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 PrintableVersion Ministering in a multi-ethnic congregationThornton Heath lies in the north part of the London Borough of Croydon, has the A23 Brighton Road running through it and shares boundaries with Norbury, Mitcham and Selhurst. It is an area of dense housing and very little green space. Petty crime, including mugging and burglary is common, and we have our share of shootings. Various factors have kept housing prices relatively low for London, and coupled with the fact that Croydon is home to the Home Office Immigration and Nationality Directorate, through which all immigrants and asylum seekers must come, the ethnic minority population is both high and has a relatively high turnover. Current local authority figures show the ethnic minority component of Thornton Heath to be over 40%. Since the figures are out of date and do not include illegal immigrants, of which there are many, it is probable that the ethnic minority population is 50% or more. This population is very diverse. There is a strong Hindu community, with its own temple. Sri Lankans are also a significant minority. South London's largest mosque is close by and we have a very strong Islamic community. Most African nations are represented and Eastern Europeans are increasing and will no doubt continue to do so with the expansion of the EU. The schools in the area are massively dominated by ethnic minority children and all have to provide English as a second language teaching. Coming to find outIn recent times Thornton Heath Evangelical Church has attracted increasing numbers of ethnic minority attendees. They come for a wide variety of reasons. Some, of course, are Christians or have had significant Christian contact in their home country. Some come from curiosity: it is quite common to have visitors who say they just wanted to find out what happens in such a place, and some of these are, of course, encouraged by a freedom they would not have felt before coming to the UK. The church is on the A23, and we have had Roman Catholics and Orthodox come thinking we are a Catholic church, because they are from places where the only church so prominently placed would be Catholic. And as usual, we have a significant number who interpret the word 'evangelical' in their own way: 'I thought it would be more Pentecostal' is a common comment. The majority of those who attend casually, and I include those who attend more regularly but are not obviously committed to the church, attend on Sunday morning. The congregation is typically 200+, rising on the last Easter Sunday to 260 which is beyond the present capacity of the building. Of these a significant number will have English as a second language and even more will not be familiar with the Bible. How to respond?How does a conservative evangelical congregation deal with changes like these? One of the earliest lessons was the Bible versions issue. As pastor I was rather proud of our position of using the NKJV. It seemed to be a good place to be, between the cobwebbed archaisms of the KJV and the modernist horrors of the NIV! But regular contact with people whose English is at best a second language, and sometimes hardly that, taught us that the NKJV's occasional descents into incomprehensibility would not do - we needed to be much more accessible. So a rethink was needed, and I can now reveal the best English version: it is the version that most accurately represents the original text in the clearest possible English! In the providence of God, we learned that at about the same time we learned another lesson. Those who have difficulties with English, in common with English speakers who are unchurched, cannot easily distinguish whether to look in a hymn book or a supplement, and have little possibility of finding a Bible text when it is announced. Encouraged by a member who offered to take on the considerable workload, we began to print the whole service - all the hymns and the entire text of the readings. The relief for many people was obvious. Latecomers (and there are many, because a considerable number of our folk originate in event-driven rather than time-driven societies) could easily locate the place in the service, no one had to struggle to find a hymn and everyone instantly had the text at hand. We are able to print the best text we can locate - often that is the ESV but we do use other versions. People are still encouraged to bring Bibles and, to facilitate that, we freely give away copies of the ESV. It is quite something to see a grown man in tears because you have put into his hand as a gift a comprehensible version of God's Word. Singing togetherHymns presented another issue. Our commitment to conservative worship means that 'choruses' and 'light' approaches to worship are not acceptable as standard fare. On the other hand, while traditional English congregations may be happy to raise their 'Ebenezers' (though one suspects half of them have little idea what exactly they are raising!) and sing many other obscure things, for second-language English speakers these really are just another layer of incomprehensibility. So in our morning service we use updated versions of hymns (some we have updated ourselves) or modern hymns that accord with our conservative theological and musicological views. In that respect we are very grateful for authors such as Stuart Townend, Keith Getty and Peter Ninnis, among others. HospitalityOne of the greatest needs is for a genuine and warm befriending of those who are coming. A great problem is the tendency of the English to regard their home as their castle. We first realised the extent of this when we asked a Ghanaian family to lunch and saw how nervous they were. When we asked we found that, although they had been in the UK for some years, and in fact the husband had been here for nine years, they had never been invited to eat in a white man's home and so were unprepared for what it would be like. That is one reason why we have replaced the Bible Study on the first Wednesday of the month with home groups. These meet at 7.00 pm and provide a full meal for all who come, followed by a Bible study, presently in John's Gospel, at 8.00 pm. Apart from training leaders, it encourages through meeting and eating together better integration. In addition to that once a month one of the home groups provides a Sunday meal at the church for anyone who wants to stay. Now we are expanding into inviting asylum seekers who are housed in local hotels to a Bible study and that also involves providing a meal. Against this background we have sought to encourage our English members to take what for them are radical steps to reach out to these newcomers. One of the greatest encouragements was seeing one of our older couples inviting a Liberian asylum seeker on her first visit to come to lunch. The Lord has done so much in changing hearts and minds. Preaching and teaching the Word is, of course, the essential thing, but don't underestimate the evangelistic impact of befriending and being willing to share food! People sufferingThe simple fact is that the social changes involved in all of this are creating chaos. Whatever the government says about the benefits of multiculturalism, the result is social breakdown in all the represented ethnic groups. Young people often feel rootless and are easily drawn into the sex and drugs culture. Unmarried mothers are just the norm, with many having children by various fathers. We have had a case where a lady had five children by five different fathers. Immigrants and asylum seekers are often bullied and exploited, too often by other immigrant communities. Illegal immigrants are far more common than the government will ever admit, and the conditions in which they are forced to live are deplorable. Illegal employment practices, including long hours for far less than the national minimum wage, are common, and many immigrants are desperate to earn money to get decent accommodation. These people need help and advice and quite often to be represented at meetings with the local authorities or other officials. I don't recall any training in ministry for attending and speaking at immigration hearings and appeals, but you soon learn! The love of ChristThere is no doubt that there are political 'hot potatoes' in all of this, but Christians should make no mistake - here is a God-given opportunity to reach people of many nationalities and at the same time to practically demonstrate the love of the Lord Jesus Christ to them. It is true that there is a danger of the social aspect becoming dominant, and we have to watch and pray constantly that we hold to the absolute centrality of presenting Christ as the essential Saviour for all nations. We make mistakes and no doubt will continue to do so. We find our 'comfort zones' and cultural assumptions being challenged and we often find that painful. There are still many issues we have to address and problems to solve. But the Lord is graciously rewarding us, out of all proportion to what we have done. People are coming to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. People from communities such as Hindu and Roman Catholic are using their new-found freedom in the UK to come and hear the gospel, sometimes satisfying a curiosity they have had for years. The fact that the gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek (Romans 1.16) is being demonstrated. And the conviction we hold, that the church of the Lord Jesus Christ is one people gathered together from every nation under heaven (and therefore not best served by 'white' churches, 'black' churches or churches of any national orientation in a foreign land) is being proved to be a joyful truth. Graham Hind,
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