Explore the challenges of the multicultural church, how we can overcome them and discover hope too.

The future of both the church and mission is undeniably multicultural – shaped by migration, global Christianity, and shifting cultural realities. Yet for many leaders, this future feels more complicated than hopeful. Why is that?

In this webinar, Harvey Kwiyani, CMS Pioneer Mission Training African Christianity Programme Lead and lecturer, explores the deeper challenges beneath the surface of “diversity,” including questions of power, belonging, leadership, and theology.

Drawing on his wider work on cultural diversity and decolonising mission, he will offer a fresh vision for understanding cultural difference not as a problem to solve, but as a gift to receive – alongside practical insights for leading churches into a more shared, participatory life in God’s mission.

Dr Harvey Kwiyani

Harvey is African Christianity Programme Lead and Acts 11 Centre Lead.

He is a Malawian missiologist and theologian who has lived, worked and studied in Europe and North America for the past 20 years.

He has researched African Christianity and African theology for his PhD, and taught African theology at Liverpool Hope University.

Harvey is also founder and executive director of Missio Africanus, a mission organisation established in 2014 as a learning community focused on releasing the missional potential of African and other minority ethnic Christians living in the UK.

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In many Western nations, politicians are lamenting the erosion of Christian values in society and calling for restricted immigration to prevent further erosion. They insist that a government’s first priority should be the care of its own citizens and that nations have the right to control their borders. This presentation will assess these claims by asking what a distinctively Christian approach to government and nationhood would look like, and then applying it to border control in order to propose a “Christian immigration policy.”

Guest speaker

Dr Barnabas Aspray, Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at St Mary’s Seminary & University, Baltimore. He also writes a column for Seen & Unseen and hosts a podcast, Faith at the Frontiers.

Host: Tyler Horton

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Attendance is free but please reserve your place:

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Christmas is a reminder that migration has always been woven into the story of salvation.

by Joseph Ola

22 December 2025

We know that Jesus enters the world into the margins: he was born away from home, visited by travellers from distant lands, and forced into exile as a refugee child. Through his birth and life, we see how God does not shy away from the precarity of human movement – in fact, God inhabits it.

The Yoruba have a proverb that offers a caution in this regard:

“Sún mọ́hùn-ún, a ó ṣorò ilé wa, tí kò jẹ́ kí àlejò di onílé.”

“Make room, we are about to perform our family ritual,”

which keeps the immigrant from ever becoming part of the household.

This proverb exposes a painful truth which has echoed loudly amid various migration policy conversations across the globe: communities can welcome migrants for a while, yet draw invisible lines when true belonging is at stake. A seat may be offered – but not a voice. Proximity – but not participation. Hospitality – but not home. Christmas confronts such boundaries!

In the incarnation, God does not stand at the doorway politely uninvited – he steps inside the human household. Jesus is not kept outside the rituals of belonging; he becomes the centre of the family story. He is not tolerated at the edge – he is welcomed by heaven and earth as Emmanuel: God with us.

So, as migration continues to shape our societies, Christmas asks us uncomfortable but necessary questions: Are we truly making room, or only appearing to? Do we allow the stranger to become kin, or merely a guest who must not get too close?

May we practise the kind of welcome where newcomers share not just the table but the story – where those on the move discover that, in Christ, they already belong. May we tear down the lines that keep others out. For in Jesus – the eternal outsider – we meet the One who makes us all at home.

As we celebrate the birth of Christ, may we remember that God comes to us not in stability but in vulnerability; not from the centre but from the edges. May we find Christ anew in the migrant, the seeker, the stranger, the neighbour – and also in ourselves, as people continually invited to journey with God.

May the peace, joy, and hope of Christ be with you and those you love.

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Christianity is multicultural by its very nature. But working this out in practice is a greater challenge than we often recognise.

by Tyler Horton

14 November 2025

In a recent interview with Premier Christianity, Dr Selina Stone expresses her concern that building ethnically mixed churches is “just not a priority for lots of people.” Dr Stone, lecturer in Theology and Ethics at the University of Edinburgh School of Divinity, is up front about her discouragement in this area:

I’m more than happy to rally the Black and Brown people to say: “Let’s build multicultural churches” once there is a good cohort of white people who actually want to do the work of building those churches, but I don’t believe that’s what we have. 

The claim that it is white people in the UK who are especially unwilling to work at building multicultural churches is somewhat provocative, and I imagine some will react against it. But before any of us follow the reflex to say that majority non-white churches also have work to do in this endeavour, we should start by giving serious consideration to the fact that she may well be right. After all, the history of majority white churches accepting and integrating non-white people in the UK is not always encouraging.

Christianity is multicultural by its very nature, and multicultural churches are one of the clearest expressions of the power of the gospel which breaks down walls and makes peace (Ephesians 2:13–14). Ethnically mixed churches that honour and express human diversity are worth working for. The prejudices and challenges that stand in the way of this goal, which mean that it is just not a priority for lots of people, must not be allowed to stand.

I want to point out two resources for those who are looking to shape churches that are more multicultural. Both are connected to the Converge 2025 conference that several of the Acts 11 team members recently contributed to.

First, we need to recognise that Christians have access to resources that no one else has. My talk at the conference, “The Bell Tolls: Asylum Hotels and Christian Perception,” had two main points:

1. Christians can see what no one else can see, and
2. Christians can be seen doing what no one else can do.

We are those whose eyes have been opened by God and among whom the love of God is perfected.

When we are confronted by problematic issues, like the current crisis around asylum-seeker hotels, we can take courage from the fact that our prospects are not determined by our past. Rather, they are animated by the possibilities of grace. Working out the multicultural nature of Christianity is often a greater challenge than we recognise, but we have to remind ourselves that in Christ we have resources which are fully sufficient to meet all that he is calling us to.

Second, I would point you toward the organisation that hosted this conference. Intercultural Churches aims to help churches create spaces where everyone feels valued, building relationships across cultural boundaries and promoting unity.

Besides events like the Converge conference, they also offer training sessions and other resources to help build truly multicultural churches.

We had a fabulous time with those who gathered, and I was particularly encouraged to meet several people who came not because they are church leaders, but simply because they wanted some help after recognizing that their church has room to grow in this area.

Do be sure to have a look at what Intercultural Churches have to offer, and, consider joining the network yourself!

Dr Stone is in a far better position than me to evaluate the state of the church here in the UK. So, when I hear her say that there isn’t a good cohort of white people ready to do the work of building multicultural churches, I’ll not set out to contradict her statement.

Her insights in this interview have reminded me that building multicultural churches is more difficult than we often think but we can join with others who recognise that by the power at work within us, God is able to do more than we can ask or imagine (Ephesians 3:20–21).

As Dr Stone goes on to say in the interview, truly multicultural churches are the dream. What calling lies on us to help see that multicultural churches flourish? What needs to be sacrificed for this vision to come to pass?

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Dr Harvey Kwiyani, founder of the Acts 11 Project, a Church Mission Society initiative, has called upon the Church to disentangle itself from the legacies and logic of imperialism and proclaim a gospel that resists privilege, inequality and exclusion.

In his new book, Decolonizing Mission, Kwiyani argues that while imperialism and colonialism have been associated with the expansion of Christianity for over 500 years, the gospel of Jesus Christ subverts idea of empire. Kwiyani says: “The good news is not imperial. It does not conquer. The mission of Jesus liberates. It does not colonise.”

Throughout the book Kwiyani traces the history of Christian mission alongside the history of empire, showing the influence that one had on the other. He imagines what mission without imperialism would look like, and sheds light on the connection between colonialism and mission and invites us to realign our missional methods with God’s.

Kwiyani explains: “In first-century Judea under Roman rule, proclaiming good news to the poor and freedom to the oppressed was dangerous. Jesus was not merely comforting souls – he was confronting empire. Jesus announced a new social order rooted in God’s justice and mercy.” This is the gospel Kwiyani challenges the Church to reclaim – a gospel that resists the logic of conquest, domination, and superiority.

In Decolonizing Mission, Kwiyani uses historical vignettes to that show how the gospel has never required conquest to spread. From the beginning, Jesus entrusted this movement not to kings or soldiers but to the marginalised and overlooked, colonised people like his Galilean disciples. The true mission of God has always relied on love, humility, vulnerability, and the Spirit’s power.

Kwiyani explains: “I dream of a global mission movement of Christians from formerly colonised lands as well as the rest of the world. This is the task of the Church today: to proclaim a post-imperial gospel. A gospel that resists baptising privilege. A gospel that stands with the poor. A gospel that disrupts injustice, embodies compassion, and embraces the non-coercive love of Christ.”

Professor Esther Mombo, of St Paul’s University, Limuru, Kenya, said: “Decolonizing Mission is essential reading for anyone committed to a faithful, humble, and culturally sensitive witness in the 21st century. It challenges us to lament past wrongs, repent of lingering imperial impulses, and embrace a mission that truly reflects the kingdom of God – one defined by love, equality, and freedom.”

Kwiyani concluded: “The gospel of Jesus Christ is not a tool for expanding empires – it is a prophetic summons to dismantle them. It proclaims that the love of God liberates, heals, and decolonises. To be faithful to God’s mission in the world today, we must decolonise mission.”

Decolonizing Mission is available from SCM Press.

See churchmissionsociety.org/events for details of upcoming book launches.

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