A Multicultural Community

Acts 11:19–26 NIV

19 Now those who had been scattered by the persecution that broke out when Stephen was killed traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch, spreading the word only among Jews. 20 Some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks also, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus. 21 The Lord’s hand was with them, and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord. 22 News of this reached the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. 23 When he arrived and saw what the grace of God had done, he was glad and encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts. 24 He was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith, and a great number of people were brought to the Lord. 25 Then Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, 26 and when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. So for a whole year Barnabas and Saul met with the church and taught great numbers of people. The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch.

Acts 13:1 NIV

1 Now in the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen (who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch) and Saul.

Acts 13

Simeon the Black - African

Lucius, North African

Manean....possibly a slave of Herod’s father

Saul of Tarsus, Asia Minor.....land bridge to Europe

Barnabus, from Cyprus....

First large city centre church that we know about, had a five person pastoral team from 3 different continents.

If you have been part of our church community for the last decade or so, you will know that the theme of multicultural church has been in quite a number of sermons. In fact we’ve had entire sermon series on the church as a multiethnic, multilingual, gathering of believers from diverse range of backgrounds.

Over a decade ago we discerned this as another of our four ministry priorities, and since that time we have had numerous sermons, workshops, and worship services built around that theme.

Here is the Ministry Priority that we came up with:

As a tangible display of God’s power to bring unity, we seek to express the rich diversity of God’s family.

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And you know, I think it’s fair to say that of the four ministry priorities that we identified at that time, this may be the one that we have seen the fruit of most vividly. The view from here today, looks quite different than it did in 2010.

I remember the Sunday morning service when we were installing our new elders and deacons, and on that particular Sunday one of the elders being installed and one of the deacons were both part of our international student ministry, and both had come to know Christ as students…one was born in South Korea, the other in China....just like in Acts chapter 13:1, the early church in Anioch had church leaders from a variety of ethnicities and backgrounds....we witnessed that same shift happening in our own church.

I remember another Sunday morning, maybe 4 or 5 years ago, when as the children came to the front for prayer, about 10-15 of them just before they were to leave for Sunday School, there were no Caucasian children that day. When I first came in 2009, some Sundays it was the opposite when there were only Caucasian children.

Of the four ministry priorities that we identified at that time, this may be the one that we have seen the fruit of most vividly. The view from here today, looks quite different than it did in 2010.

And you know what struck me this week, having just preached on our church being a Hospitable community last Sunday? Growing into a multilingual, multi-ethnic, multicultural community depends a great deal on hospitality.... THe core virtue of hospitality is essential for a church that wishes to welcome people from a diversity of backgrounds and then help them flourish in the community that we have welcomed them into.

I offer those comments as brief opening remarks and reflections. What I’d like to do this morning is different than my more “teaching” style sermon. I’d like to tell a story....not any old story but the story of this congregation, through the lens, if I can put it that way, through the lens of Acts 11 in particular, but also partly Acts 13, as well as a few other passages.

So, let’s begin...

I wonder what it might sound like to tell the story of our congregation, NWCRC, from the perspective of God’s overaching story. The book of Acts tells the story of the early church from God’s perspective....God doing this or doing that… what might that sound like for our congregation’s story?

You know as I read some key passages in the book of Acts that describe how the Holy Spirit compelled the early church to be part of God’s mission to bring the message of Jesus Christ to all the nations, I can’t help but think of verses like Acts 8:1

Acts 8:1 NIV

1 And Saul approved of their killing him. On that day a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria.

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God’s people were facing significant opposition and hardship and he used that hardship to scatter them to distant places so that their lives would interact with new communities of people and they could share the love of Christ. It’s mentioned again in Acts 11:19-21

Acts 11:19–21 NIV

19 Now those who had been scattered by the persecution that broke out when Stephen was killed traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch, spreading the word only among Jews. 20 Some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks also, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus. 21 The Lord’s hand was with them, and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord.

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…and here we notice how God scattered some in the church as far as Antioch…what the ancients called the Queen city of the East....because it was such a cosmopolitan city made up of Greeks, Jews, Latins, and orientals from Persia, India and even China. God scatters them there and Luke tells us they went there spreading word only to the JEWS.... but some.... began to speak to Greeks also.... and we read “the Lord’s hand was with them and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord.”

How many times throughout history hasn’t God scattered his people so that they could continue his work of bringing the good news of Jesus Christ?

I’m thinking about what God did among some of the Dutch following the second world war. The war had a significant impact on the Netherlands… there was a housing shortage… work was hard to find…the country had to rebuild, some cities were badly destroyed by bombing, so the Lord scattered many of them. In the later 1940’s and early 1950’s many were scattered by God to countries like Australia, NZ, some to the US, but a good many of them came to Canada.

Why was Canada an attractive option to so many Dutch? Well, God had worked it out that the Canadian army played an essential role in liberating the Netherlands from Nazi occupation at the conclusion of the War. And during the War, God stirred in the heart of the Canadian government to welcome a part of the Dutch Royal family to Ottawa to flee German occupation. Queen Wilhelmina fled to England, but her daughter, Princess Julianna, the next in line to the throne, and her young family fled to Canada. They stayed in Canada for about 4 years and in 1943, they received a new baby girl into the family. The Canadian governement declared that the birthing room in the Ottawa Civic Hospital was Dutch soil so that little Princess Margriet could be born a Dutch citizen. To this day every Spring Ottawa is overflowing with tulips because each year the Dutch governments sends thousands of them as a thankyou to Canada.

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So the Lord had prepared the way by making Canada an attractive option for many of the Dutch who had been scattered after the Second World War.

And the Lord caused a number of them to settle in Vancouver.

Most of the scattered Dutch that came to Vancouver were drawn to its more moderate climate, the beauty of the mountains was a wonderful contrast to their flat homeland, but many especially liked the fertile soil of the Fraser River delta…after all quite a few of them were farmers. And most of them the Lord sent with a deep conviction that all of life came under the Lordship of Jesus Christ, so they began churches, and schools, as well as labour and political associations.

Now the Lord God knew that Vancouver was a coastal city, one day soon it would become a gateway to the East. It would become of the home of many Asians, East-Indians, and eventually Africans, Arabs, and Persians.

A good sized group of those Dutch that had been scattered by the Lord to Vancouver, settled in Burnaby- New Westminster. A good number of them settled in a region of New Westminster called Queensborough. It was flat like Holland, had some canals, a dike, and lots of fertile soil…it felt a little bit like home!

And in the same way that those first Jews who had been scattered to Antioch, connected with and preached only to Jews, these first Dutch really ministered to the Dutch! In fact, in those early years, the church that they had established, NWCRC, was exclusively Dutch [Dutch Flag]. (In those early years there also came one German family, but they had come from a German town that was so close to the Dutch border, they easily fit in!)

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That New Westminster congregation was initially formed by a Dutch American reaching out to Dutch immigrants. And that church kept reaching more Dutch families. They started a school for all their Dutch born and newly born children. They had Dutch worship services for decades, had various Dutch socials, and as more and more Dutch came they played lots of Dutch bingo! (ask someone after the service what that is)

Those early years were difficult years for many of these folks that the Lord had scattered to come here. Language barriers were real. Money was tight, well paying jobs were are to come by. In fact I heard a story from one of the daughters of those first immigrants about her dad. For years her dad wondered why the Lord led him to Canada. He never really found a job that was meaningful for him or paid well. In those first years one day he spent the whole day walking along Hastings street from North Burnaby to Vancouver. His family thought he was gone for the day looking for a job. Years later he told his family that he hadn’t been looking for a job; he had spent the whole day crying as he walked, because he didn’t have job and he didn’t know why God brought him here. For many of these early immigrants, times were tough!

But eventually, as the Lord helped these Dutch get more settled in this Gateway to the East city of Vancouver, God raised up evangelists, and certain types of deacons. The Holy Spirit moved in the hearts of some of those New West members to reach out to seafarers. We lived near a seaport after all. Seamen were coming from all over the world to our city every week. People from this congregation would meet them at the port, take them to stores, invite them to their homes and to our church. The Holy Spirit knew many of these Dutch people were sea people themselves, so he led them to Vancouver to connect with seafarers from around the world. And eventually the Ministry to Seafarers was started and it continues to this day!

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In the same way that the Holy Spirit raised up people from Cyprus and Cyrene to go to Antioch and preach to Greeks, God moved in the hearts of some New West CRC folks to more intentionally reach out to non-Dutch folks. The seafarers were already mentioned, some reached out to neighborhood children for VBS and Sunday school, but God raised up a few men who felt deeply convicted to support refugees. A large group of refugee, asylum seekers called “the Boat People” came to our shores and these men mobilized many families in the congregation to sponsor them and help them get settled. The nations were coming to our doorstep and God had brought these Dutch immigrants year decades earlier, to help them, to welcome them. This congregation sponsor well over a thousand people over a couple of decades. They even helped plant a Vietnamese congregation so that these refugees could come to know the Lord Jesus and worship him together with others in their mother tongue.

When the Lord planted this Dutch immigrant congregation in Burnaby, the neighborhood was almost exclusively made up of Canadians and European immigrants. In fact many of the Dutch families lived all around the neighborhood of the church so that their kids could be close to JKCS. But by the 1990’s the congregation and the neighborhood was changing. Dutch immigration had stopped decades earlier. And the children of these large Dutch families in the church were moving away, further into the Fraser Valley. Families were getting smaller…growth had slowed down.

And the neighborhood was changing. Folks from Hong Kong and other parts of Asia, as well as East-Indian families were settling in the neighborhood.

The congregation continued to prayerfully discern how God was calling them to engage with their neighborhood. For close to 20 years each Sunday they offered a more contemporary style seeker friendly service, which the Lord blessed. A significant woman’s outreach called Coffee Break connected with women in the community. Some folks from different ethnicities joined but still the congregation remained mostly white.

In the years 2008 and 2009 the congregation hired three new pastoral staff. They were all white but each sensed a call from the Lord to help the congregation reflect the ethnic diversity of the surrounding community. They began praying for a season when more and more families in the church would be from the surrounding community and live in the neighborhood,like the previous generations before.

At that same time the Lord brought a Korean family to our church who moved here from India. God had profoundly touched this man when he was an international student in London England, and he came to our congregation with the sincere desire to see our congregation show loving and gracious hospitality to international students and professors. Soon a new ministry was born called MOSAIC.

Those students loved to hear stories from the senior Dutch members of the church telling about immigration and about their faith journey. Professors and students from a variety of countries came to our church, met Jesus Christ, were baptized, and became members of the church or went back to their home countries as witnesses of Christ.

Eventually a pastor born in South Korea was hired. Initally he came to lead the ministry to international students, but soon his job expanded to include helping the congregation more intentionally embrace a multiethnic identity.

The Lord heard the prayers of the congregation. The Lord began to help this congregation welcome families who were recent immigrants to Canada. Their experience of being immigrants 70 years ago was being used to help new families who were coming from a variety of different countries.

One member said....I’ve lived in the same house in the neighborhood of the church for about 40 years… I’ve always sensed the Lord’s call to love my neighbors....that’s never gone away.... but my neighbors have changed....I want to keep loving the neighbors God has put around me.

And that’s what this congregation is doing…loving the neighbors that God has put around us.

Once during a particular sermon series on God’s ethnically diverse family, the congregation hung flags in the sanctuary represent the birthplaces of all the congregations members as well as countries from which refugees were sponsored. From ONE nationality, 71 years ago, to TWENTY FIVE nationalities today.

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In their most recent Discipleship 101 course, they call it ALPHA, there are 7 participants. But even in this small group of participants 5 different nationalities represented (Iran, Malaysia, China, Congo, and Canada).

The congregation has a paid staff of 5, pastors, an administrator, and a custodian, but even among the staff we find a Canadian, some South Koreans, one from Hong Kong and one from Indonesia.

And today among the officebearers of the congregation, elders and deacons appointed to serve in the leadership body of the church a diversity of backgrounds are represented: Canada, Iran, Egypt, Singapore, China, Korea, Germany, Hong Kong, India and the Netherlands.

It is true that differences of language and culture do bring some challenges. But more recently the congregation has hosted curated conversations on culture called Convivencia, which is Spanish for “living together”, in which they name and talk about those challenges.

The early church had some of those cultural challenges too. In Acts 6 the Greek speaking Jews complained against that Hebrew speaking Jews that their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food. In some sense this was a language challenge. So what did the church do? They appointed a group of seven deacons, a bunch of whom, we can tell by their names, were Greeks!

Language challenges have been there for the New West congregation as well. About 8 years ago a Spanish speaking pastor at the time, offered a prayer during the worship service in Spanish. And after the prayer was finished, an older Dutch born members stood up and said, “Can you please repeat that prayer in English?!!” That experience was an awkward but important conversation starter.

So how does this church navigate these language challenges? Truth is, that’s still an ongoing conversation. Occasionally songs are sung in different languages, or prayers offered, very occasionally, whole services are translated.

Remembering the sermon on hospitality, where hospitality is all about making room for others and then helping them to flourish in the room you have made.... Is allowing the expression of diverse languages a way of helping others to flourish in the room you have made? It’s true hospitality is essential in helping a congregation embrace diversity.

But maybe there is something more. One member shared this about listening to others sing a verse or a song in a language that they don’t understand: “I think about the picture in Rev. 7 of all tribes and languages and nations in worship before the throne of God. I notice how I’m experiencing just a glimpse of that picture here and now. I listen to my brothers and sisters worshiping God from their heart knowing that because God is pleased, I am blessed. I am blessed because I get to listen in on the worship of how my brothers and sisters in far away places; because some of them are here, with us, I get to listen in on the broad expression of Christian worship and know these folks are part of my family! The family of God!

You know as God scattered those Dutch immgrants some 70 years ago, he did so with a purpose. Their deep conviction that they were to raise their children as part of God’s covenant family motivated them to establish a Christian school. At one time it was exclusively Dutch, now it is a school made up of more than 30 nationalities.

God scattered them so that in time they would reach out to seafarers, refugees, international students, and new immigrants......so that as their neighborhood changed, their congregation would more and more become a tangible display community, a kind of signpost that pointed towards the beautiful diversity of God’s Global family. Just over 10 years ago the community of Edmonds in East Burnaby was described by the Vancouver Sun and one of the most ethnically diverse neighbohoods in all of Canada. In fact more recently its been reported that only 47 % of the Vancouver population is Caucasian....less than half.

God scattered some of those Dutch folks long ago so he could use them to prepare his church to more and more reach the growing ethnic minority communities that are present in our city.... a gateway city.... a city where the nations of the world are living together.... not unlike the city of Antioch in Paul’s day.

We are reminded of how God’s sovereign hand is at work in history, even moving populations of people around the earth...

Acts 17:26–27 NIV

26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.

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“Altar call....... will you reach out and find him......God loves you.....he has come long ago in the person of Jesus to forgive your sin and call you into relationship with Him.... His Spirit remains with us and he is here right now....