Churches in our area that continue to focus primarily on reaching white people are headed for decline in the coming years. In my not so humble opinion, any church who has the white community in San Joaquin County as its primary evangelism target is making a huge mistake, one that I believe will backfire big time in the long run. There are a couple of reasons I make these statements with some degree of confidence.
According to Prof. Soong-Chan Rah of North Park Theological Seminary (@profrah, www.profrah.com) it’s an undisputed fact among secular sociologists and Christian missiologists that the white population in the US is shrinking relative to the explosion of non-white populations in the US, primarily Latino and Asian. This is no longer a regional issue, it is a nationwide trend as second and third generation Latinos and Asians begin to leave the primarily coastal towns and cities of their first generation American parents and move into the interior of the US. Those opposed to this trend can lament it and forward conspiracy theory email chains all they want but it’s a done deal and there’s nothing you can do to change it. It is what it is.
Prof Rah explained in a lecture I attended at Catalyst West a few weeks ago that this was caused almost exclusively by what many people now say is probably the most significant legislation passed in the US in the 20th century. The Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965 significantly raised the number of immigrants allowed into the US annually. Over time this has changed the face of America as it opened the floodgates over the years to thousands upon thousands of primarily Asians and Latinos to start a new life in the US. Now, forty years later, their children and grandchildren are expanding the population of their respective ethnic groups here in the US as they continue to have children and immigrate.
By the year 2023 (just 13 years from now) the number of non-white children in America will equal or exceed the number of white children in America. The ethnic tipping point will have been met. By the year 2042 whites will be the minority ethnic group in the US. These are the facts, this is reality. As Prof Rah said over and over in the lecture, “It’s a done deal! There’s no reversing it. It’s a done deal.”
Numbers released yesterday from the Census Bureau indicate that this has already happened in our county, San Joaquin County, California. For us the future is now. See http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100611/A_NEWS/6110326.
In my county Latinos already equal whites in percentage of population and soon will blow past whites and be the dominant ethnic group in the area. Not only that, but the white population is getting smaller, having shrunk by 5% in the last ten years. Latinos, on the other hand, have increased their population here by a staggering 45% in the last ten years. 6,000 people moved to our county in 2008; 5900 of them were Latino. The ethnic tipping point in our county is a mere dot in the rear view mirror. It’s a juggernaut that can’t, and shouldn’t be, stopped.
Like I said, if your church’s strategy is to reach primarily white people in San Joaquin County, good luck cuz you’re gonna need it.
Of course any church with any degree of evangelistic fervor will claim they’re trying to reach the whole population of their town. Awesome. But let’s be honest, for the most part, Sunday is still the most segregated day of the week both racially and socio-economically. Some of this is due to cultural and stylistic differences in worship praxis. But if we’re honest we have to admit that there is also an underlying racial and class tension from all sides that continues to drive this division. MLK and Cesar Chavez would still be protesting if they were alive today.
Even churches that purport to be reaching the whole city with the whole gospel and similar mantras really don’t do that in reality for the most part. Many follow the target audience approach popularized by Rick Warren in the 80’s which identifies people “like us” and most evangelistic efforts are directed to that population in the city. His target was the so-called “Saddleback Sam”; essentially upwardly mobile whites of OC. This isn’t a necessarily bad way to approach evangelism if the target you’re going after is actually representative of your city (as in Warren’s case when he planted Saddleback) and not a preferred slice of the pie. When niche evangelism happens we run afoul of the Apostle Paul’s admonition to not prefer rich people over poor. Worse yet it can deteriorate into nothing more than religious racial profiling. (Btw: Rick Warren is not a racist, I have tremendous respect for the guy).
Anyway, once a target is picked, consciously or unconsciously, then generally what happens is that symbolic evangelistic gestures that are socially oriented and not relationally oriented are then offered toward those that are less “like us” and relationally oriented evangelistic efforts are offered to those most “like us.” Thus we can then claim to be trying to reach the whole city, but in fact we’re symbolically evangelizing those less like us and putting our best efforts and resources into reaching those “like us.” This is a perversion of the Great Commission mandate.
If this ideology drives your actual evangelism strategy (as opposed to the one in your bulletin and website) and you’re in San Joaquin county and are going after the white people here then you’re in big trouble in the long run because your “market” is shrinking and your “market share” will only grow through transfers from other churches (this is the documented “growth engine” of primarily white mega-churches). Unfortunately, this is merely church growth, not biblical evangelism of reaching unbelievers. If your goal is to put butts in the seats in order to produce bucks for the bank then going after affluent whites may be a good short term strategy in tough economic times. But if your goal is biblical evangelism and reaching your Jerusalem and Judea then you need to reach all people in your demographic pie, not just a shrinking sliver of your pie.
A change in evangelism strategy will almost certainly necessitate a significant change in your current “business model.” If your “market” changes then your “products” and “customer service” must change. There, I said it, the Big C word; change. If you don’t change what you do as a church and how you do it and reallocate your resources to minister effectively to your whole community then your church will get grayer and grayer, and smaller and smaller as your people die or move away (we’re one of the most mobile cultures in history).
Eventually you’ll have to sell your property and buildings to a multi-cultural church that made the adjustments in time and figured out a way to actually obey the Great Commandment in the new cultural context. To add salt to the wound, they’ll probably tear down your buildings and start over because the praxis of spiritual community will have changed and your buildings will no longer be useful as they’re currently designed. But that’s another blog.
This isn’t new information and it’s not the first time the church has faced this challenge. I’m not really saying anything revolutionary or revelatory to anyone that has been paying attention the last few years. But in light of the latest information from the Census Bureau it’s gotten my goat today. It’s reality right now where I live. As a person who deeply cares about the church and its mission this is something important and critical to the now and the future.
How to do this, morph into a culturally relevant local church? The best answer I can give really is, it depends. And even so, there are more than one way to skin this cat, imo. I’d say start with the objective of a multi-cultural spiritual community and then through prayer and lots of discussion and experimentation figure out the best path for your group. Again, this is a good topic for another day.
Ethnic specific worship services and ministries are a good place to start, especially for first generation and older immigrants. But these probably have less impact on second and third generation people and their friends and children as these tend to value their heritage but view themselves more as mainstream Americans.
The bigger goal should be, imo, figuring out a way to change the definition of “us.” Churches reach who they are. The question is then who are you? If you’re reaching out to multiple cultures you’ll become a multi-cultural church in terms of the ethnicity of your congregants. If you’re primarily one ethnicity or another and/or a single socio-economic group you’ll only reach those people, with some exceptions.
The goal then should be to change the “us” to make sure it’s representative of your community’s cultural context so that when you try to reach people “like us” that the base is larger than a narrow band of ethnic and/or socio-economic groups. If the “us” includes a real cross -section of the population, average age, and socio-economic strata of our area then our church is not only obeying the Great Commission but also has the good chance of growing, thriving, and being a blessing to our community in the long-term future.
Other interesting issues Prof. Rah brought up: This change in population is reflected in a significant way in the numbers of people attending churches in the US. Evangelicalism in the US has maintained modest growth over the last few years while mainline denominations have suffered dramatically. When you pull back the covers of those stats Prof. Rah says you see that the denoms suffering the most are comprised of older white people. Of particular interest is the that the same decline in whites is reflected in evangelicalism. The only reason evangelical denoms are growing is because of non-white growth within them, especially in the Pentecostal sector.
As Prof. Rah conjectured at CatWest, the de-whityfication of America isn’t killing America as some racists bemoan in the media, but it is definitely killing the Americanized church. The sooner we wake up to this and accept it the better off we’ll be in the long run. Churches that will thrive in terms of effectiveness in the near and far future are those that figure out a way to incorporate ethnic heritage and style into their worship praxis and who reject and insistence on a largely white dominated style and praxis and begin to include non-white voices and heritage into the mix. This is a truly multi-cultural approach to the Great Commission and one I believe the Great Commission demands of us.
Prof. Rah feels that there won’t be serious attention to this issue in white evangelicalism until the Christian publishing houses and large preaching and leadership conferences begin to take seriously the incorporation of non-white, non-“American” voices into the Western evangelical conversation. He feels the publishing houses in particular pander to middle-aged white people by publishing material produced by people “like them.” Perhaps this is beginning to happen as Prof. Rah lectured at CatWest a couple of months ago and just yesterday was part of a blue ribbon panel at Rick Warren’s church dealing with socially relevant issues and the churches response to them. As a middle aged white guy I’m thankful for that.
Sidebar: Another stat that caught my eye in the article today was the average age in San Joaquin County is 32 years old and the largest group of people in the county is the 25-44 year old demographic. It seems to me that if the average age of your church is not between 25-32 years old and you’re church isn’t connecting with people under 35 years old then the bell tolls for your church. And what an opportunity for a church that focuses reaching the whole community, including young people with shallow pockets. But, that’s another blog that maybe I’ll get to later.
