I am grateful that I get to raise my kids in a multicultural church. It is a blessing I take for granted too often. There are many benefits to having your children grow up in a multicultural body of believer. Below are a few that I have been thinking about recently.
Stereotypes get broken down. When you have friends that come from a variety of backgrounds and cultures stereotypes are broken down by your learnings from each friend as an individual.
Cultural appreciation. Growing up with other cultures allows you to better understand other cultures and benefit from their unique perspectives on life and faith. You learn to appreciate each culture for the uniqueness and what they bring to your community.
God gets seen from different perspectives. We often don’t realize how much culture influences our Christian life until we step outside of our culture and view God from a different prospect. As we do this, some of things we hold most sacred melt away into something that was more culture and less spiritual.
The Gospel fits their world. If the culture of our children’s church world doesn’t match the culture of the rest of their life there is disconnect between the gospel and their life experience. If your church is monocultural in a diverse world the unintended, unspoken message to our children is that the gospel isn’t for all, it’s for us.
Their Chruch looks like the Church we see in the book of Acts and Revelation.
Acts 2 (NLT) “These people are all from Galilee, 8 and yet we hear them speaking in our own native languages! 9 Here we are—Parthians, Medes, Elamites, people from Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, the province of Asia, 10 Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, and the areas of Libya around Cyrene, visitors from Rome 11 (both Jews and converts to Judaism), Cretans, and Arabs. And we all hear these people speaking in our own languages about the wonderful things God has done!”… 41 Those who believed what Peter said were baptized and added to the church that day—about 3,000 in all.
Revelation 7” (NLT)9 After this I saw a vast crowd, too great to count, from every nation and tribe and people and language, standing in front of the throne and before the Lamb. They were clothed in white robes and held palm branches in their hands.
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