That certainly puts a finger on one part of the problem. I don’t know about evangelicalism, and i haven’t read Rah’s book, but one of the things that has struck me is that the overwhelming majority of those here in South Africa who are interested in the emerging/missional church movement are white. And for the most part they seem dissatisfied with two things — some are looking for an alternative to the neopentecostal/megachurch/prosperity gospel that has dominated the white Protestant scene for the last 20 years or so. Others are in the Dutch Reformed Churches, which, having backed the wrong horse in the apartheid era, are looking for a new direction and some are hoping to find it in the emerging/missional church movement (and some of them also seem to have had a brief flirtation with the megachurch scene as well).

Blacks seem to be largely absent from the emerging/missional church scene, but there is great concern among people in the traditional Zionist/Apostolic African Independent Churches (analogous to your native American ones?) about the growth of the Neopentecostal/megachurch/prosperity movement, some of it home grown (Frederick Modise and Grace Bible Church in Soweto) and some imported from West Africa (Winners Chapel) and South America (The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God).

Missiologists like to talk about “contextualisation”, but have often failed to note that these movements have brilliantly contextualised the gospel to fit the aspirations of yuppies and wannabe yuppies. Since the Reagan-Thatcher years the gospel of neoliberalism has been sold in the West, and these churches are now working to spread it throughout the world. Marxist historians claim that the main aim of 19th century missionaries from the West was to spread the gospel of capitalism; I think that they would have an even better case for saying that 21st century missionaries from West Africa to Southern Africa are doing the same thing.

I think you have a valid point in that the dematerialist and anti-individualist message of many missional and emergent churches does not rub well in many minority church circles. Much of this as you note is due to experience. But I think its important to note that our experience of these things is different in kind and form from the majority. Minority people are in that liminal space between embrace of the material/individual and resistance to it. We have been creative and internally our approaches to balancing these positions is, no pun intended, diverse. There are plenty of material/individualist critiques in and outside of the Black Church for instance.

To reiterate what others have said here, the missional and emergent church needs display what it is for as well as what it’s against. And for my mind, that means that the anti-individualist and dematerialist stance need to be on EQUAL footing with the cross-cultural stance. How can we as a movement (and I see myself in it) embrace the diversity of 2000 yrs of our heritage, but not the diversity within 2000 miles of our community? I’ll agree with you that Rah’s book is only just guessing at the answers.

I believe we should also consider that this impasse has alot to do with how current missional leaders and their minority counterparts are socialized. Generationally I see some limitations in their outlook. Anecdotally, I’ve seen stark differences in how Boomers & early Gen Xers want to continually “conversate” about race, while late Xers and Millennials have a more tactile proclivity to try and live the issue. I don’t want to paint with too broad a brush, but those distinctions of social location are worth examining.

Lastly, I consider myself part of growing third culture movement among Americans and Xtians as well. Yes, I’m African American by virtue of my biology and family, but I have been profoundly influenced by being raised and schooled in environments of hyper-diversity, that make me hard to pigeonhole. When you say you’ve reached out to minority church friends, where do these groups fit in the larger constellation of minority life? How about the overwhelming number of unchurched minorities of every socioeconomic standing? The ones who didn’t grow up in churches or left them long ago. How about the ones that don’t live in the old neighborhood anymore? How about the ones who have been socialized in an environment of diversity they don’t want to give up on Sundays?

In the end I believe nothing, nothing really, can ultimately salve our discomfort with the faithful imperative to take the first step to cross social boundaries, save actually taking the first step.

Sorry for the length, but hope this adds to the conversation. If I wasn’t going to be in L.A. then, I’d check out your learning commons in Ft. Wayne.

Grace Fellowship’s primary relationship to the new monastic communities is its effort to give the church prominence in its theology, rather than the state. Pastor Sharon Huey talks of Grace’s catechumenate as preparation for taking something like a “vow of insignificance.” Putting off prestige is hard, especially for “overeducated” and upwardly mobile Californians, and even more so for Asians, she says. But it is scriptural.

Huey and Grace Fellowship share with other evangelicals a love of scripture. But they have put it to use in reading Hosea as carefully as the rest of the Bible. The prophet taught Huey that the common reduction of Christianity to psychological help for the privileged is a sort of “whoredom.” Reading the prophets is training in how “not to be nice,” the amiable Asian woman says, for her community is “better at harmony than truth.” In a time of empire when the church should tell a “more persuasive story” than one of exultation of the nation, Bible study is radical stuff. Community members say they were “ready” on 9/11, for the prophets had taught them to mistrust claims that saving power comes from anything other than God.