Leadership Journal

Martin Luther King Jr. said that 11:00 on Sunday morning is "the most segregated hour in America." Not much has changed since King made that statement. But is this a bad thing? As America has grown more diverse, and not just racially, the church has responded by creating congregations to appeal to specific subcultures. We see not only black congregations and white congregations, but also boomer and postmodern, contemporary and classical, liturgical and spontaneous.

Some of this has been spurred by research that indicates homogeneous congregations grow more rapidly by appealing to a definable target audience. But even there, no congregation is completely homogenized; differences of opinion will show up in even the most niched congregations. Working through differences is usually what leads to maturity. The question remains—how diverse should we strive to be?

We asked three church leaders to explore the model presented in the New Testament and compare it to their own experience.

Craig Keener is a white minister in a predominantly African American congregation.

Larry Osborne pastors North Coast Church—a ministry that pioneered the use of "video venues" to create multiple congregations distinguished by worship style within a single church.

Mark Driscoll is pastor of Mars Hill Church, a community birthed from a postmodern context now wrestling with issues of diversity as it matures.

Craig Keener
If God called first-century believers to surmount an ethnic barrier that he himself established in salvation history—the barrier between Jew and Gentile—how much more does he summon us to surmount all other barriers of our own making? Overcoming the Jewish-Gentile barrier is one of the dominant themes in the New Testament, and it provides a model for us today for overcoming every other barrier dividing God's people.

It begins with Jesus. He focused his mission on Israel, but welcomed both Samaritans and Gentiles. While Jesus ate with tax-gatherers and sinners, not all his followers wanted to eat with Gentiles! The Book of Acts emphasizes how the Spirit equips Jesus' followers to cross these cultural barriers. The Jerusalem church's biggest struggles involved not Christology or eschatology, but how to embrace fellowship with Gentile believers.

Paul spends the last quarter of Acts in Roman custody because he refuses to compromise the message of God's love for Gentiles. He was charged with profaning the Temple by admitting an Ephesian Gentile. From custody he tells Ephesian Christians that God has shattered the Temple's ethnic barrier (Eph. 2:14) and established a new temple of all peoples by the Spirit (Eph. 2:19-22).

Likewise, Paul writes to an ethnically divided church in Rome and emphasizes that Jews and Gentiles must come to God on the same terms, through Christ. He also turns to the practical questions of not despising each other's customs regarding foods and holy days (Rom. 14). In Galatians Paul challenges ...