Churches Pursuing Ethnic Diversity
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:06.000 | Pastor John recently led a Q&A with the students of Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia.
00:00:10.000 | Here's a question from one of the students.
00:00:12.000 | I was just wondering, what are some struggles and hurdles that you feel like the, I guess,
00:00:19.000 | the New Calvinist movement still needs to overcome?
00:00:22.000 | The New Calvinism, if it is, you know, it doesn't have any borders to it,
00:00:27.000 | in terms of separation from the old, is filled with people at every level of maturity,
00:00:35.000 | which means it's filled with people who are incredibly sensitive and discerning
00:00:40.000 | to the dynamics of racial relationships, and people who are stupid, absolutely ignorant, and naive, and bumblers.
00:00:50.000 | We all can grow in our maturity in talking with other human beings like us and different from us.
00:00:59.000 | So there's room there to just grow in the authentic, natural discernment of what makes another person feel honored in talking to you,
00:01:12.000 | not a project or a specimen, right? You're an Asian specimen.
00:01:19.000 | I should know not to say that, right? I should not make you feel like,
00:01:25.000 | I know why he's talking to me in the dining hall. I'm his project, you know, I'm his specimen.
00:01:32.000 | And mature people will know how not to do that.
00:01:38.000 | And they're not easily definable features about a personality and about a strategy that make that happen.
00:01:46.000 | It's not like you can say, learn these five things and you won't ever make that mistake again,
00:01:50.000 | and make people feel like projects. So that's a big deal.
00:01:54.000 | I would say we've got a long way to go in a pervasive theology of why race exists.
00:02:03.000 | Is interracial marriage biblical? Does God want various ethnicities in the same worshipping congregation?
00:02:12.000 | Or is he OK with homogeneous units? Just the theological, theoretical foundations of those questions.
00:02:19.000 | We're not all thinking about. We're not all up to speed on their answer.
00:02:25.000 | So, I mean, one of my rationales for talking about this morning, I said, was it's not spoken about too often in our churches.
00:02:32.000 | Well, that's an understatement. I think the average evangelical church, depending on lots of different things.
00:02:41.000 | This is just not spoken about very much.
00:02:45.000 | And I think no matter where you minister, it should figure pretty regularly into your preaching,
00:02:53.000 | because it is one of those inalienable implications of the gospel,
00:02:59.000 | whether you're in Dalbo, Minnesota, surrounded for 30 miles on every side by Scandinavians or not.
00:03:08.000 | It doesn't matter. These people should be global Scandinavians being taught a theology of multi ethnicity and why the Bible has it in.
00:03:17.000 | So there's there's room to grow there.
00:03:21.000 | The last thing I'd mention is I think pastors should be persuaded more than they are probably across the board and helped more than they are to be aggressively intentional.
00:03:37.000 | In pursuing racial diversity and harmony, I mean, there's a lot of people feel like if you become intentional,
00:03:44.000 | you're into artificiality and you're into quotas and you're running that risk of criticism for sure.
00:03:51.000 | Like if you say we need some color on this staff.
00:03:55.000 | OK, so you're going to give preference to color over white right now.
00:03:59.000 | You're into preferences, right? Yep.
00:04:03.000 | We have two African-Americans on staff on pastoral staff.
00:04:07.000 | That happened. One of them, because I wrote an article, a blog on why Bethlehem is pursuing racial diversity in its leadership.
00:04:19.000 | Very controversial, just very controversial, because because I mean, just think of it.
00:04:24.000 | You're going to post a position and, you know, because of your network, 90 percent of me like you.
00:04:31.000 | Ninety nine percent are going to be like you, maybe 100 percent. Is that OK?
00:04:35.000 | That's all we got. Or are you going to go look? Are you going to press? Are you going to search?
00:04:40.000 | Are you going to work? Are you going to go outside your little zone here of a few million people?
00:04:46.000 | And as soon as you do that, you're in trouble with some of your elders and with people who are saying this is this.
00:04:54.000 | You just this is so artificial. This is just absolutely phony.
00:04:58.000 | This is so politically correct. This is just off the charts.
00:05:02.000 | So I wrote that article and Kempton Turner, a young black youth leader in Texas, read it.
00:05:09.000 | It was blown away positively by this and made a connection with David Michael,
00:05:16.000 | who was in our family discipleship in Texas on another issue.
00:05:21.000 | And they clicked so well that within about a year he was being interviewed for the youth position at Bethlehem.
00:05:30.000 | Now, that happened because of intentionality. I wrote an article.
00:05:34.000 | This is why we're doing it and what we're doing. He happened to read that article.
00:05:37.000 | And now he's on step in their seven years. I love him to death.
00:05:41.000 | He is so unbelievably full of the Bible, full of the Holy Spirit.
00:05:44.000 | And I just love this quote. Give you a flavor of how Kim can communicate with these kids.
00:05:49.000 | 90 percent of which white, a white. Right. He he was addressing the issue in a in a Baptist church.
00:05:56.000 | Let's be the same, I suppose, in a in an infant Baptist church.
00:06:01.000 | Whatever you call it, that our kids are growing up, covenant kids, right, going up and they get saved.
00:06:10.000 | Six, eight, ten. In our tradition, they get baptized.
00:06:14.000 | Eleven, twelve, thirteen. And they never were on drugs.
00:06:19.000 | They never were sleeping around. And then and so they think, I mean, testimony and Kimpton said,
00:06:25.000 | there are no boring resurrections from the dead.
00:06:29.000 | Of course, they don't know what he's talking about. You've all been raised from the dead.
00:06:35.000 | And then he has to unpack a reform view of regeneration. That's true.
00:06:40.000 | There are no boring resurrections from the dead. If a kid knows how he got saved, whether at three, five, ten or whatever,
00:06:47.000 | he's got a stunning story to tell about being raised from the dead.
00:06:51.000 | And so I mean, I'm just saying that because I just thank God for Kimpton Turner,
00:06:55.000 | who happens to be some little bit of color on our staff because of some intentionality.
00:07:01.000 | So my my point there is we need to help pastors believe in mature, sensitive, wise, biblically grounded, intentional pursuit of diversity.
00:07:13.000 | That was Pastor John recently with the students of Westminster Theological Seminary.
00:07:17.000 | For more on how racial diversity intentionally shaped the pastoral hires at Bethlehem,
00:07:22.000 | see the document titled How and Why Bethlehem Baptist Church Pursues Ethnic Diversity,
00:07:26.000 | which was published as Appendix Three in John Piper's book Bloodlines.
00:07:30.000 | You can download the entire book free of charge at DesiringGod.org.
00:07:33.000 | Click on books and look for the title Bloodlines.
00:07:36.000 | Also on the much bigger point of how reform theology undercuts racism and undergirds racial harmony.
00:07:42.000 | See chapter nine of that same book, Bloodlines.
00:07:45.000 | So what does reform theology offer the ills of our society?
00:07:49.000 | Pastor John explains that tomorrow.
00:07:51.000 | Until then, I'm your host Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening.
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