Preaching in a Multicultural World

They also can grow in sensitivity to the ethnic backgrounds in the congregation and backgrounds of those that exist beyond the four walls of the church. In fact, awareness of ethnicity will help you be sensitive to other areas, such as age and those physically and mentally challenged.

Understanding people requires observation and listening. What ethnic groups are represented in the congregation? Who are the people in the church’s neighborhood? What people live and work beyond? Conducting surveys using various categories can prove helpful, but leave room for the way people want to self-identify themselves. This is particularly true for children of mixed ethnic heritage.

Stephen Farris offers an “Exegesis of the Situation” that I have modified and use in my preaching class to help budding preachers better understand their congregation, the class members. The preacher makes visits to homes and workplaces of the congregation. He or she detects the sights, sounds, and scents of the neighborhoods surrounding the church. Prayer walks and drives often are conducted. As Leonora Tubbs Tisdale has encouraged, we preachers must be “amateur ethnographers” when viewing one’s ministry surroundings.

Understanding the people in and surrounding one’s ministry locale resembles a missionary who spends time prayerfully considering and seeking the Holy Spirit’s guidance to approach a community. It is as important to exegete people as it is to exegete the text.

Be Culturally Self-Reflective

Those of us with a pastoral heart tend to focus on the ministry to the congregation rather than carry out much self-reflection. Both an “Exegesis of the Self” (Farris, pp. 36-38) and personal questions on the “Personal Socialization of the Preacher” (Van Seters, p. 265) are important tools for preaching in a multicultural world. We often are unaware of our own cultural baggage that we bring to preaching; we tend to preach out of our own cultural perspective. For most of us, this is from our Western, North American, middle-class perspective. It is quite natural for sermons to reflect the experience of the preacher, whether that is stages of parenting, common daily activities, or travel. Thus, a sermon is not culture-free but reflects the predominant culture of the preacher.

It is important to reflect on one’s social background and how it influences preaching. The temptation for the preacher is to rush to look at others through audience analysis without looking into the mirror. Important questions are: What are my prejudices (often masked as preferences)? How am I perceived by the congregation? Does my appearance or accent influence how I am initially received? We do not want to be overly self-conscious about these issues so that it paralyzes us, but we need to be aware of the issues.