“If you are in a city like London or Manchester and your church is all black or all white, shame on you because it means you are sitting comfortably and Jesus did not live comfortably,” said Pastor Oloyede in his seminar on building multi-cultural churches.
It’s a subject the British-born but Nigerian-raised pastor is well-placed to speak on, having left his position as associate pastor at one of London’s largest Pentecostal and predominantly black churches to start City Chapel from scratch earlier this year.
The church has its weekly worship service at an Anglican church on Fridays and one monthly Sunday service in a local pub. The formula may be unconventional but it’s working, with City Chapel shepherding a steadily growing congregation of African and Caribbean people, Asians, and British after just five months.
If more churches are to become multi-cultural, they need to lose more of their own identity, says Pastor Oloyede.
“If we cannot learn to love each other and accept each other on this side of eternity we have lot to learn when we get to Heaven. What will you do when you get to heaven and discover that Jesus can actually speak Patois or has a cockney accent?! Every culture is embraced in Christ.”
First and foremost, however, the move from comfortable to uncomfortable must first happen with church leaders.
“To have a truly multi-cultural or Kingdom church the leaders have to be converted. Too many of our leaders are comfortable. They are immunised outside of the real world,” he said.If we are going to become a multi-cultural church we are going to have to really believe what we read in the Bible, that in Christ there is neither Greek nor Jew.
Pastor Jonathan Oloyede
“If we can’t break through certain sacred moulds we will not have multi-cultural church."
He continued: " A lot of it boils down to leadership. Leaders have to be baptised into the Kingdom and Kingdom principles. They have to be baptised into ‘out-of-the-box’ Christianity.”
Fellowshipping together after service is fundamental to building Kingdom relationships that cross cultural boundaries, Pastor Oloyede believes.
“If we are going to change church service we have to change lifestyles. If 99 per cent of the people you relate with are white middle class there is no way in the church service you are going to have a multi-cultural church,” he said.
“If 99 per cent of the time you eat and sleep with Nigerians your church is going to be Nigerian.
“Spend time in people’s homes, spend time eating and drinking with them. Understand the nuances of their understanding of society.
“When you sit down with people you start to see things the way they see it.”
