Reaching Out to the Suburbs

Multiethnic urban Christian Reformed Church congregations might want to consider sending some of their members as missionaries to suburban churches whose makeup lacks diversity, said the plenary speaker for the 14th Annual Black & Reformed conference.

Speaking on Saturday, the closing day of the three-day conference, Rev. Curtiss Paul DeYoung said suburban churches can learn a great deal about inclusion from inner-city congregations.

Many urban congregations are made up of people who are oppressed and marginalized and who can speak about what it means to be living on the edges society, he said.

By doing this, he said, they can help to bring about a greater understanding between the churches that may be separated by miles and economic status but share the same faith.

"Many people in white churches have never been into a church that is multicultural," said the De Young, professor of reconciliation studies at Bethel University in St. Paul, Minn.

Just as they did in the early church, urban church members who feel marginalized in society can go out and speak to those who are members of the privileged class, he said.

"The early church communities were healing laboratories for the oppressed and colonized," he said. "They identified with Christ and his church, and no longer identified with the Roman or the Greek empires."

As a result, they saw it as their mission to reach out to others — Jews and Gentiles alike — with this new faith based in unity among all believers.

Exactly what form and shape this type of evangelization would take today is hard to say. But it is a form of missionary effort that is not new in today's world, he said.

Countries in Africa, for instance, are sending their own missionaries to the United States in order to call churches back to a stronger sense of identity in Christ, and to move away from a culture that is dominated by materialism.

DeYoung is the author or editor of 10 books on the Bible and cultural diversity, reconciliation, multiracial congregations, and interfaith social justice activism. DeYoung served 17 years in urban multicultural settings in Minnesota, Washington, D.C., and Harlem, N.Y. He is an ordained minister in the Church of God.

He suggested that one way of bridging the racial gaps is for members of churches to step into the lives of one another, to truly work to understand the challenges each other faces, and to seek to share with one another, as honestly as possible, their faith and belief in the transforming power of the gospel.

The conference was held at Madison Square CRC in Grand Rapids, Mich. and included various workshops and seminars. Before DeYoung spoke on Saturday, Rev. Jeffrey Hough from Muskegon said that the Christian church should be held to a higher standard, focusing on holiness before God and not on the larger society itself.

"We are unified by God's Spirit and God's intercession," he said. "We have unity in Christ—a unity that comes from what God has done, and not from what the world has become."

The conference was sponsored through a partnership between Madison Square and the Black & Reformed Ministry Team of Christian Reformed Home Missions.

As part of the conference, participants put together a list of issues that they would like to see the Christian Reformed Church’s synod, address at some point.

Rev. Peter Borgdorff, deputy executive director of the CRC, helped to close the conference by asking what does it mean to be a multicultural denomination.

“What do we have to do differently for this to happen? Who are the persuasive voices?" he asked.

While the CRC does have many multicultural dimensions and this is good, there is still disunity among church groups, resulting in a tension.

Various ethnic groups are understandably seeking to hold their own gatherings, services and conferences, while at the same time desiring to be part of a single denomination. The answer to this, he said, does not come easily.

"We need to be speaking about this. We really haven't had all of the conversations needed so that we can learn from one another what we need to learn," Borgdorff said.

"There are many issues on the table relating to unity that will lead us someplace. The question is how do we preserve our unity and heritage in a multicultural setting."