Ethne launched at the beginning of 2023, as a next step for OCC in its vision of realising “cultural and ethnic integration within Oxford Community Church and beyond”. (For more, visit www.occ.org.uk/intercultural).
Since the launch of Ethne, the team has met regularly to consider and pray about the needs of the church in terms of intercultural and ethnic diversity, and racial justice. As part of this, we launched a survey for the church in November, following Black History Month, in order to hear directly from and be guided by you, our church family, in how we pursue realizing God’s vision for a culturally diverse church. In this blog we briefly summarise a few of the results and outcomes from the survey, with the full report available below.
The survey comprised of questions on basic demographic information, general attitudes towards issues of ethnic/cultural diversity and racial justice, and experiences within OCC.
People from many different cultural backgrounds responded, which gives us some confidence that we have heard from a wide range of OCC people.
Positively, there was a strong agreement from many of you that you feel welcome, and that you feel OCC celebrates being part of a global faith as well as has spoken (through leadership) on issues of cultural prejudice and discrimination. Further, several of you reported having spoken with a friend from church about racial justice within the last 12 months.
What do we mean by ‘racial justice’? To quote one theologian: “Within a Christian context, racial justice involves being faithful to a God of justice and love who calls on those who are made in his image to stand up for justice, equality, and dignity, and stand against racism, bigotry, and hatred, which are sinful. Racial justice is everyone’s business. Anyone who perpetrates racism is carrying out sinful behaviour, and those who fail to condemn it are condoning sin.” (Richard Reddie - Director of Justice and Inclusion, Churches Together in Britain and Ireland)
We saw that the strongest influences towards respondents’ understanding of racial justice came from ‘current news’ and ‘individual Bible study’, whilst the weaker influences were church teachings either within our church or outside of it.
A section of the survey was focussed on listening directly to your feedback: We asked you how you felt OCC together or you yourself could improve in being more welcoming and inclusive of minority ethnic and cultural groups.
A significant proportion of answers to the first of these focussed on diversity in leadership, and visible diversity during the Sunday service, both of which have been a focus of discussion amongst the Ethne team. We noted that several individuals from ethnic and cultural minority groups within OCC are involved in serving and ministry roles, but not so much in senior leadership. But we know it’s a slower process supporting a diverse range of individuals in pathways to leadership via training and development opportunities. There are however, some implementable ways that we have planned going forward for making our Sunday services richer in hearing and seeing a more diverse range of voices and people – more on this below.
Your responses to both of these questions indicate an appetite to build friendship and learn cross-culturally through fellowship and conversation, which is exciting! And we strongly encourage you to ‘be braver in approaching others’ and befriend others, including from other cultural groups, as you suggested you would like to do yourself.
Approximately a quarter of respondents to the survey reported unfortunately witnessing or encountering at least one negative experience in relation to their or someone else’s ethnic or cultural background in the context of church. We’re really grateful to those who shared this with us in the survey and invite anyone who has witnessed or encountered a negative experience in this respect, to reach out to the Ethne team or to the pastoral team.
The Ethne team are very grateful for the responses and engagement with the survey – it is tremendously helpful to hear your voices and experiences and attune with you as we begin to carry out specific plans. As a result of this survey and discussions that have been ongoing throughout and prior to the establishment of Ethne, there are three main courses of action that we aim to address:
- Forming friendships: We want to increasingly be a church of people that have friends from different ethnic, cultural and social groups. While it’s not always easy, it is what Jesus wants his church to be like - and we can all play a part in this!
- The Sunday service: We want to include more diverse styles and songs in our sung worship, to find ways to teach about cultural matters and befriending people different from us, and to regularly tell stories celebrating our increasing diversity.
- Leadership development: We will continue to invite and encourage people ethnic/cultural minority backgrounds to engage with training courses such as School of the Sprit, STEP and Upper Room, and find ways for them to grow in leadership.
- Prioritisation: We will keep issues of ethnic and cultural diversity and racial justice visibly as a priority, vocally from leaders and through prayer. Though uncomfortable at times, talking about these important matters will help us become more genuinely intercultural.
Read the full report and results of the survey below.
