Why is Sunday so Segregated?

June 30, 2009

We are the body of Christ. And we are not all the same, but we should have equal concern for one another.

For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink
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But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. - 1 Cor. 12:13, 24, 25

There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. - Galatians 3:28

Why are we so segregated into our different ethnic groups? White, African American, Latino, Asian, etc. Wouldn't God be glorified by our unity? What's keeping us apart?

For sure, we'll all be together in heaven, praising Him together. What's keeping us from being unified here? Can we fix it?

9 Comments »

I hear sacred cows mooing, and herders loading shotguns. :)

Great questions Jesse.

Very quickly, the answer to “can we fix it?” is no and yes. No, Go fixes things, and we don’t. And yes, we can play our part in fixing things, but it will always cost us something.

Comment by Michael Dean - Jun 30, 2009 @ 07:55 AM

You have to remember how the local church functions (the majority of church locations are local) Local churches minister to the community and neighborhoods that they are in. If a church is in a predominately white neighborhood, guess what the majority of the membership there is. As communities become more diverse you do begin to see some change in the ethnic makeup of the local church. Just like churches in poor communities tend to have poor congregations, etc.

I believe the real issue is not segregation by race but by other demographics.Young and old do not mix. Kid, teen and adult ministries are segregated with very little interaction between them. We develop programs to meet needs but do a poor job of bringing them all back together at points. We provide a contemporary service for one group and a traditional service for another, but do we attempt to have a Sunday were both groups worship together?

Once we begin to teach the family unit (in whatever form is dominate in your church) to worship together and let that be the ground for commonality among us then you won’t see all the other lines being crossed.

Comment by Derek Collins - Jun 30, 2009 @ 08:27 AM

Derek is on it to a certain extent. There are some churches that I’ll never understand. I’ll never understand how a church in Atlanta, Detroit or Gary, IN can be predominantly white when those cities have the 3 largest populations of African Americans in the country.

I’m in Newport, RI and our church is VERY diverse. Generationally, ethnicly as well as the other demos - socio economic, culture (not all black people have the same culture). We run the gammut of multi-millionare to homeless in our church. Cape Verdeans, Puerto Rican, Af. Amer, African, Antiguan, Irish, Portugese, multi racial and more.

A few things played in to that - 1. God’s grace and favor. We can’t ignore that. 2. We were INTENTIONAL about diversity. Young and old, rich and poor, black, white and a combination there of are all VISIBLE parts of the ministry. From the worship team to the pics we use in our bulletin - we are intentional about showing a range of people.

But I still think we have a LONG way to go in our diversity. I mean the chuch is described in Acts as having people together who didn’t even speak all the same language!!

Just my 2 cents. You can keep the change

Some churches intentionally do things that reach a certain demographic. That’s why most of the church is under 35, white, professional.

Comment by Steve Patton - Jun 30, 2009 @ 08:53 AM

This is a question that has plagued me in all areas of my life. Why is my church almost all white? Why is my business place almost all white? Why are the trade pubs and newspapers and Business Journals and other media I encounter all white? Is it simply because I’M white? If I were black, would I go to a black church, work in a job with mostly black people and read from media dominated by black faces?

And yet I know something else is possible. I attended a congregation in Boston (Mosaic Boston) that somehow naturally grew up into the most racially, ethnically diverse (albeit very small) community of Jesus followers I’ve ever known. This did not happen by human design. And Boston is a plenty segregated city. But I had the suspicion in the year I attended that I was touching something very close to what God’s Kingdom would look like, and I find it sad that that was the ONLY time I’ve ever felt that way about church.

I suppose I’m more questions than answers. Do we REALLY want to meet with the challenges and fears and joys and beauty of true diversity in our congregations? I suspect, if we’re honest, most would say no. But for those of us who do, should we just wait for diversity to come to us? Or do we have to manufacture it? How do we create welcoming, diverse Jesus communities? Perhaps we should be efforting that DESPITE the natural segregation that exists in most cities throughout the U.S. Perhaps it’s worth a lot of uncomfortable conversations and decisions within and outside congregations to really find out what it can look like to build up a community that’s reflective not just of the true fabric of the city, but the true fabric of God’s Kingdom.

More than almost any other area of transformative opportunity within America’s big “C” Church, I pray that we would begin to actively realize these possibilities in each of our own cities, communities and congregations. And I pray for myself that I find (perhaps help create?) a congregation like the one I was so blessed to attend in Boston.

Comment by Jennifer Szambecki - Jun 30, 2009 @ 08:55 AM

I believe that the problem is a few layers deeper than the surface of the question. Since “in general” is totally implied in the question, please understand that “in general” is absolutely implied in every possible area of this response.

As a case study sort of thing, I’d be willing to bet that people’s workplaces are far more culturally and racially diverse than their church fellowships. This is a symptom; not the root problem. I’m convinced that these are a couple of key problem ingredients:

1) From looking at the outward evidence (or lack of it) produced by our congregations, many don’t know Jesus Christ personally and/or have never taken seriously the pesky bits in the Word about “work[ing] hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear” and “press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed” us. They may have begun the journey but never taken it seriously. Their lives are not about Christ. Instead, only Sunday morning is somewhat about Christ, and they just meet with whoever shows up to “worship” on Sunday. Do we seriously think that this group would care much about having a more perfectly integrated congregation? If they don’t KNOW Christ, they can’t possibly have the love of Christ which spans race, ethnicity, etc.

2) American church culture (however long ago) began to dictate that our evangelism efforts should all be centered around these hub-buildings called “churches”, reinforcing the weird idea that the Church is not an organism made of God’s people, but is in fact a physical place which is holier than the rest of the places we go. Our individual members now tend to stink at evangelism if it isn’t orchestrated and planned by a church leader or developed as a program, because on the whole we don’t view ourselves as a living organism; an every-member functioning body.

So again I go back to the idea that the workplace is typically more diverse than a person’s church fellowship as a case in point, and I suggest that this is because there’s apparently no reason for the oriental guy at the office to go tell the black guy (or white guy—race here is totally irrelevant) down the hall about God and how much he loves God, possibly because 1) he’s not living in representation of Jesus Christ because he doesn’t know Christ or doesn’t honestly give a rip, and 2) after all, his church is having a Community Fun Party this weekend. All he needs to do is post a flyer on the company bulletin board (of permissible) and get the co-worker to “the church” so he can hear the pastor or pick up a tract that’s craftily placed in the kids’ candy bag.

That seemed to be off-topic, I’m sure but I’m convinced that these two things lie at the heart of many, many issues in the Church in America today, including the apparent segregation of our churches. Trickling downstream from the above problems is the fact that many “Christians” still harbor race-based prejudice, and certainly class-based prejudice.

Comment by Dean Lusk - Jun 30, 2009 @ 10:55 AM

Because we are not purposefully seeking those who are different than us for the sake of “church growth” and comfort.

Comment by Leo Rapini - Jun 30, 2009 @ 12:12 PM

I don’t exactly know if it is something to be “fixed.” Each ethnic group has their own way of worshiping the Lord, and there’s nothing wrong with that.Now obviously I don’t believe that people should be judgmental and discriminatory against other churches. Christians should be able to meet other Christians and share the same joy where ever they go. We should all be able to worship under the same roof, but when it comes to being indulged in a weekly service of worship, people should be able to do so as they wish. There’s no written rule about who can go to who’s churches. If one way of worshiping the Lord works best for you, it shouldn’t stop you from going to a church of another “ethnic group.”

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