The mixed-race population is the fastest-growing demographic and transracial adoption continues its upward trend; families are becoming more multiracial, and the church will have to change if it wants to care for these families well. White parents with adopted BIPOC kids may want to sing some of their favorite hymns on Sunday but may also realize that their kids need to see folks who look like them in the pulpit who can minister to their unique BIPOC needs. Interracial couples with biracial kids will want churches that appreciate and reflect both cultures of their family, not just one.
Yet, as cited by Campbell Robertson in The New York Times, diverse, White-led churches have been slowly losing BIPOC members and becoming less diverse since 2016. My family was among those who left during these past few years.
Like us, many Christians of color have realized that racial diversity doesn’t automatically mean cultural diversity.
Like us, many Christians of color have realized that racial diversity doesn’t automatically mean cultural diversity. The families cited in Robertson’s article “Why Black Worshipers Are Leaving White Evangelical Churches” reported that they left because their churches were steeped in White culture, even though they had Black and Brown faces in their pews. The music, preaching style and leadership style, values, nuances, and sensibilities all flowed from Anglo culture, and BIPOC congregants had very little influence, often feeling like their needs took second place to those of White members. For example, in 2020 with the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor, many Black Christians felt that the desire to coddle White folks outweighed the desire to comfort Black folks.
In these churches, if Black staff were hired at all it was as worship leaders, who added a little off-beat clapping and some gospel chords to the otherwise White music, or as youth leaders, who combined the Gospel with some street cred to draw in bored teens.
To survive and remain relevant, the American church must catch up to our country’s changing demography. Homogeneous leadership will not be able to attract, care for and retain America’s increasingly heterogeneous families.
Racism catalyzed the bifurcation of the church and the advent of separate Black and White worship spaces. After Emancipation, Black people were barred from churches with White people. If they were allowed in, they had to sit in the balcony and could never aspire to any kind of leadership. As a result, Black Christians simply formed their own churches, and this split exists to this day. Yet, at the height of the racial reconciliation movement of the late 1990s and early 2000s many Black people joined White-led churches, only to go back to Black churches a couple of decades later when they realized that though the color of some of the members had changed, the church culture and leadership had not.
God desires a diverse, unified church.
Still, from even a cursory reading of Scripture, it is very evident that God desires a diverse, unified church. The early church described in Acts 13 was socioeconomically and ethnically diverse (in its leadership and membership) and the gathering of believers in the final vision of Revelations 7 includes every tongue, tribe and nation.
So what can White church leaders do to attract, retain and nurture people and families of color well? I suggest five things.
- If you’re a pastor or church staffer, develop relationships with non-White people in your community and congregation. Eat with them, listen to them, hear their concerns. According to a 2022 Public Religion Research Institute study, the friendship networks of White Americans are 90% White. Break out of this bubble.
- Fill your pulpit with Black and Brown preachers — often. These should be folks you know and trust. Don’t try to control and/or correct what they say. Let them influence and lead.
- Read non-White and non-Western theologians. Become more aware that the way White people interpret Scripture isn’t the only way to interpret Scripture and it isn’t necessarily the best way. Anglican priest, professor and public theologian Esau McCaulley provides countless examples of some of these interpretive differences in Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope.
- Hire BIPOC staff to serve in senior positions. Make sure that they are in the room where it happens! Also, make sure BIPOCs have critical volunteer roles, like as deacons, elders, and small group leaders. Genuinely validate their strengths; let them know that you and the church need them.
- Become a student of BIPOC history. Read their books; watch movies. Learn some of the joys and sorrows of other people groups. Learn to appreciate their voice.
In my book What About the Children? 5 Values for Multiracial Families, I encourage interracial couples to intentionally pass their cultures on to the kids, and that one culture should not subsume the other but that both should be valued equally by parents and kids alike. In other words, I encourage families and churches to do the same thing: to be multicultural and not just multiracial.
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