The Joys and Messiness of Intercultural Ministry

Gary Timmermans shares about the CRCNA's multicultural cohort. These cohort brings together churches to share experiences, challenges, and successes in fostering intercultural ministry. Gary shares stories from churches that embraced their multicultural congregations.

The following is a transcript of Season 9 Episode 5 of the Do Justice podcast.  It has been lightly edited for clarity.  Listen and subscribe on your favourite listening app.  

"My name is Andrew Beunk and I serve as the lead pastor at the New Westminster Christian Reformed Church here in British Columbia. It's been a real privilege for us as a congregation to be part of this Canadian CRC multi-cultural church cohort these past eight or nine months or so. As a congregation, we're located in a very ethnically diverse part of the city and already more than a decade ago as a congregation we sensed God calling us to engage our neighborhood in very intentional ways so that that diversity would be reflected in our own church a little more, by God's grace. Indeed, we've begun to experience that and when the idea of joining this cohort came up, well, quite frankly, we hoped that we could share some of the things that we'd learned over these last number of years and of course we've done that, but have been doubly blessed by hearing from other churches that are all at different places in this journey towards greater cultural diversity. Listening to their stories, we discovered that there are so many different ways that churches find God inviting them into this journey. I think we were quite intentional at the very beginning. Sometimes churches find that they haven't been very intentional, but yet were very open to receiving new members or guests who've come. So learning about all these different ways has been a real encouragement for us. In fact, it's also helped us as we've heard these stories, to think about things that we could do maybe a little differently or other ways that we can engage our community. So, all that to say, this has been a delight to see how God has been working in a variety of Christian Reformed Churches across Canada and it's, yeah, it's just been a blessing to learn from each other in this way.”

Chris: Well, hello friends, and welcome to another episode of Do Justice. My name is Chris Orme and today I'm really excited to have joining me Gary Timmermans. Welcome, Gary, excited to have our conversation today.

Gary: Thank you, Chris.

Chris: You know, multicultural congregations, we're going to be talking in that direction. I don't want to jump right in, though, let me flash some of your bio information for some of our listeners. It says that God ignited your passion for global mission from experiences that you had on a sabbatical in '93 and '94 and it was from your first career as a Christian school teacher and it was a year-long assignment in Ukraine teaching English as a second language. And that was a unique space! It was in post-Soviet Ukraine, just after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It says here that you and your wife Galina, with Resonate Global Mission, you grow church-based partnerships both in Canada and in the Baltic countries of Estonia and Latvia. Gary, thanks for joining us. Do you want to fill in the blanks on any of that bio?

Gary: So glad that God blessed me with a life—a second part of my life in the intercultural spaces. I lived twenty years in St. Petersburg Russia where I met my wife and found myself completely immersed in the Russian culture. Now that I'm in Canada I'm able to reflect a lot more about how much intercultural aspects were going on there, what was ignored, and so this whole experience of landing here in Canada the last three years, by God's providence before the war started, really gives me an interesting perspective on how to be intercultural and how rich that is.

Chris: Well thank you for taking the time to be with us. Let's jump right in here. So, we've been talking about cohorts within the Christian Reformed Church and your focus was on multicultural congregations. So, tell us about the cohort. Tell us a little bit about what the focus was and just introduce us to this cohort.

Gary: Multicultural learning cohorts give a big picture of the wider body of Christ that we are experiencing here in Canada. Over the last eleven months several agencies of the CRC came together to give a focus to learning for churches that are already immersed in intercultural experience but they want to be more innovative, they want more experiences, they want to learn from the challenges that other congregations have. And so I, along with people from Thrive and CRC Connections and the Intercultural Office, we pulled together twelve churches last January and we just wrapped up month by month a learning experience through the last eleven months. It was just a great experience, a rich experience because, as the Scriptures say in the book of Revelation, the people will enter the heavenly city in the end of times and the glory and the honor of the ethnicities will be shown and we're able to already experience that here and now in our churches. We were able to experience that for sure in the last eleven months talking all about what is going on in our churches, what kind of bright moments our churches experience when we open our doors and when we open our leadership to the presence of people of other cultures. So, this is the essence: bringing a bigger experience of the wider body of Christ in our CRC churches.

Chris: Could you tell us a little about the types of churches? What kinds of churches were participating in these cohorts? Who was there? Who was at the table?

Gary: Yeah, we had churches—one that was even just started during Covid, so four or five years of history, and it already has thirteen languages going on in their church of thirty-five people. This is a brand new church plant. That's rare in the cohort, but we had several churches who have sixty to eighty years of church history. Cornwall, Ontario, New Westminster CRC in Burnaby, Brampton CRC Crosspoint. These are churches that have a long history of being established as a dominant cultured church but through their past history have, for whatever circumstances the Lord brought into their life and their community, their neighborhoods, these churches were able to embrace the vision of becoming a multicultural church. A couple of them just also went through a time period of the history of the church where they felt like, "Hey, we might be dying out! We're down to thirty, forty families, and what do we do? It's time to vision and time to understand what God is doing in our community, where he's leading us." But some churches didn't have that experience, they just, because of the location. For instance, in New Westminster B.C., the neighborhood was just filling up with people of all cultures and the church happened to be physically located near an immigration and resettlement office. So it was just a natural place to see God working right next door, right on a nearby street. And praise the Lord the leaders of that church just embraced the opportunity to get involved with other cultures around them.

Chris: You said something there, "The vision of what it means to be an intercultural church," and I'm guessing that that—you know, how one community versus another community would answer that would be pretty contextual, but could you maybe tell us what is the vision of being an intercultural church?

Gary: To be intercultural is certainly that you are, first of all, you're hospitable to people who are unlike the dominant culture in the church. That's sort of a beginner's level of exercising multicultural aspects but to go beyond that, to go beyond hospitality, you also want to share the experience with the other cultures so that there's a learning and an experiencing of each others' culture and each others' vision of what the kingdom of God is like here on earth. So, it gets a little bit more challenging when the people of the dominant culture have this curiosity that hungers to welcome and to experience God's picture of Christian life through the eyes and through the words and the understandings of another culture. So there's a gradation of experiencing and practicing multicultural life.

Chris: You know, throughout this experience was there—you're part of this cohort, is there something that has been sticking with you? Is there a story or an experience that really stuck with you that you're walking away from saying, "Yup! That's going to be in my back pocket for a while."

Gary: So many. Let's see, first, with coaching a church nearby in Etobicoke and the Etobicoke Church was one of these churches that is nestled in the greater Toronto area, a church community that also overtime experienced the flight of people moving out to other places away but still remaining part of the church as so, as a church, they felt that they wanted to not lose the opportunity to be a church for the neighborhood. Even though many people were leaving the area, they still wanted to be focused on being a local church so they opened the doors of their buildings. Their building was kind of repurposed for use to the community and so they would have gym nights, they would have game nights. They have, once a month, lunch for seniors in the neighborhood and all this takes a significant amount of work. The interesting part of it is that, even though there was a lot of strength, the physical time able to be dedicated was pretty scattered around the greater Toronto area and so to keep all these programs going was a real challenge but they grew a community who began volunteering. Many of the immigrants who were living in their neighborhood and who they were serving would then take roles in helping out and volunteering in some of these activities—the sports for children, the meal for seniors—so that this became a ministry among the new Canadians by the new Canadians, as well. Of course with the participation and leadership of the majority culture members. So, there's always a struggle with, "Where can we get a good, strong leadership team?" But that was still—they endured through those challenges and they were able to see the momentum growing through the purpose that they had, the vision that they had to be an outreach church. Turned out that this church didn't grow so huge because many of these new Canadians found their life at the church to be a transition point and as new immigrants come into Canada, as you know, they're still finding themselves and where they're going to belong and some of them moved to other cities or the other end of the greater Toronto area, find a job somewhere else, and so it's a challenge to see that as a ministry of a stage of life for many of these people that come through the church.

Chris: A key part of learning in cohort is that you're not on the journey alone and it's really cool to be with like-minded folks asking the same questions. We've found that this can be especially helpful in a justice setting, so from your experiences leading the cohort, what was the value or the impact that you observed of people joining together around this journey?

Gary: I think one of the key highlights for this question, justice coming out, was highlighted in a particular story told at our retreat just last week. One of the churches has a senior pastor, a dominant culture pastor, but it also has a second pastor of a minority culture, of a Chinese background. The question came up from our worship leaders who hosted this conference and did a great job of leading music, the question came up: do you have an emergency contact, you as a person, when you fill out a form do you have an emergency contact? People of other cultures, it's a moot question for them, but we as Canadians know that we're often asked this question. And the second pastor of this church took it upon himself, without even asking his co-pastor, his senior pastor, he said, "Oh, I just use Pastor Andrew's name and address and phone number as my emergency contact." And this was very revealing because not only does he use it, but he did it without even asking permission of his senior pastor, Pastor Andrew, whether he could do it. When we heard this story being told at the retreat last week, Pastor Andrew was asked, "Andrew, how did you feel about your junior pastor using your name in this way without even asking you?" And it was really moving to hear the response. His response was, "I feel such great honor that he, as a new Canadian, would by his own understanding and the relationship he has with me, can trust me and believe that I'm going to support him as an emergency contact no matter what. He just assumed that I was that kind of friend." So, this is a significant, very significant for me, understanding of what we're stepping into as workers in multicultural ministry. This is important for everybody, to have somebody that they can lean on and trust that any time of day or night you can be called in to help and serve and you're going to be ready.

Chris: Isn't it beautiful? Something that is so, I don't know, it's instinct, it's auto-pilot stuff for us, you know, "Who's my emergency contact?" But to have that come up, that's a beautiful testament of the—

Gary: Yeah, and it's interesting that during the event, we were all asked, "Is there anybody here that would have a difficulty listing an emergency contact?" Some hands went up! And so it shows that this is a real, actual need in our communities and it wasn't just hands being raised who were from third-world cultures or from new Canadian audiences. A couple widows raised their hand up whose children are living in the other end of the country or has a character or personality that the person won't be reachable for whatever circumstance might come up. So, one of the pastors listening in said, "Wow! Does it take a government form for us as a church to be the real body of the church? The real body of Christ? Do we need a form to be the real body of Christ?" That really impacted me, that we in Western culture are so, so independent and individualistic that a lot of people can slip through the cracks just because we're not paying attention.

"My name is Jonathan Hwang. I am the Associate Pastor here at Hope Community Church. We are in Surrey, B.C. in Cloverdale, where the vision is about outreach and connecting with those around us, which is very Biblical and very God, mission-focused and so it's been a great journey, a great learning curve and there's been a lot of joys. So we've been doing this cohort project since January, we're already almost coming to an end. Part of the journey has been just opening up conversation. It's just been a good excuse. You're in charge to represent our church to be part of this cohort, so that means you get the excuse to go poke around and start conversations about, "Hey, what are we doing as a multicultural church? How intentional are we? How unintentional are we?" And both have their ups and downs, but it's been great to just have that conversation and it sparks imagination. I would say the biggest challenge has been starting up conversation but making it into more of an official capacity and having meetings and kind of starting up our own internal team, like a multicultural core team, to get discussions going, to come up with ideas, to present to maybe our leadership and council. And so when you make something official and then you're now committed to it, it's a bit more of a challenge to add another thing on top of a lot of the great ministries that are going on and so, just asking for a little more commitment has been a little more challenging. People have come into our building just randomly, looking to use a bathroom, even, because they think it's a community center. We're sort of right in the middle of this Cloverdale area, more specifically Clayton Heights—it gets confusing, the geography—but here it's so amazing how random people just walk in. We had an instance last summer where this young adult just in a life crisis moment, again, just randomly came and he was seeking help and he found Christ. Just to see the joy and the experience and live that out, and we're continuing to live that, to journey together with people finding faith and people finding Christ, is such a joy. That's been the highlight of my ministry so far."

Chris: Gary, for you personally as a member of the dominant culture, how did you feel yourself being changed by interacting with the folks in this cohort?

Gary: Well, for me I have a kind of a natural attraction to people of other color, of other race. I like working with them. I like what they bring because I know that they're going to stir things up inside our dominant cultured people in the areas where we lack. We, as Reformed people, can be very much the planner types, the people who don't spontaneously jump to do something, jump to offer something, be ready to recognize spiritual forces going on. I'm used to that because I lived twenty years abroad where these kinds of cases were all around me very often. Now I'm seeing my people here back home facing this more and more, that we are a living body, the body of Christ, and not just people that are just like us, but there's people who geographically have moved into our spaces and there is the global world coming into our space and they're being a light, shining spotlights on aspects of our cultural manners, behaviors, mannerisms, which can use some reinvigoration, if not some anointing of God's light, into the kind of people we are. So I really appreciate them. We got a pastor in Whitby. He's the one who planted a church during Covid, Mark Jallim, who has just a powerful ministry growing an immigrant church in Whitby, Ontario. And I just love working alongside people like that. It reminds me of my life in Russia. It reminds me of my partner Pastor Pablo in Estonia who lives to a different beat. They're just so refreshing to work with.

Chris: Gary, I love that. I'm about six days from getting home from Cambodia. I spent a couple weeks and it's—I like how you said, you know, you just have a natural attraction to other cultures. Yeah, I felt the same being there, but I guess the importance of, you know, when I go overseas I'm a guest, but here I'm a member of the dominant culture and, you know, I'm really thankful that you and your cohort worked together to ask that question of hospitality, how can we be better at it? We're coming to an end. I just want to give you a chance to sort of give the final work and maybe encourage folks who are listening to this conversation. How can they get started in this journey themselves?

Gary: Yeah, there's always fear and messiness when you have to interpret people's actions through an accent or through different cultural expectations and so breaking through that fear is what I was able to see and appreciate in all the people who were part of the cohort. Many of these people were, you know, people in their fifties, sixties, who had a long life of living a certain pathway of life. They have just expressed the jubilance and the joy of seeing people from other cultures bring joy into the worship of their worship spaces and also bringing refreshing excitement into places where they are living and working. So, I would say any church that is supporting refugees or awaiting refugees who are coming soon—79% of CRC churches in the last fifty years have welcomed refugees. I did research on this in 2022, '23. There's still 50% or so CRC churches who are waiting for refugees or have them right now. There's lots to learn to prepare oneself to do this well and cohort number two is going to begin in late January and we would be excited to see twelve, fourteen more churches who are ready to go on a journey of learning, of sharing ideas with one another. We would be excited to see that be a full group of learners and I am excited to be one of the coaches that just gets to help with the accountability. See, the goal of a multicultural learning cohort is not just to listen to stories but also to take a step of doing something experimental in your context. To take the next step in doing a better job of hospitality or doing a better job in leadership development of someone from another culture that you're trying to raise up into leadership of the church or to help your people become less anxious about this multicultural messiness. There's lots that can be learned just by being in fellowship with ten or twelve other churches, but also lots could be learned by being encouraged to make an experiment. To start something new and to go a step further in being truly intercultural.

Chris: We'll be sure to put some of those links to get in contact with these types of cohorts and information about these types of learning opportunities in the show notes. We'd encourage folks to click through and reach out. Our guest today has been Gary Timmermans. Gary, thank you so much for sharing the story of the multicultural cohorts and we're excited to hear about the next one. Bless you.

Gary: Alright, thank you very much. Thank you.

Helpful Links

• Thriving Essentials Cohorts: ⁠https://www.crcna.org/essentials/thriving-practices⁠
• Intercultural Ministry ⁠https://www.crcna.org/intercultural⁠