The ethnic-social challenge

While teaching a seminar on leadership today in Tuzla, a huge discussion erupted over the issue of the challenge of planting homogeneous churches versus heterogeneous churches. Most current missiological thinking and church-planting models have given in, to fallen humanity and conceded that homogeneous church planting is just about the only way to reach niche segments of the population of whatever target group you are reaching for.

The object of today's loud argument was my efforts to get the local church leadership to consider planting a new church that targets the large number of adult students that come to their excellent English school. The pastor was having none of it! He has stuck adamantly with this position for the last two years that we have been discussing this. His rationale is that the church must be different than society! And in the former Yugoslavia, ethnic tensions are our theme. The Serbs live in their neighborhoods and the marry their own. The Croats do the same, and the Bosniaks do the same. The church must not have these divisions. I think his point has some serious validity . . . and some serious consequences.

I was suggesting that targeting the middle class group needs to happen, and the pastor was arguing more for an ethnically unified church, . . . the central question still may be, must the church take a different stand than society? One side of me thinks so, but another side of me thinks that the only human result from that spiritual desire is that no middle-class Tuzlans will come to Christ.

Does this mean that I have no faith? Does this mean that my missiological perspective is informing my theology, rather than my theology framing my missiological perspective? In the end I conceded to the pastor that I am not God (thankfully!) and that my words are neither prophetic nor infallible. I was only reporting the results and trends in modern church starts around the world. My heart hopes that in the end he is right and it comes about that I just lack significant faith. But my fear is that the middle-class of Bosnia may not be well represented around the throne.