Travis and Irwyn continue their conversation about Irwyn's book, The Beautiful Community, and how we have a tendency to ghettoize ourselves. Yes, "ghettoize" is a word! They also talk about their children, obstacles to being part of God's beautiful community, and the blessings of God when people pursue it. Hint, the world sees Jesus through it (John 17:21).

Learn more about Irwyn and his work at the Grace DC Institute for Cross-Cultural Mission.

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Takeaways:

• The podcast delves into the theological implications of ethnicity and race, highlighting the importance of unity in diversity as a reflection of God's desire for His people.
• Travis Michael Fleming and Irwyn Ince, Jr. engage in a profound discussion about the concept of Beautiful Community, emphasizing the need for reconciliation and authentic relationships across cultural divides.
• Listeners are encouraged to explore the challenges inherent in creating a truly diverse church environment, addressing issues such as minority fatigue and the sacrifices made by individuals from minority cultures.
• The conversation underscores the necessity of understanding the cost of belonging for ethnic minorities in predominantly majority culture churches, advocating for deeper awareness and genuine hospitality.
• The episode references the divine dance of the Trinity to illustrate the beauty of mutual support and glorification in community, inviting listeners to appreciate the richness of diversity.
• Practical tools, such as the Intercultural Development Inventory, are discussed as means to assess and enhance intercultural competence within church communities, promoting effective engagement across cultural differences.

It's watering time, everybody.

It is time for Apollo's Watered, a podcast to saturate your faith with the things of God so that you might saturate your world with the good news of Jesus Christ. My name is Travis Michael Fleming and I am your host. And today we're having the second part of our deep conversation with my friend Irwin L Entz Jr.

I want you to listen in as we talk about his book the Beautiful Community. We're talking about ethnicity and race and not in the ways that you might often think or hear being put out in the media.

We're talking about it from a theological perspective. We're looking at God's unity.

We talk about so you think you can dance dance of God, ethnicity preferences, pretending the purity of the body, as well as some minority cultures, being in essence missionaries to majority culture churches. And we also talk about God's desire for our unity in our diversity. And it is beautiful.

So I would encourage you to listen in to this second part of a two part conversation. And if you've not heard the first part verse, go back and listen because you will be glad that you did it.

And I want to let you know that today's episode is brought to you in part by Derek Eastman Insurance Agency. If you're looking for life, home or auto insurance, then Derek Eastman is your guy.

And I talk about his book Beautiful Community and really what it means to be the true community, that God wants us to be happy listening.

Just to reiterate what you said, I couldn't agree more because I see so many people saying that this is not that big of a deal and let's just let our differences be there.

But where I was really convinced on the unity of God's people, not just as a theological concept, but as a true outworking of the Spirit, was actually in an odd passage from Acts 8 where you have the apostles when they heard that Samaria had received the word of the Lord and they sent Peter and John, and they came down and prayed for them that they might receive the Spirit because the Spirit hadn't come upon them. And I've seen Pentecostals use this for so many years because the people have been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.

And I remember as a young man going, I don't understand what's really going on here. If you're a believer. You should receive the Spirit.

But then when I started realizing that Samaritans historically set up their own temple system and their own rival temple, going back to John 4, when Jesus is with the Samaritan woman and realizing that they were tempted to do that again, and he's saying, no, we are one people. That's why Peter and John. Because salvation comes from the Jews and they don't receive the Holy Spirit until Peter and John come.

So to me, it's a racial understanding what's going on there. Or an ethnic. He's saying, no, you can't set up a rival group, your own ethnic tribe. It is one people of God.

Now, you've obviously written on this and you talk about this throughout the book, but it comes down to, I mean, and you even said in this definition, the ministry of reconciliation demonstrated in the local church by the gathering of people from diverse backgrounds, cultures and ethnicities is the natural outworking of a rich biblical commitment. I hear so many people right now nodding their heads and saying, yes, but. But it's how it's worked out. Right? That's where it gets difficult.

So you've already alluded to it, but the challenges are immense. You've got history, expressions of worship, dress, just, you name it. You said the ghettoization that we have.

And even when a church is desirous of this, as you reference to the illustration of Joyce where you said she's selected to a position in the church after she'd been there for a short period of time, but she was not empowered by it. She was actually brought down a bit because they really didn't know who she was.

So she felt in many ways like the token ethnic person rather than truly being known as authentic. Is that right? Is that, and, and is that the expression that you see over and over again in people that are going into majority culture churches?

Yeah, this is. And this is, this is. Yes. You know, this is part of. This is. This is the challenge.

Because there's the question becomes, let me, let me, let me front it by saying this. There's no way to pursue this ministry of reconciliation.

There's no way to pursue beautiful community without messing up, without making mistakes, without embracing the need for confession and repentance and forgiveness. That has to be, that has to be embraced because the creation of beautiful community and even its pursuit is the work, is a spirit's work. Right?

And so, so we need to be. We should expect that we have got to. We would have to engage the means of grace that he has provided for us, right?

And so in terms of this kind of fear, should I do it? Can we do it? We're going to mess up. Yes, you're going to mess up, right?

If it could be done in your own strength and efforts, it had been done by now, right? And, and you'd get glory instead of the Lord, right?

And so, so understanding that at the same time, we, we always have to interrogate, probe our heart. The why in the pursuit, are we, are we after a superficial diversity?

Do we want to just have to be able to put up like, you know, certain institutions do, certain colleges or organizations, to have the diversity picture on the website or on the brochure, you know, to say this is, you know, we're really diverse, right? But that, that's not the story, right?

Are we after a superficial diversity for the sake of saying we're diverse, or are we really after this unity and diversity, this depth of, of communion and intimacy? Because that's costly. Pursuing that means we are not going to actually really be able to stay the same.

We have to deliver a different message that communicates a sense of welcome and belonging to people within their embodied ethnic identity that doesn't just say, okay, look, here's the deal. You just have to become completely like us if you're really going to belong here. Right? That's the, that's the challenge. That's, that's what.

And, and we don't necessarily, we don't naturally want to count that cost. And, and let me, let me say this as well.

I think we don't naturally want to count that cost in some respects because of how deeply formative our faith is and how we've experienced the faith in a particular context. And so the things that have formed us in our ecclesial or our church experiences, right, Become for us the way to do the Christian faith, right?

That this is, these are the norms.

And so we are loathe often to give those up or to loosen our grip on those for the sake of welcoming neighbors who might come from different backgrounds?

Is that because, and I try to look at it a bit like a triangle, and it's not a complete way, but theology is at the bottom. Philosophy is the next layer up, and then methodology and then chemistry and personality.

And in many ways, I see some people take the forms, it might be the methodology or even the philosophy, and they attach it to the theology. And would that be a correct assessment or would you disagree with that? I mean, what would you say about that?

Well, here's what I'd say. I Think you're onto something.

And I would put it this way, that there's actually no way to, to separate our methodology, which I would say are our cultural expressions of the faith, our preference from our theology.

Okay.

Yeah. So I think we live out the theology. We live it out in culture. We live it out in methodology. Right.

And so we need to be aware that, that we're actually doing that so that we can say, okay, what, we can ask, what, what are the. What's the essence of what we believe? Theology. Right. What is the essence of what the Scriptures tell us? Right. What the Lord says to us in his word.

Right. And how are we applying and living that out in our context?

And, and how willing are we to engage other cultures, other cultural, Other methodologies that come from different cultural experiences that are not of themselves necessarily sinful, just like ours are not necessarily sinful, but they are different. And this is why I use that term, beauty, because it is the seeing and looking for the beauty in the difference.

Seeing and knowing that we actually need it. That, you know, embracing the creative genius of God in making diverse peoples, making so much diversity in the world in specific.

Right, right.

You know, and looking for having eyes that want to see and value. Right. And appreciate and appropriately engage those differences because we, we are looking. We're looking for the beauty there.

You know, you. We talked about this. I shared this with you in the. The pre show walkthrough.

And one of the things that we tried to do because our church was ethnically diverse, and I'd read and in the Revelation where you have the four angels surrounding the throne of God and each saying to one another, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. The whole earth is filled with his glory.

And one missiologist likened it to the four corners of the earth, saying to one another, this is what I see about God. What do you see? This is what I see about God. What do you see? Now, keeping that in mind, C.S.

lewis was part of the Inklings, as you well know, and he writes about one of the Inklings dying, Charles William. And Lewis said, you know, I thought when Charles William died, I'd get more of Tolkien to myself. He said, but I didn't.

I actually found that part of Tolkien died with him. Because I'll never see Tolkien laugh at another Charles William joke again.

And it's my contention that when we don't have the fullest expression of that community, we're in. In our church, in its embodiment, as you just referred to, that our vision of God is darkened yeah, man, that's so good.

I mean, it's true, because I see something in my brothers and sisters from African tradition that I would tell our church, we have to learn. To me, there's something that the gospel affirms in every culture, and there's something the gospel challenges in every culture.

And so I look at my African brothers, and, like, we had a situation where a man died in a very tragic way, and we were going to lament in the service. And I looked around at my Anglo brothers and sisters, you know, the Caucasians, and they didn't know how to lament, but my African brothers did.

And there was a lesson that they taught us and about color and dance and, you know, richness. But yet I go, I worked with Russians, and I was preaching, and I said, let's pray. And I bowed my head and I heard all these feet hit the floor.

And I look up and they're all standing. Because in Russian tradition, they value majesty. And when you speak to God, you stand. And I thought some cultures shout, like.

Well, I had a Portuguese guy in the church, and he would shout all the time, and it drove the Russians nuts, because they didn't do that. And they would look at him and they'd say, be still and know that I am God. And he'd say, make a joyful noise and hear the Lord.

And I said, he's either one wrong.

No, it's just a different expression of who God is. And we have to learn from that other expression if we truly want to enjoy God in his fullness. And I mean.

And that seems to me why you're talking about beautiful community, you're talking about that. You even talk about the divine dance. Elaborate on that for a minute. Because I thought that was so good.

Yeah, that divine dance. The term that's used, the Greek term, is perichoresis, which describes the Trinity, the life of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in a divine dance.

Mutual love, mutual glorification, mutual support. They're working together, aware of one another's purposes, glorifying one another. This a perfect unity, and yet a perfect diversity. Right?

The Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Spirit, the Spirit is not the Father and the Son, and yet they're the one God in. And this is. I use this example in. In the book from that show that used to come on so youo Think you can Dance.

And we used to watch it as a family and loved seeing dance.

And, you know, the best ones or the ones that were most captivating to me were the Partner dances when the, you know, the couple would be perfectly choreographed, right? Because perichoresis, right? Our English word choreography is rooted in that. In that word as well, or derived from it, I should say. And right, this.

There's a beauty there, right? In that choreography, right? And then. But they've given everything at the end of the dance, right?

They strike a pose, they are sweating, they're perspiring, they're smiling, right? And their hearts are like beating out of their chest because they have exhausted themselves, right?

And I think about our God in this perfect choreography of dance and support, mutual love and support. But. But he never gets exhausted, right? He never. It's. It's an eternal divine dance, right? 4. And it gets directed to. For our good, right in creation.

And so. So this is. This has significance for what it means for us to be the image of God, right? For us to be.

We're actually made for this kind of unity and diversity. We're actually made for this kind of love across lines of difference as. As image bearers to reflect the glory of God to. To the world. As.

As one theologian, who. I quote Herman Bavig or Dutch Reformed theologian, talks about the image of God, saying only humanity in its entirety.

You can only begin to approach what it means for humanity to be the image of God in a humanity counting billions of members, he writes, spread out over the whole earth, as summed up under a single head, under a single Lord, right? As he says, only it is a fully finished image, the most telling and striking likeness of God, all of this unity and diversity.

He's really pointing to the end of the story in Revelation, right? Every tribe and tongue and people and nation.

So anyway, okay, so you've given us this picture of this divine dance. And I'm shouting, I'm excited. But we know that then there's the reality of everyday life.

And then the church that tries this and you talk about this, you say, probe the preferences and count the cost. And I want to talk for a minute just about this, because in doing that, you talk about some people getting.

Who are from the minority culture, going into the majority culture of that church, where they have to put on a role for a bit because they become the representative. And I've seen this play out.

I had an African American woman in my church, and she'd been in majority white churches, and we got into deep discussions about ethnic history and racism and preferences. And we would talk for hours on these issues. And. And she said, very frank. And she said to me, she goes, you know, I've had to adjust being here.

I mean, I've had to, of course, adjust my preferences to be here. And sees herself in many ways as a missionary, giving up her preferences, her style, everything to be able to reach.

And that comes with a price that I don't think people in that majority culture realize because they assume, because there's been an adjustment, that they are now one of us and they disregard that. The, the cost and the sacrifice that has been made. And you, you allude to this a bit.

You talk about minority fatigue, which is a little bit different, but elaborate on what that is and, and how, how does that even happen?

Yeah, this is, this is, yeah, this is very real.

So when you have a, you know, a majority, let's just say a majority white church or a dominant culture church, and you have someone who's an ethnic minority comes to be a part of that church, people who may be an ethnic minority joining a majority culture church when they do it, church membership is voluntary. Right? Nobody's forcing you to, to join. So there's a reason why people are joining these churches.

And everybody, here's the thing, everybody wants, not just wants. We need community. We need belonging. We need to be in a community where we are loved and we love where we are affirmed and we affirm. Right.

We actually need that. And so very often what happens is folks who have, I think minorities who've joined majority culture churches do so for a reason.

But folks who are part of the majority culture just think, oh, well, they just kind of want to be here and they like the preaching or they like to. They found some friends or something along those lines.

Something is happen and they, and very often folks don't go deeper to wonder, huh, what does it actually cost you to, to find belonging here? Right.

Folks who are ethnic minorities, very often I talk about it sometimes as this mission mindset come in and say, okay, I know that you don't have a lot of experience and friendships with people who come from my background, so I'm willing to help you with that. And that's sometimes a conscious decision. Sometimes it's just what folks do. But that has an expiration date.

Like, you can't wear that kind of load indefinitely. Right? And if it is, I will often ask in my travels back when I could travel, hopefully that's coming again.

Meeting with folks who are ethnic minorities in majority culture churches and saying, you know, what does it cost you to be here? What have you had to give up? And it's not as though they were unwilling to do it.

The issue is regularly the first time they've been asked that kind of question. It's just been assumed that. That there isn't a real cost to. To the folks who are ethnic minorities.

And this is something you also have to just kind of walk gently through, you know, just show up, hey, what's it cost you to be here for? You know, to somebody who's an ethnic minority?

But it's being desirous to learn those things and recognizing that it's likely that they've had to do the majority of the shifting and the adjusting to find a sense of belonging and hospitality. And it's just typically due to a lack of awareness of folks who are part of a majority culture. Right.

And not asking the questions about, okay, well, how. How do we become a body that is more welcoming to our diverse neighbors? What does that. What might that look like for us? That's challenging work.

That's uncomfortable work.

As a matter of fact, we. We had an expression that we used because we. We wanted to become a reflection of our community.

And by God's grace, we did in our leadership and our music and style and expressions of worship and so many things. But you're right, it cost a lot. It took a lot of conversations, and there was a lot of awkwardness.

And we would always encourage people at the end of the service, we said, get into a conversation with someone who is different than you. It's going to be awkward, but awkward is awesome.

Yeah, that's right.

And we would do that. And I know your time is limited, and we didn't even get to talk about civil government.

And that's something that I would love to revisit with you in the future because I think your insights are so good. But you also talked about one thing, just kind of continuing this thought or.

Stream here where you say that we.

Need to really probe the preferences and count the cost. And if a church is serious about this. You mentioned a thing called the idi, the Intercultural Development Inventory.

Describe what that is just for a brief moment.

Sure. So this is a. This is a tool. I call it. I use. I call it a common grace tool.

It's not a tool that was designed for the church, but it's a verified tool that's used all over the world in all kinds of industries, churches included, to help assess a group or individual's level of intercultural competence.

And that simply means the ability to adapt and shift behavior and perspective in culturally authentic and appropriate ways, to bridge differences in ways that are authentic and appropriate. And we utilize this tool because very. We just have, we have, we have an estated desire. Right.

Nobody, no church says, you know, we're not really interested in being hospitable here. We don't want to welcome people at this church. Right. Church is going to say that. We say we have a desire to love our neighbors. Well.

But we typically don't have a way of understanding what our starting point is. What are the tools that we have? We can just say, oh well, just preach the gospel and that's all that matters.

I'm laughing because I've heard that before and it's just there's so much more. But keep going.

So much more. Right. Because. And, and I would say every. I say yes. Right. And do we really understand the gospel? Right. That. Anyway, I won't go down that rabbit hole.

That'll be for the next episode.

Right. But we rarely have a way of understanding where we're starting from in our ability to love neighbors well across lines of difference. Right.

And so this tool, and that's what it is a tool, right.

Says here's essentially you do the assessment and it says here's where you all believe yourselves to be in terms of your level of intercultural competence and here's where you actually are and here's the gap which represents your opportunity for growth. Now let's talk about why you are where you are and how this is reflected in your church or organization or ministry.

And so it, it provides a setting for us to have a good and healthy conversation about these things. Right.

It's not a, it's not, it's not the solution to these things, but it helps to set the stage for saying, okay, well I, we thought we were here and this is saying we're not where we thought we were. Right. And so what does it look like for us to grow and what are the ways in which we have demonstrated that we're not where we think we are? Right.

And so we find it a very effective tool.

We've, I, we just did some recently, this weekend, we're, we've utilized, we've been utilizing this tool a great deal as a part of the work that we do, the ministry work that we do for helping churches begin to have healthy conversations after they've had expressed stated desires to grow in pursuing unity and diversity.

And how can they find that? I mean that resource, how can they get ahold of that tool?

Yeah. So to do so use our. So when I say we.

The Grace DC Institute for Cross Cultural Mission, go to our website gracedc Institute and you can Find out plenty of information there about how we utilize this tool and what we do to help churches and Christian organizations develop the competence and confidence, as we say, to welcome others the way Jesus welcomes us.

And I've thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. I know that you have a very limited time.

You're a very popular man and very much in demand because this is such an important resource and such an important tool and conversation that I think people should be having within the church. And you have contributed your voice and led that discussion in many ways and leading other people.

And I want to applaud you for what you're doing and continuing to do that. And I'm very blessed by it. I'm grateful for the resource. I'm going to share it with other people.

But how can people find out more about you and what you're doing and just tell us more on how people can really get involved with what your, I mean, your ministry.

Yeah, thanks Travis. And this has been enjoyable. I love talking about this stuff, so.

Yeah, me too.

We could talk all day. We really could.

My personal website is irwininstadt and if you go there you can find out information about myself, about the book, about any opportunities for speaking and the like can go there if it's ministry related to our Institute for Cross Cultural Mission. As I mentioned, go into gracedc Institute. You can follow me on social media, Twitter, Irwin on on Instagram at Pastor Irwin.

Just note if you go on Instagram you're gonna not just see faith. I, I post on Instagram about, as I say, faith, family and fitness. So you'll see a little bit of all of it on Instagram.

And of course you can find me on Facebook as well. So those are the primary avenues for, for following up with me.

And just to recommend, you need to get the book now go to Amazon.com and get the beautiful community because it is an excellent book, an award winner and one that I think is a really practical tool to help you to help your church in whatever I mean to forge a way ahead to navigate the waters of these cross cultural conversations that I think will help enhance the body of Christ. Erwin, I want to thank you for coming on.

I'd love to be able to continue this discussion because we only touched on some of the book and there's so many more things I want to talk about that you can bring up. But again, thank you. You've been an awesome guest and we will talk to you in the future. Sounds good.

Sounds good. Travis would love to do it again. God bless you.

I hope you really enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. And I love the book.

I really do highly recommend the book Beautiful Community because this is an issue that we are dealing with almost every day in our culture.

And it's not just our culture.

All cultures deal with the issue of ethnicity, race, and injustices that have been done and how they adjust to one another.

Go into a place like India or Korea or even Mexico and you're going to see the conflicts that inevitably develop as people are trying to figure out how to be the people of God in a specific geographical location and how to work with different people.

And that's why I really like Erwin's book is that it really helps us to digest and see the principles of how we might be a body that comes together with all of our diversity to show Christ's unity and who God is to a watching world. It's one aspect of the gospel and how it plays out.

Just go through the Book of Acts.

And you can see time and time again how much ethnicity and culture played a part in their understanding how to live and express their faith as citizens of the Kingdom of God before a watching world. So again, I want to thank Erwin for coming in and I recommend anyone.

To get the book.

Read it. It's not a terribly long read, but it's a very good read. Today's show is sponsored in part by Kathy Brothers of Keller Williams Innovate.

If you're looking to buy or sell a home in the Chicagoland area, call Kathy. She is the agent for you. Why? Because she's really good at what she does.

I wouldn't recommend her unless I felt that way deep down in my bones and I can state it because I've worked with her and I know how much she did for us and she can do the same for you. Also want to thank our awesome Team, Kevin O'Brien, Eliana Fleming, Rebecca Bedal, and Donovan Martin.

You guys make this thing work and your work being noticed. And if this episode has helped you so that you can water your world, do us a favor.

Go online, subscribe to this podcast, share the episode with other people and write a review so that other people might find it.

The more reviews you get, the more opportunity there is for other people to discover this podcast and interact with us on all of our social media pages. What are your favorite faith Water your world? This is Travis Michael Fleming signing off from Apollo's Watered, Stay Watered Everybody.