While I don’t believe diversity for its own sake does anyone much good, the lack of it has more to do with inertia and lack of intention than anything else. That same risktaking, lose your life to save it mentality has to brought to bear on the subject of cross-cultural reconciliation as any other area of discipleship. This is to me one of the things a waiting world is watching us for. I think this comment by you says it all:

“I need to put myself in a ton of situations where I’m the only white guy in the room.”

My personal history has thrust me into the ‘only African American in the room’ role in one way or another since I came out of diapers. Flash forward about 25 years later and it really doesn’t phase me anymore. But I do realize how uneasy that can be for someone (and this could be someone of ANY ethnicity) who hasn’t logged those kind of miles. It’s intimidating yes, but its also very missionary. From another walk of life, its also the kind of thing a community organizer, or when necessary a politician might do for the sake of coalition building. If they can do it, surely the change can charge into the breach.

I also agree with a previous commenter that building those relationships would not only change the composition of the conference, but its content and subject matter as well. This is a good thing, because though I believe the questions being asked on the post-Christian fringe are important, they may also be responded to with insights from the marginal and hybrid ethnic diversity in our midst.

Blessings as you step out the boat on faith!

Great conversation topic here. The church I currently belong with is quite simimilar to the one that I tried to plant in vision/values/style, but it’s urban (mine was commuter exurb), diverse and doing great work in social justice that we didn’t get to before we closed down.

I find that diversity a key part of our church. Two of three founding pastors are female and all three are nonwhite. More importantly to me, their cultural backgrounds are different than mine also – Native American, Hawaiian; people who weren’t part of the majority in any sense. Over half of our church is nonwhite, and at 40 I’m one of the oldest ones of the community. I think a large part of the reason for the diversity of the church is the leadership. I think it’s nearly impossible to have a diverse church with white middle class leadership of that church.

The Gospel sounds different when I hear it from them. It’s still Christ, and yet it’s got tinges of identity and community and tribe and family that I don’t get on my own. I learn more about my own Celtic Christian roots through hearing about island Christianity than I do any other way.

It has been important for me to NOT project my ideas about race and culture, but simply to listen. That can be hard to do, but as we all are relating with nonwhite folks, it’s the only posture we can begin with. Listen and ask questions. Learn.

The Gospel and its communicators are beautifully multifaceted, and I wouldn’t go back to a church which was led only by white middle class guys like me. Don’t get me wrong – I think I’m a fair leader, but my voice has been well played out in Christian history, and others need to be heard more than mine does.

I do savor the 2 or 3 times a year that I get to preach at my church, but I prefer to listen when others speak from their own perspective. Christ speaks in the differences between us.

seriously though, good questions. Didn’t the Indian actor that who spoke on thursday?(i forget his name) come with JR, or at least the LA crew. I do remember Drew Hart saying that our conversation on the Holy Spirit wasn’t a conversation they would ever have, which I found intriguing…

i think our emphasis on the post-christian fringe might be limiting our diversity, but i’m pretty sure that’s an important conversation so i don’t necessarily know where that leaves us.

Except…if I may wonder aloud about something…

JR Woodward did a pretty great job of bring diverse voices to the table at Verge LA last November, and I think it’s clear he has a diverse circle of relationships, as you’d expect in LA County. While several voices from Ecclesia, the more diverse voices were not. And I wonder if they are drawn to be, even with those relationships JR has built.

I think we have to ask ourselves if the nature of the questions we are asking in Ecclesia are primarily white questions. Generally speaking, I think it is more true in white North America culture that the church has moved to the edge of culture than it is in other cultures. Mission pushes into relationship across demographics…I totally agree. And so I wonder if our understanding of mission form the post-Christian fringe of culture is limiting us too much and also defining what Ecclesia looks like.

And yes, we must try. It’s good, messy Kingdom work.

Agreed, I think we have a responsibility to eschatologically reflect the foretaste of the kingdom, and that includes racial reconciliation.

Our situation is a bit similar to yours. Oceanside is a kind of minor urban/suburb, but it is fantastically diverse…and very polarized. The Caucasians, Afro-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and Pacific Islanders in my area are all very intentionally self-segregated, and there are serious tensions between some of these groups. I’m not really sure yet how to tackle the challenge, but I think it is incumbent upon us to try.

Jason, you bring up an important point. I totally agree, area demographics do have a big impact on diversity. We’re in suburbia and the fact is, there are a lot more white people around here than not. Yet, at the same time, I’m finding that the fringes of suburbia is where the non-white folk reside. In our area, we have some very large pockets of Hispanic folks that we need to forge friendships with. Again, not for diversity sake but because that’s what the kingdom of God is all about. We have so much to learn from each other. The thing with suburbia is, diversity is available, but its harder to come by and harder to find and a lot, lot, lot less natural. It’s just not going to happen by accident. Of course, I don’t think we should stop planting in suburbia (not implying that you are suggesting that) but we have to be thinking critically about this if that is where we are.