EP131: Transformation’s Multicultural Church, Digitally

What does it even mean to be a multicultural church today? Is it multicultural, or are we a monocultural church with multicultural attenders? And if it's multicultural attenders, then how does that affect a digital environment where we're all isolated, where there is very little "multi" happening in the context of how we're watching and processing digital church?

It's interesting. We're kind of trying to figure out some things here about what a multicultural church looks like today, here in 2021, mid-post-COVID culture.

Hey, Jeff here with the Church Digital Podcast once again, powered by Stadia Church Planting. And so really wanted to dig in here. Maybe not a technological conversation as much as, "Man, how can we be respectful? How can we pay honor? How can we embrace this idea of truly being a multicultural church in today's post-COVID digital environments?" This is the conversation.

And to that end, I went to one of the largest churches in America that's operating in a multicultural approach. We're talking Transformation Church out of the Carolinas area. Derwin Grey's the lead pastor there. Now Derwin has recently written a book called "Pastoring or Leading a Multicultural Church," and so you can download that link in the show notes. You can go to Amazon, buy the book. That's awesome. They, the church itself, they do multicultural roundtables where they gather churches from all over the country to process and work through what it even means to be multicultural and how we can embrace, at the church level, embrace more of this multiculturalism approach.

Stadia's heartbeat is in the same realm. How do we plant? How do we help multi-ethnic planters plant churches? How do we help these people reach their ones for Christ and even create a multicultural approach in that? And so to that end, I, Jeff, trying to better understand as a white man with the goatee, I'm trying to better understand what multicultural is even here in America. So I wanted to do a podcast. We brought into the conversation Curtis Miller. Now Curtis is on staff with Transformation Church at Durham Grace Church. I mentioned earlier, up in the Carolinas area. And really ask some heartfelt, honest, transparent questions. Teach me here. I want to listen. I want to learn in this season. How do we do a multicultural church physically, digitally, and or digital only? What does this even look like?

And so for this conversation, we're bringing in Curtis Miller, pastor of care and outreach at Transformation Church, and he's very involved in the multicultural approach of Transformation Church. We're also bringing in, of course, myself, Jeff, with the Church Digital and Stadia Church Planting, in a conversation that I'm simply calling Transformation Church's Multicultural Approach Digitally.

Okay, everybody, here you go. Ben, tell me your ministry story. How you got started at Transformation Church.

Sure. Um, I'll try to keep this brief. It's actually pretty cool. Um, so I wasn't married yet. Um, my fiancée at the time had moved to South Carolina. We met in Maryland, and she had been down here for a little while. I was transitioning. I had been in part-time ministry but worked full-time as a graphic designer. And um, so I was looking for, you know, what kind of jobs was God leading me in in this new adventure? And um, so my wife, she goes with her mom one day here in the Charlotte area to just have lunch, and they were gonna, you know, make save the dates. And um, she drops one on the floor and it slides over, and a lady picks it up. And we have a scripture on there, Philippians 2:2, and just speaking of that desire for unity and everything. This lady goes, "I love this scripture. Where do you go to church?" She strikes up this conversation, starts talking. And um, you know, my wife, my fiancée at the time, she says, "Oh, you know, she goes, 'I'm actually living in Columbia.'" So we, she lived further south. She tells her about church here. She's like, "You know, your fiancé should reach out. There's an opening of a new campus." And she goes, "Also, that's where you go to church?" And the lady was like, "Actually, I don't go." She goes, "I go there." She goes, "But I work at this place over here." So it was really crazy. So the lady works as teaching at a specific church for their school, but she goes to Transformation Church. And my wife was like, "Okay, that's unique." And so as she started hearing about it and everything, she thought it was really cool. So she told me to reach out. I did. Um, long story short, I would say probably six months transpired. We move. I'm down in South Carolina. We're married. I get an email one day from the communications director saying, "Hey, I imagine you're married now. Um, we'd love for you to check out, you know, what we're doing now."

Mind you, I had taken a graphic design job for a company that had been around for forty years. They were trying to have like an in-house designer for the first time in their lives, and it really was not coming together. So the week prior, I'm telling my wife, "I think I need to, we need to be praying about something different." And that literally the next week, I got this email from Transformation Church saying, "We'd love for you to come check us out. You know, just wanted to kind of catch up and see where you were in life." And so long story short, we went up there. We visited. It, my wife, having been the great woman of discernment and um, intuitiveness that she is, was like, "This, this is like a picture of heaven on earth. Like, this literally." And I, for me, I was sitting there going, "This is amazing." But you really looked around and you saw multi-ethnic, multi-generational, all in the same space, engaging, loving, serving one another. And um, there was such an intentionality of pointing to Christ. Like, you knew Jesus was the one to be lifted up in that place. And so we um, we responded. We connected. Um, as we prayed, because we had a distance between where we lived and where the church building was at the time, but um, they said, "You know, we see some things in you that we would love on the team." And here's the thing that was beautiful about it. They were inviting me to do communications at the time, and really I was a graphic designer with some experience in marketing. But their conversation with me is like, "Let's not get caught in titles. I see a shepherding element in you, and I see these pieces. We want to invite you to be a part of this team and watch God continue to lead you and what he's doing in ministry as he leads Transformation Church and what he's doing through us." And it was just, it was just like such a transparency and such a beautiful invitation right off the bat. And I'll tell you, as questions came to mind, before I could pick up the phone or shoot an email or send a text, people were reaching out to me before I even asked them and saying, "Hey, you know, we're going to do this, and we, you know, marriage, your marriage is your most important ministry. So here's how we want to structure days and things like that." It's just phenomenal.

So that was our connection. I was probably longer than you asked for, but um, as we got connected, and that was in 2012, we've been there ever since. Um, and I share this uniquely just to kind of give perspective of how much we value Transformation Church. We were in Columbia, South Carolina. Transformation Church is just south of Charlotte, so we were about seventy plus and at one point ninety some miles away from the actual building. And once we were there and experienced it, we knew it was a place that we wanted to be connected and build relationship and build family and serve God's kingdom. And so um, yeah, I could go on and on and on about a number of things in that space.

That's beautiful. Now, and I do want to get to the multicultural, but your story's interesting. So I want to pull the thread on something here briefly. So you're a graphic artist who got inserted, maybe, in the ministry more on the communication side without a lot of experience. You told me off there at one point you were more on the broadcast, broadcast, and handling more of the technological realm, and now your title, you're actually more of pastoral care, pastor over care and outreach. And so that's, that's an interesting story of artistic that trends towards technical and now shepherding pastoral. Like, how has that evolution been for you over the eight years? Are you more bent and wired towards that shepherding, or is that just something that God's done through you in the season?

I'm, I have a similar bend, and so I'm always interested to find people that are on that same journey.

Yeah, so I mean, honestly, shepherding's probably been something that's just been in my wiring. So I actually was invited into ministry as a teenager and started working with kids at that point and kind of, you know, I was just kind of working with my peers and those that were just a little bit younger than me quite often for a number of years. But I remember six months in, as we kind of have your six-month review and you're kind of thinking, "Hey, what does this look like?" And I remember sitting there at that time and really, just with complete peace, being able to look at my team and say, "If I'm going to be able to be in a space where I'm joining God and what he's doing in somebody else's life, then I'm going to be in a good spot." And like, I didn't, I love, I still to this day, you know, I love, I'm creative. I like being able to explore some of those things. Um, I haven't stuck with it near as much when I look at what Alex does and our whole team and the stuff that they create. I even told our communications director a few months back. We were working on some things that were just phenomenal, and I was just like, "You know, if this was my job now, bro, like, you know," it was, uh, it's expanded and exploded and has moved in just tremendous ways. And so I would say yes, that's been in my wiring from the beginning. And at the same time, God has done just amazing things in my life of just shaping me, transforming me, conforming me um, into you know, opportunities and possibilities that um, really I think dive deeper than what we recognize for ourselves a lot of times. And so um, I've been grateful. And again, as I told you, what they were telling me as I was coming on the team, um, I've literally got to experience that. Um, I was groups, I was our groups pastor at one point, a groups director at one point. And um, and so it was shortly after that that they brought me in the broadcast side of things. And really, I didn't even do the technical stuff. I did some of it. I did some of the social media. I helped write the engagement type elements. But I was there to be more of a shepherding presence as we were saying, "If we are going to go online and we're going to call ourselves a church, then we need to make sure that we're prepared to serve those people, care for those people, and really walk with people in spaces um, and point them to what you know, biblical community can look like."

And so um, so yeah, it's been pretty awesome. I, I love that. And I got a lot of respect for Transformation Church, even that you guys were wrestling with that up front. It's not just about broadcast. It's the reach. It's building um, some of that relationship and uh, and what that looks like and creating that community and having the ability to have that care and do things like that.

It's interesting you mentioned the Acevedos, Alex. Uh, is a very good friend. Christelle actually has done a podcast with us going back. I want to say talking about women's ministry and doing events online. I know that through Transformation Church, she had been doing a lot. And I recall Ray and her doing a podcast, you know, months earlier, maybe I think it was in the COVID season, but somewhere. Yeah, I do remember them. I do remember them doing something. And I love seeing you.

Know what, what's coming out of that church and I know, and really the heart of what I wanted to dig into this conversation, as great as that is and maybe it probably will tie in at some point at the end, most things normally do, towards shepherding care for individuals and community. But this idea of a multicultural, multi-ethnic church is something that for me has really been on my heart as of late. I was in a Facebook group and I asked the question: do you consider your church multi-ethnic? Because I really am intrigued at this idea. I think, and I suspect that a lot, and I'm even in Miami—I'm a Miami guy. It's 70 percent Hispanic down here. You know, I'm a white guy. If you're listening on the audio and you've never seen a picture of me, I'm white, I'm bald, and I have a goatee. Like, that's who I am. And so even being in Miami, being very hypersensitive to the fact that there's all sorts of nationalities, there are all sorts of cultures around me, and it's one of the reasons why my family, we live here, we love that environment. We've been in areas of America that were more white-only, more monoculture, and so for us that wasn't necessarily the highlight. We wanted to be, we wanted our kids to grow up in multicultural environments. You know, everything from a Cuban bakery to Cuban coffee to Brazilian steakhouses, and I could just keep going on and on. It's more than food, believe me. I understand that. But the heart of this is being in a multicultural environment. I think really completes a lot of the church. But when I was in this Facebook group and I started asking questions like, are you, do you consider your church multicultural? And it's funny, I started getting a lot of people respond back yes. Now the intriguing thing was I knew some of the people that were saying these things, that are saying yes, their church is multicultural, and I'm like, I don't really know that your church is multicultural. Maybe we're defining what multicultural is differently, and I'm okay with that. Let's even wrestle with that now. When I look at Transformation Church, you know, Derwin Gray, lead pastor, as a matter of fact, just literally published a book within the past month on pastoring and being a multicultural church. When you guys look at what a multicultural church is at Transformation, how do you define what a multicultural church is?

So really, you just kind of, we have to go back. I could say this, I don't want to say it too flippantly. You can look a few years ago and people would kind of say if 20 percent of your congregation is non-white or a non-majority population, then you could consider yourself to be multi-ethnic or multicultural. And we obviously know that it goes deeper than that. It has to go deeper than that. If you really look, there's quite a few, it's a much larger number of megachurches across the country that actually would identify themselves and probably statistically land in a space where someone would say, well, they're multi-ethnic or they have a diverse ethnicity within their congregations. However, leadership is predominantly one or the other. You know, it's not, you're not, you haven't opened the door for there to not just be presence but literal authority, decision-making, impression-taking place. One of the things that we've loved about TC from the beginning is starting from the beginning and saying this is going to be our vision: it will be a multi-ethnic, multi-generational, mission-shaped community that loves God completely upward, ourselves correctly inward, and our neighbors compassionately outward. And so that's really based in the Great Commandment and the Great Commission. So we're looking at that, right? Right now, I think there's a lot of people that are having this conversation because we have seen racial tension rise. It's at the forefront a little bit more in people's conversations, right? Although that's existed for a really, really long time. I think the thing that's really important, and hopefully this is answering your question, if you really want to define yourself, say, hey, we're a multi-ethnic church, like, are you valuing all people? Are you celebrating differences and living as unifiers as the family of God? Are you celebrating differences and living as unifiers as the family of God? There's a lot of ways that unpacks through your leadership, through your music, through your small groups. How does your community actually engage and do life together? That's going to speak to the fact of whether you maybe have a presentation or look like something on the outward appearance, but literally, are you living as what God had desired his family to look like? And not just look like, but to truly be a representation of humanity that is defined as a new race founded in Christ. And so anyways, that's kind of my quick take on that.

That's beautiful. Let's spin some practical. Let's unpack this. I love the celebrating the differences angle. Now, from a practical standpoint, let's just talk Transformation. What does celebrating the differences look like at TC on a regular basis?

Celebrating the differences is the reality of people. If you look at our staff, like you're literally looking at people from so many different nationalities, right? And you're not just there for a picture. You're there because you bring your giftedness. You're there because you have a heart for Christ and his church, and so there's space for you to thrive and be who God has made you to be. I use our music ministry as a quick example on a regular basis because they've been intentional. And we actually at our roundtable that we just finished up, we actually go through like an intensive in that space to talk through what does it look like to create music that most majority culture is going to hear and recognize, and at the same time you're adding those flavors, those beats, those pieces to it that you know the non-majority culture, the minority culture, others, Black, Brown, White, you know, all of them are going to feel that, they're going to understand that, they're going to relate to that. And that doesn't mean you do a country song and then you do a Jamaican song. You know, like it's literally this blend that's beautiful. And so there's a celebration of our differences in that space. There's an understanding of, I love this, Pastor Derwin says this all the time, our lead pastor. He says it's about laying down our preferences though and picking up the cross. So you may hear a song that kind of moves in a specific kind of way that's maybe not your jam, you know? Yet you get to see the person beside you or maybe just a few rows up or several people that are responding in such a dynamic way. I know one of the beautiful things that we got to experience a while back was one of our pastors. He is Puerto Rican, and as he was there for baptism, there was a family that just came to our outdoor baptism and just wandered, you know, they just kind of wandered in. It was like, hey, what's going on? I think they had been invited by one of their neighbors, and just for them to see that there was somebody representative of their community in that space, it meant so much to them. And so there's a celebration in the fact that God has made us all uniquely, and yet we don't want to use those differences to divide us. How does God want to use those to unite us and celebrate, enjoy, and appreciate? And so I think the voices that are given, the spaces that are given, the authority that is given, it just shows that we are celebrating that God has truly created us to be a people united in one purpose, and that's His purpose, not necessarily what we through our cultures elevate and make sacred.

You know, and that's why even getting back to biblical, like, let me even this line from Derwin Gray, Pastor Grey, that you mentioned, the laying down of the preferences, like, just even going to the Beatitudes: blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are the meek, and everything that's in context there within Matthew, you're getting this posture of not let me have things my way, but instead let me humbly serve. And if nothing in the life of Christ shows that, and the fact that you guys are looking at doing this in a mega, giga church environment in North Carolina, where I'm sure there are times where racial lines are very tense, I love the fact that your church is encouraging even some of this humility among its people. Now, was this, has this passed, and I don't know this, forgive my ignorance, but was Derwin there? Did he plant the church? Did he start the church? Did this culture exist even before him? What's his involvement here in establishing this culture in the church?

Sure. So I'll give you the quick on Pastor Derwin. He had a ministry early on, and as he was traveling and sharing his story, you know, he was in a space. He came to the Lord later in life. He's an NFL player, right? At some level, he was an NFL player, went through the NFL years, and towards the end of his NFL career, he came to know Christ because his wife had come to know Christ. And his wife was introduced to Christ through a coworker. And so he began, he went and shared his testimony one week, and it kind of just opened the doors for him to begin to share his testimony. And his story is fantastically dynamic. You have the opportunity to hear that, you need to take the time and do that. As he began to share though, something was troubling him because he's been reading the Word, and he's looking, and he's seeing ethnicities being pointed out. And he's seeing, and I'll give you some scriptural context to this in a second, but he's seeing Scripture speak to the fact that the dividing wall of hostility between Jew and Gentile was to be torn down, that there was a new race created in Christ. And yet every church conference that he went to and every event that he was a part of was predominantly a specific ethnicity. And it wasn't, as somebody who didn't grow up in the church, he was going to help me understand this. My the teams that I played for were diverse. The club that I went to in college was diverse, you know? Like, he's speaking to all these spaces that the world is displaying diversity, and yet the one place that it should be representing, and not representing is not even the right word, it should be reflective of, is in the church, and it wasn't. And so he heard a very, very adamant calling: don't criticize, create. And so they set out from then, and through much prayer and enduring for a lot of years, just set out and said we are going to be a community that represents what God intended for His family. And so you know, that was huge. And so from the get-go, this was what this church was going to look like. And so that's been the heart from the beginning as him and the founders came together. They said this is what this church is going to look like.

That's beautiful. So from the get-go, you're creating, you're establishing this DNA of multicultural. He's Black, you know, I know the Acevedo, I'm referencing, they're Hispanic, and so even seeing that on video, I don't want to call you up publicly, you're a white dude, so even just in the context of the people that I know, you're already seeing some of the multicultural. And you're using language, you know, even among your staff and in leadership, to kind of celebrate those differences. You're talking about kind of even some things like the musical beats of it to kind of celebrate some of that. What are these other practical ways? I mean, there's...

I want to make it—we all know this, especially you being someone who's involved in shepherding and pastoral care—there's more than just, um, church than just what happens in the one hour on Sunday. Used to be a small groups guy, so talk to me a little bit here. Beyond even just like doing that, the musical portion of that, how is a church really operating in a multicultural sense? What does that look like?

I think you have to go to a foundation that is, um, one of the first series, and I wasn't even there for this initial series, but then we kind of revamped and did it again, speaking to Nehemiah and say we are going to stay on this wall. This is what God has called us to. Paul said I have been called to this gospel, and he was so specific in that. And so you have to have a vision that doesn't change every year. Um, and I think it's really important that we say this right now. While we understand that there is, um, awareness that's happening in our current climate and in our current culture that we absolutely want to welcome, um, we need to have a foundation that is based in the heart of God and who he is. Otherwise, you end up with ideologies that don't hold up.

So you're not—if you're not pointing back to God's heart in these spaces, then when you think about your small groups, well, why can't we just do this? And when you think about your music, why can't we just do this? You have to go back to this is why. And it will be less about why can't we do this to look what we get to be a part of. And so a lot of times, I know my eyes have been opened over the last several years, and it's just been absolutely mind-blowing.

But when we typically think about the gospel, for most people, one of the first scriptures—I mean, you might think of the Romans Road—but one of the first scriptures that come to mind is John 3:16. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life. And that's a phenomenal passage of scripture that speaks to the redemption of humanity and it speaks of you and I being able to be in relationship with God. But the big thing that God did is that he not only reconciled us to himself through Christ, but he empowers us through the Holy Spirit to be reconciled to one another.

Well, what is that? What does reconciliation to one another as humanity look like? This is one of the scriptures that kind of blew my mind. Galatians chapter 3, verse 8 says the scripture saw in advance that God would justify the Gentiles by faith and he proclaimed the gospel ahead of time to Abraham, saying all the nations will be blessed through you. So he told the good news to Abraham before Jesus was physically on the scene. And what did he say? All the nations will be blessed through you. He's saying that beyond the Jews, people will know that I am the Lord.

So if you think about it, historical context, Genesis chapter 11, what you have is Tower of Babel. Everybody getting separated, scattered to their own spaces, own languages, own ways of doing. Chapter 12, God comes to Abraham—Abram at the time—and says I'm going to get my family back. And so you're like, okay, he's saying he wants to get his family back. He says I'm going to bless all nations, all ethnos, through you.

Verse 14 of Galatians chapter 3 says the purpose was that the blessing of Abraham would come to the Gentiles by Christ Jesus so that we could receive the promised Holy Spirit through faith. So you're seeing Jesus's role in this, that he's making a new people. Because if you look at Acts chapter 2 and you look at the day of Pentecost, Jesus has come. He's given a commission already. Says you're going to go to all the nations and you're going to make disciples. So you're seeing ethnos continually, continually. This is what I'm doing. This is what my family's gonna look like. This is how the world and humanity's going to be blessed. This is God's heart from the beginning for his family and for his church.

So if you look at Revelation chapter 5, powerful, powerful passage. And they sang a new song. You're worthy to take the scroll and open its seals because you were slaughtered and you purchased people for God by your blood from every lot, tribe and language and people and nation. You made them a kingdom and priests to our God and they will reign on the earth.

So these are just, I'm just mentioning very specific ones, but throughout scripture the narrative is this: God was going to have a family and it was going to be made up of all people. And if he's saying his family needs to look like this, then the body of Christ, the literal body of Christ now, the kingdom come, active in the earth, needs to be representative of that. That's why multiethnic church matters, because it's always been God's heart. This is not a model. It's not something sociological that we're just addressing right now. It literally has been God's heart from the beginning.

And so, um, I know I kind of hit those quick, but Ephesians chapter two is another amazing passage, and chapter three. You listen to Paul as he just teaches and unpacks over and over again, um, how he was going to minister in these spaces. But you look throughout scripture and ethnicity was highlighted on a regular basis.

We get people a lot of times asking why y'all talk about race so much. Um, it wasn't an accident that the Great Commission said go to all nations and make disciples. It wasn't by accident that the first person that Jesus told he was the Messiah to—sorry, just having a moment. Kind of builds up sometimes. You just think about all the different things, how intentional our God is. Was a Samaritan woman, somebody that was despised by the Jewish people, and Jewish people were despised by them. And that was the first person he said I'm the bread of life. I will quench your thirst. And she was the first one then to take and go tell, hey, I just met one. I believe he's the Messiah.

And so God has been intentional throughout his story to establish the fact that his church will represent a multifaceted, a beautiful, diverse, economic, socioeconomic, you know, ethnic, generational body of people together. And I think here's what's really important. And is when you think about, if we're having this conversation because we're the church and we want to glorify Christ, Jesus says in his prayer in John chapter 17, before he's starting to progress off the scene, his prayer is for his disciples, but his prayers for the words that they would be putting together, the testimony that they would be, and how that would show forth to us that he literally was sent from God the Father. And it would be reflective through their unity. And now it will be reflected through our unity.

What better picture can we be to the world today when there's so many things, ideologies that divide us that shouldn't, but instead we're showing the world that no, we genuinely love and care for each other? We're not just here for a presentation on Sunday. We're not just here for an event that gets together, but literally and now to answer your question from the practical standpoint.

They started six months in. They had to wait to do groups because the first flood of people was very, very monoethnic. And they said no, that's not what we're called to. And so we're going to take some time and we're going to disciple these folks and we're going to talk through this. We're going to take them back into this and we're going to pray and we're going to wait. And God began to raise up leaders. And then they decided, yeah, okay, we feel the freedom now to move forward and starting our small group ministry. And you know, that story exists throughout several spaces. But we started with a vision that we were committed to. We believed that it was God's heart. And so you've got to continue to come back to that.

So then everything comes through that vision. If you're starting a new ministry, if you're thinking about something else that's going to be taking place in your body, then it needs to be reflective of that vision. And, um, and so all the different spaces, you know, our groups are intentionally multiethnic and multigenerational now. We do other groups for short said periods of time because we all know that, I mean, even if you're looking at a first generation, perhaps, you know, immigrant, or you're looking at, um, even somebody just joining the church, joining a small group is not necessarily the first thing that they're thinking about doing. So you have to be intentional in those spaces to continue to bring people along. But we're pointing to get connected and engaged and diverse community because this is God's family and this is what we need to look like.

We need to value one another. We need to celebrate one another. We need to get to know one another. And when Christ is at the foundation of that, but you're actually doing relationship with each other as you're serving alongside each other, as you're stepping into places that intentionally are recognizing the folks that have been, for lack of a better word, outcast, they've been set over here, um, the system has not been built to support them, then you need to be a voice. As it says in Proverbs 31, for those who don't have a voice. So you step into these spaces together. You're continually encountering opportunities to be in community together, getting to know your brother and sister, their story, the shoes that they've walked in. And in that grace and humility, seeking to be, seeking to really understand before being understood, um, knowing that a sanctifying work is going to be happening for every person that's involved, is, um, is all a part of how it really gets lived out.

Um, I'll give you this, a, a, a, an example that was really so. I was groups director at the time, and we had an officer-involved shooting in, um, Charlotte. And so the city was very, very, um, it was a hot spot. Um, and we got together, invited people out that night to pray, to point people back to God's word, and just how do we love each other? How do we seek to understand what's going on right now? How do we show support in the proper kind of ways, um, that that needs to look?

And so as our groups got together, then even that Sunday as Pastor Durham was preaching, as our groups got together, there were things that bubbled to the surface. Um, there were things that people began to talk about because they had had enough of people not understanding and questioning, and then others had had enough of feeling like things were being put in their face but they didn't understand all that was behind it. And so you saw people that had been in community for perhaps years, and they were facing conflict. But because they had true, genuine relationship with one another, they endured in that space. They yelled. They'd gotten some arguments. But then they came back together and they said, hold on, I know you. Hold on, you're my sister or brother in Christ. I think I need to understand some things and I need to spend some time with you because, um, my perspective is my perspective and I've probably been very limited in that.

That creates opportunity for genuine understanding. And, um, and in that, I mean, you like I said, sanctification has to happen. You don't just undo hundreds of years of systematic injustice, you know? You literally have to walk together in that. And, um, when I say hundreds, that's hundreds for this country, you know? We know that it was far, far before that. And, um, so anyways, there's some. I know that was a lot. I said a lot, man.

Yeah, that was. There was a lot there. I mean, let's not even back up and forget. You literally took us on a biblical journey from Genesis to Revelation talking about multicultural and now even like hundreds of years going through, um, reconciliation, uh, grace and humility, um, you know? And I don't want to get lost on this. Listening is even the first step towards.

Understanding, and it's not monologuing your way to understanding, but listening and processing and grieving along the way with that, which almost gets me to this next thing that I wanted to work with. And so obviously we do a lot, and the podcast is literally called the Church Digital Podcast, so we talk a lot about digital church, church online, hybrid churches, churches that operate physically and digitally. And I know Transformation, you guys have an excellent digital strategy and operations that complement your church physically and in digital space. We even work with digital-only expressions of church. We've got, I've got friends that are launching churches in Twitch using Discord towards video gamers. We've had guys on here that do virtual reality church, you know, Roblox church, Facebook church. Like we really work in this bleeding edge, right? And so pre-COVID people thought we were crazy. Now mid-post-COVID, some people still think we're crazy, but some people at least, hey, you know what, give it a shot. Let's see what happens. This whole multicultural thing, like it's giving me pause a little bit, you know? What does it mean to be a multicultural church digitally? You know, a lot of the churches, and I don't want to kind of overspeak here, but wrestle with it. A lot of our churches are, you know, you talk about celebrating the differences. A lot of churches are monocultural in that they're not necessarily celebrating that on a stage. Maybe it's more in the audience and in other ways engaging with that. I'm not saying they're racist, but I'm saying it's more towards, it's a mono kind of cultural experience from the stage. Now in a digital environment, if I'm monocultural and that's what I'm celebrating by putting out, but my audience who's completely separated in digital space is multicultural but they're isolated, so once again it feels kind of monocultural. And truly, like this is an answer, I don't know the answer to this question, but it's more of, as I look at digital churches, I really start to wrestle with what does it mean to be multicultural in a church that's operating digitally where there's isolation among the viewers. And so Transformation Church obviously has a very strong digital strategy. Have you guys wrestled with this? What does it mean to be multicultural digital? How does that look like, at least from a digital perspective?

Yeah, so just trying to think the best way to say this. We spent our entire purpose and existence wanting to be intentional in this space, so what we're offering is going to reflect it. And so what I mean by that is our service didn't change, right? We're continuing to offer the service that we are, the worship time, the message. So like, you know, our message is, I'll use this example. You know, people a lot of times ask Pastor Derwin, you know, what are you doing? You know, what are you doing to celebrate Martin Luther King Day? And he's like, well, our very existence is celebrating Martin Luther King, what he stood for. Our very existence speaks to the one who had the dream before he had the dream, and that's Christ. And so like we'll share those things in that context on purpose to kind of give some perspective that like what we're doing on a regular basis is a display of God's family as a multi-ethnic, multigenerational community of people. And so really for us it was making the things available that we do already. And we've seen our team pivot in amazing ways, but you know, we already had some groups somewhat consider meeting online, but all of our groups went to online. And we've had people joining our church from all over the country and all over the world over the last year, like literally joining, attending our membership classes online, connecting and engaging. So really you have to give people the opportunity to really go, hey, they are who they say they are, and that is reflected in our message. That's reflected through our music. That's reflected through our small groups. That's reflected through the things that we continue to make a priority. And so if we look at the Gospel, the Gospel is going to constantly speak to elements of unity and justice, but it's going to do it from a biblical perspective. It's going to speak to the importance of valuing people beyond the color of their skin. And so as we look at that and we look at God's heart and continue to wrap that all the time, you know, like from a foundation of who Christ is, then it's going to overflow in the spaces that we have opportunity. So we've continued in a digital platform and now have even begun to work with our outreach ministry to make, you know, hey, here's some things that we've had the opportunity to do. And one of the things that we said as far as being a body and being present in a community, we're in Indian Land, South Carolina, like it's about six miles south of the border of North Carolina. We're right there in that space. If God has planted us here, this place should change as a result of us being here. People should be in an uproar if we decide to leave. Now we tell people that, and yet as we've grown because of where we're located, we have people attending from forty-five minutes and an hour away that would drive to the building and come and be a part of that. So we've had to continue to remind people that the church is not the building. It's not the events that we're opening up and making available. It's you being on mission in your sphere of influence. So as we say that, we're looking at those that are watching online, and we're taking what we're having the opportunity to do here and say, hey, here's some pieces that we want you to be able to participate in too. So if you want to serve, we're doing our rollout Hope Ministry that's going to mainly impact our local community, but your giving is touching these things, these things, these things, these things, which go beyond us. They go into our regions, and they go nationally and they go globally. And so God has begun, you know, really shaped us to take who we are, that hasn't changed, that just translates now.

So you're saying if you have the thought process of like, and I totally understand where you're coming from, this person's over here, maybe isolated, and some people have been, but our care ministry is continuing to connect and do our meetings. You know, we're connecting with the servant leaders, which is what we call volunteers or servant leaders. And so as those people are coming together, they're still having opportunity even though it's in a digital space. We have had some of the most amazing conversations over the last year through Zoom. I was blown away. One of our first meetings that we had with our care ministry, they were probably around sixty to seventy people that signed up for it, and I was blown away at how transparent people were with where they were, how they were processing the pandemic, how they were, some of them were processing loss. And then as the racial tensions rose and came to the forefront, the beauty of the conversations that were happening with people, it continued. So I mean the short answer is it just continued and overflowed into that space. But there's a lot that you need to think about as far as your intentionality because, and I don't, I'll say this for clarity, I don't say this as like any kind of indictment or anything, but we've got to be careful that we aren't invitations to assimilation. We really are invitations to celebrate one another. We really are invitations to in that same space lay down our preferences and pick up our cross. And so if we're creating that space rooted and grounded in Christ, humbled by the Holy Spirit, responding to him and not creating our own thing, not creating this multicultural place, but responding and joining Jesus and what his mission has always been, then it's going to translate into spaces, and you'll have to be intentional though for that to happen. So yeah, you can't just, you know, you can't just flippantly, you know, whatever. But as we're putting it out there, we really believe in the work of the Holy Spirit that this is his heart and he's going to give us opportunity just to reinforce that and to do that in this broader reach.

That was so good. I, even as you're talking, I just reflected back. I'm trying to remember who said this, but you know, digital is an amplifier of who you are physically. And even to what you're saying, of hey, it's just it amplifies our DNA, our culture of who we are. If we're a multicultural church and we're living that way as a church physically, then it's going to mirror in the digital space. If we're celebrating our differences, if we're laying down our preferences, and if we're being a humble church, that is going to exist and it's going to show itself physically and digitally. And so that's such a good word there. Love that heart. Love that challenge. But and even let's pick on that challenge a little bit, okay? So I'm at a church, hey, that should, the church that I'm at, I mean there's plenty of there is a ton of people who are asking these questions right now listening. Hey, I'm at a church, we're very monocultural, you know, mono, and I'm not even picking up, doesn't matter, we're only celebrating one thing. How do I even, how do I start to change? What do I do to go from mono to multi? How do I start celebrating differences? What does that need to look like? How do I transition?

Yeah, and I mean I think you're asking a very realistic question that has seventeen thousand answers. You know, one of the things we talk about at the round table, and I say we talk about it all the time, but we're not going to build a multi-ethnic church if we don't first have a multi-ethnic life. And that multi-ethnic life has to be recognized. Again, I'll say, I'm going to keep saying it because we want to go back to God's heart for his church. So what does that look like? What does it look like to value my neighbor? I've heard people say this a lot, and there's even a popular CCM song right now that speaks to the fact that you know we're willing to do our missions overseas, but we actually have a problem with those who are overseas being here. And yet they're our neighbor. Like, how we, we have to have some things I think unearthed and different. And I so I think it really starts first and foremost with a posture of just coming before the Lord and going, God, I need to recognize that there's differences than maybe how I've perceived things. I think that there were tons of YouTube videos that were put out like years ago, like just within the last five years or so, and you know, and it's like you got this wall and you got all these people lined up on it, and the person kind of out in the middle, you know, of a field or a gymnasium, starts speaking to specific things and people begin walking forward. You know, they say, how many went to a private school? How many were homeschooled? How many grew up in the city? How many grew up in the country? How many of you grew up with both parents? How many of you grew up with one parent? I mean, we were adopted. As you start to think about these simple differences, it should cause you to pause and realize that your perspective and experience is not the barometer for how everybody else has lived. And when we recognize that, you know, and see the fact that there are these possible differences, then we should be willing to hear and understand where somebody else has walked, what somebody else has experienced. And that in itself, so I love it, the simple way of saying it is like, let's seek to understand before trying to be understood. And another thing that I think is important, and I'll just, I'm going to hit this one quick and keep moving, but

We talk about it all the time. There's an adultery in this country when it comes to politics, and we talk about it all the time at TC. That is, you know, we do not follow the party of the donkey or the party of the elephant. We follow the party of the lamb. And if that has to be central and first and foremost, because ideologies then begin to outweigh our first love, and so I go back to—and I'm gonna, I'll read—well, no, I'll say that I'll save that kind of as a closing thought. But you know, so we have some spaces that we have to be intentional in, but I think it really starts with saying, "God, I'm not going to pretend that I'm a know-it-all," and I don't think people are sitting back thinking that I'm—now as I look and I hear your question, I hear a genuine desire to say, "I want to understand differently." You know, it may be researching some things. I can think of different books that you can be looking at, and I would start building a multi-ethnic church. Pastor Derwin's book that he just released, and we do a round table on that that piggybacks on that. Did that in April. We will do it again in the fall. But we're going to make content available for that as well. But this is, you get the theological foundation. You look at some very important practical steps of vision casting and then practicing this amongst your body, and then we wrap it up with Gospel Shape Soul Care, which is we think is super important because we've got to be in a healthy space if we're going to love and really care for those around us. And but it, I mean, we do panels in that space. It's other leaders who are saying, "How do we take this step forward?" Because there's a lot of questions I don't have answers to. And I think even in our genuineness of asking questions, so often we say things that are hurtful, and it's not intended. But you need a safe space to be able to process those things. You need a safe space to be able to ask the hard questions to get to a better place of understanding. And I really think that that does come from a posture of humility, and of course we see Christ exemplify that so beautifully. I think a posture of humility to learn and grow together is super important. And so what does it look like to start just loving your neighbor? Really, that doesn't look like you. And they're not a project. And we'll go back to the old school, you know, evangelism tool. They're not a project. They're a person, right? But for real, for real, build genuine relationship. Be open. And don't be scared of that. Our God is powerful. He's a guarder. He's a discerner. He's a protector. So as we look at some things that have been driven by fear for so long, and some of them rightfully so in space—as I get there, there's context for the fears. Let's trust our God to be bigger in those spaces. If He has defined this from the beginning, that this was His intent, He plans to see it to fruition. And we as His body are literally His physical body living out His kingdom come here and now. So we're called to that. Go and make disciples of all people of all nations. So He's calling us to love our neighbor. And so you go back to the Good Samaritan. Who's our neighbor? Intentional that He told that story that way. Yeah, that's beautiful.

This has been a great conversation. You know, it's so we try to talk technology. We try to talk. It always comes back to discipleship. We try to talk multicultural. It always, you know, comes back to that relationship piece. And whether it's physical or whether it's digital, I can quote stats. I don't need to quote stats, but it all—and if we're going to do ministry in the future, it all comes down to that relationship of an individual to an individual. And how, if we're going to, if we're really going to change the church, if we're going to change our cultures, it comes down to that relational piece.

Well, I tell you what, I want to put a pin. I don't have time to really dig into this, but Gospel Centered Soul Care. I'm going to come back to that. You're going to get a call at some point. I totally want to explore that in a deeper level. But this series has been a solid conversation. I know that you guys are so Derwin's book, we'll put links to that in the show notes. For the round table, link to that as well. For future, and there's resources as well, maybe from the most recent one that was in April. And so they, what's the website they can go to and maybe to download some of these resources?

Darwinellegregg.com will have those things posted up on there as an opportunity for you to purchase like a small package of majority of the content from that. And then we'll do that like we do the roundtable twice a year. And so we'll have it again in November. But then we've also packaged some resources in that as well, just to show you some reading resources that kind of you know just give you some clarity of multi-ethnic church. Also, you know, racial recognitions, pieces of things that we can really grow and learn to understand historically and things like that from the history of the church to just the history of civilization. So those will be some pieces that will come along with that too.

Awesome, love it. So check out darwinellegregg.com for those. We'll put the link in the show notes and include all of that. So Curtis, man, thank you for this. This has been a heartfelt conversation. Hopefully bringing some awareness for celebrating the differences. Like, I just, it's not enough to be monoculture with just multicultural attenders. Let's celebrate and push those forward. Let's set our preferences aside. That's a couple beautiful lines right there. Maybe just as we're landing the plane here, any closing thoughts?

Now, I really do appreciate the opportunity. As you can tell, I'm passionate about this, and I can rattle a lot of things off. We've spent a lot of time really being poured into, and I love it. Our team spends time, and I'll give you an example. We do every Tuesday's Transformation Time, and it's our staff spending time. So we take time as a staff to talk through some of the things that you hear in the world, but how are we making sure that it's not just the spirit of the day, but literally we are seeing it through the lens of the Gospel? And so I think that's another great opportunity. If as you're looking at church staffs and thinking, "How do we address these things and address them well?" Spend some time. Be willing to have those more difficult conversations and spaces because they're needed. Somebody is longing for them, and there's a lot of people longing for them—a safe space to be able to talk through those things. But if I was gonna land on anything, this is what I really thought about. I knew we were gonna have the opportunity to talk about this. You know, we followed Jesus because we realized that He first loved us, and we love Him in return. And so as I'll go, I'll reference John 17 again and just thinking about this. Jesus is literally praying this out loud for you and me, and He said, "I've given them glory that You have given me so that they may be one as we are one. I am in them and You are in me so that they may be completely one, that the world may know You have sent me and have loved them as You have loved me." I know that the heart of every church, the desires that they have, is that the world would know that Jesus came and was sent by God the Father. And He's speaking very specifically saying it's going to be our unity in Him, identifying as His. And so I think that's something that we can look at and how amazing that we get the opportunity to be the answer to Jesus's prayer. It's pretty incredible.

Yeah, I'm not even sure how to like add or if I even need to add anything to that. Let's let that be our prayer and our challenge moving forward. Hey, Curtis, thank you very much for jumping on this. Check out the show notes. There'll be plenty of resources there to help towards that. But even that seems like a cheap commercial at this point, so I'm just gonna wrap. For Curtis, this is Jeff with The Church Digital in State of Church Planning. Thanks for joining us on this episode, and we'll see you next time here at the pod. You have a good day.