When speaking at a church in South Carolina about the need for workers in Scotland’s church plants, I was challenged by the question: “Why do we need to go there — are there not enough lost people here?” Likewise, when sharing among believers in Scotland about a good and faithful brother who will soon be moving from the U.S. to join one of our church planting teams in Scotland, I am typically met with skepticism rather than enthusiasm and rejoicing. Why would a Christian from America do ministry in Scotland? Isn’t that cultural elitism? It is a question I get asked often. It is a curious question, to be honest. I am never quite sure how to answer it. It always takes me aback every time.
Are You Guilty of Cultural Elitism?
The very asking of the question raises in my mind so many other questions. Why would a Christian from England go and plant churches in Brazil? Why would a Christian from China go evangelize in Malaysia? Why would a Nigerian become a pastor in London? Why would a Scottish believer plant a church in Kentucky?
The question appears to presume that the birthplace, ethnicity, accent or cultural origin of a gospel worker in some way disqualifies that person from that work. Does this not defy what God is doing? If God can speak through a donkey, then he can surely speak though a southern drawl on the streets of Dundee!
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Besides that, the church is a part of something global. The church is a part of something far bigger than any one nationality. We are no longer Jew or Gentile. We are all adopted sons and daughters of our heavenly father. Our accent, our birthplace, our race or ethnicity no longer defines us. As believers, we are marked out from the world and bound to one another by the blood of Christ. We share a common purpose, the proclamation of Christ and his Kingdom. That is the only identity that counts now.
The church is a sent-out people. Our mission is to go. Yes, we are to go to our neighbours, but more than that, we are specifically called to go to the nations. We are called to cross cultures. We are called to go beyond our own borders and enter into foreign, alien, unfamiliar lands in order to make known the Kingdom of God to all peoples. We are a sent-out people.
There is something wonderful about this, something Christ-exalting, when we lose our attachment to our nationality and ethnicity and embrace the common citizenship that all believers share as peoples from many tribes and tongues. Serving alongside one another, we bear witness to a global Kingdom that is yet to come.
