Editorial

The intercultural imperative

Ministry Magazine's role in a multicultural ministry

Willmore D. Eva is the former editor of Ministry Magazine.

I had just given myself the easy out of not editorializing on this month's sensitive theme, pastoring in a multicultural setting. Then it struck me soundly that if editing Ministry is not a thoroughly multicultural venture, then what is? Working with this journal may not be pastoring, but it certainly is multicultural ministry. At the same time I realized that in this shrinking, mobile planet of ours, rising numbers of us in the church will never again do ministry in simple monocultural settings. The more one senses the migratory trends of relocating peoples, the more one understands the critical nature of this multicultural theme.

Assorted cultures have always mixed with one another. For the past two or three centuries more and more human clusters, whose cultures are seriously diverse from one another, have been thrown together in all kinds of unprecedentedly complex combinations. And this prolific mixing is still in high gear all over the world. The relatively recent increased movement around the globe began with sailing vessels and stage coaches, and has proliferated into the fastest and most sophisticated forms of effortless intercontinental transfer. And now significantly, there are not only jets and printed media, telephones and faxes that bring people together, but also a World-Wide-Web.

With the unanticipated mixtures of people at least two conflicting dynamics have presented themselves: The obvious essential of "getting along" with one another in some semblance of unity, and the powerful, on-the-rise desire to maintain our cultural, racial, national, religious, and other distinctions. As we blend, we feel the need to get along. But the more we intermix, the more threatened are those cultural distinctives so deep in all of us. We must find a universal "language," and be able to speak together about relevant issues. But which language is it going to be and whose issues will we take up and who will do the talking and who the listening?

The active reality is that in this burgeoning international blending we will unavoidably be forced more and more to find ways of communicating meaningfully on a universal scale. In all this, I believe international media such as Ministry will have an increasingly important role to play. Thus the heart of the challenge to Ministry is at its core the same as the challenge to multicultural local congregations all over the world: How can we be fair and relevant to pastors in California, and at the same time speak meaningfully to those in Botswana?

A significant part of me says, "We must come to a point where each world division of the church produces its own Ministry edition, perhaps along with a centrally published cadre of truly international articles." Although this is already being done in one or two significant places, for many this possibility presents a formidable task. And in the long run, would this plan by itself do the job?

There are other possibilities that fascinate me with thoughts that are new. What if we embrace our multicultured internationalness? What if we look this vast world and all our differences and similarities squarely in the face and, seizing the visionary initiative, agree that we will intentionally begin to look at one another and at the world as God looks at it. In the reality of things as they are developing on this planet, is this not the only viable path left open for us? And is it not the community of God, who in the light of the best New Testament tradition has the privilege of demonstrating that this sort of thing can at least be attempted with some success?

Is this starry-eyed idealism? Not really, if one looks thoughtfully at what actually happened on that particular day of Pentecost when everyone in multicultural, multilingual Jerusalem heard the message in their own language. Wasn't it something like this that Peter, Barnabas, Paul, and the others lived to bring to the first-century world church and were quite successful in doing? (See Acts 10 and 11, and references all through the Pauline letters.)

This matter was and is foundational to the Christian vision: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ" (Gal. 3:28, NIV). "For he him self is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility. . . . His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two [or the many]" (Eph. 2:14, 15, NIV). And if this is not done in the arenas of our practical daily ministry, then where will it be done? In being citizens of the Kingdom, are we not a new humanity clearly characterized by living our lives together as fellow subjects in Christ's ever new world community? For instance, I am no longer state-citizen White or provincial-citizen Black, but instead new earth-citizen White/Black or Black/White.

Even though we will always struggle to understand and embrace one another, being genuinely inclusive is our inevitable imperative. One way we can actually practice this is through the pages of Ministry. The days of nationalistic, materialistic parochial separatism have passed. Through Ministry, and in other ways, it is ours to take up the challenge of at least one part of this fabulous struggle. From an editorial perspective we will try to include more contributions from every part of this wonderfully diversified world. This will be successful as we universally relish this fabulous all-nations challenge. We will be vastly enriched as we put aside our prides and prejudices, our superiorities and inferiorities, along with the cramping, suspicious preconception that we cannot learn anything from one another because we are at different developmental points, or because we are "just so different." Then by God's great grace we will become both a symbol and a practical unveiling of who God's new community actually is in Christ.


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Willmore D. Eva is the former editor of Ministry Magazine.

May 1996

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