Now I recognize it as the defining moment in my ministry. Almost one thousand people were gathered inside our one-time Masonic Temple for our Wednesday night prayer meeting.
The shouts from protesters outside competed with our prayers. “Racist, sexist, anti-gay, born-again bigots go away!”
The chant was relentless. The longer they yelled, the louder they yelled. The mob was angry and growing more agitated. They spray-painted graffiti on our old building and splashed red paint on the sidewalks. They waved signs bearing deadly threats. I didn’t know if the night would end without violence.
Our church, Armitage Baptist in Chicago, had been their target for months. Our presence on sidewalks outside the city’s abortion clinics—telling pregnant women about alternatives to abortion and drawing attention to the rights of the unborn—had raised the hackles of an array of radical groups. The militant homosexual machine Act Up had failed in their attempt to take over our Easter worship service. They blew whistles and dropped condoms in the offering plate. Seven screaming protesters were arrested, prompting an investigation by the city’s human rights commission.
Now a coalition of ten political groups had amassed on our doorstep, including Queer Nation, seditionists Refuse and Resist, Puerto Ricans to free political prisoners, and Sister Serpent, an occult group.
Our church was one of a dozen targets across the nation that night in 1994. Activists were protesting on the anniversary of the shooting death of a Pensacola, Florida, abortion doctor. It seemed accidental that we found out about the rally ahead of time. One of our members saw a flyer on his college campus and told us our church was the Chicago site.
“We will have a concert of prayer on Wednesday night,” I told our congregation on Sunday. “We’ll pray for our nation, our city, and for the demonstrators.” The people of Armitage were primed. And a little nervous.
My friend James Meeks was surprised that I hadn’t told him about the coming march when one of his church members relayed the news. James is pastor of Salem Baptist Church, a large African-American congregation across town. We had become good friends in recent years. A black pastor and a white pastor find a lot of common ground ministering in the city. We shared stories and encouragement, pulpits, and even some church attenders. James had been very open about his ministry—what it takes to reach African Americans with the gospel and involve them in the church. He had been very supportive of our work in this drug-infested, gang-driven neighborhood.
“What would I tell you?” I asked when he wanted to know why I hadn’t called for his help. “Would I ask you to shut down your service?” I learned his answer as the chants of witches and anarchists turned to screams.
A school bus screeched to a halt on Kedzie Boulevard, wedging the protesters between the street and our stoop. Another followed, and another. Seven buses ringed the block.
The doors opened and an army of determined allies from Salem Baptist Church filed out and elbowed through the crowd. It was the youth choir. Lining the steps, these bright-faced young people began to sing, not softly even at first.
Fomented protesters met the challenge with a vile verbal barrage, but they knew they were outmatched. The rollicking praises to Almighty God soon silenced the assault. Later, watching the videotape shot by a local television news crew, I saw the demonstrators wilt in the presence of holy testimony to the saving power of Jesus Christ. In ten minutes, they were silent. In twenty minutes, they were gone.
The singing continued outside and inside as some of the youth choir mounted our platform. I had our people stand and fold up their chairs so we could fit, shoulder to shoulder, in the sanctuary. Inwardly I thanked God that the fire marshal didn’t order a head count. Outwardly, basking in the celebration by Brother Meeks’s choir and my own congregation—young and old; black, white, and Hispanic; reformed gang members, drug addicts, prostitutes, and homosexuals; street people who called Armitage home and middle-class working people who were trying to reclaim our once-forsaken neighborhood—I knew we were one.
Stirring the “stew pot” church I didn’t set out to pastor a multicultural church; but I can see how I was prepared for it, and for this time in our nation’s history. What has happened in the urban centers in the past two decades is happening now in suburban communities and rural crossroads everywhere.
Jesus told his disciples to go to the ends of the earth from the starting point of their own hometown: Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts. Now Samaria has come to us. People from the uttermost live next door.
Even the smallest town has migrant workers, refugees, and first-generation immigrants and their English-speaking, Americanized children. And they all need Jesus Christ.
The South Side of Chicago where I grew up was multicultural in a sense, but blacks, whites, and Hispanics had nothing to do with each other.
I was a preacher’s kid, and I had had some exposure to black churches. I don’t think the two dozen people who called me to pastor Armitage Baptist realized what they were getting. A city boy, fresh from Bible college, meets Appalachian transplants in the heart of a Chicago neighborhood that is rapidly becoming black and Hispanic.
In 1974, there were no books on multicultural ministry, no seminars, no models. I had no clue how to create a multi-ethnic congregation; I just envisioned one where everybody felt welcome.
During my first four years, our worship service remained mostly Anglo—in attendance and style. We drew Hispanic and black kids to Sunday school, and a few ethnic adults attended the service, but we made few connections and no real inroads.
We realized the problem when one of our teachers returned from a visit to a young student’s home. She reported that the black girl told her, “I’m never going back to that white church again.” We didn’t think of ourselves like that, but looking at our worship service and our leadership team, I understood why she did.
Look at the leaders on our platform today and you will see a different picture. Our worship leader is African-American. Our associate pastor is a Lebanese Christian from Pittsburgh with a slight Memphis accent left over from his seminary days. On a recent Sunday, the man who read Scripture was from Puerto Rico and seated beside him were a Kenyan and a Philippino.
Forty nationalities are represented among us most Sundays. When our worship attenders look to the pulpit area, we want them to see someone like themselves. They usually do.
The transformation of this congregation from down-home hillbilly to urban multi-ethnic was intentional, but I can’t say that it was planned. It takes the gift of hindsight to understand how it came about.
Fences don’t make good neighbors Our first tactic was simply to get to people. We had no mission statement, but we had a mission: reach anybody you can, anywhere you can. Multicultural ministry is not about methods. It is first about people. Keep talking with people in a multicultural setting and you will eventually penetrate other cultures. The differences may be race or language, or geographic or economic. Whatever the distinction, the first contact across the barrier is critical. The first person who comes to Christ from another culture will open the door to an entire world you haven’t met yet.
That report from our Sunday school teacher told us that people must feel comfortable with us. Beyond that, is the comfort level sufficient to allow them to make this church their home? Our church needed to feel like home.
I didn’t think my preaching style put up a barrier. Granted, I’m a white guy, but I don’t preach like most white guys. My style is not so didactic. In the seventies when all the white guys had their dialogue sermons, overhead projectors, and fill-in-the-blank study sheets, I was preaching to the heart. I don’t ignore the head. How can you preach truth and not have intellectual appeal? But I aimed for the heart. My preaching was more like that of the black preachers I was exposed to as a kid. I relied on strong stories and direct challenges. I still do. My inner-city culture expects that and responds to it.
Our music was a different story. There was a barrier. I knew from worshiping in black churches that our traditional, “stand and sing hymn 234” style prevented the people who visited our services from staying. Before anyone knew what to call the praise and worship movement, we were adding choruses and singing songs in series. We started weaving prayer into the music. Even our announcements have musical accompaniment. It took a while, but we added instruments. By the time the longer-term members noticed the changes, they were used to them. And to the people from our urban neighborhood, that’s what church sounded like.
I don’t ever remember my preacher-father mentioning “our kids in jail” in his pastoral prayer. But I pray for them now.
I take good ideas wherever I find them. Our worship style is part white, a good bit black. More recently we have added Spanish, Swahili, and Indian choruses. You can’t bring multiple cultures to worship with a single culture’s music. Worshipers need to hear some of what they are accustomed to hearing. I can affirm them, their presence, and their culture without flashing lights or big pronouncements. A few simple touches let them know we’re aware of their presence and their needs, and that we care.
I changed the way I prayed, too. In the pastoral prayer I began to touch on issues that were common to the people in the community, even though they’re not common to me.
I don’t ever remember my preacher-father praying for “our kids in jail.” But I began praying for them. And for the gang-bangers, and for victims of drive-by shootings; for the mother who didn’t know how she was going to pay her rent; for the young person who was struggling whether he should stay in school.
In the context of the prayer, I incorporate experiences that are everyday life in this community. My public prayer has nothing to do with the romance of distant people groups. I deal with my congregation and their reality. Changing the content of my pastoral prayer lowered a barrier.
Why I won’t preach about O.J. I preach the gospel. That has not changed. But in my setting, I carefully consider the way I address social issues, the timing of tough messages, and the implications of my illustrations. I must deliberately seek to avoid using anything that offends.
Referring to something as simple as “playing cowboys and Indians” may prompt the native Americans in my congregation to wonder, “Who is he saying is the bad guy?”
A lot of things that we take for granted in one culture suddenly become issues when we go cross-cultural.
I wanted to open my Father’s Day sermon with the names of some well-known fathers. I started out with a long list of names but used only two. O.J. Simpson would have worked well for my purpose, but I don’t want the man whose daughter prayed and begged him to come to church to get riled up in the first two minutes of my message. I scratched O.J.
I deliberately try not to make the white guy the hero all the time. Ted Turner was my negative example that day, Reggie White the good guy.
If I can tell a story without mentioning race, even better. I told the story of the woman who became president of Smith College. She paid tribute to her mother at her inauguration by holding her mother’s Bible. I suspect the whites weren’t thinking about race to this point in the story. The blacks probably assumed this was a white woman. Then I told how her mother made their living by doing white people’s laundry and scrubbing their houses. The picture became clear to everyone in the room. I touched a lot of issues—work ethic, poverty, motherhood, race—without being offensive.
I need a special sensitivity to political issues in my setting. After the last presidential election, I desperately wanted to preach on the bramble king from Judges. The timing wasn’t right. I saved it, until after the impeachment.
Sometimes it’s not what you say, but when you say it. Other times, it’s how you say it.
I preached a message a year ago called “What about homosexuality?” Without bashing, I affirmed God’s power to change people, using stories of people from our own congregation who have come out of that lifestyle. I made it very embracing. And the homosexuals and former homosexuals who listen to me every week were willing to hear me on this.
It’s about trust.
The pastor and the party girl One of our strongest leaders today was the first African American in our leadership, Betty Cherry. Betty grew up on the West Side of Chicago, the rough side. Then raising three children, Betty says she had not been sober for 18 years. She had little interest in God and not a shred of trust in white people, white men in particular. Then she met Rob Thornsbury.
This skinny 19-year-old from Jolo, West Virginia, came to Chicago and to Armitage. He caught the vision. He began sharing with Betty. She wanted none of it.
At New Year’s, she was invited to a party at our church. Betty says she thought, “I’m going to go eat those white people’s food and then I’m going to my own party.” She came, and she stayed. And she was saved in a service that night in 1982. Today Betty directs our evangelism ministry ARMS (Armitage Reaching Many Souls).
As big a miracle as her salvation is that Betty has been able to grow in her faith, lead in this church, work with me, and we have a trusting relationship. That took a long time.
Time alone does not breed trust. It takes time and a good track record.
Developing leaders is not easy. It’s a slow process to win someone to Christ and then grow them sufficiently to assume a place of service. Our leaders usually start as workers in Sunday school.
I have targeted men. Without men we short-circuit what we may accomplish among women and children. The effort to keep men in Bible study, extra home visits, and encouragement to serve are vital.
Not everybody relates to me in the same way. Our three predominant cultures have three takes on the pastor. In the black culture, there is a high regard for the pastor. Most of our black members would never consider calling me by my first name. African Americans have ways of honoring the pastor that are without parallel in white culture. My relationship to Hispanic members shows their great respect for patriarchy. Some see the pastor as a spiritual father figure.
Both views require the pastor to be a strong leader. That’s very different from the expectations of the Anglo members. College-educated WASPs have an opinion on everything, and they sometimes wonder why the pastor is such a dictator.
That creates tension. And it’s one reason why pastors need, as quickly as they are able, to fold into the leadership people of other cultures.
A seller of purpose If you preach it long enough and live it long enough, your congregation will learn to love people of all languages, races, and classes. Multicultural ministry won’t just become your mission, it will describe your church. In our case, it’s the glue that keeps us working together. At Armitage, what could become “us” and “them” works for our good, when “us” are God’s people and “them” are those who need Christ.
A little lady named Lydia came to Chicago from Appalachia. She found housing not far from our church in a large apartment building where almost all the residents were elderly, Hispanic Catholics. Lydia couldn’t speak Spanish, and they certainly couldn’t understand her version of English. But she loved them, and they loved her cooking. She would have them over and they would eat and gesture and laugh.
Lydia started inviting them to prayer meeting. These people knew they could trust her, because Lydia had shown she loved them. She gestured, folding her hands together, and they would come over and pray.
Then she asked one of our Hispanic ladies to teach a Bible study. The very first night six people trusted Christ. Two different worlds, two different cultures, two different languages, but love bridged the gap.
Charles Lyons is pastor of Armitage Baptist Church 2451 Kedzie Blvd. Chicago IL 60647 www.armitagechurch.com
At a glance Lower the barriers to minister across cultures:
1. Connect to your congregation’s needs. Make them the subject of your pastoral prayer, even when they are outside your normal experience.
2. Address style issues. You can’t expect two cultures to worship with one culture’s music. Likewise with the sermon. Different cultures have different learning styles. Discover them, incorporate them.
3. Be sensitive to differences, even super-sensitive. Be aware of the stereotypes in your sermon illustrations. Small things become big issues when crossing cultures.
4. Affirm cultures wherever possible. Speak truth positively. Speak hard truth lovingly.
5. Leader development must be intentional. Find people who are spiritually sound and teach them the skills needed to lead. Be certain that members see leaders like themselves.
6. Keep at it. Trust is built on time and a good track record.
Going Multicultural How to get started.
1. Settle in your soul that God has called you and equipped you to reach all kinds of lost people.
2. Identify several pastors who are doing it, and attach yourself to them. Multicultural ministry can be learned. It’s less about technique than vision. Catch that vision and learn how to communicate it.
3. Expose your congregation to a variety of multicultural ministries: guest speakers and musicians, interaction with groups effectively reaching the community, and involvement with mission projects benefiting a cultural group different from your own.
—Charles Lyons
Copyright © 1999 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
