Diverse cultural forms in worship and ministry are thought to honor ethnic and social diversity. Church leaders are eager to demonstrate sensitivity to the cultural preferences of each identifiable demographic group within society. Accommodating those preferences with worship services featuring culturally familiar music, language, and format is thought to be a wise church-growth strategy. However, this strategy is pursued at the cost of unity. This is how we end up with Cowboy and Hip-Hop churches. If accessibility, another buzz word of the marketers, surrenders depth, diversity surrenders unity. If the ethnic and cultural diversity of the church requires a proportionate diversity in worship, then unity in worship is impossible. What can we say to this? Simply that unity in worship ought to take priority over diverse cultural expression in worship. We offer an alternative perspective.

1. Culturally specific worship and ministry is not the New Testament way. Warren’s attempts to enlist Jesus’ priority of “the lost sheep of Israel” (e.g. Mt 15:22-28, 10:5-6) in his cause of “targeting specific kinds of people for evangelism” is bad ecclesiology and worse exegesis. Jesus limits his ministry to Israel for redemptive-historical purposes, not in pursuit of effective evangelistic strategy. Those limits were temporary, abrogated by the Great Commission (Mt 28:18ff; Acts 1:8ff), and had nothing to do with cultural preferences among the various groups of Gentiles.1 Warren’s philosophy confuses the church’s evangelism and mission with its public worship and congregational life (see Chapter 4). We have seen in previous articles the Apostle Paul appealing to the Corinthian church on the basis of catholicity, that is, what was practiced in “all the churches” (1 Cor 1:2, 4:7, 11:16, 14:33). Significant uniformity of church practice was achieved in the New Testament era between churches that were Mid-Eastern, Asian, Greek, and Latin. In Christ there is neither Greek nor Jew (Gal 3:28). In Christ the dividing wall has been broken down and Gentile and Jew have been reconciled (Eph 2:14-22). In Christ, as we have seen, there is but one baptism (Eph 4:4-5), and by implication one worship. In Christ, Greek and Jew worship together in a common service. It is difficult to believe that the Apostles would have approved of the homogenous church as a goal of church life. It might happen as an accident of circumstances, but not a goal. “Did the early church separate itself out into units of the like minded in terms of ethnicity, class, and language,” asks David Wells? “It did not,” he answers forcefully.

2. Culturally specific worship and ministry was not the way of the Patristic and medieval churches. Historians find continuity between the New Testament church and the Patristic church of the first three to four centuries. We have sought to demonstrate that continuity in the preceding articles. Yet in spite of the increased ethnic diversity of the church as it expanded into Africa and Asia, the interiors of the Mediterranean, and Europe, into cultures beyond those of its first century roots, we find increased emphasis on uniformity both in doctrine and practice as a means of fighting heterodoxy. The banning of hymns by church councils in the fourth century may serve as the case in point.

3. Culturally specific worship and ministry was not the way of the Reformers and their children to the mid-twentieth century. The Genevan liturgy and Psalter were translated almost immediately upon publication into German, Dutch, Spanish, English, Hungarian, and other languages. The differences between Romantic, Germanic, Slavic, and Celtic cultures, for example, were not seen as barriers to implementing historic Reformed worship. Scholars don’t speak of “international Lutheranism” or “international Anglicanism.” But they do write extensively of the dynamic of “international Calvinism.” Could there have been more unreceptive soil on which to plant Genevan faith and worship than violent, amoral, backward, illiterate, and clannish sixteenth century Scotland? Yet it did flourish there and elsewhere without any particular attempt to contextualize or show sensitivity to cultural forms. The Reformed faith and its ministry flourished because Reformed worship was theologically, not culturally, driven. It is interesting to follow Martin Bucer’s changing views on diversity. His Grund und Ursach, published in 1524, was the first systematic defense of worship “according to Scripture.” In it he championed innovation and diversity as good things. Later he came to lament the chaos introduced into the church by those who took diversity too far. He denounced the “deplorable differences” of practice and “detestable changes” made in the name of Christian liberty. According to Hughes Old, “The prevailing opinion of Strasbourg, an opinion which the Reformed Church has often reaffirmed, is that liturgical reform is not to be left to the illumination of individual pastors, but rather is a concern of the church as a whole.”6

4. Culturally specific worship and ministry was not the method employed by the Modern Missionary Movement. As the bold missionaries of the early 19th century scattered around the globe, they took their Prayer Books and Psalters with them. Missionaries as diverse as Roman Catholic Matthew Ricci (1583–1610) and Hudson Taylor (1832–1905) were willing to adopt the fashion and manners of indigenous cultures. Ricci dressed as a Confucian scholar. However, they taught their converts to worship as Anglicans, Presbyterians, and Baptists. In Ricci’s case, worshiping as a Roman Catholic meant a Latin Roman mass! Yet he was among the most successful missionaries in the history of the church.

Perhaps previous generations of missionaries went overboard. Perhaps they should not have erected gothic cathedrals in the jungles of East Africa. Perhaps they were not as culturally nuanced as they might have been. Modern missiologists are sharply critical of them for their failure to indigenize and for their denominationalism.7 Still, their own self-understanding was that they taught their mission-field churches to worship denominationally not because they were cultural imperialists, but because they saw their worship as arising from their theology, not from their cultural preferences. Their widely acclaimed success, we might add, was nothing short of astonishing.