Interview: Bryan Loritts and Oneya Okuwobi on Multiethnic Ministry

This article was published in Faithfully Magazine No. 3 (Summer 2018). Bryan Loritts is lead pastor of Abundant Life Church in Silicon Valley, California. In 2003, Loritts co-founded Fellowship Memphis, a multiethnic church in Tennessee, and later founded the Kainos Movement, an organization committed to seeing the multiethnic church become the new normal in our world. He is the editor of Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr . and Right Color, Wrong Culture: The Type of Leader Your Organization Needs to Become Multiethnic , and several other award-winning books. Oneya Okuwobi is director of TranscendCulture, providing curriculum and coaching to help multicultural and multiethnic churches thrive. Okuwobi also volunteers as director of Multicultural Education at Peoples Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, and co-authored The Multi-Ethnic Christian Life Primer , an eight-week personal devotional and small group study on multiethnic life and church. Loritts and Okuwobi were interviewed individually after each spoke at Catalyst Cincinnati ( catalystleader.com ). Although they minister in different regions of the country, their individual conversations about multiethnic church ministry reveal similar challenges, offer similar suggestions, and find similar encouragement. When it comes down to it—no matter where we live in these United States—the mission to be truly united in Christ puts everyone on common ground. Why do you think a multiethnic church is such a difficult concept? Loritts: We’re dealing with America’s historic sense. This is 400 years in the making. It was intentional and aggressive. If where we’re at is the fruit of intentional, aggressive steps to segregate us, to undo that we must take intentional, aggressive steps in the opposite direction. Okuwobi: I think the multiethnic concept is challenging because we have start-ed to believe diversity is a cultural thing and not a biblical thing. So when we talk about having a multiethnic church, we always go back to the theology. This is what Jesus en-visioned before he died in John 17. This is what Paul talked about—one new humanity. This is what happened in Acts 13 when they were finally called Christians. You had all these different people doing life together who would never do life together under any circumstance. I think it becomes challenging when we get caught up in the messages of the culture and that gives us an out, right? You have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. What steps can churches take to move an existing homogeneous congregation to multicultural openness? Loritts: You’ve got to be willing to share power. We did a teaching team in Memphis, and I’m putting together a teaching team in the Bay Area right now. That teaching team has good teachers but is also multiethnic. The pulpit is the steering wheel of the church. One week it’s me, an African American, one week it’s a White person, one week it’s a Hispanic person. That communicates value, but also they’re hearing things from different ethnic perspectives as well. We’re teaching the Bible, but they’re bringing their perspectives to it. There’s a beauty that emerges out of that. Your worship is the same thing. So whatever you can do at the highest levels of leadership in a local church to communicate multiethnic—kind of this distribution of pow-er—I think is going to yield a lot of fruit. Be-cause when a minority walks into a church, or anybody for that matter, they’re fundamentally asking, “Whose church is this? Am I going to be a visitor here? Am I going to feel like an immigrant on foreign territory? Or is this going to be home for me?” Big difference. Okuwobi: Our lead pastor just got a vision from God that he needed to start building relationships with African-American pastors around the city. There was no motive other than, “I want to get to know you and have a relationship with you.” It has to be authentic and from the relationships you have in your own life. From there he started to understand the racial disparity and gaps, and God started download(ing) in him the theology: “This has been in My word all along.” We in the church have just missed it. Our pastor decided this needs to happen. Diversifying leadership became an important element. When you want to have a church look more like heaven—every tribe, tongue, and nation—you need to start with the people who are on the stage. Because when people walk in the door, they need to know people like me are welcome here. Our lead pastor was in a relationship with another local senior pastor who was tired and needed a break—and he asked, “Would you like an associate pastor of col-or?” That happened on the same day that Cincinnati was experiencing unrest because of the death of Timothy Thomas. So in this fracture, in this racial thing where the world is saying we can’t get along, God is saying, “I’m going to send you the right people to help us all get along and it’s going to start in the church.” So that was a big step. And bringing on an associate pastor of color, families of color started coming to church. (Loritts and Okuwobi each go on to say that church leadership needs to challenge their flock). [caption id="attachment_63575" align="aligncenter" width="1000"] Oneya Okuwobi speaks into a microphone at Catalyst Cincinnati.[/caption] Loritts: To turn the corner you’ve got to have relationships. I’m a firm believer that sanctuaries reflect dinner tables. So the whole church has to see themselves as shareholders in the vision. One thing we did in Memphis, we called it Black Mondays. We encouraged our body on Mondays to patronize Black businesses. If you do your grocery shopping, go to the African American side of town to do it. If you’ve got a lunch appointment, go to a Black restaurant. That does a couple of things: number one it’s putting money, economics back into those communities. And number two you’re going to get to know some people. If there’s one thing I want to encourage my White brothers and sisters. I think you all do phenomenal at helping minorities for the most part. Adopting across ethnically. That’s great. I’ve seen many move into impoverished neighborhoods which is great. But we’ve got to be careful. If your only relationships with minorities are in a top-down, helping perspective, that’ll almost undermine the very thing you want to do. What you need also is peer relationships with people who don’t need you. I tell White people all the time, “You need a relationship with people like me. I’ve got good credit. I can actually buy your lunch! I don’t need you for anything.” You know what I’m saying? We’re sitting at the table as equals and peers. So that’s a layer that I would like to see added to it as well. Okuwobi: Then there was a need to shift hearts. We had people in the church together but not really doing life together, not really understanding each other. So we had to start conversations with each other. Our leadership assigned people to groups the first time around because you have to get past your comfort zone. What better way than to say, “OK, they assigned me to this group.” We actually started off a 20-week-long small group experience in diverse small groups. Yes, it’s long by today’s standards. But out of our adults in the church, 80 percent finished the entire 20 weeks. It created an entire language change in our church. Now everyone knew somebody that didn’t look like them. Everybody had somebody they could call. And that has helped us progress along the way. (Finally, each commented on the increase in multiethnic churches and what that means for the future.) Loritts: It’s just 14 years ago when we planted our church in Memphis. I looked around the country and I hardly saw any models. I was hardly hearing any conversations about this. Now 14 years later, the ball has significantly moved in this area. In 2003, only 2.5 percent of all churches were multiethnic. As of two years ago, the latest LifeWay study says now 14 percent are multiethnic. That’s a significant jump. Conferences like Catalyst are asking me to come in and talk about it. That didn’t exist in the early 2000s. The new generation of church planters is think-ing about these things. That wasn’t normal when I was coming up. That deeply encourages me. Do we have a long way to go? Absolutely. But the very fact that this is coming on people’s radars is huge. Okuwobi: The number of multiethnic churches, with at least 20 percent diversity, is expanding exponentially. We are up to 14 percent—which is not enough, but I am hoping when the next numbers come out in 2018 that we are at or above 20 per-cent. That is a phenomenal shift because it enables a change where you actually know somebody who looks different from (you). They become not an issue; they’re a friend. But the other thing that goes along with that—it’s not enough for a church to just have diversity in it. They need to be talking about issues of systemic racial inequality, talking about issues of poverty, immigration—the things that we’re seeing in our lives. About half of the churches that have become diverse are actually talking about these things from the pulpit, and that’s what gives me the most hope. Because if people are hearing these messages reinforced in the context of an environment where people don’t look like them, and they’re building friendships, then they’re going to be motivated to make change. And I see that as the future of the church.

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