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Multi-Ethnic Novelty

Are consumer Christians engaging justice and racial reconciliation because they're trendy?

You can learn a lot about Evangelical Christianity by going into a typical Christian bookstore in a shopping mall. You'll find scores of how-to, self-help, and church growth books. I doubt you will find many books on reconciliation.

While the church definitely needs good, practical literature on helping individuals and churches grow, we must guard against replacing the gospel of reconciliation with a gospel primarily or exclusively focused on quantitative church growth. In fact, Dr. John M. Perkins prophetically confronted the Evangelical church as far back as 1982, saying that "We have substituted a gospel of church growth for a gospel of reconciliation" (See Perkins, With Justice for All, pp. 107-108). Perkins was speaking primarily of the need for churches to break down racial barriers between people of different ethnicities. With this in mind, it is a welcome sight to find churches like Willow Creek being intentional about welcoming diverse ethnicities (See "Can Megachurches ...

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