Kay I am assuming that you ae speaking for yourself and not every one else. We are a predominantly white community that doesn't stop other races from worshipping with us we have many different colored people that join us at church, They are welcome and very active members of our congregation.

Sorry musicsooths, I was referring to the churches I'm familiar with in my own small town, and those I have been familiar with in other places. 

Maybe it starts with the pastor .... with a certain mentality

If you let one in then you have to let all in ....

here is a scenario

you're a dashing middle aged pastor working in a medium sized community

your congregation is at least 3 generations thick and you have been there for at least 20 or more years

life is good ........your members are very easy to get along with................. some of them give you personal notes of thanks , others bring fresh veggies from their home gardens ... they love your quaint little sermons and your dreamy shimmering blue eyes

you get a letter from the mother church asking you to reach out to a new immigrant community ...... so you decide to have a little cultural get to know each other ...... and several families show up

you feel like you've opened up a can of worms you have no way to relate to these people

your upper middle class life is no match for their lives, being terrorized by some despot or eating mudcakes as a child or having cattle prods attached to your weenie during the civil war ....

your best experience with other cultures is when your parents hired some dude called Pablo to build a deck at your house .......

your new members are not passive, since they are part of "The Struggle" they are very vocal and are not impressed by your quaint sermons , and shimmering blue eyes . you feel over matched , exposed , even the members of your old congregation are starting to wonder.

pretty soon your superiors start getting complaints from the new members ...... that they want their own pastor from their own cultural background who can understand their trials and tribulations .....

to avoid a bigger can of worms the mother church decides to give in to their demands and they get a pastor that they like and you get banished to some quaint fishing town ......

better to play it safe .....

We have several Korean families at my church. From my own experience, however, many Koreans prefer to worship at Korean churches. While I go to a multi-ethnic Baptist church, my wife attends a Korean Presbyterian one.

I was not aware the GLBT community was learning a new language.

Are you proposing they start their own churches...?

There are very few churches in my area that have mixed race congregations.  The ones that do tend to be Baptist and Catholic.  Most of the United and Anglican Churches are mostly if not exclusively white.  That's on the Dartmouth side, I'm not sure about Halifax.

Most churches represent the context they find themselves in - one congregation had several native canadians- current has asian - the larger city one had blacks - in prop to the community and history.

 match3frog said:

"At our church we are colour blind."

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I don't know who you are match3frog, but in the spirit of engaging with each other critically and in love I will say that this statement is of deep concern.  I hope you aren't colour blind at your church.  Being colour blind is a serious problem in churches.  Those who are colour blind refuse to acknowledge the cultures of others and that we're not all white.  

Somebody being "colour blind" would make me question their integrity.

 No accusation is being made here.  I'm sorry you feel accused.

In many congregations I have been in there is no truth to the statement that "all have equal opportunities in the church regardless of race" because in mainline congregations it is rare that worship and small groups are based on non-white cultural norms.

Unless, of course you include denominations like the African Methodist Episcopal Church, African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, British Methodist Episcopal Church, National Baptist Convention, the Church of God in Christ, Coptic Orthodox Church, etc. or other individual non-white congregations within other denominations.

I must say that in my previous church for many years we had an active family from Trinidad.  When the girls grew up the family moved away and we were mainly white anglo-saxon for many years.  Recently they have welcomed some Korean families. 

The church I attend now is also predominately white anglo-saxon, but it is a large church and has a board mix of others:   quite a large number of French families (one or both parents French and often RC but attending the UCC); people from other European countries; from Cuba; from Africa; or from Korea.  They participate in worship and other parts of church life to the extend they are interested - some in Sunday School, some on the official board, some in the choir - the same as everybody else.  We benefit from the diversity.

 match3frog:

How does your congregation honour other "races"?  Are there liturgical elements, other languages, or cultural traditions implemented into worship and church life?

kilnerad brings up a very valuable point. One worth looking at for those who say their aim is equality. When people say colour blind, they may also not truly honour or value differences (asimilation or homogenization). Correct?

Sunday, during church service hours, are the most segregated hours. There has to be intentionality and talking about it, before it can be lived out in relationships or facilitated.

Does your church bring in other words, other ways of worshipping, other cultural stuff? What of the various expressions of worship?

What about art? What does Jesus look like in your church?

What about music? Do you sing hymns from many traditions?

To me, simply saying it is like saying you are affirming when the language is "male and female", "husband and wife", "man and woman", "father and mother" etc... Saying we are all equal does not cut it without all being represented or fully embraced even in their absence.

How would your church respond to someone worshipping differently? People worship sometimes in culturally distinct ways. I sway/rock when I pray or speak of God (from aJewish background)... people were taken aback by it and/or thought it was nervousness. What about an "Amen"? How about dancing or clapping during hymns?

I went to an Easter liturgy once that read from the Bible in every language represented by a congregant. It was beautiful. I also know that coming from a Jewish background, I watch Seder suppers Christianized. You cannot be what you claim you are sometimes without intentionality.

 Blackbelt wrote:

are you kidding,

everybody is equle under the Lord

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Examples....

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Thanks for the video!!!

Exactly, thank you brother, well said.

seeler, I love the ideas. Our community is not all that diverse, though we have identified that we need to present that the world is and teach some diversity inside church.

We should be careful not to create schisms.

Why all the questions about my church. What about your church? We do sing in other languages at times. We welcome both quiet worshipping and more emotive.

Strange thing is he is usually depicted as being a Jewish man.

Yes. Indeed we have had people sing songs from their countries of origin in their own styles and languages.

Let's not get into the male/female thing here. We are discussing colour.

All fine at my church. I personally do not clap in church because I believe the worship service is to be directed to God not to humans.

Listen here, kilnerad was addressing me. You said he had made a good point then started asking a number of questions about "your" church. That implies me. I still await your answers to your questions.

Here's a picture of Jesus that I like: http://www.nairaland.com/attachments/131190_Korean_Jesus_jpg6d034ffc7bc1000778c6bc12c4165e5e

The only perfect thing about my church is it's head, Jesus Christ.

When I am speaking directly to someone I make a habit of addressing it like an email with a name at the top. 

I had not done so, so I was not speaking to you.  In fact, I quite some time ago expressed my thoughts on the various names you have used and said that since it was no longer a suspicion and not an inkling or a rumour, but was proven... I could feel free to simply ignore you.

I do. You mistakenly thought I was addressing you and responded to that. I likely should have simply ignored that too. I however did not.

You thought I was speaking to you and yes I referred to you as "whatever your name is". It was not meant to be polite or warm and fuzzy. I do not have those feelings and will not pretend to. I do not respect you, I do not trust you and I do not like you.

If "whatever your name is" is objectionable to you then perhaps you should not have used so many various names and since you did perhaps you should have been honest about doing so when it was asked about and then later alleged.

If you can come up with something that does not make me part of the name game of yours then tell me what that salutation might be. For clarity, I still intend to ignore you, but should there be some miscommunication like above, it would provide a salutation perahps less objectionable to you.

If you come up with something that does not make me a pawn, complicant... then tell me what that salutation might be.
 

As we were addressing culture, "listen here" is objectionable to me. It is for many reasons. It is a way of telling someone to "shut up" and listen to me without having the guts to say so publicly or to try to look like a goodie-goodie while doing so. It has been and is used as a tool of domination and oppression. It has been used  to hush up women. It has been a tool used by people to shut up blacks. It has been a tool to shut up homosexuals.

I make exceptions when I know that "listen here" is part of another culture, like Appalachian people or some people of colour, who say "listen here" without that intent.

Your use of "listen here", coming from you.... unacceptable to me, period.

When it comes to our church our Pastor is white; our Deacons are black, and white; our worship team is brown, white, and yellow; our Sunday School leaders are black, white, and yellow; our choir is white, and yellow; our outreach team is black, brown, white, and yellow; our Bible study teachers are white, and yellow. Seems pretty rainbowish to me. 

I wonder if we avoid singing this in part because we would rather not acknowledge diversity, and then acknowledge the lack of diversity in our congregations (besides the issue of acknowledging whether we all believe that Jesus exists and loves... I won't go into that!).  I know that all the congregations I have been a part of have been almost 100% white.  In some places, that was representative of the surrounding community.  In other places, not so much.

Part of of our "colour blindness" is our inability to see how much of what we do and say reflects white North American culture, and not just the Christian story/tradition.  For myself, it is an ongoing journey to discover how I have been blind to the ways I have contributed to letting folks who are non-white, non-straight, non-middle class, etc, know that they outsiders.  And so I reflect, repent, and struggle to make change. 

shalom

I think the point that's worth consideration is that, while people from other than European background may be in our congregations and the official policy is to make them welcome, if worship practices don't incorporate some elements of other cultures, then it makes it less likely that people who aren't from European background/cultures will feel welcome.