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A Multi-Ethnic Ministry Framework for Campus Ministry:
Holding Tightly to the Lord and Loosely to Our Own Agenda
Paul Sorrentino
Introduction
Should an effective multi-ethnic ministry function any differently
than a thriving ministry with majority students? Should people of
different cultures be able to adapt to a particular model for ministry or
are there legitimate issues that should cause a divergence from other
ministry models even though they produce impressive results?
I am convinced that ministry with people of different cultures will,
of necessity, look substantially different from models that may work well
in more homogeneous settings. In this paper, I make some preliminary
recommendations for how to think about multi-ethnic ministry and some
factors to consider in terms of participation, practice, power, prayer and
praise. I write as a campus minister at a small, liberal arts college in
New England. Amherst College has 1600 students and is approximately 35%
students of color. The Christian Fellowship that I currently work with is
60% students of color.
I. Participation
One common ministry model operates in terms of concentric circles with
the center circle being maximum participation. A person in the outermost
circle may have simply expressed interest in the fellowship by signing a
form during orientation, attending an evangelistic event or by friendship
with a member. A person in a closer circle may attend a large group
meeting or small group occasionally. Movement toward the center involves
regular small group and large group attendance and may include
participation in a high commitment study, small group or praise team
leadership, conference and camp attendance, participation in a summer
missions project, and involvement with the executive leadership team. A
person generally takes on additional responsibilities and commitments as
they move towards the center (see Figure 1 below). The concentric circle
ministry model has proved to be a highly effective model of discipleship
and means to build a chapter and for that I am thankful. There are,
however, special challenges when this model is utilized with students of
color.
Figure 1: Concentric Circle Model
The concentric circle model, as is true of any framework, can be
abused. I am particularly concerned with two misuses. First, leaders
sometimes apply it inflexibly with no allowance for exceptions. It is quite
possible to take a good thing and destroy it by an overly strict
application. This was the error of the Pharisees. Secondly, there can be a
view that heightened involvement in the church or fellowship is always
better. Although it is seldom stated, there is often an implicit message
that one’s commitment to Christ is in direct proportion to involvement in
the fellowship. The more one does with the fellowship, the more spiritual
one is. In this paper, I want to challenge the “more is better” assumption
and, especially, the universal application of the concentric circle model
to all people and situations.
The dominant culture meets many of the needs of majority students.
This frees them to engage in the activities of the concentric circles
described above. Majority students and staff are often unaware of ways
that many of their needs are met and so, consequently, wonder why minority
students and staff raise so many concerns or, as is more often the case,
simply “vote with their feet” and drop out of the fellowship, if they were
ever involved at all.
Carl Ellis has said some things that I find invaluable in trying to
understand the tensions students of color face. He says that the critical
issue in multi-ethnic relationships is an appreciation of one another’s
“core issues.” He identifies core issues as being: personal, social and
cultural. Personal issues are universal, internal reactions such as fear,
loneliness and anxiety. Social concerns are such things as education,
health and family. While these are common to all people, there can be
dramatic differences in each individual’s situation according to their
particular social and ethnic group’s historical and cultural context. The
cultural core issue relates to a specific situation and tends to be unique
in its expression to any one people group.
Majority people have many of their social and cultural core issues
addressed by the broader society and may not even need to think about them.
Because of this, majority people are much more likely to focus on personal
core issues. Because personal core issues are common to all people, there
is some attraction to these areas for people of color as well. However,
like Eric Erikson’s basic needs pyramid, it is far more difficult for
students of color to focus on personal core issues alone when so many other
needs are pressing.
Differing constellations of core issues mean that behaviors that
appear identical on the outside have varied meanings. A student with a
long family tradition of college education may view studying quite
differently than one coming out of a family and a community where few if
any of their members have attended college. What might be “academic
idolatry” for the former may be good stewardship for the latter.
The social and cultural core issues of a student of color may require
involvement in groups and activities that are not at all felt needs for
majority students. Some of these commitments may relate to central aspects
of a person’s identity. For example, a black student who has not lived in
a predominantly white setting previously may find it essential to be
involved in a black church and the Black Student Union on campus. These
activities speak to who she or he is in a way that a multi-ethnic Christian
group simply cannot. A person of color may be placed in the uncomfortable
situation where, in order to move deeper into the fellowship’s concentric
circles, they will have to reduce or eliminate ties with groups that better
meet their social and cultural concerns. This creates a basic identity
tension that majority students are simply not required to address.
For instance, I have attended a Kwanzaa celebration where a highly
respected, elder member of the community called upon each member of the
black community to do certain things. She is a Christian woman and the
requests were good and reasonable. They were things that would strengthen
the black community and things that would make each student’s parents
proud. However, they would all require payment of that most precious of
commodities, time.
When students of color are asked to do time-demanding things within
their own ethnic community or church, these may well conflict with
expectations of the Christian fellowship. These students are then called
upon to make fundamental loyalty decisions that go to the core of their
being. Are they Black or Christian? No one should have to face that kind
of artificial choice. The Christian group that causes them to do that is
creating an unnecessary and painful marginalization of the student of
color.
Carl Ellis speaks about a “window of marginalization.” There are four
aspects to the window. Relational marginalization takes place in direct,
personal interactions. Systemic marginalization happens because of
traditional social conventions. Ellis used the example of an elderly black
man being required to call a 10 year old white boy “Mister” so and so.
Marginalization by Design is intentional while marginalization by Default
is unintended and comes about due to a genuine or perceived lack of power
(See Figure 2 below).
Majority people, if they address marginalization at all, tend to focus
on the “Relational by Design” quadrant. Even some of the excellent work by
Spencer Perkins and Chris Rice has highlighted this area of racial
reconciliation. It is the most natural starting point for dialogue
across racial lines and an important one.
| |By Design |By Default |
| Relational |
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX |
| Systemic |
Figure 2: Carl Ellis’s “Windows of Marginalization”
If the dialogue does not move beyond the upper left quadrant, however,
then some of the most significant needs of minorities will not be
addressed. Further, even if relational issues are being attended to within
the context of the fellowship, there is a strong likelihood that people of
color will be marginalized by a failure to examine their needs related to
the other three quadrants. This is because the expectations and values of
“committed” majority fellowship members may themselves militate against
considering the other quadrants. [4]
Jesus broke with social and religious conventions to go through
Samaria, to speak with and to teach women and to touch lepers. He used
Samaritans as the positive illustration of ones who fulfilled the Great
Commandment by loving the Lord and his neighbor and as a proper model of
thankfulness. In each instance, he both challenged the status quo and
affirmed the marginalized.
Peter learned that the gospel was for all people through a repugnant
vision, having to travel a substantial distance to Cornelius’s house and by
seeing clear evidence of God’s Spirit moving amongst the Gentiles. The
Holy Spirit was at work in a manner, with a people, and in a location that
Peter did not expect. His own ethnocentric perspective had limited his
thinking about the inclusiveness of God’s kingdom. God chose to explode
Peter’s restrictions for the sake of the Gentiles and the kingdom of
God.
A recognition that the gospel and God’s love are for all people means
that we must hold tightly to the Lord and loosely to our own agendas. It
means that we must be careful to analyze our cultural blinders and
expressions, expectations and methodology in order to allow the Holy Spirit
to work in whom, through whom and in the ways God desires.
II. Practice
On the night that the police arrested Rosa Parks in Montgomery,
Alabama, leaders began making telephone calls. The next night black
ministers and professionals met and planned the famous bus boycott of
Montgomery’s segregated bus system. They met at Dexter Avenue Baptist
Church where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was the minister.
Dr. King led an entire community into an effective response against
injustice by connecting faith in God and concern with the lost with social
concern and action. He preached, saying “…that any religion that
professes to be concerned with the souls of men…and is not concerned with
the slums that damn them…and the social conditions that cripple them…is
a dry and dust religion.”
I fear that many churches and fellowships have become precisely “dry
and dust religion” for lack of a whole person and whole society concern.
This is seldom by design, but it is often by default as our programs and
commitments leave no room for action or involvement outside of the bounds
of our own church or fellowship. Ministry is more complicated when we must
make decisions about changing or canceling programs, allowing “exceptions
to the rule” in leadership selection or participation in a training event,
but I believe that is the kind of tough decision making that “shepherds of
the church of God” are required to make for the sake of the people they
lead and protect.
It is also uncomfortable for us to be out of control. Control,
predictability, certainty and plans are never as definite as we might like
in any field. When we walk with God there is really no telling where the
adventure will lead us. Philip was called away from an ongoing revival to
an isolated spot in the dessert. When the Ethiopian was converted and
baptized, Philip was transported away by the Spirit to another place.
No doubt this was a surprise to both Philip and the Ethiopian! It was also
not our ideal “follow-up” plan, but God was the One clearly doing the
directing.
I believe that we will often experience a tension between our desire
to train and equip people, our plans for how best to do that, and what God
wants. This may be true fellowship wide, but more often it relates to
God’s plans for a particular individual or individuals. This is not to say
that people should do whatever they want, but rather to recognize the
obvious, that God’s will involves a far broader scope than ours, and than
our own faith community. God may want one of our key leaders to leave to
study abroad in Taiwan just when we seem to have a lot of momentum. If
that is true, we can trust that God will do something through and in that
person in Taiwan as well as through their absence with us. We know that to
be true even if we never see the outcome clearly.
An important part of our job, as a community, and especially as a
leader in a faith community, is to help individuals to ascertain God’s
direction and will for their life as well as the community’s. Where will
they most be stretched and where will they have the most influence for
God’s kingdom? Where will they, as someone has said, be challenged enough
to “fall on their knees but not on their face?” It may be that a person’s
ideas are good, but the timing is wrong. A person may have a thought that
takes us, and the fellowship with which we work, in a completely different
direction than we planned, but it is from God. All of this is to recognize
in practice what we declare in doxology: Jesus is Lord.
When someone comes to us with an idea or commitment that does not fit
our plans, our default position should not be that this is wrong unless he
or she proves to us otherwise. Rather, we should ask questions and help
them to consider if this is from God. Perhaps, we should even take the
positive view that it is likely that, in God’s sovereignty, they are in the
right place and we want to support them where God has placed them. This
was John the Baptist’s approach with tax collectors and soldiers who came
to him asking, “What should we do then?” He essentially told them to carry
out their work in a godly way, but he did not tell them to change their
jobs. The apostle Paul took the same approach with the Corinthians when
he advised them to remain in the situation they were in when God called
them to himself.
Instead of neat concentric circles, this sort of model may look more
like overlapping circles (see Figure 3). The leader’s role is not to
reorder the circles, but to provide support to individuals in their faith
community by whatever means they are able. If God is calling someone to do
something, then it is reasonable to expect that God will also provide
prayer warriors to stand beside that person in prayer, if not in actual
physical presence as a partner in whatever they are doing.
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Campus Fellowship
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BSU
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Figure 3: Circles of Involvement
How we help people in decision making and how we support them in those
decisions is clearly more broadly applicable than people of color. Several
years ago I had a white student who believed God wanted him to be an editor
of the school newspaper. As we talked and prayed, this seemed like a wise
decision. It was consistent with his field of study and long-term goals
and he clearly saw it as an avenue for ministry. While there was no one
else to join him on the newspaper staff, his small group prayed regularly
for him and asked him how things were going. This student has now
completed his PhD in English and is following Christ as college professor.
The same principle applies for the student athlete whose practice and
game schedule prevents him from any sort of regular attendance at a
fellowship activity. This person should not be made to feel “less
spiritual,” but supported in what she or he is doing. Likewise with the
student who believes that he or she needs to be involved with their church
for bible study or a small group.
Another instance that comes to mind was a Latina student. She was a
pre-medical student going into her junior year and had been a small group
leader during her sophomore year. Her dream was to become a physician and
return to serve her community. She told me that her junior year would be
incredibly demanding academically and that she would need to “disappear”
for the year. As we talked this through, it was evident that she was
struggling with the desire to be both a responsible student and a faithful
follower of Christ. We decided that she would come only to our Friday
Night Fellowship and that, otherwise, she would focus on her studies. She
had a network of friends who would pray for her and support her. She also
committed to coming to a week long camp at the end of the year and leading
a small group in her senior year. She did both of those things. She has
now graduated from medical school and is working in her home community.
I think that it is also worth noting that students of color are
likely to have varying degrees of comfort within a multi-ethnic fellowship
at different times in their life. They are likely, particularly in the
college years, to move through several shifts in understanding their own
personal and ethnic identity. There may be times when it is exceedingly
difficult for them to interact regularly with whites or people of
ethnicities other than their own. Likewise, there may be times when it is
very helpful for them to closely associate with a faith community whose
membership is largely of their own ethnic make-up.
I have three concerns in proposing this model. The first is that
students may be stretched too thin and be involved in too many things.
This is, essentially, a Lordship issue and a matter of Christian maturity.
People will need to make decisions about what to do and what not to do for
their entire life. They now, in consultation with believers they respect,
have the opportunity to learn some things about decision-making and
trusting God.
The second area of concern is community. How does one develop a
strong sense of community if the focus of involvement is so diffuse? I
believe the answer lies in the above illustrations. If people have a sense
that they are welcomed and loved, there will be community. A faith
community that is constantly drawing its people in and sending them out is
a healthy community. We have found Willow Creek’s definition of community
very useful as a place where we can: know and be known, serve and be
served, love and be loved and celebrate and be celebrated. We have also
found it necessary to add to these a fifth characteristic. Our community
must also be a place where we can forgive and be forgiven. It does require
more effort to develop commitment to one another when there are less points
of contact with the community (for example, only small group or prayer
group attendance instead of large group and small group). It may be
natural to feel this tension even more when one of the other foci is
another faith community. Yet this also serves to force us to examine our
own motives and be certain that our real goal is seeing people develop as
disciples of Christ and that we are truly desirous of seeing Christ’s
prayer fulfilled, that there be unity in the Body of Christ.
My third concern has to do with the need to help people to know the
scriptures. Biblical illiteracy is so widespread that there is a need to
be intentional in providing training opportunities. It seems logical to
help people to minimize other commitments during their college years so
that they can learn as much as possible about being a follower of Jesus.
My question, however, is whether or not an academic approach is the
most effective way of training a person in Jesus’ school of discipleship.
Patterns established in college tend to carry over after college years.
There is no normative sense in scripture that gathering to study scripture,
sing and pray should substitute for or delay our involvement in the world.
Jesus frequently emphasized the place of applying what we learn. His
most famous teaching, “the Sermon on the Mount,” ends this way:
Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into
practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The
rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat
against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its
foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine
and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built
his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the
winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great
crash.
Similarly, in his “Upper Room Discourse,” Jesus told his disciples
that their experience of the love of God would actually be enhanced and
deepened when they obeyed his teaching:
If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love
him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.
These words and others convince me that it is vitally important that
we be sure that those in our faith community are able to put the teaching
they receive into practice. We do talk about “application” in our small
groups, but we seldom emphasize obedience by leaving time in the schedule
to practice what we are learning together. What Martin Luther King, Jr.
did in Montgomery was not just an act that helped to alleviate suffering,
but it was a powerful act of discipleship as he helped people to apply
Christ’s teachings.
The Urbana 2000 Student Missions Convention echoed this priority in
the repeated emphasis that worship leads to mission and mission leads to
worship. Our doxology heightens our desire to respond in obedience and our
service deepens our doxology.
III. Power
A fellowship is not multi-ethnic unless power is shared. It is not
enough to have a smattering of people of different ethnicities in
attendance. People of different races and cultures need to be in positions
of decision-making and visible leadership. This is not tokenism, but a way
of being certain that God’s voice is heard through the various backgrounds
and lives of each person God has brought into the community. We will all
have “blind spots” that cause us to distort what might be clear to others.
We need one another.
The first internal crisis in the early church occurred when the
Grecian widows were overlooked in the distribution of food. This was an
instance of Carl Ellis’s systemic marginalization by default. The apostles
response was actually quite surprising. They addressed the relational and
systemic aspects by appointing seven Grecian believers to take
responsibility for the distribution. I find no mention of any of these
disciples before that time. The next several chapters deal specifically
with several of these leaders and how God used them. The entire rest of
the Book of Acts explains how God worked in expanding the kingdom amongst
the gentiles.
Shared and representative leadership may require a more flexible
approach to leadership selection. There are clear character issues that
are given in scripture as leadership qualifications and these should not be
compromised. However, we sometimes add to these in an effort to strengthen
our community. These additions are good (e.g., going through a study in
the Gospel of Mark, attending a fellowship small group), but we may want to
hold them loosely as suggestions rather than requirements if we are to
embrace students of color in leadership. This is because of the reasons
discussed above. People of color, who may not feel at ease with the
majority membership of the fellowship, may well benefit from other avenues
of support outside of the fellowship. These other involvements are
actually a way that we champion students of color who are involved in a
multi-ethnic fellowship. These outside commitments, however, also make it
difficult for them to be as actively involved in the fellowship as a
majority student who does not have these additional commitments outside of
the group.
The InterVarsity Christian Fellowship group at Wayne State University
has a position on its executive leadership for “black student outreach.”
This allows for valuable input and mutual encouragement from a black
student whose primary ministry and focus is outreach amongst black
students.
Likewise, a student of color may be an effective small group bible
study leader within his or her own ethnic context, but be unprepared to
lead in the typical inductive method used by most majority groups. They
may be used to a style that is more authoritative in its leadership. This
is an opportunity to learn from the strengths of each approach. It may
also be that a small group geared to a different ethnic group will be more
effective within its own teaching tradition.
When I refer to “sharing power,” I do not mean a diminishment of
whites, but an elevation of people of color so that we have parity. All of
us are to use our gifts and who we are for the sake of the kingdom. I
appreciated what black minister Alex Gee had to say at Urbana 2000. He was
following Brenda Salter-McNeil’s talk on racial reconciliation. Speaking
to majority people in the audience, he affirmed us and said, “We need you
to be white!” He also encouraged us to use our power for godly ends.
IV. Prayer and Praise
The Apostle John described what he saw in the Book of Revelation. He
writes:
After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that
no-one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language,
standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were
wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands.
And they cried in a loud voice:
“Salvation belongs to our God,
who sits on the throne,
and to the Lamb.”
A multi-ethnic worship gathering awaits us in heaven. If we are to
begin on earth, we will need to have God’s intervention. Racial healing is
a particularly complex process. There is a great deal of corporate and
individual history that underlies a multi-ethnic faith community. Many of
the issues are so personal that they are largely unknown to others and even
to a given individual. Further, the enemy of our souls seems to attack any
attempts by believers to unite. Racial reconciliation has proven to be a
powerful battleground. We dare not attempt it in our own strength.
Prayer and worship are key ingredients in any Christian community.
Nevertheless, these two present a particular challenge to a multi-ethnic
community. Singing and prayer have a great deal to do with how we
experience God. If we are to come together in prayer and worship, we will
have to be intentional in learning from one another in a posture of
humility. We will need to see our own style of prayer and singing as one
style and not the only or the preferred style. Throughout eternity we will
never become bored with the multi-faceted diamond of prayer and praise. We
can begin to appreciate that now.
Robert Webber has defined worship as “a community response to the God
who has acted in history.” Learning to respond to God in ways that are
meaningful to all its members will provide rich rewards for a multi-ethnic
community. Prayer and worship are so central to God’s desire for his
people that we can be certain that God will lead us in answer to our
prayers.
The Rev. Dr. Alice Brown-Collins described five purposes for prayer:
1. Liberation and building a beloved community of people.
2. Release. Prayer is a way of making it through life.
3. A weapon of social change. We should expect real change as a result of
prayer.
4. Personal fulfillment.
5. Intimacy with God.
All five are necessary in a faith community and all are needed if we
are to overcome the evils of racism in our midst and in society. Effective
prayer for healing will be costly prayer. Our black brothers and sisters
know a lot about suffering. Dr. Alice Brown-Collins has suggested that
“Lift Every Voice and Sing,” sometimes referred to as “The Black National
Anthem,” serves as a model prayer for African-Americans. I close with
it as a prayer.
Lift every voice and sing, ‘til earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise, high as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us;
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us.
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on ‘til victory is won.
Stony the road we trod, bitter the chastening rod
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat, have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered;
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the
slaughtered;
Out from the gloomy past, ‘til now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.
God of our weary years, God of our silent tears,
Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who hast by Thy might led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee,
Shadowed beneath Thy hand, may we forever stand,
True to our God, true to our native land.
———————————-
[1] Carl Ellis, “Managing Diversity” (lecture presented at the
InterVarsity Christian Fellowship New England Regional Staff Meeting at
Toah Nipi Retreat Center, Rindge, NH on December 12, 2001).
[2] Ibid.
[3]Spencer Perkins and Chris Rice, Racial Healing for the Sake of the
Gospel: More Than Equals (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993,
2000).
[4] Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith, Divided by Faith:
Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2000). This book provides a fascinating sociological
analysis and explanation of why white evangelicals and blacks view their
world so differently. They suggest that the theological system of
evangelicals hinders them from being able to see the systemic injustice
involved in the racism that they oppose in principle. The personal
emphasis that is so important to evangelical religion actually helps to
perpetuate racism.
[5] John 4; Luke 10:38-42; Mt. 8:1-4; Luke 10:25-37; Luke 17:11-19.
[6] Acts 10.
[7] Nancy Shuker, World Leaders Past and Present: Martin Luther King
(New York: Burke Publishing Company Limited, 1985), 47.
[8] Acts 20:28.
[9] Acts 8.
[10] Luke 3:10-14.
[11] 1 Corinthians 7:17-24.
[12] John 17:20-26.
[13] Matthew 7:24-27.
[14] John 14:23.
[15] Acts 6:1-7.
[16] R. York Moore of Detroit, interviewed by author at The Chancellor
Hotel in Champaign, IL, December 27, 2000.
[17] Revelation 7:9-10.
[18] Robert Webber, lecture given at Regent College, Vancouver, B.C.
in June of 2000.
[19] Alice Brown-Collins, lecture given at the Church of the Good
Shepherd, Roxbury, MA on December 6, 2000.
[20] Ibid.
[21] James Weldon Johnson and J. Rosamond Johnson, Lift Every Voice
and Sing.
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Occasional Attendance
Regular Attendance
Small Group Member
Small Group Leader
Exec. Member
Missions trip
Worship Leader
Mark Study/Conference
Investigative Study
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