This part of who we are will stretch many of you. But I promise that if you’re willing to walk this path a little while, to pray and search the Scriptures and to see God’s heart for all of this and to allow the Lord to do something with you here, it just might change your life forever.
I want to invite you to consider that what we see in Acts 2 of all these different people hearing the gospel in their own language and all these cultures coming together in Christ is EXACTLY the point.
And I want to invite you to consider that what we’re attempting to do here is the future of the American church. We don’t have to go far to realize that our country’s rapidly changing and that the church needs to change, too, right?
Quick: what’s the fastest growing population here in North Carolina? Hispanic/Latinos, right?
If we are not prepared to engage a multi-ethnic country with a multi-ethnic gospel, then the church over the next 50 years in America will not be effective in the mission that God has called us to.
If you stay here over the next four years and work out some of the challenges of engaging with songs in different languages and different people coming in and speaking the same gospel that we all share but in slightly different ways than maybe your pastor back home did
Then you will graduate better equipped and better prepared to lead the church in America into greater impact over the next 50 years. That’s what we’re doing here.
We’re worshipping a global God, as a predominantly white organization, and taking advantage of all the breadth and fullness and wonder of the diversity of God’s kingdom.
It’s not just diversity for diversity’s sake. It’s diversity that gives glory to God, because only he can do this in his power, by his grace.
4 comments:
Hey Alex! I didn't get to mention it last week, but I think you gave a phenomenal talk. Especially the multi-ethnicity section that you've highlighted this week in your blog.
You have a great way of inspiring and calling people to a vision as well as unpacking hard things like M-E.
I know we don't know how your talk was received by everyone, but I'm glad you were honest and upfront with new students about this part of our organization's heart. And I think you did a good job of explaining how this is an outgrowth of who God is.
As for the content itself, way to highlight the Latino population! This is HUGE in our community at-large and I think we can do a better job of engaging. Besides, la musica latina es mejor!
See you at LG! Thanks for all you do.
thanks for the visit and the love, liz!
i've really struggled with how my talk went last week. i feel like what i said was true, including obviously this part, but i felt like it was a little too intense, definitely too long, and not peppy enough for a first large group talk.
i generally feel good about 8 out of 10 times that i speak. i hate that one of those 2 times was the first large group of the year!
this was good stuff that might have needed more familiarity with us to really appreciate. good blog material, good later-in-the-semester material, maybe not good first large group material.
we'll see what the Lord does over the next couple weeks...maybe even tonight at large group #2! if there's just five freshmen that come back, we'll know that i managed to run the rest of them off!
I really struggle with this stuff, Alex. 1) having a deep love for God's kingdom building in the world 2) having lived in Uganda for three years and 3) now living in the mighty whitest (and most fiercely ethno-centric) nation ever (Czech Republic). I find myself stymied.
While it is a great privilege and honor to worship God in other languages and to be a small part of the Global church, every culture by its very nature defines the world by its own worldview. We cannot extract our assumptions, indoctrination, and presuppositions from the way we worship and even the very foundation of how we view God.
So my struggle now comes from living in a country where only a small handful of people believe that God MAY even exist. So MY worldview when crashing against the brick (iron?) wall of atheism becomes irrelevant. How do I assimilate into Czech culture AND worship?
But the truth is...I have such a bigger view of God from seeing holy reflections in so many tribes and tongues. I would never have asked these questions if I were still teaching in Virginia. And I would never, never have seen God in so many faces across the globe.
So, thank you. For having a heart that embraces God's love for creative diversity. Thanks for asking students to think, risk, and enter into others lives, and walk (and worship) in others shoes. And thanks, as always, for faithfully pointing yet another generation of students ultimately to God's grace and abundant love. (Including me, I guess I was year 1?)
Joanna in Prague
joanna,
so great to hear from you! yes, you certainly have a unique perspective on this given your journeys of the past many years!
blessings as you continue to help the folks in prague find their "God-language" in worship and prayer. i hope that one day many years from now there will be a joyful and large remnant of folks worshipping in their language, in their culture.
and i pray that you'll get to enjoy that uniquely as you're a part of the groundwork in some very hard, very rocky (iron?) ground.
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