HOMOGENEOUS GROUPS
The idea behind the struggling class as a homogeneous group is that people like to worship and fellowship with their “own kind.” Birds of a feather flock together. Some new church starts specifically target a certain demographic. For example, the core team may be composed of young adults who are led by a recent graduate from seminary. The music, the fellowship, the preaching all fit recent college graduates, young professionals, newly married, etc. An elderly couple visits and within 15 minutes decides that the place is not for them. The music is too loud. Sermon illustrations and application do not apply to them at all. They think the message is shallow, but the regular attendees think it is awesome and hits home every time.
Believers are all one in Jesus Christ, but the rich have difficulty relating to the poor, African Americans have difficulty relating to Latinos. Hispanics from Puerto Rico do not feel comfortable with those from Mexico or from El Salvador. Imagine trying to put a chief executive officer and a Burger King employee in the same small group. The employee would probably feel so intimidated that he or she would not share anything, lest he be ridiculed. The CEO probably would not share his struggle with priorities or difficulties in personal relationships. Like in AA, one alcoholic confronting another in love, the CEO would need someone in a similar position to confront him with his less than ethical business dealing. This is why a small group of women feel a kinship and freedom to share without men being present.
Inmates, too, after a fashion, comprise a certain demographic. Many times, I’ve talked with inmates who came to a Monday night worship service in the jail recreation room. They told me how they liked it. They felt comfortable. It was a service especially geared to their needs. A volunteer counselor would often invite an inmate to come to his church when he was released. However, once free in society, the former inmate never attended the church where the volunteer was a member. He just did not feel comfortable there. Just driving into the parking lot told him that he did not belong. He felt like a piece of junk, like his car, in comparison to all the others who belonged. The truth is that all those in that church were also needy sinners, but the former inmate saw himself as unworthy in comparison. We need to take this sociological phenomenon into consideration when we strive to disciple the struggling class.
In 1913, Rev. William Van Wijk, then pastor of the Oakdale Christian Reformed Church in Grand Rapids, wrote a 16-page booklet entitled City Evangelism, Why and How (Stadsevangelisatie, Waarom en Hoe [Grand Rapids: Eerdsman and Sevensma). Large ethnic Dutch Grand Rapids churches felt a desire to evangelize their neighborhood, but they realized that they represented a foreign element in the city. So they established chapels, small churches that could call neighborhood people to Christ and gather them into a congregation where they could play a meaningful and important role. The churches hired evangelists who received their training at the Reformed Bible Institute (now Kuyper College). This school was founded to train men and women in evangelism and discipleship making. Many of these chapels became Christian Reformed Churches. Unfortunately, the chapel was viewed as an inferior type of church, when it should have been respected as a peer among the churches. The true pastor was the missionary evangelist, but because he had not graduated from seminary, he could not administer the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Over time, this changed, but the evangelist still served under restrictions. Women could serve on the steering committee because it was not a true council of elders and deacons. The steering committee served the role of a church council but its decisions needed to be approved by the sponsoring church. The chapel, the church of the struggling class, never entered the ranks of a “true” church until it measured up to the standards of the suburban church. The tragedy was that when the chapel became a church with a seminary-trained pastor it became non-evangelistic and traditional and it ceased to grow through the evangelization and discipleship of people from the community.
Now that we know what the homogeneous principle looks like, and how it can help us start new congregations, we need to confront its limitations. “Koinonia” is a Greek word that means “a partnership,” “a sharing in,” “a fellowship.” The Spirit-filled early church, immediately on the heels of Pentecost experienced a heightened koinonia. The believers “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. . . . All the believers were together and had everything in common. . . . They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts” (Acts 2:42, 44, 46). It was a church that was growing. The “Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved” (Acts 2:47).
The koinonia of a vibrant, growing church can also turn into “koinonitis,” a term coined by missiologist Peter Wagner to describe a church that is so loving and sharing among its own members that it grows isolated and distant from the world around it. The members are talking and visiting together before and after worship. They get caught up on what is happening with their friends. Potluck meals and fund-raising events for mission projects, like sending their youth on a serve project to Latin America, help bind the people together. Yet, a visitor would feel totally out of place. There is humor that only the members pick up on. Reference is made to events that are meaningful to longstanding members but meaningless to a newcomer.
Years ago, there was a group of people who effectively evangelized their neighborhood. The core team was made up of people with an ethnic Dutch background and a Reformed heritage who had a heart for evangelism. Volunteers canvassed the neighborhood, conducted Vacation Bible Sschool, and picked up neighborhood children for Sunday school. The minister preached down-to-earth evangelistic, Bible-based messages and people from the neighborhood accepted the gospel and joined the church. In its initial stages of growth, the church reflected the cultural makeup of the neighborhood. The church members became a close-knit family of faith. Over time, pastors came and pastors went. Evangelistic outreach varied depending upon pastoral leadership, but visitors were rarely led to conversion and growth through discipleship.
Today the church is trying to draw new members from the neighborhood, but its family unity and cohesiveness hinders it from ministering outside of its shell. It adheres to the gospel message, but it continues to follow the traditions of the past, clinging also to the way evangelism was done 50 years ago. When a visitor comes, the people are very friendly, but the church family is hard to break into. The people love their church and wonder why visitors do not continue to attend and then join.
In many cases, the neighborhood around the church has changed. As the members became more prosperous, they moved away to the newer suburbs where they joined churches with a style of worship, doctrine, and social level similar to their own. They were being part of a gradual transplant to a new area, often preserving the way of life and the traditions they’ve always held, occasionally updating them to fit the times and a new generation.
Although they moved to a new home, some members, out of loyalty to the church and a desire to continue fellowshipping with longtime friends, commuted to attend worship and the church’s other programs. In the neighborhood around the church young families bought the homes that were put up for sale. Some of them became rental units. These new residents saw this as a step up from what they had before. The church members, now commuters to worship, saw the change of the neighborhood as a step backward. In fact, the neighborhood lost the stability that it once enjoyed. The struggling class moved in while those with suburban values moved out. With the passage of time, the size of the congregation diminished and the median age of its members grew increasingly old, out of touch with the new reality, and too weak to keep the program of the church going. Finally, the remnant decided to sell the building to a new congregation. Another homogeneous fellowship group (maybe Hispanic, maybe African American, maybe other) moved in.
It is at the point where the church was at its most vibrant, enjoying success by almost every measure, that it should have been seeking a vision and working hard to reach people groups other than its own, and doing this by starting satellite worshiping groups to reach new people moving into the area.
The Apostle Paul’s mission to the Gentiles lays precedent. It wasn’t merely that those who were dead in trespasses and sin were made alive by the love and grace of God through faith in the Lord Jesus (Ephesians 2:1-10), but those who were far away, separated from Israel and its covenant with God, were brought near by the blood of Christ (Ephesians 2:11-13). Through their acceptance of Jesus as Lord and Christ, the Gentiles were brought near to become part of the “new humanity” that God was creating (Ephesians 2:15). Paul wrote, “So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:26-28). Jews don’t stop being Jews, slaves don’t stop being slaves, and males don’t stop being males, and people of the struggling class don’t stop living in trailer houses, but everyone who accepts Christ is united in Spirit, and they can all celebrate that in a large assembly for worship.
By abdicating its responsibility to win and gather those who are far off culturally and socially, the church misses out on the joy and victory of the peace in Jesus that overcomes social barriers. Who knows what joy might be in store for a CEO and a Burger King employee opening up their hearts, confessing their sins, and encouraging one another in the faith, if they were to take part in the same small group?