News > North America

Montreal UBF, Canada

January 30, 2013

“The Emerging Multicultural Church”

Galatians 3:28 “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

On Friday January 26 we held a Tyrannus Bible Academy about the emerging multicultural church. Social disintegration is the tendency for society to decline or disintegrate over time. This is the fate of not only worldly culture but Christian culture without renewal.  While recent research shows that church membership among young adults in the US has dropped, church attendance in Quebec is reported at a devastated 3% (Huffington Post, 2012).  While nominal Christianity is dropping there is a silver lining that God is working in the background. “What we’re seeing emerge is a smaller but more committed core of young Christians.” (Drew Dyck-Relevant magazine, 2013) . As we know the new generation of young people, are service-oriented, civic-minded, ethnically diverse and globally connected showing great promise. The University Bible Fellowship is an ethnically diverse Christian body but we have our own challenges to display the uniting power of Christ which gives us true freedom from cultural boundaries and can make us one.  For this academy we invited m. Charles Kim from Toronto ministry who shared his presentation entitled, “Campus Ministry in Cultural Diversity”. Toronto is more ethnically diversity than any other city in the world. M. Charles shared models for Christian ministries in cultural diversity. Through his presentation we learned: 1) That though external culture (dress, food) is easily influenced, internal culture like assumptions, values and beliefs represent the largest part of a person and are hard to change. This is called Iceberg theory and needs to be considered for effective ministry. 2) Between our life in Christ and unbelievers there may be an exclusive boundary zone of fear between us and them. According to this second model m. Charles said that we need to form a “grace margin” to invite people to Christ and share our lives with them. 3) In a third model m. Charles showed us that many people have been marginalized from worldly culture systems in different people groups. Jesus Christ, through his crucifixion death for our sins and resurrection makes a “creative core” in which rejected people are accepted in his grace. This creative core can be a thriving Christ-centered community that embodies the heart of Christ.  Through his models and examples m. Charles gave us a very encouraging presentation and hope evangelize university campuses in Canada and Montreal amidst ethnic diversity.

         Finally b. Marcel gave us a 10 minute message based on Galatians 3:28 “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” In this verse Paul declared that the ethnic barrier between Jew and Gentile, the class barrier between slave and free-man and the gender barrier between male and female are made into nothing by faith in Jesus Christ. B. Marcel showed us how Jewish believers in the Galatian church could not freely accept Gentile believers because of their reliance on the law . In the same way ethnic and religious background can make people self-righteous and distant from others. Even university students form cliques and organizations that exclude and condemn other university students. Jesus, through his death on the cross gave us freedom from these worldly standards and has reconciled us into one body by his grace. B. Marcel’s message encouraged our multi-ethnic UBF community in Montreal to live in unity with his Spirit, and through the gospel of his Son. Thank God for good attendance of this Tyrannus Bible Academy and we thank s. Veronique, b. Nicolas, b. Lesedi for participating in an invitation publicity video.

(see at http://montreal.university-bible-fellowship.ca/)

One Word:  “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”