If you believe that the Body of Christ is, by design, a multicultural community of God's people, then I want to connect, learn from, and network with you.

If multiculturalism is another gimmick to gain market share in a highly lucrative religious industry in North America, then please, don't even think of sending your promotional materials to me.

My socio-cultural journey in the ministry.  I moved from ethno-centric ministry to multi-cultural ministry.  It was not an easy process.

The Baptist General Conference invited me to Canada in 1986 to plant a Baptist church among the Filipino community in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

I saw and judged North American churches and society from my Filipino cultural standards.  I thought my culture was somehow better than other people's culture.

My Understanding of Culture

I understand culture as a people group's worldview, value system, and behavior patterns.

Worldview is the core of our culture.  It is our concept of ‘Final Reality’.  It answers the question: “What is real?”  Some examples of worldviews are: Judeo-Christian, Islamic Monotheism, Eastern Monism, Pantheism, Animism, Materialism, etc.  Postmodernism tries to look at all these worldviews and take them all as equally valid.

Value System is our concept of what is right and what is important.  Our concepts of time, space, history, progress, and society are affected by our value system.

Behavior Pattern is our concept of what is proper and acceptable.  Should we bow down as we greet each other, or should we shake hands?

My whole ministry--preaching, discipleship, marriage and family counselling, etc.--was wrapped in my strong identity as a Filipino Baptist.  We were a Filipino Baptist church!  We were not Chinese, not Vietnamese, not English, not French--we were Filipinos!  We were not Mennonite, not Catholic, not Anglican, not United Church, not Evangelical Free--we were Baptist!  We were Filipino Baptist!  I was aware that my strong sense of identity was based on ethnocentricity and denominational biases.  But I embraced them anyway because they helped me feel secure when I was experiencing culture shock.  They made me feel stable when I was being overwhelmed by changes happening in my life.

Throughout those years we rented several church buildings to conduct public worship services.  We grew in numbers.  The Filipino Baptist Church of Winnipeg was officially organized, bought our own building, and supported one of our own home-grown elders to be our pastor (he eventually finished a seminary degree).

In 1989, they sent me off as their first missionary to plant more Filipino Baptist churches.

Planting more Filipino Baptist churches didn't happen.

I brought my family to Vancouver, British Columbia.  Not for noble reasons.  I simply wanted to get away from Manitoba winter.  I wanted to touch the Pacific Ocean once more, hoping to go back, eventually, to the Philippines.

God opened a door for me and my family to pastor a church in Vancouver.  Grace International Baptist Church was a merger between an Anglo-Canadian congregation and a Filipino-Canadian congregation.  A few months before I accepted the job, GIBC experienced a split due, primarily, to cross-cultural conflicts between the Filipinos and the Anglos.  It was my initial, on-the-job training in multi-cultural ministry.

It was during my lowest moments at GIBC when God sent Dr. Miriam Adeney, a professor at Regent College, to mentor me in the area of culture and ministry.  She challenged me to develop a healthy appreciation of my own Filipino culture, and to see, appreciate, and experience the beauty of other cultures.

It was then that GIBC adapted the vision of becoming a multicultural church.  Beyond the Anglo-Filipino bicultural dynamics at GIBC, God brought other families from East Asia, Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and South Asia.

I started reading the Gospel Story from a multi-cultural perspective.  The Gospel Story is originally designed by God to be the story of the nations.  Hence, I learned that my theology of ministry must reflect God's design for the community of God--a community of many ethnic groups.

Here are some highlights of the Gospel Story from a multicultural perspective:

Our Story starts with God -- not with sin.  "In the beginning, God created..."

"And THE LORD God formed the adam from the dust of the adamah and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the man became a living being." (Gen. 2:7)  There's the beginning of the human race.  We all came from the ground.  We're named after the ground.  We're one humanity!  We're all carbon-based material.  We're all breathed with the same breath of God.  That's the basis of our Being Alive!

And yes, we sinned against our Creator and we messed up our whole relational connections--with God, with ourselves, with others, and with nature.

God started redeeming our relational connections or shalom.  God blessed Abraham (Genesis 12:1-3).  God's intention was to bless all the peoples of the earth through Abraham's blessing.

As God redeems our shalom-connections, those who were usually excluded by the society were included by God in the redemption process.  Rahab, a Gentile prostitute, recognized THE LORD as God (Joshua 2:11-13; 3:11).  She was saved from death. Eventually, the Gospel of Matthew included her as part of Jesus' family line.

Our Story is also expressed through poems and songs.  Many of those songs (like Psalm 96) declare that THE LORD's reign includes all nations, all peoples, in all the Earth.

Prophets, like Daniel (7:13-14), envisioned a heavenly worshipping community that includes all peoples, nations and men of every language.

The life and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth is the central focus of Our Story.  Through the Cross, we experience death from the worship of self.  Through his resurrection, we experience new life.  Through Jesus, we are able to experience God and shalom for he is the Prince of Shalom.  Through Christ, our broken connection with God, with ourselves, with others, and with nature is re-connected.  We're redeemed!

We are called then to share this Good News to all nations.  Of course we know the Great Commission passage (Matthew 28:18-20).  No, it's not about justifying our crusading-oriented, triumphalist, religious neo-colonialism.  The emphasis is not in "go" as in "go get them!"  It's about making communities of followers of Jesus Christ that is consistent with God's redemption of our shalom-connections.  This is about allowing the redeeming presence of Jesus to be experienced by all people groups while we're going through our daily activities, while we're baptizing, and while we're teaching.

The Story is acted out by the Holy Spirit of God.  God called a group of multicultural spiritual leaders in Acts 13:1-3.  They were not conducting a strategic meeting.  They were worshipping, fasting and praying.  Then the Holy Spirit formed a shalom-connection team: Barnabas (a former Jewish Levite from Cyprus Island); Simeon and Lucius (probably Black Christian brothers from Libya); Manaen (an Idumean foster brother of Herod Antipas), and Saul (a former fanatic Jewish Pharisee from Tarsus, who became the Apostle Paul).  Multicultural, eh?

Paul, that guy from Tarsus, wrote that the Christian faith is essentially linked to the promise of God to Abraham: "All nations will be blessed" through him.  This blessing can be experienced immediately through koinonia--sharing of life and resources within the community of God's people.

Finally, we have the climax of Our Story, the Ultimate Community (Revelation 21:22-27).  The vision is a community of nations with all their glory and honor!  That's shalom-connection in its finality.

In 1995, the Baptist General Conference of Canada invited me to serve as the denomination's Director of Global Ministries.  I served in this capacity for five years.  During those years, I also served as a member of the Executive Committee of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada's Task Force on Global Mission.

I experienced the blessings of working with brothers and sisters from different nationalities and cultural backgrounds around the world and across North America.  I began to understand their ethno-cultural perspectives of church and ministry both in their own countries of origin and in North America.

I also experienced the struggle felt by many Christian organizations with regards to finances.  Many of our meetings and conferences were spent on brainstorming about financial survival.  At times actual ministries of touching real people were paralyzed due to financial and administrative problems.

Political-economic issues I encountered in my journey.  Politics is about power.  Economics is about wealth.  There is a "corrupt golden rule" at work in our world today: "They who have the gold make the rules."

Sadly, this is also a reality within the Body of Christ.  The issues of power and wealth are major challenges we need to face as we work toward building genuine multicultural communities of Jesus' followers.  I learned about these issues through my interactions with many pastors, elders, deacons, mission executives, and other Christian organizational leaders.

Stewardship or Control?  A board member of a Christian organization sent me this email: "Dann, we were entrusted by God to be the steward of this family of churches.  We want to be faithful stewards of what God had entrusted to us in this denomination."

I initially affirmed this fellow leader's statement.  We became friends.  But the more I got to know him, the more I learned that the statement is more about the issue of who controls the denomination's ministry resources.  It was about preserving the position of authority of those who belong to the pioneers of the organization.  It was about "getting the biggest bang for my buck"--a standard for financial decision-making that was usually tied to fundraising and promotions.

I hate, I despise your religious feasts;
I cannot stand your assemblies.
Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them.
Though you bring choice fellowship offerings,
I will have no regard for them.
Away with the noise of your songs!
I will not listen to the music of your harps.
But let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream!

hwhy 
in a message delivered by the
Prophet Amos [5:21-24] to the religious leaders in Israel
ca. 760-750 BCE

The needs in India and Central Asia, as far as this person was concerned, can wait.  The preservation of the organization was more important and urgent.

Landlord or Brethren?  Here's another correspondence from a board chairman who was considering to rent their church facilities out to an ethnic church: "Dann, we're ready to open the doors of our church to ethnic people around us.  Please give us some tips on the ramifications of this outreach program -- rental agreement, maintenance policies, property insurance issues, parking priorities, etc."

I replied with the following tips: "I'm connecting you with a friend, a church administrator, who knows all the ramifications of church rental agreements, etc.  But I am more concerned about the long-term biblical and communal processes that your congregation needs to consider.  First, invest time with that ethnic congregation.  Get to know them.  Share your church life with them.  Learn to cross your cultural boundaries as an AngloCanadian church.  Second, start the process of sharing both the financial responsibilities and the decision-making responsibilities between your leadership teams or boards.  Third, start experimenting joint-worship services, bringing to each other the beauty and uniqueness of your respective ethnicities."

His reply: "Thank you for helping with the administrative stuff.  About the long-term issues, we're praying about it."

These communication exchange happened in 1996.  Sharing of political-economic responsibilities never happened.  The ethnic congregation are still tenants in the building.  The Anglos are still the landlords.

If you own a church building and an ethnic group rents it for their afternoon church services, and they don't have a genuine say in the stewardship of the building, it's called landlord-tenant relationship, not a community of brothers and sisters in Christ.

Cultural Imperialism or Cultural Plurality?   Here's another communique from a 48 year-old lady: "We enjoy the new people coming from other countries.  But we feel awkward when they start speaking their own language in front of us."

She's one of the most beautiful Christian ladies I know.  She loves Jesus dearly.  She loves the people from other countries.  She welcomes them to church every Sunday.  But she insists that they should speak English in the church's lobby.

I shared with her about an attitude that many English-speaking Westerners show--consciously or unconsciously.  In a very nice way, I explained to her the reality of cultural imperialism.  I didn't even use the term cultural imperialism when I was explaining the concept.

"If they choose to speak their language in front of you," I said, "don't be offended.  English has been imposed on them at work and at school through out the week.  It should be OK to be their ethnic-selves when they are with their spiritual brothers and sisters, right?"

"But they're in America!" she insisted.  "They must have learned their manners by now!  Everybody must speak English here!"

"Would you speak their language, the way they speak English while in church, when they invite you to their home?  They usually speak English every now and then to accommodate you, right?" I asked.

Then I explained to her the concept of cultural plurality.

Cultural Plurality according to Msgr. James Barta

Each society or people has its culture...To be human, one has to have a culture.  And that culture should develop.

Human culture carries with it a historical and social aspect.  It is therefore no surprise if a nation or a group of nations that shares many values is said to have the same culture, distinct from that of another nation or group of nations.  We can for this reason speak of a plurality of cultures.

There are many levels of reference to cultures.  In the widest sense one could speak of European, Asian, or African cultures.  But soon the necessity to become more precise becomes evident.  Within Asia, Japanese culture is surely not Indian culture, nor is Chinese culture the same as Indonesian culture.  Even within one country such as Nigeria, we have cultures identified with such major language groups or peoples as the Hausa, the Igbo, the Yoruba and the Fulani.  In the U.S.A. we can identify, for example, the Native American, the Caucasian, the Hispanic and the African American cultures, at least to some extent.

One thing is clear: our world is marked by cultural plurality.

I encouraged her to appreciate the beauty of cultural diversity while struggling with the inherent cross-cultural adjustments involved in a multicultural community: "Allow those people from different ethnic backgrounds to join your singing in English and you may also join their singing in their language even if it's difficult for you."

After our talks, she said: "Oh dear.  Lord forgive me!  I didn't know."

I simply said, "Amen."

She's a more sensitive and a well informed church greeter today.  Her ministry is really being blessed by God.

I believe in multicultural ministry.  Let's do it!

The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it.  Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful and deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life.  Revelation 21:26-27 (NIV)

DANN PANTOJA's passion is to help multiply effective leaders for the global and digital realities of the 21st Century.  He has traveled globally as a leadership consultant.  He's married to Joji, his college sweetheart.  They have three young adult children--Alethea (21), L'nielle Joy (18), and Byron (17).  They live in Richmond, British Columbia, Canada.

Email: connect@dannpantoja.com
WebSite: www.dannpantoja.com
Tel: 604.448.1242
Fax: 604.448.1241