By Sherene Joseph
I
n early 2020, our family changed churches. We left the Indian immigrant church we had been part of for fourteen years to move to a majority white congregation, now moving towards being multiethnic.
This move to a new church was nearly two years in the making, but there we were. We believed in the multiethnic vision for a church, and we were ready to go all in. But little did we know there was a global pandemic around the corner.
By mid-March, we were all home watching church online. This was not how I expected moving to a brand-new church to look. However, within a month, the church launched virtual small groups. I had never been part of small groups before and wanted to be a part of this ministry, even if it meant meeting via Zoom. So, I went ahead and signed us up. Within a day, the pastor in charge called to ask if my husband and I would lead a small group. and soon we found ourselves small group leaders.
But doing this online during a pandemic took a lot of work. Zoom fatigue, silence, and log-in troubles all contributed to a challenging experience.
From the very beginning, our group was diverse. Be it ethnically, socially, age, single, or married. It was a group where one could expect a lot of conversation. But I don't know whether it was the online format or the country going through deep turmoil navigating a pandemic, race-related deaths, political unrest and confusion, and an overall sense of instability that while there were members who showed up and contributed to the conversation, it was tough going. The one hour ticked by very slowly, and often, we were ready to be done well ahead of time.
Over the next six months, people joined and left the group. For many weeks, we both wanted to quit.. Small group was hard. Moreover, being in a multiethnic church was complicated, leading a multiethnic group even more.
Everyone had different perspectives; they complained about sermons, preachers, online churches, and politics.
More than once, I wondered what the point of all this was. If it was going to be this hard, was it worth it? What was I trying to prove? Did I need to make friends with a bunch of strange people? Wasn't my time valuable?? Did I need to work this hard to build community? Was this community worthwhile?
In my eyes, everyone else's small group life seemed easy. They had created a community with those they knew, those that looked like them and had similar interests. All I wanted was to be part of that. But we had members with different tastes, interests, and beliefs. But neither of us are quitters, and something kept nudging me to stay. So, we stayed and stuck with it.
Fast forward to 2023. We are still part of the group. We meet in person; some members have stayed, others have left, and others have joined. We are a diverse group with different opinions on culture, politics, and life. But we are committed to building community and friendships with one another. Not all of us knew the others well, but it's been nearly three years. We have prayed for each other, listened to highs and lows, encouraged each other, and stuck it out.
It has been challenging at times. The conversations have not flowed well, and discussions have seemed bland, but people keep returning. I keep coming back. We are all invested in it.
Why? Because it is worth it. Humans are messy, but God is faithful. Investing in people is worth it. We were not meant to do life alone but together. Building an inconvenient community is hard. It shouldn't be hard because God created us for the community. But we live in a broken world. Relationships are complex; investing in each other takes time and effort.
Through this journey, I have learned some lessons about community building. Be it a multiethnic community or a homogenous one, these takeaways are the same.
Time
Time is one of our most valuable commodities. Unfortunately, we simply do not have enough of it. Or we do, but we do not use it wisely. Not having enough time in our schedules is the most common excuse when asked to commit to anything. Our calendars fill up with work, meetings, children's activities, sports, etc.; whatever we have left, we guard religiously. Even in the middle of a global pandemic, when the world came to a standstill, getting people to commit to a one-hour-a-week meeting that you could technically attend in your pajamas online was hard. I used to look down on those who always told me they guarded their schedules until I caught myself doing it.
If we need to build community, we must start being generous with our time. The best relationships grow when we give ourselves sufficient time for the conversation to flow and linger. We need to prioritize building relationships and be willing to give up something on our calendar. We can and must give up the good for the sake of the better.
Conflict
Conflict is going to happen. You will have disagreements when you bring people from different backgrounds together. We cannot run away from conflict, nor should we stay and avoid engaging in it. We don’t need to engage in conflict head-on and create an unpleasant situation. But we can find healthy ways to handle it. We can listen, hear others’s perspectives, and respond with gentleness and care. Too often, we tend to react in anger or annoyance; often, we skirt over the issue and never address it. Instead, we burn with anger and irritation at the person, which remains until we see them the following week. Avoidance never solves the problem and will not help with community building.
If a problem exists within a small group, it can and will damage people and relationships. Therefore, we must deal with it healthily and lovingly. There will always be areas we disagree, but in the words commonly attributed to St. Augustine, "In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity."
Balancing Expectations
For the first few months of meeting online, we grew increasingly frustrated with some members. First, the super silent member added to the Zoom silence. It was like pulling teeth! Then, we had the member who jumped in to answer every question while also making things very political and one-sided, which caused me to grit my teeth and not respond.
The discussions were not significant. There was no spiritual formation or discipleship, so why were we even doing it?
But, being in a pandemic, there was no other way for us and the others to build community. We could not meet in person; for many members, this was their first experience with a church group. Inconveniently, by meeting once a week, we were creating space for people to get to know each other.
We had to readjust our expectations of small groups and give ourselves the space and patience to allow the group to grow. I wanted a group with intimacy, accountability, fellowship, friendship, spiritual discussions, and lifelong friends. I was not getting much of anything, and despite being frustrated, we kept going, if not for us, for the members. Showing up weekly, we held each other accountable.
We do not need to have intimacy in small groups. Our small group members do not need to become our best friends. They may grow into friends for life, but we don't need to hold ourselves to unrealistic standards. We must create a space for healthy, honest, and authentic conversation. A place to encourage and a place to pray for each other. Most of the time, people want a place to be seen, known, and loved. If we can show up every week, that is half the work done. Balancing our expectations of what our group needed to look like helped us build a real community.
Investing in a Multiethnic community
Over 60 years ago, Martin Luther King Jr. is known to have said, "It is appalling that the most segregated hour of Christian America is eleven o'clock on Sunday morning."
If Sundays still look like this, weekday evening small groups won’t likely look much different.
In most churches, it is tough to enter an existing group. Groups usually form when people who are already friends get together, and they need to make it easier for a new member. It gets remarkably cliquish! Thanks to social media, we often create FOMO and envy for those who might not be part of a group.
If we believe in the vision of a multiethnic church, we ought also to think of a multiethnic community. It's not enough for us to shake the hand of our Chinese, Indian, or African brother at church and then forget about them for the rest of the week. Building an intentional and inconvenient community is what God calls us to do. We all lose when we only gather with people who look and act like us. We are losing out on the beauty of God's creation of a multiethnic world.
In her book Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden Forces that Keep Us Apart, Christena Cleveland writes, "When we meet Jesus around people who are just like us and then continue to follow Jesus with people who are just like us, we stifle our growth in Christ and open ourselves up to a world of division. However, when we're rubbing elbows in Christian fellowship with people who are different from us, we can learn from each other and grow more like Christ."
Birds of a feather do tend to flock together, but if we believe the Biblical mandate to be a multiethnic church as we see in Revelation 7:9, (“After these things I looked, and here was an enormous crowd that no one could count, made up of persons from every nation, tribe, people, and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb dressed in long white robes, and with palm branches in their hands.”) then we ought to set aside our natural tendencies to gather in homogenous groups and build an intentional community.
We might not always agree on everything, but we must learn how to come together because there is so much we can learn from each other.
A healthy community and a healthy multiethnic community do not happen by accident. It takes concentrated effort—sometimes exhausting—but we must persevere.
Over the last three years, our family has participated in various small group ministries at church. While the church's vision is to be a "multiethnic movement of missionary disciples," the real work of that vision is done in small groups. We might worship every Sunday with people from different ethnicities and backgrounds. But, when we meet in small multiethnic groups, we engage in an intentional, inconvenient community, listening, laughing, sharing a meal, and building relationships.
Multiethnic small group community is the fuel a multiethnic church needs. It's not easy, but it's so very worth it.
photo credit: Chris Montgomery
Sherene Joseph is an Adult Third Culture Kid, an aspiring writer, and a storyteller who she finds herself at the crossroads of Christianity, Culture & Community. As an immigrant to the United States, she has a unique perspective on how faith is intertwined with culture and community. She is passionate about educating others about the challenges faced as an immigrant while also building inconvenient community. Sherene loves good coffee & deep conversations. She is wife to Joe, mother to two children & friend to many.