn’t know there were fifty-seven languages in the world, much less spoken in my local high school! I immediately went to the Duluth High School website to fact-check the veracity of this claim and I found the following description of Duluth High School: “Duluth High School offers the greatest cultural diversity in the county.”

I had been pondering this information for months and praying, “What does that mean for the mission and ministry of the First Baptist Church of Duluth?” This is what God placed on my heart: Project 57, a challenge to take the gospel to every language group in our immediate area. This mammoth call to action initiated everything that follows in this book. That day, a line was drawn in the sand, and a commitment made that we will not rest until we learn how to cross language and cultural barriers to share the life-changing message of Jesus Christ.

During the formation stage of this new vision, I had been asked to participate in a cooperative task force that included leaders from our International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, the North American Mission Board, the Georgia Baptist Convention, local Baptist associations in the metro Atlanta area, and a few local church pastors. The reason for this gathering was to strategically plan how to reach the urban centers, the cities of America. During this four-day meeting, I came up with some DUI facts. I know the first thing you think of when you hear “DUI” is “driving under the influence.” However, this acronym stands for: diversity, urbanization, and immigration.

The first of area of importance is diversity. The 2010 Census reports that 28 percent of Duluth residents were born outside of the United States. The Gwinnett Daily Post, on March 18, 2011, ran a front-page story about the 2010 Census declaring that Gwinnett County (my home county) has the largest concentration of Hispanic residents in the entire state of Georgia, larger than any other county by far. Over one hundred sixty-two thousand Hispanics call Gwinnett County their home. Twenty percent of the entire state Hispanic population is found in my home county. This is a 250-percent increase since the last decade census in the year 2000.

During the turn of the century, Duluth was quickly becoming one of the most diverse places in America. Duluth is now home to the eighth largest concentration of South Asian people in all of Georgia, the fourth largest concentration of Chinese people, the third largest concentration of South Americans, and the largest concentration of Korean people in our state! During the past decade, the world had fallen in love with Duluth. And now I was falling in love with the world in Duluth.

One of the first international members of First Baptist Church, Titi Esho, from Nigeria, sent an encouraging e-mail to me as we embarked upon this new journey:

Pastor, I’m not surprised people from many countries are flocking to First Baptist Church Duluth, because there’s something special and unique about the church. First, there’s the presence of God, and where God’s presence is, there is love and peace and fulfillment. Second, there is a true acceptance and friendship, and it is very easy for a foreigner to blend. I went to a couple of churches before I chose First Baptist, and none of them measured up to my expectation. I believe First Baptist Duluth truly preaches the Word of God and they practice what they preach. God is doing a wonderful thing at First Baptist Church of Duluth.

My prayer has been that we will live up to those lofty words.

The second DUI point of emphasis is urbanization.3 The Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission Board reports that over half of the world currently lives in cities. People are congregating in the urban centers across our planet. Just fifty years ago, that number was less than a third. By the year 2050, it will be more like two-thirds. There is an urbanization of society taking place like never before in the history of our planet. People are flocking to the urban centers of the world.

Atlanta is the largest city in the southern United States. My city of Duluth is a nearby suburb of Atlanta. In the 1980s, Duluth was a sleepy little bedroom community. Many residents were part of multigenerational families that had made Duluth their home for a long, long time. By the 1990s, Duluth had become the “up and coming” place for palatial homes and upper-class neighborhoods. Professional athletes and business executives moved their families to this new hot spot. With the turn of the century came a new chapter to Duluth. Many credit Atlanta hosting the 1996 Olympic Games as the catalyst for the suburban communities receiving extraordinary international attention. The world literally moved to Duluth en masse!

The “I” of DUI, stands for immigration.4 The United States has always been the great immigration society—the great melting pot. There were 35 million immigrants from 1780 to 1924. These were predominantly Europeans moving to the Americas for religious freedom. Seventy-five percent of the immigrants during that time period were Protestants. There were Methodists, Baptists, Episcopalians, and Lutherans, most of them from Central and Northern Europe.

However, there is a modern immigration that is taking place at a much faster rate. The last immigration swell saw 35 million come over a nearly 250-year time frame. There were 35 million immigrants from 1970 to 2005—a million immigrants a year. The vast majority of them are not Protestant. As a matter of fact, they are Muslim, Buddhist, and Hindu. Many of them struggle with the English language. Forty to sixty-five percent of them do not speak English when they arrive.

Because the first port of entry into America for this new wave of immigrants is a major city, our urban centers are becoming filled with rich ethnic blends. I have seen demographic predictions that in the next twenty-five years every major city in America will become at least 60 percent non-Anglo. This means that there will be no ethnic majority in the United States. The statistical term for this status is “majority-minority.” This future ethnic reality in American cities is a current reality in my city of Duluth. My city has been majority-minority since the 2010 census, with the Anglo population being about 42 percent and the rest being a genuine mosaic of cultures.

Churches in America are going to become extinct, or at least severely crippled, unless we learn how to minister in a multicultural society. This truth is even more immediate for me and my arena of ministry. My church would soon be totally irrelevant to our community if we chose not to pursue a process of crossing cultural barriers.

Language is an extreme barrier to the gospel in the new immigration phenomenon. Like many churches in our area, we offer English classes during the week. For many people, this is their first exposure to our church. Classes are taught by highly dedicated, e...

Table of contents

• Foreword
• Introduction: Technicolor
• Section One: The Biblical Principles of Multicultural
• Section Two: The Biblical Practices of Multicultural
• Epilogue: Is the Sky Falling?
• Appendices
• Notes