Pentecost inspires international worship experience

Frank Stirk
CW BC Correspondent
bc@christianweek.org

NEW WESTMINSTER, BC-The widely-used homogeneous church planting model where people of the same ethnic or cultural background worship in their own language is "not biblical," says African-born pastor Sam Owusu.

"Language wasn't the Creator's original intention. Language was the result of a curse," he insists. "In the church, we can reverse that. On the Day of Pentecost, this is exactly what happened-they heard each other in their own language. And God is saying to us, ‘This is my intention.'"

Owusu and his family immigrated to Canada from Ghana in 1991 but did not want to attend an ethnic church, as many of his fellow Christian immigrants were doing.

The following year, he planted the non-denominational-and "intentionally multicultural"-Calvary Worship Centre in New Westminster. Its membership now numbers about 330 people from close to 40 nationalities.

"Our aim," says Owusu, "is to go beyond the nations that are represented in New Westminster, attract every nation in the Lower Mainland and let the church be the real plaza of nations, where people can come and meet together."

While different groups meet during the week to study the Bible in their native language, worship services are in English.

But Owusu says that does not mean people whose English is poor or non-existent are ignored. "If we see a language group that is quite big, we translate the sermons or whatever into that language. That's a lot of work, but that's the way of the cross."

It is also an approach to church planting that causes even those sympathetic to Owusu's vision to frame their comments carefully, for fear of offending advocates of the ethnic church model.

"I know that when we do evangelism [among different ethnic groups], we have to speak their language, we have to go to where they are-but I thought Christ tore all those walls down," says Cam Roxburgh, senior pastor of Southside Community Church in Surrey and the B.C. regional coordinator of Church Planting Canada

"Even if we don't speak the same language, we worship the same God."

But church planter and former pastor Larry Eide believes the multiethnic model is not the only type of church found in the New Testament.

"I think that's an ideal," says Eide. "I don't think it's anti-scriptural to plant homogeneous churches. The apostle Paul did that. I don't think every experience was an Acts-Pentecost experience."

"More often than not," he adds, ethnic churches will forsake their ethnicity over time. "As their people become more Canadianized, they evolve into a more multilingual, multicultural identity."

Yet Owusu says it distresses him whenever he hears of Caucasian and immigrant churches which cannot seem to get along.

"Recently, a Korean church was asked to move out from the building that they were renting, because the [host] congregation couldn't stand the smell of kimchi," he says.

"What does that say about a church that says, ‘We don't like a smell; we can't worship with you?'"

Roxburgh believes true universal worship will occur when both sides display more grace toward each other.

"Some of it's the fault of ethnics-they don't want to come to the table and talk; they want to do their own thing," he says. "Some of it's our fault-we haven't learned to dialogue and communicate well, and so we have our own structures we try to force them into. We've got to address that."

Still, Owusu is convinced that as Canada's cities become increasingly populated by immigrants, more churches will embrace the richness of multicultural worship.

"We come to worship from our own cultural basis," he says. "Others come and say, ‘Have you looked at the Scripture this way? Have you worshipped this way?' And you're like, ‘Wow, it's beautiful.'"

Owusu will be part of a panel discussion on the multicultural church at Vancouver's MissionsFest later in January.