by Sandy » Thu Jun 01, 2017 9:05 am
There are places where multi-ethnic, multi-cultural congregations form spontaneously, without any specific or deliberate intention, even among Southern Baptists. I served such a congregation in Houston for five years. It was an unlikely setting for something like that to happen, built on the remains of what had been a white, upper middle class church that started a decline due to neighborhood demographics in the early 1980's. Among the congregation of 130 people, mostly in their 60's, 70's and 80's by the late 1990's were a few visionaries in leadership, willing to consider the potential uses of the space in a building where they were only using 20%. When the church included leaders from the various ethnic congregations that were using the building, and they realized their equality, three congregations became one with two worship services, one in Spanish. The African Americans became the worship leaders.
The congregation I currently worship with developed a very diverse character in a spontaneous manner, in spite of the fact that the demographics of the area are overwhelmingly white. It's not a large congregation, but it seems that it is a magnet to people who are from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Many are second generation Americans and not from cultural backgrounds in which there is much Christian influence of any kind. The worship style has virtually nothing to do with the background of the people who attend, and remains what I would call traditional to this particular body.
Does your church have a denominational affiliation, Jon? How does it handle that with the multi denominational character of the membership and leadership?
Dr. McKissic's congregation is one I'd pick as well, if I had to live in the DFW area. It is racially mixed, though latinos and whites probably only make up about 5% of the membership.