HUP & Mark DeYmaz on Why McGavran Recommended Heterogeneous Churches

by Mark DeYmaz, Mosiax Conference at Exponential East, 4/25/17.

Donald McGavran suggested that the healthy church was heterogeneous, but with homogeneous cells (or sub congregations).  But the homogeneous unit principle (HUP) which is defined that people “like to become Christians without crossing racial, linguistic or class barriers,” gave the majority church in America a theological rationale to create churches monocultural churches.  Donald McGavran didn’t support this and even warned that focusing on one culture can make the church racist.

(On his website, Mark continues)

What may surprise you, however, is what Donald McGavran himself had to say about the HUP: “It is primarily a missionary and an evangelistic principle.” And in an apparently prophetic admonition, McGavran also warned that with any misunderstanding or application of the HUP, “there is a danger that congregations…become exclusive, arrogant, and racist. That danger must be resolutely combated.” Such quotes from within the context of his life and ministry clearly reveal McGavran’s understanding of the HUP: what it is and what it is not. More importantly, McGavran’s words reveal his expectation that a healthy local church will reflect God’s heart for all people in ways that go beyond mere mission statements and the race and class distinctions of this world that so often and otherwise divide.

In my new highly innovative eBook, Should Pastors Accept or Reject the Homogeneous Unit Principle?, you will learn that the HUP was never intended by McGavran as a strategy for drawing more believers into church or for growing a church in the sense of how most are taught to think of it today. Rather, the HUP was originally mined and refined as “a strategy to reach unbelievers—a missionary principle” according to Donald McGavran, himself. Yet from its introduction in the United States, the HUP has played right into our natural, all-too-American, desire to become real big, real fast: and it works. In other words, to grow a big church, you simply target a specific people group: give them the music they want, the facilities they desire, in the neighborhoods where they live, and “they” will come…whoever “they” are.

Here is Mark’s diagram.  The “umbrella” at the top represents the heterogeneous church as an organization.  The lines and circles represent “cells” (or I would call larger cells = sub-congregations) of different cultures that are part of the same church.

Read more about DeYmaz’s rediscovery of the original intent of the HUP here: http://www.markdeymaz.com/glue/2011/08/should-pastors-accept-or-reject-the-hup.html

MULTICULTURAL & Observations by Daniel Im, teaching pastor of The Fellowship, Nashville

Daniel Im, a teaching pastor at The Fellowship a multisite church in Nashville, shared some interesting observations at the Mosiax Pre-conference at Exponential East today. Here are some of the take-aways.

Cultural comfort develops in our childhood.  “If your parents had a dog when you were young, you probably want a dog when you enter adulthood. The same is mostly true for cats.”

Is there a place in America for a mono-ethnic Asian church? “There is a lot of grey area around this for immigrant groups.  If it is language-based, then probably yes. But, maybe not for second-generation churches… So, what if we partnered and shared our facilities with immigrant churches and helped disciple the second generation?”  This would be what I have described as a Multicultural Alliance Model where the church assets are shared.  Read more about this here … http://intercultural.church/five-types-of-multicultural-churches/

An Example of a Multicultural Alliance Model:  “We had a first generation Arabic congregation in our church.  They didn’t have much finances, so with our support of giving them their space free, they could concentrate on reaching their culture.  They told us, ‘We don’t want to be an independent church.  We would rather not do the organizational piece’.”

For more on Daniel and his ministry, see … https://www.danielim.com

 

CHURCH PLANTING INTERNALLY & A Student Responds: If They Invested Church Planting Money In Us … We’d Be Growing Too!

by Bob Whitesel, 5/19/15.

A student once shared how he felt offended by the cold shoulder he received from pastors of nearby churches of the same denomination, when he went to raise money for a church plant.  He said, “When I visited with local church pastors to introduce myself and share my vision, almost immediately I sensed these pastor’s turn their focus on (their)self by their behaviors (the cold shoulder kind of treatment)…We heard statements like, ‘If they invested that kind of money in our established churches we would be growing too’.”

I responded with the following:

Let me explain what I see from the other side of the fence 🙂  And, please hear me on this, I do not feel this is often the fault of these pastors.  They are laboring for years in the field, and they need help. Then the denomination plants a church of the same denomination nearby.  This can overnight, decimate the older church’s long hard work.  That is what they fear.  They fear the sense of abandonment they see in the eyes of dear long-suffering and long-working saints, who are now eclipsed by a denomination that gives up on them.

I have worked with hundreds of these aging congregations, and many, many have life in them.  They just need the right leader to revise them.  One of my friends took a dying church in Tipp City Ohio with 40 people and grew it to a mega-church.

So, I do not doubt they have said these hurting things to you and others.  But, I don’t feel the problem is them … but the problem is our strategy.  In the business world we would never start a competing organization when we already have a product in that market that is on life-support.  It takes more money (and work) to start a new product line (or church plant) that to revitalize an aging one (aging churches have experienced leaders, assets, facilities, social capital, etc.).

But, granted planting a church is faster, for you don’t have baggage to deal with.  But in the process we jettison many senior saints who have labored for years in the field, robbing them of some steadfastness in their latter years.

I know you are a sharp student, and a gifted leader.  And, I ask you to look beyond those who have hurt you to those senior saints in these congregations that are finding their churches undercut and left behind.  They have great resident power, if only we will work with them too.

Now, I’m not suggesting we don’t do external plants.  I think we should!  But, we also must do internal plants.  Both are needed for healthy ministry.  Resentment only comes when one receives emphasis more than the other.

PLANTING & Soong-Chan Rah Challenges Urban Church Planters to Find a Non-white Mentor

Commentary by Dr. Whitesel,: “Soong-Chan Rah is a friend and colleague, who has important advice for church planters. Citing Walter Brueggemann, he points out that churches which sponsor planting often operate under the context of ‘celebration (those who already have good things)’ as opposed to those in urban areas who who ‘have little and operate under a context of suffering.’ To demonstrate ways to offset cultural myopia I describe a new model in my book The Healthy Church” called ‘The Multicultural Alliance Church’.”

By Richmond Williams, 07/13/11

Soong-Chan Rah challenged a General Assembly audience to break free from stagnation and captivity and recognize the “changing face of Christianity” in Tuesday’s “Be The Change” lecture at the General Assembly.

Rah, a professor of church growth and evangelism at North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago, pointed to dramatic demographic shifts and changes in American culture over the past 50 years to demonstrate that diversity is no longer a matter of choice. In 1950, Rah said, the “typical face of a Christian” was a white male from an affluent metropolitan suburb, but today’s Christian is likely to be a peasant in Nigeria, a teenager in Mexico City or a woman in South Korea.

Rah cited statistics illustrating a change from 1900, when more than 80% of Christians in the world were in Europe and North America, to a projected 29% on those same continents in 2050. America has seen similar shifts, Rah said, since the 1965 passage of the Immigration Reform Act. These trends are accelerated in the church, marking “one of the first times church is ahead of society.”

Christianity has an advantage over other large religions like Islam, he said, because of its adaptability to new cultural contexts, including language translations of sacred texts.

At the same time, mainline Christian denominations that are historically European and predominately white – such as the Lutheran and Episcopal traditions — are the ones facing sharp declines. Baptists and Pentecostals, by contrast, have been able to ride waves of the new multi-ethnic reality.

Energized, Rah painted a picture of a church at a crossroads – one that faces the “danger of becoming imprisoned by white Western culture, which has been more influential than the Bible itself,” citing historical individualism, materialism and racism.

Outlining Walter Brueggemann’s work, Rah contrasted those who operate under a context of celebration (typically those who already have good things) as opposed to those who have little and operate under a context of suffering.

Congregations who celebrate tend to focus on stewardship and being thankful to God, Rah said. They also prefer the status quo and think heaven is “more of the good things they already have.” Those who operate under the lens of suffering talk about survival and injustice, and hope heaven will be the opposite of their lives on earth.

Rather than operating under one of these distinct contexts, Rah went on, the church should find a way to learn from each context. He warned against exceptionalism and tokenism, which does not allow room to learn from those operating under the context of suffering.

“If you give someone a seat at the table and then expect them to act white,” Rah said, “that’s tokenism. If you give me a seat at the table, you’d better be ready to change your ways. Can you learn as much from me as I’ve had to learn from you?”

In closing, he challenged all Disciples to find at least one non-white mentor by the end of 2011, even if they started with just a book by a non-white author.

“If you are a missionary preparing to go overseas and you’ve never had a non-white mentor,” Rah said, “you are not a missionary, you are a colonialist.”

Read more at … http://disciples.org/general-assembly/soong-chan-rah-challenges-disciples-to-learn-from-the-changing-face-of-christianity/