From Every Nation (by Ruth Farquhar)
I have many happy memories of churches in the United Kingdom that have included people who have moved from other parts of the world. Often these churches have welcomed people among them in a warm and friendly way, often offering hospitality in their homes. I am grateful that cross-cultural friendship in church was part of my experience from my earliest days. This was possible because we lived in London and people from around the world were arriving in the community where we lived on a weekly basis.
The church services were full of people of different cultures and nationalities, and yet they persisted with an exclusively majority-culture British style and leadership.
Allow me to describe one of my earliest memories of church:
I was sitting as usual with Mum and my sisters in the pew. Dad was at the front with the other elders. All around us were people of British descent going back many generations, who had gathered to begin a new church plant. Crowded into three pews at the very back were about thirty people of Nigerian descent. Nobody had excluded them, yet they naturally wanted to sit together and be with the people they knew best. These people lived locally and shared their lives together within the community, whereas the majority-culture people were drawn from all around London. The “indigenous” British people had different roles to play as elders, deacons, preachers, Sunday School teachers, cooks, cleaners, musicians, worship leaders. None of the Nigerian and British-Nigerian people appeared to have a role, or even a key to the building. Probably the majority-culture British people had come with the intention of serving the local Christians and the local community but to the observer it looked as though they had come to take the leading role. Did they regard the local Nigerian and British-Nigerian Christians as their guests?
When we stood up to sing songs, I would turn around to face the back. A warm, rich sound of praise rose from the back pews. People moved together as one as they sang. They expressed their joy in Jesus. Usually, Mum would tell me not to stare, but in those few minutes each week, I learned that they each had something wonderful to give us. I learned that we were missing out.
Every Sunday afternoon I would go to Sunday School where white teachers taught a handful of white children and a large majority of black children.
After a year, my father wrote to the denominational leaders to say that he intended to resign as an elder because he believed it was time for the mature local Christians to take up a leadership role, to be allowed to offer a culturally appropriate style of worship and to be able to preach in a way that was both biblical and related to the lives of the people in the community. He recommended two people who could take on roles in the eldership.
This meant change for everyone and no doubt for some people it meant passing on their roles to others and trusting others. I no longer live in the area, but I understand this is now a strong church with a leadership representative of the ethnic mix in the community. I was delighted at my grandmother’s funeral to meet one of the children I grew up with now pastoring a church, serving as a leader and confident in the Lord.
Over the years many more people have come to the UK. Many attend our churches. What has changed? Is the UK church now a place in which people of international origins are fully included?
The church services were full of people of different cultures and nationalities, and yet they persisted with an exclusively majority-culture British style and leadership.
Allow me to describe one of my earliest memories of church:
I was sitting as usual with Mum and my sisters in the pew. Dad was at the front with the other elders. All around us were people of British descent going back many generations, who had gathered to begin a new church plant. Crowded into three pews at the very back were about thirty people of Nigerian descent. Nobody had excluded them, yet they naturally wanted to sit together and be with the people they knew best. These people lived locally and shared their lives together within the community, whereas the majority-culture people were drawn from all around London. The “indigenous” British people had different roles to play as elders, deacons, preachers, Sunday School teachers, cooks, cleaners, musicians, worship leaders. None of the Nigerian and British-Nigerian people appeared to have a role, or even a key to the building. Probably the majority-culture British people had come with the intention of serving the local Christians and the local community but to the observer it looked as though they had come to take the leading role. Did they regard the local Nigerian and British-Nigerian Christians as their guests?
When we stood up to sing songs, I would turn around to face the back. A warm, rich sound of praise rose from the back pews. People moved together as one as they sang. They expressed their joy in Jesus. Usually, Mum would tell me not to stare, but in those few minutes each week, I learned that they each had something wonderful to give us. I learned that we were missing out.
Every Sunday afternoon I would go to Sunday School where white teachers taught a handful of white children and a large majority of black children.
After a year, my father wrote to the denominational leaders to say that he intended to resign as an elder because he believed it was time for the mature local Christians to take up a leadership role, to be allowed to offer a culturally appropriate style of worship and to be able to preach in a way that was both biblical and related to the lives of the people in the community. He recommended two people who could take on roles in the eldership.
This meant change for everyone and no doubt for some people it meant passing on their roles to others and trusting others. I no longer live in the area, but I understand this is now a strong church with a leadership representative of the ethnic mix in the community. I was delighted at my grandmother’s funeral to meet one of the children I grew up with now pastoring a church, serving as a leader and confident in the Lord.
Over the years many more people have come to the UK. Many attend our churches. What has changed? Is the UK church now a place in which people of international origins are fully included?
I now have friends here in Dundee who are Christian international students coming to the city and becoming part of church. They are warmly welcomed. People will speak with them and invite them home. Yet I notice some of them still sit together with people of their own culture and nationality.
Are their differing cultural needs understood and met?
People of other ethnic origins still encounter the cultural assumptions of the majority culture in the United Kingdom, both in the way the church family interacts and also in the actual content of the teaching. Preachers and Bible study leaders regularly assume that our western way of doing things is Biblical and sermons and Bible study materials rarely reflect the breadth of different cultures within our congregations. This means international people can find some practices in the church unsettling and unfamiliar and can end up listening to the teaching and saying “yes, yes,” without ever considering how the Bible passage relates to them in their own cultural setting. In many of our churches, I don't really think awareness and change have gone very deep.
Are we communicating well across cultural differences?
Preaching on family relationships, work relationships, authority, disagreement and confrontation, praise, the spirit world, etc. can all assume the majority worldview of the Global North. It is not just the language, vocabulary etc. that is misunderstood by the students I know. It is often the content of the teaching too that is misunderstood or perhaps misapplied or inappropriate. The students are left with a choice. They can dismiss the teaching, or they can follow obediently, not realising that they are becoming unnecessarily out of step with their home community.
I remember a talk about personal relationships and marriage given to a group of Chinese Christians by a British pastor. It was such a helpful talk for a young British person. A lot of what he said was about our personal choice of the right person to marry. Throughout the whole talk, he never once mentioned the role of parents. Yet I know that, to honour them, all of my Chinese Christian friends discuss their choice of a husband or wife with their parents. They genuinely will consider their parents' expectations. When married, they expect to give their parents a big role in their family life and a big role in caring for any children. I realised uncomfortably that if a Chinese speaker had led the session, they too would have had a lot of things to say that would have been helpful to everyone, Chinese and British alike. We had all received a lot from the British pastor’s talk and we had all all missed out.
Preachers need to be aware of cultural diversity, even if they still choose to say what is appropriate for the majority. Those who are personally supporting international people also need to provide opportunities for the hearers to discuss the content and application of the sermons etc. We need to recognise that what is heard is often very different from what has been said and that what is heard by those listening is just as important as what has been said. Even once their English language is of a high standard, things will be differently understood by those who approach the Scriptures and join in the service with a different set of cultural understandings and a different worldview.
I remember a Chinese student in our unadorned Scottish Presbyterian church buildings who believed that the absence of adornment showed we didn’t really care – “If you really loved Jesus, you would
bring your very best works of art.”
I remember a Muslim student in a Christmas family service, “It was all about the children’s Christmas presents. I thought it would be all about the Bible.”
Equally, I can tell stories of international students who have come into our church fellowship and been impressed. “When you pray, you really believe God will answer.” “I thought it would be like a [Communist] party meeting, that people would just say all the right things, but now I can see you really believe this!”
Do they have opportunities to serve, to lead and to fulfil their roles in the body of Christ?
The simple step of including people of different backgrounds in leadership would gradually help to avoid some of these problems. We need to set aside our assumptions about the kind of person we should appoint and look instead with loving, Christlike eyes at the variety of people whom God is gifting and whom God can use in leadership.
God has provided the UK church with opportunities to listen to and learn from the worldwide church. Let us open our ears as well as our hearts and receive this rich blessing from Him gladly.
Ruth Farquhar grew up in London in the 1960s, a time when large numbers of people had migrated into the UK and new waves of people continued to arrive. Many of these people became her friends. In recent years, she has worked for Friends International among international students in Dundee.
Are their differing cultural needs understood and met?
People of other ethnic origins still encounter the cultural assumptions of the majority culture in the United Kingdom, both in the way the church family interacts and also in the actual content of the teaching. Preachers and Bible study leaders regularly assume that our western way of doing things is Biblical and sermons and Bible study materials rarely reflect the breadth of different cultures within our congregations. This means international people can find some practices in the church unsettling and unfamiliar and can end up listening to the teaching and saying “yes, yes,” without ever considering how the Bible passage relates to them in their own cultural setting. In many of our churches, I don't really think awareness and change have gone very deep.
Are we communicating well across cultural differences?
Preaching on family relationships, work relationships, authority, disagreement and confrontation, praise, the spirit world, etc. can all assume the majority worldview of the Global North. It is not just the language, vocabulary etc. that is misunderstood by the students I know. It is often the content of the teaching too that is misunderstood or perhaps misapplied or inappropriate. The students are left with a choice. They can dismiss the teaching, or they can follow obediently, not realising that they are becoming unnecessarily out of step with their home community.
I remember a talk about personal relationships and marriage given to a group of Chinese Christians by a British pastor. It was such a helpful talk for a young British person. A lot of what he said was about our personal choice of the right person to marry. Throughout the whole talk, he never once mentioned the role of parents. Yet I know that, to honour them, all of my Chinese Christian friends discuss their choice of a husband or wife with their parents. They genuinely will consider their parents' expectations. When married, they expect to give their parents a big role in their family life and a big role in caring for any children. I realised uncomfortably that if a Chinese speaker had led the session, they too would have had a lot of things to say that would have been helpful to everyone, Chinese and British alike. We had all received a lot from the British pastor’s talk and we had all all missed out.
Preachers need to be aware of cultural diversity, even if they still choose to say what is appropriate for the majority. Those who are personally supporting international people also need to provide opportunities for the hearers to discuss the content and application of the sermons etc. We need to recognise that what is heard is often very different from what has been said and that what is heard by those listening is just as important as what has been said. Even once their English language is of a high standard, things will be differently understood by those who approach the Scriptures and join in the service with a different set of cultural understandings and a different worldview.
I remember a Chinese student in our unadorned Scottish Presbyterian church buildings who believed that the absence of adornment showed we didn’t really care – “If you really loved Jesus, you would
bring your very best works of art.”
I remember a Muslim student in a Christmas family service, “It was all about the children’s Christmas presents. I thought it would be all about the Bible.”
Equally, I can tell stories of international students who have come into our church fellowship and been impressed. “When you pray, you really believe God will answer.” “I thought it would be like a [Communist] party meeting, that people would just say all the right things, but now I can see you really believe this!”
Do they have opportunities to serve, to lead and to fulfil their roles in the body of Christ?
The simple step of including people of different backgrounds in leadership would gradually help to avoid some of these problems. We need to set aside our assumptions about the kind of person we should appoint and look instead with loving, Christlike eyes at the variety of people whom God is gifting and whom God can use in leadership.
God has provided the UK church with opportunities to listen to and learn from the worldwide church. Let us open our ears as well as our hearts and receive this rich blessing from Him gladly.
Ruth Farquhar grew up in London in the 1960s, a time when large numbers of people had migrated into the UK and new waves of people continued to arrive. Many of these people became her friends. In recent years, she has worked for Friends International among international students in Dundee.
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