Ethnic must become multi-ethnic

By Ken Shigematsu

Steering my Honda through Richmond last fall (after being away for nearly a decade from the Lower Mainland), I felt like I was winding my way down a street in Hong Kong or Taipei.

Chinese malls and restaurants have sprouted across the Richmond landscape, creating tension for those unable to decode Chinese characters. A five thousand year shared history as well as a viable market, make it profitable for Chinese merchants to pitch their products to the Chinese community.

“It’s not a matter of right and wrong,” says Eric Wong, assistant editor-in-chief of Ming Pao, a daily Chinese paper based in Richmond. “Business is business.”

If the ‘invisible hand’ of the market guides business, is it also an appropriate compass for the church?

“No,” says Wong who is a member of North Richmond Alliance Church. “The message of the Gospel is not exclusive and therefore [the church] should be open to all people. It’s appropriate for an immigrant church to appeal to the Chinese community … but once the second generation is in place the [Chinese] church should become multi-ethnic … The church should reflect the composition of the community.

“If there’s no practical reason [to be separate], it’s racist … if language is not a problem, I don’t see a reason to stay exclusive.”

With this conviction, North Richmond Chinese Alliance Church decided to drop “Chinese” from its name last year. According to Wong, dropping “Chinese” did not imply the church was not Chinese, but conveyed that the church over the long run would not be defined by race. “In the long run we expect to be multi-ethnic,” says Wong.

Since the name change, Wong notes that the church has received a number of Caucasians.

Barriers toward more inter-racial churches persist, according to Wong, because of a clash of Eastern and Western values, conservative pastors and a mainstream church that is perceived as being ineffective at reaching the younger generation.

Not everyone believes in the vision of the multi-ethnic church. The late Donald McGavran and other church growth proponents have long advocated targeting a homogeneous unit in order to facilitate evangelism by removing cultural barriers that would otherwise hinder people from coming to Christ.

Urban ministry leader Jogn Perkins, however, fears that this focus will lead to compromise: “Homogeneity does not mirror the image of God. It cheapens the people who proclaim it and mocks God’s call for us to be agents of reconciliation. What makes it even more harmful is how it is justified: If we are segregated, more people will come and hear the Gospel, which in turn advances the kingdom of God … At the same time it increases the size of churches’ membership, it retards their spiritual growth.”

While evangelistic expedience and the values of the Canadian multi-cultural mosaic might encourage separate churches, one of the most powerful evidences for the authenticity of the Gospel lies in its power to pull people together across racial lines (Galatians 3:28).

A recent issue of the Globe and Mail covered the tensions that plague the now culturally diverse British Properties of West Vancouver. The author wrote that “time and luck” may free British Properties of the ethnic tensions that face it today.

Rather than resigning ourselves to the whims of time and luck, Jesus challenges us to take a more proactive approach to fostering unity. Part of the key to encouraging this unity may lie symbolically in North Richmond Alliance’s decision to drop “Chinese” from their church name.

If our identity becomes fixed on anything—even a good thing—other than Christ, we risk needless division; but if our identity is rooted in Christ whether we are Jew or Greek, Indian or Hispanic, Anglo or Chinese, we will discover that we stand on common ground.

Ken Shigematsu has recently been accredited to serve with the Christian and Missionary Alliance in Canada. Originally from Vancouver, he has been living in California, where he helped plant New Song Community Church.

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