It is hard for me to express this morning the joy that I feel to be here with you and the opportunity I have to share God’s word with you. Dr. Piper has been to me, as I am certain for many of you gathered here this morning, a great, great, great blessing. He has been in many ways a mentor of mine from afar. As a matter of fact, I cannot think of a single contemporary writer or pastor who has influenced me more in terms of my thinking about the Christian life and about the church of God. I praise God for him and I thank you for this invitation.

The second reason why I am so thankful and overjoyed and almost cannot even express the joy for being here is because I’m gathered with my fellow pastors, and because I have the opportunity and privilege this day to share God’s word with you. I would ask that you would pray. It has been my prayer that God would use me in a mighty way to both encourage your hearts this morning, but at the same time to challenge you to think about the church the way God Almighty thinks about his church. I pray that he would use me this morning to instill in you a desire to see in your church, a church that honors the Lord in every single thing that you are doing there.

A Multiethnic Vision of the Church

As you know, the theme of this particular conference is, “How Must a Pastor Die? The Price of Caring Like Jesus.” Dr. Fernando blessed us so much last night as he opened up this conference. This morning I have the opportunity of focusing on a specific topic underneath that theme, and it is the topic of the multiethnic church. It’s about God’s vision, the biblical vision, of the multiethnic church and how you and I as God’s men, as pastors of churches, are to give of ourselves to see that goal implemented in our churches. The title of my message is “Sacrificing Self: The Multiethnic Church and the Mandate of the Gospel.” The main passage that we will be looking at this morning comes from 1 Corinthians 9, and I would ask if you have your Bibles to please turn to this passage. This is a passage that is very familiar to you. I’m reading 1 Corinthians 9:19–23:

For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.

This is the word of God. It is inspired, infallible, inerrant, and true in all that it proclaims, and it is to be our goal to submit our lives to God’s word. Let’s bow in prayer.

The Multiethnic Church is Possible

I am the pastor of a growing multiethnic congregation in Jackson, Mississippi. Now why do I begin that way? Well, it is certainly not to impress you, if a statement like that could in any way impress you. That’s not it. As a matter of fact, the reason why I begin that way is that I want to surprise you by what I just said. To go even further, I would like to shock you by what I just said, especially by the last part of it. It’s a growing multiethnic congregation in Jackson, Mississippi. As you know, church growth experts teach us that if you really want to grow your church, if you really want your church to be effective and strong and pulling people into the doors, that what you have to do in order to grow that church is to target a certain segment of like-minded, culturally similar, economically similar people and go after that specific group. And if you don’t, the likelihood of your church growing will be slim.

That thinking has become so pervasive in our culture and in our society over the last few decades that a gentleman by the name of Steven Rhodes, who is a pastor of a multiethnic church, has written a book on it entitled, Where the Nations Meet: The Church in a Multicultural World. He says this:

One of the questions I am asked most frequently is, “Does the multicultural, multiethnic church really work?” People seem genuinely perplexed at the viability of a multicultural church. The question reflects less a sense of whether multicultural churches ought to exist than whether in fact they can exist.

Did you hear that? I mean, all of us here this morning, regardless of what kind of church you’re in, would probably hear a minister say, “I think a multiethnic church is a good thing,” and that would not in any way be a concern for you. The question is whether it can exist. The question is whether it can thrive. The question is whether a multiethnic church can truly grow. Well, Redeemer Church exists, and not only does it exist, it’s growing. And it’s growing with people that are wealthy and that are not, that are educated and that are not, that are Black and white. And even in Jackson, there are Asians and Hispanics. God Almighty is a good God.

In case you don’t know this, Jackson, Mississippi is not a bastion of racial progressiveness. I have been at Redeemer Church, as Dr. Piper said, for a little over a year now. I was in Miami, Florida before that for 12 years. What a shift — Miami, Florida to Jackson, Mississippi. I remember when this was a core group, a church plant, and I remember when the pulpit search committee chairman called me on my cell phone and left a message and he said, “My name is Bryant Taylor. Would you at all consider coming to Jackson and helping us start this church?” I never called him back. He kept calling and he finally reached me. I said, “Brother, I want you to know something. The last place on God’s green earth that I would want to live is Mississippi.” When God confirmed the call, I was speaking to a friend and I was telling him that I was moving to Mississippi, and he looked at me and said, “Black folk don’t move to Mississippi, they move away from Mississippi.”

And yet I live there. What an extraordinary thing. I love living there and I love the people there and God Almighty is doing a work there. I cannot tell you how extraordinary that is, and it’s not just because it’s Jackson, it’s also because of this man standing here.

A Painful Remembrance and Gracious Healing

My experiences in life are not those, from a human perspective, that would have prepared me to be this man and to do this work. I grew up in the south and even though there were many things about that experience that I could look back on and say that God was so good and so gracious to me, yet I still feel the pain and I still feel the scars. I grew up in a small community in Southwest Virginia whose racialism was so pervasive that it had — and many southern communities are like this — a railroad track down the middle of the community. White folk lived on one side and Black folk lived on the other. And even though I am young enough that I went to integrated schools, our interaction with one another was very little and when we did have interaction with one another, it was awful.

I won’t take the time to go into the details today, but because of the racial wounds and the racial scars and the painful things that were said and done to me by others growing up, by my peers, by adults, it so shaped me. All the way up to this day, I have to constantly go before the gospel and say, “God, heal me.” Now I tell you this, not because in any way this morning that I want you to feel sorry for me, nor in any way this morning do I want you to feel bad or guilty or to even think that the topic of this address is about racism in America. I tell you this because I want you to know my story and I want you to know, in knowing my story, that there is not one single place on planet earth that I would rather be in the gospel ministry than Jackson, Mississippi.

And brothers, that is not about me. It is about the wonder of God’s grace. The same grace God has manifested in my life is the grace that was manifested in the life of Paul. It was the grace that allowed the apostle Paul to write a passage as profound as the passage that we have read this morning.

Learning from the Life of Paul

Now, we know a lot of things about Paul because of the book of Acts and because of his letters. We know many things about him, about how he thought, but also we know many things about his life. We even know many things about Paul’s life before he came to Christ. And one of the things we know about the apostle Paul before coming to Christ is that this man was profoundly, deeply ethnically conscious.

In other words, the word ethnocentrism would’ve wrapped itself all around Paul. When he talked about his preconversion self over in Philippians 3:5–6, he described himself as “circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.” Now, one of the things that would’ve done very much with Paul and with other Jews is it would’ve been that which they would’ve held up and said, “This makes me right before God.”

But it did not just do that. Sociologists remind us that one of the things that groups do is that groups help to form belonging and identity. At the same time group identity is there it also sets us apart. It makes distinctions from others. Now, when we go back and we look at Paul as he described himself prior to coming to Christ as being circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, not only was that something that he would hold up before God and say, “I’m right before him,” but he held it up as an ethnic identity marker to separate himself from others. Jews would look down upon the other. Jews would see the other as inferior. They would loathe the other. Now they weren’t the only ones. Everybody else is guilty of that too. But most certainly the Apostle Paul was this way before coming to Christ.

An Ethnocentric Outrage

There’s this amazing passage in the Book of Acts, which I think explains some of this clearly. It’s a passage where Paul has finished up his third missionary journey. He makes his way back to Jerusalem and he has this meeting with James, the brother of our Lord, and with the Jerusalem elders. Because of the tension that exists there because of Paul’s ministry among the Gentiles, they make a recommendation to him. They tell him, “Paul, we would like for you to pay for this Nazarite vow for these four Jewish Christians and to participate in the purification part of this yourself.” He agrees to for the sake of peace and for the help and the welfare of the church in Jerusalem.

So he goes into the temple and on the last day of this what ends up happening is these Jews of Asia see him and they falsely accuse him of doing all of these things and of even bringing the Gentiles into the temple. As a result of that, they attack him and they almost kill him. If it were not for the intervention of the Roman soldiers, Paul in a matter of moments would’ve probably been dead. The Roman soldiers grabbed him and they were taking him back up to the barracks. But Paul stops them and he asks whether he could have permission to speak to his people. So he starts to address them in the Hebrew language, most likely a Hebrew dialect of Aramaic. He speaks to them. This crowd that was going crazy for his very life gets quiet and they’re silent and they listen.

And what Paul does in this particular instance is he takes them through his conversion. It’s the second of three times that he does this in Acts. He goes through the story and then he gets to this part. This is the thing that’s striking to me. He gets to the part where Jesus says, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” And Paul responds back by saying, “Who are you, Lord?” And then in this account, which is different from the account in Acts 9, Jesus responds by saying, “I am Jesus of Nazareth” (Acts 22:8). But in Acts 9:5, all he says is, “I am Jesus.” In other words, there is a clear identification that the Jesus who is speaking to Paul from heaven, the Jesus who had been resurrected, is the same Jesus that walked planet earth, the same Jesus that the Jews would’ve clearly said died accursed on a cross.

Paul tells them, “Jesus of Nazareth has spoken,” and they say nothing, not a word. He moves on through. And then he gets to the end of that and he talks about when he went back to Jerusalem. He was in the temple and he had fallen into a trance. Jesus spoke to him there and Jesus said, “Leave Jerusalem. The Jews will not accept your testimony. I am sending you to the Gentiles.” Do you know what happened then? The crowd went crazy. They started to scream for his death. They started to throw off their clothes, throw dust up in the air, and shout out, “Away with such a man from the earth” (Acts 22:22).

All One in Christ

Now, I want you to just think about that passage for a moment because what’s being said there is he would actually stand before that crowd and cry on about Jesus of Nazareth being alive, resurrected the one who had been accursed on the cross being alive and they say nothing. But as soon as he mentions Gentiles, they go crazy.

Paul would have been like that as well and yet the same man could write this:

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:28).

That is a profound difference. His entire world had been turned upside down because of Jesus, because he had seen and embraced and believed in the risen Christ. Everything he thought changed. His conversion meant everything, and so should ours. Our lives are to, be brothers in Christ, no longer the same because we have surrendered them to Jesus. And as we look at this passage from 1 Corinthians 9, what we see here is helpful to us as ministers because it really is Paul’s philosophy of ministry. What we see here is how Paul’s life view changed and how ours should as well.

Paul’s Renewed Self-Perception

The first way we see it is that his very perception of himself changed. I mean, think about it. When he described himself as a Hebrew of Hebrews before he was talking about what he was like. That would be something that would be a main emphasis of how he viewed himself. Now in this passage, he describes himself in the most radical, most profound ways, even the most contradictory of ways. He describes himself as a free slave.

At first, as you hear that, it makes absolutely no sense. It’s like trying to take a square peg and to push it into a round hole. What in the world is a free slave? But that’s what he says in 1 Corinthians 9:19:

For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all . . .

In another translation it is put this way: “For though I am free from all men I have made myself a slave to all.” The Greek word is douloō doula and it literally means “to make oneself submissive to,” “to make oneself a slave of,” or, “to make oneself obedient to.” Now, I like those two words because they stand out in such stark contrast to one another. How could someone be both free and a slave? How could someone be free of all men and at the same time a slave of all men? Well, as you look at the passages, one of the things that’s clear about it is that the word “free” stands out. The Greek is eleutheros is the first word in verse 19. It’s emphatic. So that word takes hold overall, and one of the things that Paul is attempting to communicate to the Corinthians is that he is free from all of them. In what way?

Well, one of the ways that Paul describes himself as free from the Corinthians, I believe from the context of this passage, is that he’s free from their financial control. And so back up in 1 Corinthians 9:14–15, it says:

In the same way, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel.

In other words, we should get our living from the proclamation of the gospel. If we are giving our lives through it, we should make our living that way. But then Paul goes on to say:

But I have made no use of any of these rights, nor am I writing these things to secure any such provision. For I would rather die than have anyone deprive me of my ground for boasting.

In other words, what he’s saying is, “Even though this is my right, I am not taking it from you. I have not taken it from you. I am absolutely free from you. I am not beholden in any way to you.” So he’s free in that sense. But I don’t believe in this passage, in this context, that’s the only way that the apostle Paul describes himself to be free. I believe he goes on to make it clear that he’s free from everything that would have held him in bondage to people before. He is free from the bondage of the law. He is even free from the bondage of ethnicity.

How else could you explain Paul going on to say here, “To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law . . .” (1 Corinthians 9:20). Paul would not have thought himself as under the law, or are acting as if he were under the law, before coming to Christ. In Philippians 3, when he described himself before, he said, “As to righteousness under the law, I was blameless.” He would’ve considered himself under the law, not like he was under the law, but under the law. Before coming to Christ, he would’ve considered himself a Jew, not like one who would step into the shoes of a Jew to be a Jew. He would’ve considered himself a Jew. How could a Jew be like a Jew?

Ethnicity Remains, Not Ethnocentricity

The point of what the apostle Paul is saying here is this: that he had become, in Christ, so freed from the cultural and ethnic and racial bonds that had entrapped him before. He was so free from that that he could transcend these things even, and then as he transcended them he could step into whatever context was necessary.

Now, in saying that to you, I want to caution you in two ways because it’s easy for us to make mistakes in this area. I want to caution you by saying, first of all, that Paul is not denying that culture or ethnicity exists. He’s not. As a matter of fact, he’s making it clear that he understands it. To the Jew, he became like a Jew; to the Gentile, he became like a Gentile; to those under the law, he became as one under the law; to the weak, he became like the weak. He sees this. He understands this. I’ve met Christians — and it happens a lot — that have this naive view that when you become a Christian, that means that there’s no such thing as people that are Black and white. I’ve had people say to me, “When I see you, I don’t see a black man.” What? How is that possible? When I walked up on this stage, what did you see?

Paul is not denying that, nor is Paul saying here that he now disdains his own culture or that he now despises his own heritage. He’s not saying that. One writer in looking at this makes this statement that Paul “avoided the inverted snobbery, or the twice born reactive arrogance which undervalues the very traditions which that person has been called to relativize.” In other words, as Paul made relative (in the sense of not absolute) his culture, his ethnicity, and who he was as a person, he was not saying that Paul no longer thought about his people in a positive way.

I’ve had opportunities to minister in different places in the world and among many ethnic groups. I have met subdominant groups at times that will attempt to try to assimilate into the dominant group in such a way that the subdominant group ends up despising their own heritage, despising their own culture, despising their own people, and not wanting to be a part of it. They’re ashamed of their parents, they’re ashamed of their culture, and they’re ashamed of their tradition because they’re attempting to assimilate into a dominant group. Paul doesn’t do that here. As a matter of fact, you can run through Scripture and you can see examples in Scripture. One of them is in Acts 18. In Corinthians, in response to Jesus coming to him and assuring him of his presence and his love and his comfort, Paul took a Jewish vow there. He took a Jewish vow. He even cut his hair, which many scholars think indicates that this was a Nazarite vow.

A Passion for Our Own People

One of the Scripture passages that is most profound and startling to me in thinking about this is Romans 9:3, where Paul says:

For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh.

Think about that. He’s actually saying that if it were possible for him to be cut off from Christ and accursed for the salvation of his people, his fellow Jews, he would do it. Paul loved his people. Part of the reason why I am in Jackson Mississippi is because, in case you don’t know this, even though it is a small city, it is a city that has one of the highest percentages of African-Americans of any city in America. It is 70 percent African-American. Part of what drove me, drew me, and pulled me to Jackson, Mississippi is simply this: I love my people. I love African Americans. It is my desire and my heart of hearts to see God-centered, gospel-driven churches in the black community. One of the things that I personally believe is a scourge in the black community today is the prosperity gospel. I want to see gospel-centered, God-centered churches in black communities.

But even saying that, I do not pastor a black church. I love my people. Paul loves his people, but you want to know what the rest of the story is? Paul loved Jesus more. He loved Jesus more.

Loving Jesus More than Any Culture

I can say this. I love my people and I love Jesus more. Loving Jesus more, valuing Jesus more, releases you from the bondage and the entrapment of being centered on your ethnicity, being centered on your culture and having that drive everything. I will tell you something. I believe it in my heart of hearts. I believe part of the reason why the church in America today is still by far (as many statistics indicate) almost 95 percent homogenous is simply because of this: American churches are culturally enslaved.

That’s the problem. And whether you’re talking about being enslaved to middle class values or whether you’re talking about being enslaved to culture, to ethnicity, and to all of those things, it happens. And we men of God, pastors of the Church of God, just buy into it and accept it just like it’s okay. We just live with it. And we know in our heart of hearts that what causes people to come into churches and to want to stay in this church, or attend this church, or become a member of this church may be a little bit of theology, or it may be that they want a church that preaches the Bible, but the rest of the thing that’s driving them is they like what they like.

So we pull right into the exaltation of self and we structure our churches just like that. If they like what they like, we’re going to make sure that we give them what they like. Then we stand back and we wonder why people are leaving our churches and going to the church down the street with the bigger youth group and the better nursery and the better music ministry. I’ll tell you why they’re doing it. It’s because we allow believers to stand in the exaltation of self. I’m telling you brothers in Christ, it’s time for us to stand up and say, “No. This will not stand. This is not the gospel. This is not what Jesus wants. Jesus is my Lord. Jesus is my king. I value Jesus more than anything else, and this church will value Jesus more than anything else.” We should work that he would be exalted, not culture, not race, not ethnicity, and that none of these things would keep apart that which Christ has made one.

Theologian Gustaf Gonzalez writes this:

The multiethnic or multicultural vision is sweet, but there is a bitter side to it. There is a bitter side of having to declare that the vision of many peoples and many tribes and many nations and many languages involves much more than bringing a bit of color and folklore into our traditional worship services. It includes radical changes in the way we understand ourselves.

A Glimpse at Ethnicity, a Fixed Gaze on Jesus

I’m not telling you to let some black folk in your church. That’s not what I’m standing here to say. What I’m saying to all of us is that all of us must come to understand who we now are in Christ. That’s one of the things that Dr. Fernando said last night that was so powerful. He talked about suffering, he talked about Christ, and he talked about how we take a glimpse at suffering and gaze at Christ. Well, this is the same thing here. We take a glimpse at ethnicity. It’s not that you don’t see it, but you just gaze at Jesus. You see Jesus. May we see Jesus.

There are stories told of a girl that was attractive, beautiful, except for one thing, she had a disfigured nose and because of that disfigured nose, it caused her to think of herself as being ugly. Her parents were so concerned about this that they went and found the best plastic surgeon they could find to do surgery, to correct her nose, and he did. After several weeks of healing, he removed the bandages from the surgery and he saw that the surgery had indeed worked. He lifted her up, took her over to the mirror, and said, “Look.” She looked and she said, “I knew it wouldn’t work.”

She had become so used to seeing who she was prior to that surgery that she could not now see who she was. I’m telling you, brothers and sisters in Christ, this is true. We are — Scripture proclaims it — new creations in Christ. We are new in Christ. We need to see that. There are many things that shape our churches and in this crowd, a crowd that will come to this pastor’s conference, knowing the heart and the teaching of Dr. Piper, I am certain that one of the things that rests large in your minds is the word of God. It does in mine and I’m certain it doesn’t yours. That’s why I love this brother.

But there are other things that influence our churches. Our histories do. Our traditions do. The culture of our people does, and that’s all right. It’s just a part of who we are. But I tell you something, people that refuse to see that there is culture in their church are typically enslaved to it and don’t even know it. That enslavement prevents you from looking out. That enslavement prevents you from seeing the other.

Paul’s Renewed Perception of Others

Paul’s perception of himself changed, but not only that, his perception of others changed. Look again with me at 1 Corinthians 9:20–22:

To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some.

Now, one of the things that this clearly communicates to us is that when Paul thought through his philosophy of ministry, he identified all of these different groups and he understood his call to go to all. To the Jew he became as a Jew; to those outside the law he became as one outside the law; to those under the law, he became as one under the law; to the weak, he became weak. He so embraced this multiethnic, cross-cultural, cross-economic understanding of ministry that it didn’t really matter. And I think all of us need to hear that today. All of us need to be challenged by that today when we are hearing and buying into the homogeneous unit principle. Paul targeted, but it wasn’t a rifle shot; it was a buckshot. It was to everybody.

But what’s most amazing about this isn’t just that. It isn’t just that he identifies these ethnic groups and says, “I’m called to go.” That’s not the main thing here, and when we just focus on that I think we missed the heart of what Paul is saying here. The heart of what he’s saying here comes up in this refrain. It’s repeated over and over. You see it in 1 Corinthians 9:19, which says, “That I might win more of them.” In the first part of 1 Corinthians 9:20, he says, “In order to win Jews.” In the second half 1 Corinthians 9:20, he says, “That I might win those under the law.” In 1 Corinthians 9:21, he says, “That I might win those outside the law.” In 1 Corinthians 9:22, he says, “That I might win the weak.” And then he goes on and he summarizes the whole thing and he tells us exactly what he means. At the end of this, he says:

I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some.

We need to understand this. Paul’s goal in all of this wasn’t a sociopolitical agenda. He wasn’t trying to show to the Roman world, “Look how Jews and Gentiles can really get along.” This isn’t about what the world talks about. This isn’t about worldly tolerance. This isn’t about any of those things. Do you know what this is about? This is about a man that saw sinners in need of the gospel, and it wasn’t that he didn’t see ethnicity, or economics, or religious differences. He saw all of those things, but his homogeneous unit principle was this: I see sinners in need of a Savior.

The Mandate of the Gospel

Therefore, in truth, what Paul was doing was really fulfilling the command, the mandate to all of us, to the church, to go and make disciples of all nations (panta ta ethnē), all the groups of the world, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. His eyes simply saw the salvation and the need of salvation of others.

Not that long ago, Diane Sawyer did an interview with Billy Graham and in that interview she asked him if there was one thing in our world that he could wave your hand to and it would go away, what would it be? His response was this, “If I could wave my hand what I would have go away would be racial strife and division.” That’s a great laudable goal. Billy Graham of course knows this, but it will not go away by the waving of a hand, and it will not go away by the way the world talks about this. It will not. It will only change and there will only be advancement in this when the church is the church, and we just live as the church and we stop allowing what people look like or where they’re from to become hindrances and obstacles to faithful gospel ministry.

In our community in Jackson, even though the city is about 70 percent black and 30 percent white, our community is about 50 percent black and 50 percent white. In an eight block span, from four blocks north of us to four blocks south of us, there is an economic diversity that moves from government subsidized housing to million dollar homes. I look out, and you know what I see? I see a community in need. I see a community in need of the gospel.

Brothers, I tell you, one of the great tragedies in the American church today is that all over our nation today there are these transitioning communities. What’s happening in these communities is that they’re transitioning ethnically, they’re transitioning socioeconomically, and they’re transitioning culturally. But what’s happening is that we have been a church of a certain type in this particular community. We see the changes, and do you know what we do all the time? We run away, and the reason we run away is that we want to find folk out there that look more like us. We want to go to the green pastures on the other side of town, and then at the same time we do that, we will say, “I’m going to send the missionary to some other part of the world.” We don’t even acknowledge that God in his sovereignty has put us right in it.

We forget that we are to be missional as the church. We forget that we are sent as the church. If there’s one thing that I could say to you today, in a crowd this large I can imagine there are some of you sitting right there and you are thinking and wrestling with your leaders and you’re thinking, “Should we move?” Don’t move. Don’t leave. Don’t give up. Live in the gospel. Live in the gospel and let God Almighty use you right there. Let him use you and don’t buy into the lie and don’t buy into the lie people will say and begin to think: “Well, these folks won’t be comfortable with us.” Some might not and some might leave, but I tell you this, if you love them in Christ, what they are first going to see are Christians before they see whites, Christians before they see blacks, Christians before they see Hispanics, Christians before they see Asians. Love them in the gospel and embrace them in. Let God do the rest.

Paul’s Renewed Vision of Ministry

Paul’s view of others changed. He saw sinners in need of the gospel, and finally, Paul’s view of how to do ministry changed. He knew that genuine ministry is always incarnational. It is always self-sacrificing. It is always giving of self, and he learned it from our Lord who he speaks of in Philippians 2:6–8, saying:

Though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Paul followed Jesus in his life and ministry, and he calls us to do it as well. As a matter of fact, over in 1 Corinthians 11:1, what he tells us is this:

Be imitators of me as I am of Christ.

What he’s saying when he speaks of this philosophy of ministry — to the Jew he becomes like a Jew, to the Gentile he becomes like a Gentile, to the weak he becomes like the weak — is this: “As I am following Christ in this, follow me.” Church, follow Paul, the apostle of the Gentiles, who in every city first went into the synagogue. Follow Paul because Paul is following Jesus.

The Cultural Pluralism Paradigm

There are two paradigms that hinder the multiethnic church. One is the church-growth paradigm, which I’ve spoken of already. The other one is called the cultural pluralism paradigm. The church growth paradigm hinders the multi-ethnic church by saying that growth is the most important thing, and because growth is the most important thing you do whatever it takes to facilitate the fastest growth. In elevating self, if that will facilitate the fastest growth, you do that. Therefore, self becomes supreme over the gospel.

The cultural pluralism paradigm hinders the multiethnic church because what the cultural pluralism paradigm says is that there is an attempt to guard cultural distinctives and in that attempt to guard cultural distinctives as being most important, culture becomes supreme over the gospel. For Paul, the gospel was supreme. It’s as simple as that. The gospel was supreme and he says as much in 1 Corinthians 9:23. He writes:

I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.

Now, the part of this that is a little bit tricky is the end of it where the ESV says, “That I may share with them in these blessings.” What does that mean? Well, literally from the Greek, it can actually be translated this way: “That I may become a joint partaker of it.” In other words, what he’s saying is, “I do all of this for the sake of the gospel, that I may become a joint partaker of the gospel.” Now, what does that mean? Does that mean that he’s giving all of himself away, serving the Jews, serving the Gentiles, serving the weak, and doing all this self-giving stuff so that he can get something back?

I think the answer is understood contextually. When you look at this passage, what you see is this. Paul is saying, “I identify with the Jew. I step into his world. I identify with the Jew. I identify with the Gentile. I identify with the weak. I do all of these things.” And then the way he ends it is basically this way: “Ultimately, I do all of this for the sake of the gospel because I am identifying with the gospel.” This is the very nature of the gospel. Scripture says:

For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich (2 Corinthians 8:9).

The gospel proclaims to us a message of one who has given up the glories of heaven, taken on flesh, walked among us, and suffered and died a curse on a cross. It is about God who gave it all for our salvation. That’s the gospel, and to live in the nature of the gospel, to live in the work of the gospel, it calls all of us here brothers to that same self-sacrificing service. So when we go back to our churches, I hope and pray that all of us will be able to stand up in front of our congregation and say that the gospel is about this man standing here and sacrificing all he is for the sake of Christ, and you know what else it’s about? It’s about you sacrificing. It’s about Jesus being supreme and then putting the interest of others ahead of my own. That’s what Christ calls us to.

The Great Obstacle to Effective Evangelism

John Stott did an interview on evangelism not that long ago, entitled, “Why Don’t They Listen: The Most Pernicious Obstacles to Effective Evangelism.” He says this:

We often do not look like what we are talking about. We make great claims for Christ, but there is often a credibility gap between our words and our actions. It’s time to get them together, our words and our actions.

It’s time for us to begin to say, oh, church of God, I believe in the atoning work of Christ. I believe in the reconciling work of Christ. I believe that he has reconciled me to God in Christ, and in that I believe that he has reconciled all who are in Christ to me. We believe it, now live it. I say this to my church all the time. What other area of sanctification do you tell your church, “Wait till you get to heaven and work on that”?

Have you ever told somebody that came into your office who was committing adultery, “Just wait till you get to heaven and God will fix it there”? Why do we wait on this? Why do we wait? Jesus has made me reconciled with God, and if he’s made you reconciled with God, we are reconciled. Live that way. There is a movement in the church today that says the gospel is about success, that the gospel is about winning, that the gospel is about health, or that the gospel is about wealth. That isn’t the gospel. The gospel is about surrendering to Jesus and taking up our cross and following him. That’s the gospel.

Becoming What We Are

May we long to be like Jesus. I have three children, two girls and a boy. I have an 11 year-old-daughter, a three-year-old daughter, and a nine-year-old boy. Almost anybody that sees my children will say they almost look just like me. Now, that’s sad because my wife is a lot prettier than me, so I would wish they would look more like her. But it’s interesting because we get a lot of visitors in our church and they’ll see my kids running around, and they’ll come up to me and they’ll say, “I know that had to be your kid because he looked just like you.” Thankfully, the one that looks most like me is my son, Matthew.

Matthew is nine. We have people in our church that call him mini-Mike. Not long ago after a worship service, Matthew came up to me. I was standing at the door greeting people as they left, and he came up to me and he was standing there. And somebody came out and this person looked at me, looked at Matthew, and he looked back up at me and said, “Man, did you ever mark that boy.” Now that’s a Mississippi expression. That means, he looks like his daddy.

That really is what we should want spiritually, isn’t it? We should want people to be able to look at us, to look at our churches, and to cry out in prayer to Jesus, “Oh Jesus, did you ever mark that boy. Did you ever mark that church.” That’s what I want. That’s what I want for me and for our church, and that’s what I want for you.