Challenges in the Ongoing Life of a Multiethnic Church

Workshop Outline

  1. Defining the multiethnic church
  2. The evolution of the multiethnic church: invisible, idealized, interrogated, re-imagined
    1. See this article (part one and part two) for more
  3. Interrogating the multiethnic church
    1. Newly awakened to reconciliation and justice but without spiritual formation
    2. Racial justice viewed through partisan lenses
    3. Confusion on the goal
    4. Conforming to cultural whiteness
  4. Re-imagining the multiethnic church
    1. Importance of diverse (especially Black) leadership
    2. Importance of place/community and how you see yourself in relationship to it
    3. The formational potential of creation/place
    4. Belonging to the “big-C” multiethnic church; the role for mono-ethnic churches
      1. How is reconciliation being demonstrated?
      2. How are reconciled disciples being made?
      3. How is the racial hierarchy being disturbed?

Facilitators

Pastors Michelle Dodson and David Swanson of New Community Covenant Church

Michelle is a Doctoral Candidate at Loyola University where she is completing a Ph.D. in Sociology of Religion; her focus is on multiracial congregations. She is a Teaching Fellow at North Park Theological Seminary. Pastor Michelle has been dedicated to the work of racial reconciliation for nearly two decades and has helped to plant two intentionally multiracial churches in Chicago. She and her husband Karlos have been married since 2003 and are the proud parents of two amazing daughters.

David and Maggie have been married since 1999. They are the parents of two wonderful sons. David is passionate about racial justice and reconciliation within the Body of Christ and regularly writes and speaks about these and similar topics. He is Ordained to Word and Sacrament with the Evangelical Covenant Church.

Resources