What Heaven Wants

I've been reading an article for college by William H. Willimon (of Resident Aliens fame) on the power of the Spirit of the Risen Jesus to create unity amongst cultural diversity and plurality.

The gospel is deferential and accommodating to no particular culture; rather, it is indoctrination, inculcation into a new and oddly based culture, namely the church. Thus Peter remembers Joel's prophetic vision of the crossing of gender, age, and social barriers (2:17-18). The result of Pentecostal empowerment by the Sprit is baptism (2:38), adoption by and enculturation into a new people, a holy nation, a light to all other nations, cultures, clubs, and means of human gathering. Thus many interpreters have seen Luke's list of hearers as an echo of the list of nations in Genesis 10. Pentecost is a day in which the linguistic divisions of Babel (Gen. 11) are healed. The same God who scattered the nations in order to prevent a united nations against God, now gathers and unites the nations in a new nation convened by God. The church is a sign on earth (2:19) of what heaven wants.

Willimon concludes the article with these heavy hitting words:

Acts says we are right to see the multicultural composition of our congregations as a kind of test of the fidelity of our preaching. I think Acts would also tell us that, whenever by the grace of God our preaching overcomes some cultural boundary, we are right to rejoice that God continues to work wonders through the word. Whenever we hear "multicultural" we are supposed to think "church," that peculiar cross-cultural people gathered by nothing other than the descent of the Holy Spirit.

It makes we wonder if we in increasingly diverse Sydney would meet this standard. "...[T]he multicultural composition of our congregations as a kind of test of the fidelity of our preaching."

A Rant: The Homogeneous Unit Principle

A rant placed here mainly for my own benefit:

Like attracts like, right? So if you are wanting to reach Transylvanian lumberjacks with the gospel, the most effective way to do it is to start a church for Transylvanian lumberjacks. After all, there are plenty of parachurch organisations that operate on this principle and they seem to have a fruitful ministry in reaching their particular group. So this ministry tactic is naturally transferable to churches?

No! In this instance we can not allow ourselves to be guided by pragmatism. This is a danger we must be on our guard against because it is a denial of the gospel. The church is the place that welcomes everyone: Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female, the rich, the socially excluded, even the Transylvanian lumberjack. But the vision of the New Testament is that they are welcomed into God's church together:

"May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God. For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God's truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written, 'Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles, and sing to your name.'" Romans 15. 5-9

And again:

"This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel." Ephesians 3.6

As the church proclaims Jesus, the Holy Spirit brings different types of people together to form the church, God's new humanity (cf. Ephesians 2.11 ff.). Churches modelled on the homogenous unit principle deny this reality. And yet God uses this reality to declare to the world the wisdom of his plan to unite all things - even Jews and Gentiles - under Christ (Eph.3.10). It is through this that God ends hostility and brings peace to his creation.

Churches modeled on the homogenous unit principle reinforce to the world the exclusions and segmentations the world has created. We are in danger of denying the power of God to bring peace to the world.