Randy Nabors pastored a cross-cultural church for 35 years and now works with the Presbyterian Church in America denomination to help plant churches that reflect the diversity within the new church's community. He's done a lot and seen a lot. In Today's Conversation, he joins Leith Anderson to talk about pastoring cross-cultural churches.

In this podcast, Randy and Leith discuss:

How terms like "cross-cultural" and "multi-ethnic" are distinct;

Whether every church should be cross-cultural;

How to deal with differing cultural preferences about music, preaching and other things; and

Whether there is a certain profile that helps make someone successful as a pastor of a cross-cultural church.

Read a Portion of the Transcript

Leith: Should every church seek to be multi-ethnic or cross-cultural?

Randy: If you’re in Montana somewhere, or Nebraska, or some state — if you are in an all-something neighborhood and it is completely homogeneous — then I don’t see any mandate that you have to become something different than you are. I do think African American churches are legitimate churches. I think white churches are legitimate churches. But I do think that if you are in a mixed neighborhood and you step over certain pockets of demographics in that neighborhood to only reach the kind of people you want in your church, I don’t think you’re being obedient to the Great Commission, and I think there might be some incipient racism at work there or cultural bias.

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Relevant Links/Resources

The New City Network

"Everything You Need to Know About Pastoring" Podcast Series: Small Churches, Rural Churches & Large Churches

Are Multi-ethnic Churches the Only Way? Evangelicals magazine, Spring/Summer 2016