The Quest for Legitimacy

Reflections on Leading as a Minority in the Local Church

Mar 11, 2021

It was an unusual word of encouragement for a young preacher.

“One of these days you will preach in front of Americans.”

She didn’t elaborate but we both knew what she meant. This was a word of encouragement, laced with hope, that one day God would grow my gifts to the point that I would be received by white people.

In case you are puzzled by how I could infer all of that from her statement, you should know something about the world in which she, and other Indian immigrants in the 80s and 90s in Oklahoma City, lived. Most of the Americans that she knew were white. The person who sponsored her family to come to America was likely white, as well as the person who interviewed her for her first job, and the person who employed her, the person who sold her her home, the person who taught her children, the authors they read in school, the people they watched on television, and the people who enforced the law. In other words, nearly every person in a position of authority in her life, who opened doors of possibility, who legitimized her place in society, was white.

Dear friends, we need not wince at these words. This was simply the reality for minority immigrant communities. There wasn’t a hint of contempt in her tone for neither white people nor Indians. She was merely trying to encourage me and I received it as such.

But I also received her words in ways that she never intended. I came to believe that the people who ultimately legitimized my ministry were white people. To be accepted by white Americans meant I had arrived. And this tape played in the background of my decisions when I hesitated to become a pastor in an Indian church, and when I struggled to be comfortable in my own skin as the pastor of a predominantly white church. In both cases, I saw my “Indianness” as something that needed to be transcended in order to be successful.

Not every leader is on a quest for legitimacy, but at the same time, there is no way to become a leader in a church unless someone has legitimized us as such. Someone must recognize our spiritual fitness to lead. This is just how healthy church leadership works and is true for all ethnicities and cultures. We lead because someone, often in a position of authority, recognized our character, confirmed our call, and trusted us enough to vouch for us in front of the community.

But what happens when it’s not enough? When after you have been trusted to lead, you still struggle to find your footing and question your legitimacy as a leader in a church that you love but where no one looks like you?

In my previous post, I wrote to help Indian leaders navigate the challenges they face in their local Indian churches. This post, however, is aimed at helping Indians lead through their feelings of illegitimacy as minorities in the local church. I write from the perspective of a second generation Indian American, but I hope it can still be helpful to those who don’t share my culture. Discussions involving ethnicity can evoke all kind of emotions. But we need not be troubled here. My aim is the health and effectiveness of the leader who has the noble calling to serve Jesus’ church.

And yes, your church too.

Even when none of them look like you.

FINDING A PLACE TO BELONG

Erin Chan Ding recently wrote an article in Christianity Today describing why children of immigrants are leaving the multiethnic church to return to their ethnic-specific churches. In many of the stories that she tells, the second and third generation immigrants in those churches are searching for belonging.

Interestingly, I know many Indians who left their immigrant communities for this very reason. They could not bare their souls, confess their sins, and had to cover their shame. And they did this because revealing their brokenness would threaten their belonging.

It is no wonder that some elect to be nomadic, wandering between two or more churches in order to provide the kind of community for which they long. Others feel forced to choose between the freedom of sharing their culture and the freedom of sharing their lives.1 But since you are called by God to be a leader as a minority in your church, leaving is simply not an option. You must forge a way forward because, as Eugene Park notes, community is not something we find as much as it is something we build. So how can we build a sense of belonging right where we are?

I’ll tell you what we did.

I went to the people in our church, especially the minorities, and asked them what they missed about their heritage and ethnic specific churches. The common answer among them all was potlucks. They spoke longingly of eating together with others in the community every Sunday. So what did we do? We hosted multicultural potlucks every other month. We asked people to bring food that represented their heritage. We served salads and samosas, kimchi and curry, fried chicken and mac and cheese, all at the same table.2

At first, this felt like a gimmick. Why on earth did we even do this?

It’s because at the heart of belonging lies the conviction that you are finally received for who you are. And many minorities cannot conceive of an identity apart from their ethnicity. It is simply who they are. They are constantly confronted by their otherness at work, at home, and in their churches. But to be given a seat at the table, where others savor the joys of their culture, while they savor the culture of others, is to build a community of belonging for who we are.

Yes it is true that when a community loves us despite our sins, they love us as God loves us and remind us of our legitimacy in Christ. For that is who we are. But when that same community loves us, not despite our ethnicity, but because of it, and treats our cultural complexity as the fearful and wonderful crafting of God’s reflection, this too reminds us of our legitimacy. For that is also who we are.

Even the most well-intentioned Gospel-focused leaders can forget that belonging as lived reality requires intentionality. They forget that the glories that Christ has made possible must be apprehended, that we must press on to take hold of that for which Christ has taken hold of us.

For example, God welcomes us as his children with open arms because of Christ. But in order to experience belonging as children of God, we must often fight through feelings of estrangement and instill practices that reorient us to what is true. Practices like daily devotions, prayer gatherings, and accountability groups.

But as it relates to helping minorities experience belonging as brothers and sisters, many leaders assume this happens naturally without intentionality. We don’t prioritize the need to help them fight through their feelings of estrangement and instill practices that reorient the entire church to what is true. We lack multicultural practices and expressions of ministry in the life of the church.

The leaders of your church may believe that God has united all ethnicities in Christ. However, they may need your help to see that just because God has made it possible doesn’t mean that he has made it inevitable. This requires leadership. People who will build a community to realize the wonder Christ has won.

So to return to our question, how can you, as a minority, help build this kind of community if it doesn’t currently exist? A few considerations:

First, let the glory of Christ and what he has accomplished for the church be your reasons. Remember that the church as a diverse family is God’s idea. And this display of his “many-colored wisdom” is made possible by what Christ has done on the cross.
With the blessings of the senior leaders, and without undermining their authority, would it be helpful to ask people what they miss about their heritage or ethnic-specific church? If so, do you have the ability to create initiatives based on their responses?
When you consider the scope of your authority, what opportunities can you create for people to experience belonging in both of the ways described above? What ideas would you propose to make the display of God’s many-colored wisdom a lived reality in your church?
Who else needs to be involved in facilitating change? How can you present your ideas to other leaders in a way that it will be received? How do these initiatives fit into the current vision and mission of the church? The more it can coherently fit into what the church is already for, the easier it will be to implement it.
How will you respond in the event that no one else buys in? Will you continue to trust in the Lord and lead with the conviction that God has called you to labor in love among that community? Will you be committed to relationships and not simply results? Will you build community as best as you can knowing that you are just one small hand firmly placed in the Lord’s as he builds his church?

FINDING YOUR VOICE

It had been several years since he heard me preach.

In fact, we last saw each other at an open-air meeting in India. Open-air meetings are outdoor church services in India where the preacher’s sermon blares loudly through speakers for the town to hear. The sermons that I preached in those services were often “hot off the altar,” lacking in preparation but full of passion for the truth.

But this time was different.

I was invited to preach at his Indian church in America. I had not thought about how my preaching style had evolved over the years until he approached me after the service and said,

“You’re a white man’s preacher now.”

Interestingly, these words were similar to the woman’s encouragement several years before. If her words were prophetic, that one day I would be received by Americans, then his words confirmed that her prophecy at long last had come true. Except this time, the words that once carried the promise of being found were now spoken in search of me.

What was it? Was it the fact that my professors taught me to surgically analyze the text and present my conclusions in three points? Was it my cadence, my tone, my presentation, and measured passion? What does it mean to be a white man’s preacher? What does it mean to be an Indian preacher?

To be a second generation Indian American leader means that no one fully understands you all the time. There are things about you that puzzle the first generation Indian church when you are with them, and there are things about you that perplex the church where you lead as a minority. Compounding all of this is the fact that you also struggle to find your place among them all. So how can you cultivate a voice amidst this vertigo?

Leverage it.

Let your unique experiences become a place of rest for those who often feel disoriented. Your experience is a vital part of their belonging.
Let other leaders who do not share your experiences learn from you. Do it with a posture of humility, knowing that God knit you and them into the same community in order to serve the diverse needs in your church - needs that require their perspective and needs that require yours.
Be a peacemaker when your community is divided by competing ideologies. Help them see their disagreements from a different perspective. You’ve had to live with nuance. In humility, help others do the same.

The words of hope and judgment, prophecy and fulfillment, that one day we will be found, and that no one recognizes us anymore need not define us. It is Christ who legitimizes us in all of our brokenness and cultural complexity. We may be a white man’s leader, an Indian’s leader, or something entirely different altogether.

Yes, this can be lonely. In an age of self-actualization, to be all things to all people carries the dread of not being anyone at all. But what we are is known to God. And our struggle to find our footing is no hindrance to his call on us as leaders. In fact, it may even be the grounds for it.

Consider This

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