There are times when godly believers recognise that there are certain parts of the country that seem to do less well for churches. They may recognise that the more deprived parts of the country lack a gospel witness. They may even be moved to do something about it and they go and plant a church in a deprived place. They recognise the need to be present and commit to living among the people. But they recognise a problem: all of them are drawn from the same middle class culture and they recognise this will inevitably create barriers to reaching local people. What are they to do?

I love it when people ask genuine questions like this. They are thinking really helpfully about how they can best reach the people in the community around them. I also love the awareness – just being from the same country and speaking the same language does not mean we share the same culture. Likewise, being committed to recognising the cultural attitudes that are prevalent and not making them barriers to the gospel is excellent. And yet, they rightly see there may still be an issue.

There are several things to say before we get to that issue, chief among which is this: middle class people do not need to keep apologising for being middle class. They cannot help who they are and there is nothing wrong with being who they are. Let’s just be clear about that from the front end.

Second, you’re a bunch of middle class people who have gone to a working class area where there is no church. Just as I would far rather see paedobaptist or charismatic churches that preach the gospel in areas where there are no churches, despite neither being paedobaptist nor charismatic myself, I would much rather a very middle class church went and preached the gospel than we simply left the place devoid of any gospel witness at all. So, let’s just be clear: well done for going and actually showing up to a needy community.

Third, far more important than whether you are upper, middle or working class is whether you are willing to be self-critical of your own culture and can listen to a different culture without wincing at points of difference. Are you willing to parse whether this is actually sin or is it really just cultural? Are you will to ask, ‘why do you do that?’ before you jump to ‘that’s wrong’? Being present, willing to listen and willing to learn will take you a long way indeed.

So, there are a few things worth saying at the front end. But what about the problem that still exists? You have no working class people among you, nobody who looks and speaks like the people you want to reach, and therefore nobody who looks and talks like them fronted anywhere in the church. How can you make people welcome when there is nobody like them in the church?

I would refer you to some of the things I’ve already said above. But there comes a point where, as welcoming, authentic and culturally aware as you can possibly be, at some point there simply needs to be one brave soul, one brave family, who are willing for at least a time to be the only one of their kind. This is true if you have no working class people, no black people, no Asian people, even if you have no families. At the end of the day, somebody has to be first otherwise it will never change.

Now I suspect it is helped if you have somebody who is already Christianised, who has swum in church waters for many years, coming in from that background. They can help you see some of the issues and barriers to others like them coming in whilst being able to wear quite a lot of cultural strain because they are probably used to it to some degree. But whether it is someone like that or it is an unchurched unbeliever, someone ultimately has to be first and they have to be able to wear a significant amount of misunderstanding, cultural strain and assumption to stick around. Such people do exist, but it pays to recognise whoever the first person or family is, it will be hard for them.

If, however, you get someone sticking around, particularly if you are willing to listen to them and let them speak freely about the things they find odd and why, soon enough like will beget like. I am reminded of the person who came to our church from a local estate, terrified of coming in and being judged, not knowing what to expect, who said they were so worried because (in their words) “I dress like a right chav”. But, and I take this in the best possible way, they said “but then I arrived and I saw you at the front and knew it was alright”. Just having somebody who looks and sounds a bit like you makes all the difference in the world. It makes the place seem like it might be safe for me. It makes it appear to be somewhere that might welcome me too.

It is no surprise that once Jesus called Levi, lots of other tax collectors and sinners started hanging out with Jesus too – if he welcomes Levi, maybe he’ll welcome me too because I’m like Levi! The church will likely be the same. But, like Levi with Jesus, somebody has to be first. Those who are part of the majority culture would do well to recognise that it takes a brave person to be first, it comes with a lot of pressure and we might want to be especially mindful of that if and when they show up.