Racism and Racial Reconciliation

How Do We Respond to Cultural Crises Over Race?
by Brian Davis

Racial Reconciliation, the Gospel, and the Church
by Jarvis Williams

Racism as Favoritism
by Trillia Newbell

Don’t Be Color-Blind at Church
by Isaac Adams

5 Steps to Racial Peace-Making
by Russ Whitfield

Why the Race Conversation Is So Hard
by Jonathan Leeman

Multi-Ethnic Churches

Re-Thinking Homogeneity: The Biblical Case for Multi-Ethnic Churches
by Aubrey Sequeira

Building a Multi-Cultural Ministry on Gospel Doctrine
by John Folmar

Pastor’s Forum: Can You Reverse-Engineer a Multi-Ethnic Church?
by John Onwuchekwa, Greg Gilbert, and Andy Davis

Lessons Learned from South Africa About Multi-Ethnicity in Churches
by Gustav Pritchard

Does the Asian-American Church Need an Adjusted Gospel?
by Jeffrey K. Jue

One Example of Reaching Your Multi-Ethnic Neighbors
by Juan Sanchez

The Joys and Challenges of Multi-Ethnicity

The Joys and Challenges of a Multi-Ethnic Church
by John Smuts

Why White Churches Are Hard for Black People
by Isaac Adams

Being Asian American in a White Church
by Tim Chiang

Helping Asian Churches Become Multi-Ethnic
by Patrick Cho

Book Reviews

Right Color, Wrong Culture, by Bryan Loritts
by Sam Lam

Reviving the Black Church, by Thabiti Anyabwile
by Jemar Tisby

United by Faith, by Curtiss Paul DeYoung. Michael O. Emerson, George Yancey, and Karen Chai Kim
by Russ Whitfield

Bloodlines, by John Piper
by H.B. Charles

Editor’s Note:

Satan has always loved to exploit the lines of ethnic division. Think of how the Egyptians in Exodus hold the Jews in contempt. Or how the brand new Jerusalem church, price sticker still on the backseat window, divides in Acts 6 between Greek-speaking and Hebrew-speaking Jews.

So churches today too often mimic their host culture’s ethnic rivalries, whether in South Africa, India, or America. Or at least, too often they forget they possess a resource for overcoming racial or ethnic strife that the world does not have: the gospel.

Most evangelicals recognize that possessing the righteousness of Christ means “putting on” that righteousness in every-day decisions. Yet the same is true of the reconciliation we share with one another in the gospel (see Eph. 2:11-22). We are to “put on” that reconciliation. If we do not put on that righteousness, and if we do not put on that reconciliation, we call into question whether we have been declared righteous or “one new man.”

The blood-bought reconciliation that believers share with one another in the gospel, ethnically and otherwise, does not require any one of us to participate in any one form of reconciling work, as in, “If you don’t carry that picket, you’re not a Christian!” But it does require all of us to undertake some sort of reconciling work. Those who have been made one new man work as one new man. It’s just what they do.

Consider this Journal 9Marks’ way of inviting you into that work of ethnic reconciliation. Don’t you want to see churches in South Africa, India, America, and everywhere not lagging behind their neighbors in this area, but pushing out ahead? What a witness that would be to the power and glory and goodness of the gospel!

Most of the articles have been borne out of the American experience, but hopefully the lessons will translate into any national setting. Brian Davis begins very much in the moment of cultural crisis and walks us by the hand out of it. Jarvis Williams then explains the relationship between the gospel and racial reconciliation. Trillia Newbell exposes the symptoms of racism in our hearts where we might not have recognized them. Isaac Adams and Russ Whitefield point us to some unexpected lessons of humility as we approach the topic.

Turning to multi-ethnic churches, Aubrey Sequeira provides a substantial and foundational theological piece. John Folmar, Gustav Pritchard, Jeffrey Jue, and the brothers in the pastoral forum advise us on how you may or may not go about building a multi-ethnic church. Juan Sanchez and John Smuts offer a couple of case-studies from their own situations. Isaac Adams and Tim Chiang provide a couple of the more challenging pieces for White readers in White churches, while Patrick Cho gives advice for predominantly Asian-American settings.

Friends, even if you don’t have time to read anything, stop for a moment now and pray for Christ’s churches around the world: that they would increasingly fulfill that promise first whispered to Abraham of a multi-national blessing and a multi-national people. Pray that our boast would not be in our skin color, our music style, our parentage, our manner of expression, whether we say “pastor” or call him by his first name, or anything that tends to divide one ethnicity from another. Instead, pray that our boast would be in Christ alone, and our love would extend one step more broadly today than it did yesterday.

—Jonathan Leeman