(This article, written by Nicole Doyley, first appeared in The Presbyterian Outlook, 12 February 2025.)
The mixed-race population is the fastest growing demographic and transracial adoption continues its upward trend; families are becoming more multiracial, and the church will have to change if it wants to shepherd these families well. White parents with adopted BIPOC kids may want to sing some of their favorite hymns on Sunday but may also realize that their kids need to see folks who look like them in the pulpit who can minister to their unique BIPOC needs. Interracial couples with biracial kids will want churches that appreciate and reflect both cultures of their family, not just one.
Yet, since 2016, diverse, white-led churches have been slowly losing BIPOC members, thus becoming less diverse.[i] My family was among those who left during these past few years.
Like us, many Christians of color have realized that racial diversity doesn’t automatically mean cultural diversity; a lot of these churches were steeped in white culture, even though they had Black and Brown faces in their pews. The music, preaching style and leadership style, the values, nuances, and sensibilities all flowed from Anglo culture, and BIPOC congregants not only had very little influence over these things, but they also began to feel like their needs took second place to those of white members. For example, in 2020 with the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breanna Taylor, many Black Christians felt that the desire to coddle white folks outweighed the desire to comfort Black folks.
In these churches, if Black staff were hired at all it was as worship leaders, who added a little off beat clapping and some gospel chords to the otherwise white music or as youth leaders who combined the Gospel with some street cred to draw in bored teens: you can spice up our music and try to reach our unimpressed teenagers, but you have no say in our finances, priorities or values. Leave the heavy lifting to us.
To survive and remain relevant, the American church has to catch up to our changing demography. Homogeneous leadership will not be able to attract, shepherd and retain America’s increasingly heterogenous families.
Racism catalyzed the bifurcation of the church and the advent of separate Black and white worship spaces. After Emancipation, Black people were barred from churches with white people or if they were allowed in, they had to sit in the balcony and could never aspire to any kind of leadership. As a result, Black Christians simply formed their own churches, and this split exists to this day. Yet, at the height of the racial reconciliation movement of the late 1990’s and early 2000s many Black people joined white-led churches, only to go back to Black churches a couple of decades later when they realized that though the color of some of the members had changed, the church culture and leadership had not.
Still, from even a cursory reading of Scripture, it is very evident that God desires a diverse, unified church. The early church described in Acts 13 was socioeconomically and ethnically diverse (in its leadership and membership) and the gathering of believers in the final vision of Revelations 7 includes every tongue, tribe, and nation.
So what can white church leaders do to attract, retain and shepherd people and families of color well? I suggest five things.
1. If you’re a pastor or church staffer, develop relationships with nonwhite people in your community and congregation. Eat with them, listen to them, hear their concerns. Seventy-five percent of white people will never have Black friends[ii]. Be among the twenty-five percent who do.
2. Fill your pulpit with Black and Brown preachers - often. These should be folks you know and trust; don’t try to control and/or correct what they say. Let them influence and lead.
3. Read nonwhite and non-Western theologians. You can find a link in the endnotes with a list of suggestions[iii]. Become more aware that the way white people interpret Scripture isn’t the only way to interpret Scripture and it isn’t necessary the best way. Dr. Esau McCaulley’s Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope provides countless examples of some of these interpretive differences.
4. Hire BIPOC staff to serve in senior positions. Make sure that they are in the room where it happens! Also, make sure BIPOC have critical volunteer roles, like as deacons, elders, and small group leaders. Genuinely validate their strengths; let them know that you and the church need them.
5. Become a student of BIPOC history. Read their books; watch movies. Learn some of the joys and sorrows of other people groups. Learn to appreciate their voice.
In my book, What About the Children? 5 Values for Multiracial Families (Westminster John Knox), I encourage interracial couples to intentionally pass their cultures on to the kids, and that one culture should not subsume the other but that both should be valued equally by parents and kids alike. In other words, I encourage families and churches to do the same thing: to be multicultural and not just multiracial.
[i] Campbell Robertson, “A Quiet Exodus: Why Black Worshipers are Leaving White Evangelical Churches,” New York Times, March 9, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/09/us/blacks-evangelical-churches.html.
[ii] Michelle Silverthorn, Mom, “Why Don’t You Have Any Black Friends,” Medium, June 1, 2020, https://forge.medium.com/mom-why-dont-you-have-any-black-friends-e59f37e62ed9
[iii] Thabiti Anyabwile, “Diverse Theologians to Read in 2019,” The Gospel Coalition, January 3, 2019, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/thabiti-anyabwile/diverse-theologians-read-2019/
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