In a multicultural church, it can be easy to let the dominant culture dominate everything. it is especially hard when your elders are drawn from the same culture but are called to care for people from a variety of different cultures. That isn’t always a result of cultural expectations and filters stopping us recognising minority culture leaders so much as there simply not always being – for a variety of reasons – people from minority cultures gifted to the church as elders even though the church might dearly love to appoint some.

So how do you include minority culture voices in church when there is a clear and dominant culture? Here are some simple ways you can do it.

Sing songs from different cultures

In our church, we have a number of Farsi-speakers with us. So, every now and then, we sing songs in Farsi. We have both Farsi script and Finglish (Farsi transliterated English) on the screen and we sing a song in a different language. This allows minority culture voices to be included in the service. Where there are other cultures present, it can be good to sing songs from their culture too every now and then so that all are represented.

Have open prayer (and let people pray in their mother tongue)

It is our practice to have open prayer as an element of our service. Usually, the person leading the service will pray and then leave a space for the congregation to pray. We are happy to let people pray in their mother tongue so that they can express themselves, and build up fellow believers from their culture, in their heart-language.

Against this practice, one might argue (with reference to 1 Corinthians) that Paul is particularly concerned about understanding and intelligibility in worship. It can’t be good, one might argue, to not understand what you are hearing. To which I reply, it may not be great for me, but it is good for those in the congregation who speak that language and have to struggle on for most the service in English. Though we translate as much as possible, understanding is inevitably strained for them. It seems to me this is a good way of building up a section of the congregation and it helps the rest of us understand, even if just for a couple of minutes, what most of our service is like to a large proportion of people. We are serving them by encouraging this form of prayer.

Have a variety of people serve

In some traditions, you expect to find whoever is preaching also to lead the service, pick the songs and basically everything that happens in the service is done by one man from the front. Other than the congregational singing, everyone just sits and listens for an hour and a bit. I don’t think the Bible demands a particular model and one way we can encourage others to be involved is to have different voices involved in the service.

Whilst it is our practice to let the person preaching read the Bible passage (I won’t go into why here but another post for another day), there is plenty of room for other voices to be heard. Whether that is people from different backgrounds and cultures praying in the open prayer, or serving the bread and wine in communion (and maybe praying at this point), or offering another reading at a different point in the service, we try to increase opportunities for a range of voices to be heard. We even have a time of testimony where the congregation can share how the Word has spoken to them for the encouragement of the church, again different voices can be heard this way.

Have food at as much as possible

One of the easiest ways to engage with other people’s cultures is to eat their food. Many people, especially when they are out of their home country, are fiercely proud of their nation’s cuisine and miss it. Having opportunities for them to share food they would eat at home, and getting the church to share in it as a family, is a great way to engage different cultures and to allow people to express themselves and their culture within the church. The more opportunities to eat together you have, the greater the opportunity to have a spread of food-styles.

Don’t demand a cultural dress code

Whilst many churches have long since given up arguing about Sunday best, some still have a de facto dress code. Depending on your church, it could be shirt and tie. It could be chinos and checked button down shirts. But welcoming people wearing whatever clothes means, if your church is multicultural, people will naturally begin to express their culture. But, and I can’t say this enough, people get very tired if everyone comments on their clothes. I know a number of African brothers (and particularly sisters) who tire of everyone mentioning how “colourful” their clothes are when they wear stuff from their culture. Whilst we should want everyone to express themselves and their culture so that they feel comfortable, we do well when we don’t make them feel uncomfortable either by suggesting they shouldn’t wear such things nor by making such a song and dance about how wonderful it is when they do that they are too embarrassed to wear them again. Let be wear what they will without making a big deal out of it.