Models for a Multicultural Church: Five Motives That Shape Your Church's Cross-Cultural Engagement

Practical Guidance for Understanding and Assessing Your Congregation's Multicultural Posture

In a world where conversations about diversity are often met with both hope and skepticism, it can be difficult to know how to lead a church in cross-cultural practices that faithfully reflect the kingdom of God in its multiethnicity.

From leadership structures to music and preaching styles, cross-cultural ministry postures vary widely and don't always reflect local demographics. Kenneth Nehrbass and Eunice Hong identify five key motives that shape how a congregation engages across cultural and ethnic lines:

● Multiculturality--How intentionally does your church represent multiple cultures in its leadership, worship, and everyday community life?
● Oneness--Does your congregation lean toward unity above cultural distinctiveness or does it try to hold space for both?
● Togetherness--Are members genuinely connected across cultural lines--sharing meals, ministries, and friendships--or mostly coexisting?
● Inclusionary Vision--Does your church's stated mission actively aim to reach and include multiple ethnic groups or is diversity assumed rather than pursued?
● Ethnic Diversity--How closely does your congregation's makeup mirror the diversity of the neighborhood around it?

These five motives combine in different ways to produce one of seven distinct cross-cultural postures--some blending multiple cultures into shared worship and others centering on one dominant culture, with several variations in between. To help leaders discern where their own church falls, the authors introduce the Cross-Cultural Posture Assessment Tool, a research-based instrument built from their study of real congregations that helps congregations discern their current approach. Importantly, they argue that no single posture is inherently better than another; the approach should fit the church's calling, context, and constituency.

Each chapter includes reflection questions, recommended reading, and practical tools, along with callout boxes, charts, and images. With a foreword by Derwin L. Gray, this book translates research and real-world insight into practical guidance for anyone leading--or hoping to lead--a church toward faithful cross-cultural ministry.

Kenneth Nehrbass (PhD, Biola University) is assistant professor of social work at California Baptist University in Riverside, California. He is also a Bible translation consultant for Wycliffe Bible Translators and the author of God's Image and Global Cultures and Advanced Missiology.

Eunice Hong (PhD, Biola University) is director of research and assistant professor of ministry at Wheaton College Graduate School in Wheaton, Illinois. She is also an ordained minister and served as an English ministry pastor of a Korean immigrant church in downtown Los Angeles.