The Antioch Podcast

Sam Salguero is a children’s worship leader at a small Spanish-speaking church in the West Michigan area.  In this interview, she shares about the multi-ethnic worship culture of her Hispanic congregation, sharing about coritos, a genera of Latin worship music, which she describes as her congregation’s musical “sense of home.”  Later, Sam describes how the Trump administration’s heightened focus on searching for and arresting illegal immigrants, is now affecting the children of her congregation and challenging their understanding of the sovereignty of God.

Credits:

Pon aceite en mi lampara Señor

Cuan Grande Es Dios

Dia feliz (happy day)

Joseph Kuilema and Christina Edmondson are scholars at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  Joe is a professor in the Department of Sociology and Social Work, and Christina is the Dean for Intercultural Student Development at Calvin.  In January 2017, Joe and Christina co-wrote an article entitled “Confronting White Privilege” for the Banner Magazine, the official magazine of the Christian Reformed Church in North America.  In this interview, Joe and Christina share the backstory out of which this article arose, as well as their own expertise on how Christians can confront white privilege and structural racism which exists within many multi-ethnic churches.

Footnote: The article Do Multiracial Churches Reinforce Racism? by Daniel Jose Camacho was referenced, but not directly cited in this podcast.

Scott Huebl and Linda Naranjo-Huebl have been leading worship together since their teenage years in the Jesus People movement of the 1970’s. They came to Grand Rapids from their home in Denver at the turn of the millennium, and have continued leading worship at Madison Church’s Square, Ford, and North campuses. As a couple, they are passionate about social justice and draw their song selections from a broad variety of musical homes while actively developing worship leaders on their teams from each Madison campus. Scott and Linda excel at weaving scripture into their worship sets, as well as tell great stories. Scott and Linda are my personal friends, and I hope you come to enjoy them as well through this interview.

Every church has its own story, and our story at Madison Church starts in 1915.  We celebrated our centennial in 2015, and our present Senior Pastor, Pastor David Beelen (known as “Pastor Dave” to most in the church), has been leading this church for nearly one-third of Madison’s existence.  Before leaving on sabbatical, I had an opportunity to interview him, asking him to tell the story of Madison: how it came about in the first place and how it developed the way it did to become the multiethnic church it is today.  In this interview, Pastor Dave traces the development of worship practices over the decades at the church, telling pieces of his own story along the way.

The Antioch cast returns to talk about the unique challenges of leading a multi-ethnic congregation in the post-election season of 2016.

Any group of people are sure to have a few differences, but in multi-ethnic churches, these differences of opinions sometimes run along racial or ethnic lines. This is a unique challenge as a leader in a diverse congregation. We each vote our conscious, and only get to vote for one person. While holding our personal opinions (perhaps strongly), we as leaders are called to represent a church of all people, a large number of whom we are called to love, even though the systemic outcomes of these votes may make our lives very difficult… and yet, we are called to worship together. Hard stuff. But the church has never been about taking shortcuts or gathering only with people “like us.” Let’s talk about it.