SO WHAT? Part 4 of A Rumor of "The Other"

by David Wesley

In the last three sections, I have written about ethnicity and race. I now turn to the "so what?" question. What does all of this mean for the church? What does this mean for missions? What I am proposing is not the traditional approach that the church takes to ethnicity. I welcome your thoughts which may be in agreement, or may be in disagreement.

How then, does the church of Jesus Christ respond to ethnicity? Earlier in this paper, I stated that a great challenge that we have is to express a missionary ecclesiology in terms of ethnic heterogeneity. Another way to state this is that the church must be motivated and must be defined by its nature as the body of Christ in a manner that explicitly takes into account the diversity of ethnicity that is within the body of Christ. There has never been a time in history that the church had the option of being ethnicity neutral or ethnically exclusive. The context in which we currently live is one in which the church must find ways to articulate it’s theology in ways that reflect our spiritual identity as preferential over our social identity or in a manner that our spiritual identity articulates our social identity. In conclusion, I would like to define some practical implications of this paper:
1) Local churches must intentionally work through the complexities and difficult task of bridging ethnic divisions. I have stated earlier that models which facilitate fast growth such as the homogeneous unit principle of church growth, often foster divisions between ethnic or racial groups. While models which explicitly address a desire to be driven by a missional perspective which is motivated by a common mission instead of a focus on growth may be more challenging, they may be closer to a biblical model for the Christian church. Research done by Kersten Bayt Priest (Priest ) demonstrates the complexity of attempts to join a traditional African American congregation with a traditional congregation with self defined themselves as “white”. Priest also gives a good review of four sources which deal directly with different aspects of multiethnic congregations in the Baylor publication series “Christian Reflection: Race”. Beyond simply bringing people together into one congregation, is the need to work through aspects of ritual inclusion. African American sociologist, Korie Edward’s research (Edwards, 2008) is similar to that of Kersten Bayt Priest (Priest 2007:275-292) as it demonstrates that “black-white” mergers often result in a diminished presence of predominant African American ritual or traditional worship practices and a dominance of traditional “white” ritual or traditional worship practices. To overcome “deep out-of-awareness cultural divides”, according to Priest, “we must intentionally educate ourselves on how to become good neighbors”(2010). This is consistent with a missional aspect of mission in which mission is the nature of the church instead of a project of the church. By being the body of Christ which lives into the missio Dei in all aspects of life, we love our neighbor because the nature of God is love and we share in that nature. In this sense, therefore, a missionary ecclesiology in which church is defined by the missio Dei instead of physical location or building a larger organization, will be expressed in terms of hospitality, shaloam and authenticity which seeks to hear and understand “the other” based on real relationship rather than rumor.
2) For global mission efforts, there are enormous implications of a missionary ecclesiology for the church. Darrell Whiteman’s article in Missiology (2006) wrestles with the tension between ethnicity expressed as a social identity and our spiritual identity. In this article, Whitemann concludes that “our mission organizations have been shaped by North American culture, worldview, and values…The problem is that we have often been unconscious of the strong impact that our culture has in shaping our beliefs, our strategies, the way we “do business” and organize our institutions.”(67) As many places in the world which have a long history of mission efforts from “the west” now begin to be mission sending nations themselves, it is imperative that mission not repeat colonialistic tendencies of the past and work toward “self theologizing” which, in the words of Sanneh, allows Christianity to express its nature of translation into culture. By doing, so spiritual identity gives definition to authentic social identity to a degree that aspects of the social identity which are contrary to the Gospel become subservient to spiritual identity.
3) The objective of mission must be that of making disciples of Christ. In a globalizing context in which ethnic division is exasperated by commercialism, the church must avoid the lure of quick, easy, and grand outcomes in which objectives become larger structures and fast results instead of incarnational mission which moves the church be a holy people who reflect the holy nature of God.
Whether the church is involved in education, evangelism, or compassion, a great challenge for mission in the 21st century is that of authentically expressing the Gospel in ways that express the nature of God toward all humanity regardless of gender, language, culture, or geographic location.

Sources Cited in all four parts of this series

Bosch, David. 1991. Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books.

Buell, Denise Kinber. 2005. Why this new race: ethnic reasoning in early Christianity. New York: Colombia University Press.

Chamberlain, Houston Stewart. 2003. Foundations of the Nineteenth Century: With an introduction by Lord Redesdale. Volume 1. Adamant Media Corporation.

Edwards, Korie L. 2008. The Elusive Dream: The Power of Race in Interracial Churches. Oxford University Press.

Emetuche, Damian. 2009. West African Worldviews: New Immigrants in the USA and their Missiological Immplications. LAP Lambert Academic Publishing.


Gauch, Hans (1934). New Foundations of Racial Science. USA: Encyclopedia of the Third Reich.

Collins, Adrian, and Arthur Gobineau. 2010. The Inequality of Human Races. Nabu Press.

Goheen, Michael. 2000. As the Father Has Sent Me, I Am Sending You": J.E. Lesslie Newbigin's Missionary Ecclesiology. Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum.

Goldenberg, David M. The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism,
Christianity and Islam. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003.

Hannaford, Ivan Race: The History of an Idea in the West. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1996.

Hanson Paul, D. 2001. The people called: The growth of community in the Bible. Louisville, Kentucky, Westminster John Knox Press.

Haynes, Stephen R. Noah’s Curse: The Biblical Justification of American Slavery. New
York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Hutnyk, John. 1996. The rumour of Calcutta: Tourism, charity and the poverty of representations. London: Zed Books.

Lopez, Ian. 1997. White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race. NYU Press
McGavran, Donald Anderson. 1990. Understanding Church Growth. 3rd ed. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

Newbigin, Lesslie. 1978. The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

Priest, Robert J. Missionary Positions: Christian, Modernist, Postmodernist. Current Anthropology, Volume 42, Number 1, February 2001: 29-63.

Priest, Robert and Priest, Joseph Paul. They see everything and understand nothing:Short Term mission and service learning. Missiology an International Review, Vol. XXXVI, Number 1, January 2008.

Priest, Kersten and Priest, Robert J. 2007. “Divergent Worship Practices in the Sunday Morning Hour: Analyssis of an ‘interracial’ Church Merger Attempt.” In Robert J Priest and Alvaro I., Nieves, eds, This Side of Heaven: Race, Ethnicity and Christian Faith. New York: Oxform University Press.

Priest, Kersten Bayt. 2010. “Let’s Get It Together: Multiracial and Interethnic Congregations” in Robert B. Kruschwitz, ed. Racism, Christian Reflection: A series in Faith and Ethics. Baylor University.

Sanneh, Lamin. 2008. Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture. 2nd ed. Orbis Books..

Urry, John. 2002. The tourist gaze: Leisure and travel in contemporary societies. London: Sage Publications.

Whiteman, Darrell L. 2006. “The Role of Ethnicity and Culture in Shaping Western Mission Agency Identity.” Missiology: An International Review, Vol. XXXIV, no. 1, January 2006.