When Kensington Baptist Church was originally established, Easton was a genteel suburb, separated from Bristol by fields and market gardens, but now, over 175 years later, Easton displays all the marks of inner-city life. Dealers operate fairly openly, sex-workers frequent local streets, poverty levels are in the top 5% nationally, police raids are not unusual and the Home Secretary recently identified the road where we meet as one of five national policing priority areas. But alongside these facts is the reality of a vibrant, multi-cultural community presenting a rich tapestry of sights and sounds, tastes and smells. Easton is a great place to live and work out what it means to be an authentic, Christ-centred, Bible-shaped, gospel-driven church.

Twenty years ago the church was overwhelmingly ‘white’ but two pressures came to bear.

Firstly, there were rapid and significant changes in the surrounding demography. A large number of refugees from the civil war in Somalia were settling here, the Asian community was growing and more latterly a significant number of sub-Saharan Africans were setting up home.

Secondly, there was a growing awareness and conviction that diversity is the biblical norm for a church and glorifies God. The vision of Revelation 7 of God’s redeemed people ‘from every nation, tribe, people and language’ called us on; the barrier-breaking cosmic message of Ephesians that celebrates diversity within unity challenged us; and the racially diverse leadership of the church in Antioch rebuked us. These passages underlined that we must resist pressures to become a homogeneous body, whether of age, income, intellect or race. Although such churches might provide cultural comfort zones (and thus facilitate faster, short-term growth) we determined not to be controlled by the post-modern ‘supermarket mentality’ of the age.

So what were we to do?

The following was not the result of brilliant and insightful strategic planning – it was God’s grace that kept prompting and provoking rather dull and slow minds, and His providence that kept us moving forward. There didn’t appear to be many models for us to emulate, or books for us to research. We were learning ‘on the job’.

First and foremost we went on preaching and applying the Bible as accurately, passionately and relevantly as we could. This had the effect of drawing in visitors who were hungry for an authoritative, God-glorifying message and helped shape the hearers to grasp something of God’s vision for the church and the necessity for love and acceptance within the body of Christ.

Secondly, we were committed to a plural leadership, within which varieties of style and gifting could be expressed. Sukesh Pabari was appointed to work amongst Asians in Bristol; he brought with him insights into cross-cultural work that were to be invaluable.

Thirdly, we built on the strong commitment to overseas missions that already existed within the church. We prayed for the large unreached people group who were moving into Easton in growing numbers. This led to close involvement with a secular charity that worked amongst refugees and asylum seekers. Church members volunteered to teach and mentor.

Fourthly, we refurbished and redesigned the large Victorian building we were meeting in. This meant that a number of rooms became available to be used by community groups, giving further opportunity for personal interaction with Easton residents. What was once an imposing and strange edifice was moved to the centre of community life.

And fifthly, we planted a church to the south of the city. This not only opened up space for others to join us and be used within the fellowship, but it also gave opportunity for some in the church to serve in a cultural setting more appropriate to their gifting and experience.

Some of the challenges

We received a request from a Russian speaking group who wanted to use one of the church halls to meet together as a ‘church’, but after much thought and prayer we determined that we didn’t want to encourage a raft of autonomous ‘national’ churches on our site, rather we wanted to encourage them to integrate into the overall life of the fellowship whilst resourcing their own Russian speaking meeting, in the way that we support ‘Home-groups’ around the city. We believe that God is most glorified in our fractured and diverse community by showing to the watching neighbourhood how Christ alone breaks down the barriers that separate, and unites people groups previously distant from each other.

Although our Russian brothers and sisters felt unwilling to take up this invitation, there are Iranian, Eritrean and Roma groups who are being integrated into church life and who are being supported in the language specific meetings that they hold throughout the week.

About thirty different national groups are represented in a Sunday morning congregation. To help with language issues we provide headphones and translation during the preaching, but we’re discovering that even if their use of the English language is not perfect, many of our new friends prefer to listen in English, trying to develop their language skills. They find particularly helpful the fact that the sermon outlines are projected on screens during the message, as well as Bible references copied out in full. Some will also use the simplified worksheets that we provide for the early teens to help them follow a message.

Questions of ‘style’ in a service are amongst the hardest we grapple with. We recognise that these are issues of culture rather than principle. We have Africans and Afro-Caribbeans who are used to a more expressive style, Asians who are more familiar with a strongly led style, and Europeans who tend to be more cerebral (and the other 50% of the congregation who can’t be defined by such simplistic generalisations!). We use a variety of appropriately gifted people to lead services – this in itself reflects our diversity – but generally the approach is one that seeks to embrace and help the predominant culture (which means a blend of the best new songs with the richest of the past, accompanied by a variety of instruments). We are also encouraging some of the national groups to lead us ‘in their style’ for a period within our services.

We’ve come to the conclusion that we shouldn’t expect every part of a service to resonate with us culturally all the time. There will be times when different ‘styles’ will clash or contrast with those we were brought up with. But being part of the body of Christ means we learn to accept and appreciate this diversity and delight in its riches. We will not compromise on truth, but we will encourage variety.

To foster this delight still further, we are now deliberately using ‘minority’ members of the congregation to help serve at communion, underlining for each of us how it’s in Christ’s work alone that we find unity, rather than through the narrowing and excluding structures of man’s invention.

We are also mindful that our training of believers must be inclusive of the national groups in our church family, so when we have run a course on the basics of the Christian faith, we have broken the participants into culturally appropriate groups. In this way the lessons are more easily taken on board and applied into specific situations.

Leaders are being deliberately developed from a wide range of backgrounds. We have recently taken on a Nigerian trainee pastor. We are soon to be joined by a Gambian ministry student and his Brazilian wife, having said farewell to a Brazilian staff member, now working with OM in Brazil. We also have apprentices from Iran to Pakistan and at the heart of our church operations is our office manager who is of mixed heritage.

What lessons are we learning?

1. God is amazingly gracious. We have made many mistakes and been slow in responding to His prompting, but still we see people being reached, saved, baptised and discipled from a wide range of backgrounds.
2. We are blessed by the challenges brought by the practices of other cultures. It has made us examine all that we do and given us extra determination to be shaped by God’s unchanging word rather than our own cultural preferences. We will lay all before the bar of Scripture, and where any culture is in error we will challenge it to conform more closely to Scriptural models.
3. We are increasingly convicted by the individualism of British culture and are learning more about what it means to be an extended family.
4. Not everyone will find this multi-cultural approach easy to accept. Some patterns and habits are so deeply ingrained they will look for somewhere else where they can be in their comfort zone.
5. There is the danger that a white majority can unwittingly agree to the glory of diversity in principle, but in practice only welcome those who are willing to give up their own cultural heritage and ‘become like us’.
6. We need to have a clear grasp as to the distinction between primary gospel issues (which we cannot compromise or accommodate) and secondary issues, where we should encourage gracious discussion and loving, mutual understanding.

Andrew Paterson is the senior pastor of Kensington Baptist Church, Bristol.