I've always found it interesting when a church does not look like, ethnically, the surrounding neighborhood. I used to live a Long Beach, CA - a very diverse city - and was a part of a church that was primarily white in a black/latino/white neighborhood. In my experience, it is extremely difficult to break in to becoming a multi-ethnic church when it was never in the DNA structure of the church in the beginning. Almost seems like new church plants with a leadership desiring this would be a great thing. Look me up if you decide to plant a church.

Old ways do not simply disappear, true. So if one has invested heavily in their racial identity before being saved to the point that they have an instinctive antagonism toward other groups, it is true that they will have to be transformed and it will take time, maybe a life time.

However, none of this speaks to the protocol for the church, herself. That is, in the church, the body of Christ, the protocol still remains that racial properties or any anthropological property is not a consideration with regard to its spiritual identity or spiritual exercise.

This does not mean in all other walks of life your anthropological properties such as race, gender or ethnicity must or should become impotent. Not at all. If anything they are the basis for the divine institution of the self, marriage and family. In these contexts and constructs they are to be given their full social expression but only in their correct context.

Racial conflicts, petty or significant, are certainly always present with us in this world. Even Christians, particularly when they do the thing proposed here, to count race or to give it value in spiritual expression, will "take sides". That should not happen for believers but it does but not because the remedy of all of us finding our spiritual and ecclesiastical identity does not work as it should but it occurs when we do not do this in the body of Christ that such "taking sides" arise.

But let me say something here for you and everyone with whom I have been discussing. The phenomenon of our unity in Christ regardless of race/ethnicity, can only happen as it does in its unique way and is only intended to happen as it does in its unique way within the spiritual construct of the body of Christ and with its protocols.

Outside of the body of Christ such as within your family, though you may be a Christian family, it is a different divine institution based on an anthropological construct where your human properties are quite relevant and should be. It is your human DNA or civil law (such as adoption or marriage) upon which a family is built and identifies itself. So even a society or nation can be racially homogenous without it being a bad thing, necessarily. That is to say nations tend to rise from families or groups of families that are closely related or alike. These are valid sources of social identification and function, even for Christians.

It is only in the body of Christ these things disappear as they do or I should say are rendered impotent. But when you go to your home the only people allowed in without knocking are whom? Your human family of course. So even our unity in Christ does not necessarily intend to force a change in social structures and protocols.

Thus, race will stay an issue. Humanly speaking if all the world were saved and drawing near to the Lord, well what a grand place it would be. But the world is by majority not Christian. Hence, it not only will legitimately use its racial identity, it will illegitimately use it as an identifier for a group or groups toward whom they wish to target their hatred and explanation for all things wrong in life.

And at times it might even be true that collectively one racial group or another can be described as acting in a way that is not in the interest of another group or maybe even to the injury or another group. Those social problems will, indeed, stay with us until our King reigns in eternity. I do not believe they will go away.

But to some degree, however, our human identity is one that God has given us as social creatures. There is nothing wrong with seeking the preservation and promotion of our unique human properties in their right setting but in the church, I believe, those properties are to be impotent other than for anecdotal functions.

Thanks again.

P.S. I do have a series at my blog, An Examination of Protestant/Evangelical Race Based-Special Interest Theology, if you are ever interested and have some time to kill.

P.S.S. I like to watch Charles Stanley and have followed him since the early 1980's. His church is racially diverse but he will tell you he never pursued such a thing. The most he ever did was insure just what the Bible required, that anthropological properties were not a basis for consideration, one way or the other. He simply taught the word of God and in the community in which the church was the demographic changed somewhat along with simply attracting believers of every kind of human race and ethnicity who did just what Stanley did, did not consider those properties as relevant to spiritual identification and exercise.

What is present in Christ is not anthropological reconciliation but our reconciliation to God in Christ thus our spiritual unity based on our spiritual DNA. The text has nothing to do with social or anthropological reconciliation. What it presents is an absolutely different and new divine construct, one removed from anthropological causes, considerations or motivations which is the spiritual construct of the body based in and resolving around our spiritual reconciliation in Christ. Thus our fellowship with one another is based our new spiritual property which is precisely what is being emphasized in all of Ephesians, "in Christ".

Let me state just for the sake of knowing, I am a black woman. I also want to say that I agree with you in regards to evangelism and defining people as in-Christ or not. I think that's important. And I agree that unity should not be defined by race. But, where I think we may differ is that I believe the message is needed because all too often "race" and ethnicity continues to be a dividing wall. I really appreciate your perspective. I just don't think we are there yet. I am also convinced that the Bible does address diversity. I'm so thankful you are here sharing.

Do we tend to socialize thus inevitably share the gospel more often with those in our social periphery? Yes, but the Bible not only does not treat this as sinful but in the great commission it assumes it "as you go, making disciple and Baptizing..." Secondly, should we make a conscious effort to share the gospel with those who are not like us? Yes, they are called the lost and the us we should have in mind when doing the work of the church, the spiritual exercise of sharing the gospel, is us-those that are saved.

I pray no one would place a demand on a church like this. There are churches in rural areas, for example, that may never be diverse (in ethnicity). But for those starting new churches or for churches that do have a desire for a multi-ethnic community it isn't harmful to cast a vision for it. I don't think anyone would demand diversity. I do think that diversity reflects the last day--and how beautiful it is to reflect that now. I also think it's a good witness to a world that loves to division. What do you think?