Intercultural Church Planting

Jesus' commission to the church was to make disciples of all nations, to the ends of the earth. To reach all nations, and to serve all nations, we need to better reflect the diverse cultures represented.

But, our cultural lies, blind spots, and biases can be barriers to making this happen, and worse can cause division in the church.

Understanding these barriers can enable us to better understand others, and therefore reach and serve all nations.

I'm doing a TED Talk on intercultural ministry. My name's Rick, I'm the pastor of All Nations Church, and the question we're gonna look at is how do we appropriately reflect and embody the different cultures in our churches?

Now, this is a vast area, so what you're gonna get is the tip of the iceberg. And we're going to look at the importance, why it matters, one key principle, and some practical first steps.

Why is it important?

So importance, why this matters. Now, a member of your church plant, in the first year of launch, is serving on refreshments and they failed to turn up 30 minutes before to get everything ready. They arrive five minutes late before the start of church, and it's not been the first time.

And they get an absolute roasting, you see this, by the team leader overseeing refreshments, because another member had to be tapped on the shoulder, to set it all up because of his lateness and lack of time keeping. And he'd actually explained why he was late, that he was really sorry, at which point a family of five come out of the toilet. And he said, "oh, I've been getting to know this family and they've heard about the church, they've been interested in coming, and on my way to church this morning as I was walking up, I saw them in the cafe, went and started talking, lost track of time, encouraged them to come, and they have and here they are!"

And this is a real scenario. This person, who was late to turn up for his duties. He was, he from a different cultural background. But it's interesting to observe the cultural dynamic here of, task and time versus relationship. See in the West, British culture, task, or shall I say time, is generally the more important thing. "I need to get here at this time in order to set up refreshments."

Whereas, in Eastern cultures, relationship people is more a more important thing, not time. And so the person was late on refreshments because people were more important. He got told off, but look, he brought a new family to church. And as church planters, aren't we in the business of reaching people?

You know, you get a new family come through the door so they can hear the gospel, so their lives are transformed. I mean, that's what you want, isn't it? And if a member of your church brings a new family, it's like, brilliant, great. Refreshments in one sense just serves that purpose.

Doing things differently

Now, look, I don't want, don't mishear me. I don't want to dismiss the importance of timekeeping. Or downplay following through on commitments, and so on. These things are important.

But here's the thing, there are gonna be people in our midst who will do things differently because they are culturally different. Okay. And that will irritate and frustrate, and rub you up the wrong way. Try and think about trying to pack a bunch of hedgehogs, in a suitcase and give them a shake, the spikes: "oh, ah, ah, oh". That's what church is like, isn't it? Different people, making mistakes, and so on, but also from different cultures who think differently and do things differently.

And really, I started with that sort of real life scenario just to think, to raise our awareness to get you to see it's not necessarily wrong, but different. And so getting us to think, well, if I'm task orientated, if time keeping's the thing, it has its strengths, but what is the strength of the relational way of doing things? What can I learn? How can I flex? How, can I hold both, task and relationship in tension so we can better reach, reflect, and embody different cultures in our churches?

The great commission

That's why it matters and it matters because research has shown that post COVID with flexible working from home, cost of living going up, immigration on the rise, people are leaving the cities of the UK, and they're settling in townships and villages across Britain, and many church leaders have observed a cultural shift, with people from different nationalities and nations and cultures, moving in.

And they're trying to think, well, how, do we integrate, how do you just integrate them into church, how do we reach them? And so it is a really, really exciting time to church plant. That's why it matters. But also the biblical rationale, the great commission. What did the risen Lord Jesus say to his disciples? Matthew 28:19, "go and make disciples of all nations".

Didn't he? Acts 1:8 "you'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria to the ends of the earth", and as the disciples obeyed the outworking, well, they went to new geographic areas, spoke the gospel in the power of the Spirit to new people groups, people from different cultures who are not like them.

Well, what are we doing in 2025? We're writing the Acts 29 chapter in the church age on our journey, isn't it, to the Revelation 7 reality of the future when one day every tribe culture, language will be around the throne singing praises.

How do we do it?

How do we appropriately reflect and embody the different cultures, in our church as well? We've seen why it matters. And so the key principle, the take home message, if you remember anything, remember this: we want to understand our own cultural lies, blind spots, and biases, and grow in cultural awareness so we begin to better understand other cultures.

Let me unpack that. We want to understand our own cultural lies. See, we all see the world through a cultural lens and that colours everything. And therefore we'll have cultural blind spots. So things that we're missing, and biases. We'll have cultural prejudice.

Cultural lenses

And we want to grow in cultural awareness. So we better understand our cultural lens, so we can understand other cultures. Which you saw from the example, it's not necessarily wrong, but different. I opened up with a task vs relationship which is the cultural attitude to time with people. But there are others.

So there's a cultural attitude, believe it or not, to queueing. Brits queue, isn't it? You have to queue up for your breakfast this morning, your eggs and your croissant and your coffee and so on. Some cultures just push in and you'll be waiting a long, long time if you don't push in. Now, we could say this is wrong, it's not the right way of doing it. But no, it's just culturally different.

Well take honour/shame vs truth. I remember, I was at an Indian wedding, really, really distant relative. We'd gone as a family. I'm married to an English woman and on the way back I said to my wife, "oh, I really didn't want to go to that". And she said to me, "well, why do you drag us out here?

Why, don't you just say no?" And I said, "well, I'd let my mum down and my family down". There was a real sense of honour. It'd be shameful for me to say no. So even though I didn't want to, I did.

Or federal vs individual, or should I say community vs individual axes, some cultures, very much the choices I make, the decisions I make, reflect well or badly on me as an individual, so secular culture. But actually some cultures, the decisions I make, the choices I make reflect not just well or badly on me as an individual, but on my family and the community that I'm in.

Examples to think through

So here are some questions of culture, to get you thinking. A new family from Southern Asia, they've arrived at your church, and they've heard about the evening home groups and stuff, and the whole family, including the children, turn up to your evening home group.

How do you respond? Your instinct might be "what are they doing here? Why are they not in bed? What are kids doing up?" Well, is it wrong or is it just that they're culturally different and that's their cultural norm? I remember, when I was a missionary working overseas and hospitality having expats over, the expats would get babysitters, couples would come, locals bring their children.

But here's some, other questions of culture. You find a homeless man sleeping in your church, just as you arrive to set up for your carol service. What do you do?

A family from India just arrived to London or to your community or whatever. And the mum has told you that, this 7-year-old, that if they don't stop biting their nails, the devil will punish them. What do you say? You are running a picnic in the park as a church. One of the mums says, "oh, I'm just gonna go home and get some food and, I'll be back in half an hour".

Just leave the children there in your care. And, what do you say?

And what you'll find often if there's a strong gut reaction, it often reveals our cultural bias and therefore blind spots. What are they doing here? Why are you pushing in? Why did they say that? Why does she go home?

First steps to intercultural ministry

So we've established, intercultural ministry, why it matters, a key principle. Three practical first steps, to get you going.

Know the cultures you are looking to reach

Number 1, know the different cultures in the community, town, and city you are trying to reach. Okay. And not just hard data, but soft data. So, hard data is just stuff you'll be researching on, like data and so on. It's all graphs and tables and, census information stuff.

But soft data is what people tell you. And it, so invest time in getting to know people, names, backgrounds. "How long have you been here?" "What brought you here?" "Do think you'll move on? Why? Why do you think you'll move on? Why? Why do you think you'll stay?" "What do you love about this area? How would you love this are to change?

And it's all impressions and feelings. So get your team as well, to go out and ask these questions and collect that sort of data.

Intercultural teams

But number 2, be intentional in building intercultural teams that reflect the area from the outset. And remember, a team, if you're starting with a small group, it's two or more.

And you'll have a leadership team, a children's team, outreach team, welcome and hospitality team and so on. But, but church is body. And you'll grow in cultural awareness, not just from the community you are trying to reach, but from the Christians in your launch teams, and particularly if they're from different cultural backgrounds.

It goes without saying you want to be aware of tokenism, and remember the other elements, as you recruit and build teams. Character, conviction, competency, chemistry, you know about that stuff, as well as social status and generational differences.

Cross-cultural thinking

And then thirdly, drip feed cross-cultural thinking little and often to your launch teams.

So rather than a day on cross-cultural stuff, 15, 30 minutes, a week just covering a whole range of things, for example, welcoming: the moment someone walks through the door, the welcome they receive. What do you say? What don't you say? How do you say it? How do we communicate the gospel to an honour/shame culture? Key principle, take-home message: we want to understand our own cultural lies, blind spots and biases and growing in cultural awareness, so we understand other cultures, and seeing that it's not necessarily wrong but different. Again, it's gonna be a challenge. It's going to be hard, but we want to flex.

But in those pains, let's pray that the Lord will grow us and use us and grow his church for his glory.