DISSONANT ADAPTERS & The Tanning of America. Is a New Blended Culture Emerging?

by Bob Whitesel, Feb. 1, 2015.

Author Steve Stoute in his book The Tanning of America (2011) points out a new culture is emerging in America where “brown, black and white mixed together makes tan” (quote by Adrienne Samuels Gibbs, “Steve Stoute’s New World Order.” Ebony Magazine, Dec. 2011 – Jan. 2012, p. 87 – attached below).  Stoute argues (see the attached article in Ebony Magazine for an overview) that there is arising a mixed Tan Culture among the Millennial Generation that does not see divisions based upon skin color.

I ask my students to read the article and tell me if you agree with Stoute, that a new culture is emerging.  And then I ask students to …

1) Suggest what the church should do about this.

2) Discuss briefly why they think everyone will become part of this tan culture or if some people will remain “dissonant adapters.”

To understand “dissonant adapters” read the paragraph below excerpted from Bob Whitesel (The healthy Church: Practical Ways to Strengthen a Church’s Heart, The Wesleyan Publishing House, 2013, pp. 69-70).

“People from emerging cultures usually adapt to the dominant culture in one of three ways.”

Consonant adapters are people from an emerging culture who adapt almost entirely to the dominant culture. Over time they will mirror the dominant culture in behavior, ideas and products. Thus, they will usually be drawn to a church that reflects the dominant culture.

Selective adapters adapt to some parts of a dominant culture, but reject other aspects. They want to preserve their cultural heritage, but will compromise in most areas to preserve harmony.(1) They can be drawn to the Blended Model because it still celebrates to a degree their culture.

Dissonant adapters fight to preserve their culture in the face of a dominant culture’s influence. (2) Dissonant adapters may find the blended format of the Blended Church as too inauthentic and disingenuous to their strongly held cultural traditions.”

(1) Alejandro Portes and Ruben G. Rumbaut in Immigrant American: A Portrait (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996). They suggest that organizations comprised of selective adapters will be a more harmonious organization.
(2) Ruben G. Rumbaut, “Acculturation, Discrimination, and Ethnic Identity Among Children of Immigrants,” in Discovering Successful Pathways in Children’s Development: Mixed Methods in the Study of Childhood and Family Life, Thomas S. Weisner ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), Charles Kraft, Christianity in Culture: A Study of Dynamic Biblical Theologizing in Cross-Cultural Perspective (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1979), p. 113.

ARTICLE Steve Stoute Tanning of America

See also on ChurchHealth.wiki info on the related study of “ethnic consciousness” by Tetsunao Yamamori, who created an “Ethnic Consciousness Scale” to measure the degree to which a person identifies with a specific culture. Tetsunao Yamamori’s article on ethnic consciousness and titled, “How to reach a new culture in your community” can be found online and in Win Arn et al., The Pastor’s Church Growth Handbook (1979), pp. 171-181.

MULTICULTURAL & Is a Blended Church Multicultural? It Depends on Several Things #HealthyChurchBook

by Bob Whitesel, 10/20/14

A student once shared about a church that advocated fostering a multicultural church by blending the different styles of ethnic/cultural diversity into one “blended” worship service.  The student noted, “At the time of the writing of the book (David Anderson, Multicultural Ministry 2004), ‘Bridgeway Church is 55 to 60 percent African-American, 13 percent Asian, Latino or other ethnicities, and 27 to 30 percent Caucasian.’ (Anderson, 2004)  His church does not share their facilities with other ethnicities, they integrate the services.”

I responded that when a church has a “blended” multi-ethnic worship service, that church is sometimes not regarded as a multi-cultural church, for it is often made up of a culture of people who have come to like multiple ethnic elements.  Such individuals are usually more affluent, more educated and more well traveled that other people of their culture.  Thus, anthropologists could say that technically Bridgeway is a mono-cultural church; comprised of people from different ethnicities who like the blending of ethnicities (which then becomes a new culture.).

Attached is my research on the “Five Types of Multi-cultural Churches” from The Healthy Church: Practical Ways to Strengthen a Church’s Health, (2013, pp. 55-79).

Here is the quote that begins the chapter:

We do not want the westernization of the universal Church. On the other hand we don’t want the ecumenical cooks to throw all the cultural traditions on which they can lay their hands into one bowl and stir them to a hash of indeterminate colour. – John V. Taylor, statesman, Africanist and Bishop of Winchester [i]

[i] John V. Taylor, “Cultural Ecumenism,” Church Missionary Society Newsletter, Nov. 1974, p. 3, see also John V. Taylor, The Theological Basis of Interfaith Dialogue, in Faith Meets Faith, ed. Gerald M. Anderson and Thomas F. Stansky, Mission Trends, no. 5 (New York: Paulist Press, 1981), pp. 93ff.

BOOK EXCERPT MULTICULTURAL MODELS from Whitesel’s Healthy Church

WORSHIP SERVICES & How to Settle Worship Wars: For Churches Both Under (& Over) 100 Attendees #HouseDividedBook

by Bob Whitesel, 10/13/14

Many of our conflict-orientated forces arise from differences over worship. And, though differences over worship have their genesis in cultural differences (and thus life-cycles too) it may be important here for me to describe some of the tools you can use to settle worship conflict.

First of all, conflict over worship has to do with cultural preferences. There is nothing wrong with that. Each generational culture has been brought up in a different milieu.

The Builder Generation (69+ in 2014) was raised upon great hymns of the faith sang in the sanctuary. Popular tunes with hand-clapping were only sung at camp meetings (but notice most of the Builders got saved at camp meetings 🙂

The Boomers (50-68 in 2014) and Leading Edge Gen. X (40-49) grew up in a media explosion, where small transistor radios and car radios meant they were exposed to rhythm/blues music (i.e. rock and roll) every where they went. They came to hear this music as the soundtrack of their lives. Not surprisingly it became the soundtrack for their worship too.

Post-modern Xers (31-39 in 2014) and Yers (12-30) have grown up in an increasingly distrustful world, and their music has a much more plaintive and lamentive feel. This often bothers the Boomers who are much more upbeat and positive in their music (see Whitesel, 2007, p. 59).

Which is useful? They all are, but in different circumstances.

And thus many of you have tried to start new services. Dr. Chip Arn has a great book on this called How To Start a New Service (1997) and it is required in my elective course MIN558: Building a Multi-Generational Church. And, I have addressed how to use his book and modified his steps to starting a new service in my book A House Divided, the chapter titled “Worship in a Multi-generational Format.” Here is a brief overview of what you can do to settle worship wars.

If you are running 100+ attendees.

1. Find a time to start a new service that is convenient for the cultural generation you are reaching out to (I have given four charts on when Builders, Boomers and Xers like to go to church in A House Divided, pp. 173-177).

2. You ask 50 people in the church to sign a “covenant agreement” to change their worship time, and come to this new service for one year. At the end of this year, they either replace themselves with someone they’ve invited, or they re-up for another year. The reason you need 50 is because worship does not usually break out in a worship encounter unless there are 35+ people there. This has to do with anonymity and community. To get 35+ each weekend, you need to have 50 people committed to this new worship encounter; and because some will be gone each week, a net 35+ usually results.

3. You develop small groups during this time from the 50 people. The small groups are the discipleship environments for this new worship encounter. Some groups may be Bible-studies, etc., but others will be worship teams, greeters, etc. (creating groups that you need to help you organize the new encounter, but always ensure they practice all three elements of a healthy small group: UP-IN-OUT, see Cure for the Common Church, 2011).

4. You have the small groups meet for 2-6 months, before you launch your worship encounter.

5. Have new small groups ready at the worship encounter launch, for newcomers. The number of new small groups available should be 1-2 small groups for each 50 people who have committed to the new encounter.

However, if you are running under 100 attendees, things change.

If you start a new worship encounter you will usually have too few people coming to it (after all, the people coming to your church already like the times you have, and they are not likely to attend a new time). The best thing to do of you have less than 100 regular attendees, is the following:

1. Do not have a blended service (where you blend throughout the encounter) but rather have a “compartmentalized worship encounter” where you put the traditional songs/liturgy/elements at the beginning, then the sermon next, and then modern music at the end. You tell the traditionalists that they can go after the sermon, and even have a benediction before they leave. You have thus compromised, giving any who prefer their traditional music a traditional service. But, those who want to can stay around for the contemporary music “After-Glow.” This is 15-20 minutes of contemporary worship. You have thus “compartmentalized” rather than “blended” your worship service. And, each generation can worship without being blind-sided by a change in cultural music. This gives the traditionalist who do not care for contemporary music a chance to leave. In addition, the contemporary people can come late to the service of they want and stay longer. In essence, two worship services are emerging, with a common sermon in between. (You can instead do a contemporary music “Pre-Glow” before the service if that suits your church better. But, then you may wind up with an early second service that is contemporary, and younger generations tend to prefer later morning encounters.)

2. You allow this After-Glow (or Pre-Glow) to develop until you have 30-40 people staying for After-Glow. Then, once you have a total of 100 at the whole worship encounter, your start with Step 2 above.

I have used this with dozens of churches and it allows compromise, and the eventual growth of a new cultural worship encounter in a unifying manner (this process is spelled out more in A House Divided, 2000).

MULTICULTURAL & Neighborhood Change

How a Church Changed to Match Its Neighborhood
http://leadnet.org/how-a-church-changed-to-match-its-neighborhood/

“Patrick is seeing his dream come true at River Pointe, a multisite church of 5,000 people located in one of the most ethnically diverse counties (Fort Bend) in the United States.

But River Pointe is in the small minority of U.S. churches—only 8 percent—that are considered multiethnic (although the larger the attendance, the more multiethnic it is likely to be, according to research by Michael Emerson). While most churches in America are comprised of 80% of people being from one race, only 68% of River Pointe is white and the rest is a multiethnic mix.

‘People have said that our county is what America will look like in 50 years—or less,’ says Patrick. ‘The church is going to have to figure out how to reach a population that looks like that. And it’s not just predominantly white churches that need this transition’.”