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Phil Bowling-Dyer: Organizations must first commit to regular prayer regarding multiethnicity. Multiethnicity is not just a trendy policy; it is the manifestation of a scriptural value that is countercultural. Those who commit to multiethnicity will be dealing with issues on different physical and spiritual levels, and they will need the power of the resurrected Jesus to bring things together.

What were the key, perhaps even controversial, steps you took that made multiethnicity a reality?

Yep: In the early '80s, I chaired a task force that proposed several organizational changes. One was to change our purpose statement, to be explicit about our desire to reach students of every ethnicity as we evangelized the campus. Second, we asked for a vice president of multiethnicity, who would report to the president and ride point on this issue. And then we asked for money. We asked for a portion of every dollar raised in InterVarsity by staff workers, which we called a "tithe," to be designated specifically to support multiethnic staff, because we knew funding was such a large barrier for them.

Our proposal was so fundamentally new for any Christian organization, and certainly new for InterVarsity, that we thought it would be rejected outright. But president Gordon MacDonald approved our proposal. And we just couldn't believe it.

Lundgren: Money is always a lightning rod, but the urban regional directors of IVCF told Gordon, "We've got to have it. This is really crucial." Some staff resisted, saying, "I'm not receiving my full salary, I haven't even been able to raise my whole support." Others questioned whether this was just a "politically correct" move on InterVarsity's part. And so we repeatedly asked, "Is this a biblical value? Or are we buying into the campus cultural pluralism?" For some people, it's taken several years of talking through those issues before they've come on board.

But the majority was very supportive. In many parts of the country, staff went even further and taxed themselves again. For example, here in Chicago, in addition to their 1 percent "tithe," staff members voted as a team to give another $500 a year per person out of their own support.

Orlando Crespo: It is critical for organizations to not only say they are committed to multiethnicity, but to demonstrate that commitment through structural changes. Even if it's just small baby steps, at some point an organization needs to make these changes, and even small changes can help to bring bigger changes later. So for us to have a vice president of multiethnicity starting in the 1980s, that step slowly brought on other significant changes later on.

What is the relationship between pursuing multiethnicity and pursuing racial reconciliation?

Lundgren: You can't do multiethnicity unless you have a high value for reconciliation. You have to be willing as an organization to go back in your history and deal with areas where people have been hurt by the organization or by other people in the organization—white people on white people, black on black, whatever the case may be, and not just cross-ethnically but also within ethnic groups.

It's so easy for an organization to say, "Let's forget about the past and only look to the future, this stuff happened long ago and it doesn't affect us now." But it does affect you. And you either have a value as an organization to go back and work out hard relationships or you don't, and if you don't, you won't move forward in racial reconciliation.

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January 2004, Vol. 48, No. 1