The Bible makes it clear that God is building a diverse church. It is God’s plan that a church begun in one place with one people would soon spread across the earth to become a church in every place and of every people. We see the ultimate result beautifully and vividly described in passages like Revelation 5 and 7. God is drawing to himself representatives of all tribes, languages, peoples, and nations, (and, of course, all classes and castes and ages and demographics and …). 

Over the past few weeks I’ve encountered a number of articles about diversity in church leadership. Specifically, I’ve seen discussions about whether churches should make diversity in their pastoral leadership a matter of priority or even consideration. Not surprisingly, given the medium of the internet and the current cultural context, many of these discussions have not gone very well.

Living and ministering as I do in the most diverse city in the world, this is something I have had to think about on a personal level and something my church has had to consider on a congregational level. I’ve got a few thoughts I’d like to offer for consideration and hope you’ll hear and evaluate them. In this article I am going to share some initial thoughts, then ask for your feedback on them. Then I hope to prepare a second article that builds upon it all.

God’s Plan for the Church

The Bible makes it clear that God is building a diverse church. It is God’s plan that a church begun in one place with one people would soon spread across the earth to become a church in every place and of every people. We see the ultimate result beautifully and vividly described in passages like Revelation 5 and 7. God is drawing to himself representatives of all tribes, languages, peoples, and nations, (and, of course, all classes and castes and ages and demographics and …). There will certainly be an ultimate and heavenly fulfillment of this vision when Christ returns, but we naturally long to see a temporal and earthly fulfillment. And we do, through the local church. The local church is the place we are meant to see unity in diversity.

Pause: Let’s discuss diversity. When we speak about it in North America today, we’re typically referring to racial diversity, but we should consider far more than that. We should account for class, age, country of origin, economic situations, and so on. Really, we should look for any way that humanity distinguishes or divides itself and desire to see unity rather than division in each of them. Not every community is racially diverse, but I’d wager that every community is in some ways diverse, even if less visibly. Unpause.

Going back to the early days, Paul wasn’t zipping around the ancient world planting the First Jewish Church of Galatia for all the Jews and, just down the street, the First Gentile Church of Galatia for all the Gentiles. Rather, he was planting churches that would be made up of both Jews and Gentiles—a divide that many considered unbridgeable. Yet he insisted that the gospel of Jesus Christ provided all they needed to experience perfect unity. God’s plan was not to have Jewish churches and Gentile churches, but Jewish/Gentile churches. He wanted them then—and wants us now—to have churches that cross divisions instead of form around divisions. God wants us to have churches that display a heavenly unity-in-diversity right here on earth.

Three Principles

Now, let’s lay down some principles related to the local church.

Principal #1: a church has a particular responsibility to its local community. Each local church has a geographic responsibility. No Bible verse I know of says this explicitly, but I think we can regard it as a matter of common sense (and perhaps an application of the widening concentric circles of Acts 1:8). I have a greater responsibility to the unsaved people within driving distance of my church than to those within flying distance. I have a greater responsibility to the unsaved people of Canada than to those of China. As a global body of Christians we are to reach this great big world, but as individual parts of that body, our first responsibility is to reach our little part of it.

Read More