multicultural ministry as a tool for building the multicultural church
University of Birmingham
2013
Thesis (Ph.D.)
2013
This work explores the idea of a multicultural church and the possibility of its existence through the formation and development of multicultural ministry as a programmatic tool. The ideas and vision of a multicultural church and the development of multicultural ministry are presented through an auto-ethnographic lens using the participant-observer methodology. The study draws on the multicultural experiences of three mainline Christian Churches in different western contexts, with a particular focus on the United Reformed Church in the UK, to highlight the possibilities and the challenges of multicultural church and ministry. Looking at New Testament multicultural ecclesial models as proto-types for what Christ's Church in the twenty first century ought to look like, the study found the struggle to live with difference and diversity to be just as much of a blockage today, if not more pronounced. An underlying assumption throughout the work is that the multicultural ecclesial model is a core and central characteristic of Christ's church.