Diverse by Design
Establishing a multi-ethnic ministry takes patience, persistence, and prayer.
interview with Mark DeYmaz
October 10, 2008
Mark DeYmaz is founding pastor of Mosaic Church, a multi-ethnic church in Little Rock, Arkansas, and co-founder of the Mosaix Global Network. The 46-year-old documents his journey from west-coast youth guy, to megachurch youth pastor, to church planter and passionate leader of a global movement in Building a Healthy Multi-Ethnic Church (Jossey-Bass, 2007).
What motivated you to plant a multi-ethnic church in Arkansas?
About eight years ago, I became increasingly uncomfortable with the feeling that the only minorities in my otherwise wonderful, healthy church were janitors. It forced me to scripture and to interact with a couple of brothers around the country who had paved some ground in this area.
I was talking to my hairstylist, a black woman named Precious, about the need for a diverse church in Little Rock. She said, "Mark, do you ever think it could happen here?" And at the exact same time I heard her voice with my ears, I heard God's voice in my heart: "Mark, would you consider doing it here?" On May 17, 2001, my wife, Linda, and I committed ourselves to stay in Arkansas and plant a multi-ethnic church called Mosaic.
Why a multi-ethnic church?
If your church is not diverse in the next 15-20 years in America, it's going to be largely irrelevant. In an increasingly diverse and cynical society, people are no longer going to buy into the message that God loves all people when it's preached from segregated pulpits and pews.
At Mosaic, I have seen a U.S. Senator sitting next to a homeless drunk without shoes, taking communion from an undocumented illegal immigrant. That to me is a picture of Ephesians 3, the mystery of the gospel given to Paul, where the context is Jews and Gentiles together in one church for the sake of the Gospel.
There's nothing new about what we're doing. We are reconciling churches in the twenty-first century to principles and patterns of the first century church. I believe that the single greatest movement of the Holy Spirit in this century will be the integration of the church.
What obstacles have you faced along the way?
The first has been theological opposition. Previously, most of the people who had written about the multi-ethnic church had been minority pastors, sociologists, and missiologists. But the white evangelical power base in the American church largely marginalized those voices. They would say, "That's a Black issue, it's an urban issue, it's a minority issue." Another type of opposition we've experienced is spiritual warfare. Particularly in the South, in a city like Little Rock, there are attitudes and demonic forces that have been entrenched for centuries. Our battle is not against Blacks and Whites, Koreans and Chinese, but against spiritual forces that strive to keep us apart.
A third difficulty has been the economic and ethnic diversity itself. Those are two sides of the same coin. I'm trying to plan a healthy, strong church with a multi-ethnic DNA. I know how to "do" church growth. But modern church growth in America is largely dependent on money, and we are trying to reach all people, even those who do not have great financial resources. But from the beginning, God has provided for us in amazing ways.
Finally, what we're trying to do has relational obstacles, and those are overcome only with time and the building of trust. You just can't build a healthy multi- ethnic church overnight. The first five years of our church were about being intentionally multi-ethnic: defining our theology, our commitments, etc. The next stage is for us to build a truly healthy church, which will take patience, persistence, and prayer.
What do you say to existing churches?
In a transformational situation, go slow. The last thing you want to do is split a church in the name of unity! Transformation is not about political correctness, it's about being spiritually correct. The Mosaix Global Network is working on strategies for coaching this kind of change.
What's the difference between multi-ethnic and multi-cultural?
Everywhere I go, there is discussion about what to call ourselves. In Canada, they speak of intercultural churches. In some places, it's multi-ethnic, or trans-cultural, or multi-racial. Call it whatever you want to call it, as long as we are all talking about the same thing. I don't use the term "multi-racial" because the Bible says there is only one race, the human race. In America, the term "multi-cultural" can be associated with the doctrine of tolerance. At Mosaic Church, we describe ourselves as a multi- ethnic church doing cross-cultural work.
Copyright © 2008 by the author or Christianity Today International/Leadership Journal.
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