Monoethnic Churches Can Be a Good Idea

AD Robles

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Alright, today I'm going to do a video primarily about a tweet that I saw from Kofi Adu -Boahen.

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Kofi is an internet famous Christian, sort of like me but a little bit more famous than me.

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But anyway, he's a good guy, I like him a lot, I don't agree with everything he says and I'm pretty sure he doesn't agree with everything

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I say and surprise surprise you can be friends with and support and like people that you disagree with.

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Before I get into that though, I wanted to just say if you don't already, please consider supporting this work on Patreon.

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I put a lot of time into this YouTube channel and I'd love to continue doing that. Obviously I've got bills to pay just like everybody else and a family to take care of and stuff like that.

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I would love to devote even more time to this channel but obviously in order to do that I gotta be able to raise some significant income from it, which

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I do right now but definitely not enough to live on at all. So anyway, please consider supporting me on Patreon, even as much as a dollar, five dollars, every little bit helps.

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And for those of you who do support me, thank you very very much. Now let's get to this tweet from Kofi. He starts it off like this, y 'all know

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I'm not an intersectional guy by any stretch. However, my brother Pastor Whale from London raises up a valid question for a

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Calvinistic reformed constituency. And this is an interesting little thing,

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I'm not going to read the whole thing here because it's kind of long, but the thrust of what he's saying here is basically that different ethnicities or different cultural backgrounds, and I mean cultural from like an ethnicity perspective, have different ways that they worship.

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And so if you go into a very European church, you're not going to see a whole lot of people raising their hands or dancing around a little bit.

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And he's careful to make sure that, you know, he's saying that they're, you know, he's talking about dancing but not like, you know, crazy dancing, right, you know what

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I mean? And this resonated a lot with me because I remember when I was a kid, I went to a very

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European styled church where it was very, you know, calm and we sang hymns and, you know, you didn't really move around too much except during communion.

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And then I remember the first time I visited my grandmother's Puerto Rican, more charismatic -y type church, and I remember thinking like, what is going on here?

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Like people are doing a little dancing, they're hitting, you know, tambourines, they're shaking maracas, like everyone brings their own tambourine, like it's very strange, this doesn't seem like church.

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And anyway, so, you know, I always kind of grew up sort of knowing that there were different kind of styles and things like that.

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And so this guy is making the argument, and what I really liked about this paragraph is that he recognizes, and this is something that doesn't get recognized a whole lot, but this brother, this is a pastor from London, recognizes that those cultural and ethnic kind of elements that he has brought to worship and the churches that he used to go to, you know,

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European is a culture as well, you know what I mean? Like a lot of times we think like, well, just white evangelicalism, you know, they're just, they're not really a culture, but he kind of recognizes that, the fact that, you know, the way that they worship, you know, if we're going to say that black or Latino ways of worship need to be, you know, respected, well, so does the white version, right?

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Like you would think that. But anyway, so he kind of says like, look, like, you know, we don't want to, if we're going to be, he says, this is kind of the thrust of the point here, so let me just read that here, one second, let me find where I'm, he says this, he says, our struggle with heterogeneity is not new, but has been present since the birth of the church, and because diversity is biblical, we must constantly address it, or we may run the risk of the causative factor of the division of, in Acts 6, verses one through two.

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So he's saying that, look, diversity is biblical, and so we need to make sure that when we're having our churches, that we don't want to exclude people who might worship differently than us.

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And for Reformed people in particular, but really all Christians, these are questions that are worth thinking about, and I don't think that the answer is what a lot of social justice -minded

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Christians think the answer is, to be perfectly honest with you. Because here's the idea, so number one, we've got to make sure to distinguish that there are some issues that are, that we just have to realize the

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Bible teaches, and insists, and demands, like the regular principle is a real thing, and we need to consider that.

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So like, hypothetically, let's just say there was a church that we found out about down the street, and they had some ethnicity that included interpretive dancing, okay, and they said, interpretive dancing is how we do our sermons.

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We have a guy, he'll do a sermon, and we'll have a lady dancing in the front, you know, like that. We could say to them, okay, so I understand that you bring this ethnic thing to the church, but here's why you cannot have a lady dancing in front of the pastor during your worship service.

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It's not commanded. God did not command that, and that's going to be like the strange fire that Nadab and Abihu got blown away for.

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We can't, you can't just add elements of worship willy -nilly. We have to look at what the

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Bible says, and the Bible does present very clear commands of what a worship service ought to be like.

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So we can't, there's a distinction between, we gotta figure out what is the core of worship, and the

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Bible does tell us what worship should be, okay? That's the first thing we need to realize. What's that?

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And then what are more of the stylistic things that are maybe a little bit flexible? Perfect example is sort of musical styles, right?

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So let's just say we had two cultures, two ethnicities rather, and one was more

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European, one was more, I don't know, Latino or something, and they're both singing psalms, but they're singing them with very different music, because Latinos have different music than Europeans, right?

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So I might sing a psalm, and it's a very, you know, kind of European melody and things like that, but you might sing a psalm, and it's a different kind of melody altogether, and we have to be careful not to say, well, the

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European one is the biblical one, and the Latino one is not. Look, you're both singing the words of the

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Lord back to himself, so we don't have an issue there, it's the same words, but the music is just an incidental, it's not the core of what worship is, and so we can't favor one or the other.

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But this is something we ought to think about very carefully. A Latino, let's just say a different ethnicity comes to London, because that's where this guy is, he's in the

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UK, right? A different ethnicity comes to London, and is not comfortable worshipping in a

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European style music. He doesn't understand the style, he doesn't like the style, he can't sing the psalms in that style, he doesn't want to, and so he goes down the street to a church that has musical stylings more close to him, and maybe they'll, you know, clap their hands a little more, shake the maracas and hit tambourines and stuff like that.

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Like, I don't think that there's really a problem with that, if somebody wants to do that, something that they're more comfortable with, so long as it's not a core element of worship, as long as it's more of a stylistic thing, there's no problem with seeking people that are like -minded.

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And you see, here's the thing that I want to caution social justice -minded

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Christians to think about, especially when it comes to this kind of thing, like, it actually might be a better idea to go to a more mono -ethnic church than to cause divisions based on stylistic things.

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Because here's the reality, like, too many people think we need to pursue a diverse church, and they just assume that, because there's, you know, the reality is that this brother, this pastor, makes a good point.

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Diversity is biblical, definitely. The Bible talks about how God's people will come from every tribe, every tongue, every nation, so there's nothing that you can do to change that.

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You know, you can have mono -ethnic churches, local churches, as far as the eye can see, but nothing will change that the church is, in fact, diverse.

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And there might be a place for diverse local churches as well, where, you know, these kind of ethnic differences, they don't cause any division.

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Like, to be perfectly honest, I would be just fine going to a church that had European -style music and maybe a few people clapping in the corner, maybe a few people raising their hands and maybe moving a little bit, you know, like,

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I would have no problem. That wouldn't be distracting to me at all. It wouldn't be distracting to me at all. Maybe it's just how I was grown up, you know, and how

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I was raised or whatever. That wouldn't be distracting to me. In fact, I've gone to many churches where they sing hymns and they sing, you know, more upbeat sort of types of songs, and it's not distracting to me.

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But there's, I don't think, and I'd like to get pushback on this, I don't think there is anything morally or ethically superior to a church like that, where there's a lot of diversity in the church itself, the local church, or I don't think there's anything better about that than a mono -ethnic church.

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I think it's totally fine to have a mono -ethnic church. If you live in the city and you have options to go to any ethnicities church and you're

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German, and you go to a German church, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. In fact, I think it can benefit a lot of different people so you don't have to worry.

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You don't have to have conversations about, well, you know, we got to have, we got 20 % European, 20 %

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Chinese, 20 % whatever, and we got to have music that, you know, I think that that can be a problem sometimes.

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And I don't think we have to, like, acknowledging that diversity is biblical does not mean that you need to have a diverse local body.

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It does mean that you have to treat people with impartiality. You can't be partial to anybody. You can't be partial to anybody.

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And here's really where the rub is, I think, because this is really a first world problem.

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You know what I mean? Because it's basically white churches that are always told they need to change. You would never take this kind of a message to Japan and say, okay, well, there's some white people in Japan, right?

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There's some Europeans in Japan or Ethiopia for that matter. There's some white people in this Ethiopian church.

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And so, therefore, your Ethiopian churches, your Japanese churches need to take that into account with how they worship.

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And you can't get too, you know, dancing around because it makes white people uncomfortable. No, no, no. That would never happen.

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And it shouldn't happen. And it shouldn't happen here either. You see my point? So, like, I don't think that there's anything, again, there's this assumption that if you have a multi -ethnic church, a diverse church, local body, that that is superior to a mono -ethnic church.

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You hear this kind of assumption all the time. I'm not saying Kofi's saying that, by the way. But you hear that kind of assumption all the time, and I don't think that that's necessarily the case.

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And so, yes, we don't want to necessarily make someone uncomfortable if they're, you know, moving around a little bit during your worship service.

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So long as it's not crazy, so long as it's not distracting. We don't want to necessarily do that. But I think that, you know, there's nothing wrong with the idea that, you know, a

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South African or a Nigerian, like he says in this, a global South person, goes to a church that has people like him or her.

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Like, there's nothing necessarily wrong with that. I think that that's a, there's everything good about that, as long as you're not showing partiality, as long as you're not, you know, treating people differently based on their ethnicity and stuff like that.

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So, I know this is kind of presented as a problem to be solved. And for some contexts, for some churches, that might be the case.

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But I think for the vast majority of churches, there would be no reason for my, you know, little church in Vermont to be considering how many

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Latino songs they have to play for me. Like, I wouldn't want that. I don't understand why anyone would want that.

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I don't want to cause problems, I just want to worship God. And the reality is that the musical stylings matters very little.

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So, like, you should consider others more important than yourself, and that includes minorities.

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When you come into a, when you're a minority ethnicity, and you come into a majority culture, it's not your way or the highway, and if that's how you're thinking, then

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I think you've got some problems. I think maybe, then maybe your heart needs to be checked.

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And maybe you should spend some time at a church that, you know, better suits your needs for a while, while you kind of work on your heart and say, well, why am

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I insisting on my own way? Anyway, I don't know, that felt kind of rambly, I'm not really sure.

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I want to say one more thing, though. This is a separate topic, so let's shift gears here for a second. I've been thinking a lot about these articles that have been coming out, you know,

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Carl Ellis and Albert Mueller sharing it, and the Baptist Press and stuff like that.

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It certainly seems like there's a little bit of a shift in thinking, or at least they're providing more clarification or something like that.

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Let me just say something very, very clearly. Your articles that you're writing about clarifying your positions, or changing your positions, or things like that, we've been asking for them for a long time, and now you're giving them to us.

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I appreciate that. But you know what? It's not enough. It's not enough. If you're going to change your positions, or change how you say things, or change how you do things, and stuff like that, you've done a lot of damage.

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You need to understand that. You've done a lot of damage in this church. And so what you're going to need to do, and I'm not saying you need this before we forgive you, it's not like that, but what you should do if you're going to truly try to undo some of the damage that you've done to people, is show us why you've changed.

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Why are you saying it differently? Or why have you changed your mind? We need to know what the evolution of your thinking has been.

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And this is not for a purity test or things like that, but it's rather, it's for the people that you've damaged with your social justice rhetoric, and your

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Resolution 9, and stuff like that. We need those people to see your journey so that they can make that same journey.

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Why did you go from rejecting Tom Askell's amendment, saying it was a hostile amendment, to the point now where you're thinking, well, we have the same concern?

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We need to know the why there. I've changed my mind about things. I've changed my mind about a lot of things. You know what?

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I've been very transparent about why I've changed my mind. I've changed my mind regarding immigration, and I've had a couple of podcasts and videos about why

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I've changed my mind about immigration. I've even criticized one of my own articles that I wrote, a little bit of a cringy article.

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I did a whole video criticizing it, because I've changed my perspective. That evolution is very important in this kind of a situation, where you know things that you have done have divided people, and now it looks like unnecessarily, because you're changing your tune a little bit, or at least changing how you explain things.

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If you're going to come out strong against critical theory, we're going to need to see some specific applications of what you stand against, because there's still a lot of people confused out there.

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You must understand that. These articles are great, Carl Ellis. These articles are great, Baptist Press, but we're going to need to see a little bit more about that, a little bit more about your evolution, a little bit more about your thinking here.

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Anyway, I hope this was helpful. God bless. Bye -bye.