January Series Speaker Will Focus on Cultural Diversity

If the modern North American church wants to grow into the future, it better be prepared to have a vision for cultural diversity. That’s the message pastor and author Soong-Chan Rah will deliver as part of Calvin College’s upcoming January Series 2010.

Rah's lecture, sponsored by Christian Reformed Home Missions, takes place on Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. day, Monday, January 18. The presentation, called "The Next Evangelicalism and the Changing Face of American Christians," will be based in part on Rah’s recent book, The Next Evangelicalism: Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity (IVP, 2009).

Besides Home Missions, two other Christian Reformed Church institutions are also sponsoring speakers for the January Series, which runs from January 6-27 and will be available via the Internet and at 28 remote sites across North America.

On Wednesday, January 13, the Calvin Academy for Lifelong Learning will sponsor a talk by James K.A. Smith, an associate professor of philosophy at Calvin College, who will speak on  "Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview and Cultural Formation."

The final speaker for the series will be Archbishop Elias Chacour, a church official from the Melkite Catholic Church in the Middle East. His talk – "Unity Within Diversity: Myth or Reality?" –is being sponsored by The Center for Excellence in Preaching at Calvin Theological Seminary.

Other speakers, who are being sponsored by a range of organizations and companies, will address such topics as global health care, "Green Prosperity," and "African Solution to African Problems."

Richard De Vos, Sr., co-founder of the Amway Corp. will speak on Wednesday, January 20, on the subject of "Ten Phrases." His focus will be on the use of words and how they can impact a person’s attitude and help to create a positive outlook on life.

The presentation to be made by Soong-Chan Rah is especially relevant to Home Missions, because many of the agency's new church plants serve multicultural North American communities and are staffed by ethnically diverse pastors.

Additionally, Home Missions has four ethnic leadership teams that seek to provide leadership to Hispanic, Black, Korean, and Native American church communities in the CRC.

Soong-Chan Rah is a pastor, theologian, and sometimes controversial thinker, who has called attention to racism and cultural insensitivity in the North American evangelical community. He is currently the Milton B. Engebretson Associate Professor of Church Growth & Evangelism at North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago, Illinois. Prior to that, he was senior pastor of the Cambridge Community Fellowship Church, a multi-ethnic, urban, post-modern generation church in the Central Square neighborhood of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

January Series lectures take place at the Calvin Chapel from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. EST. Admission is free. For more information, visit: http://www.calvin.edu/january/.