New York hosts hundreds of Korean, West African, Caribbean, Chinese, and Latino churches worshipping in their own languages and traditions. Does preserving those distinct communities reflect the many tongues of Pentecost, or does Sunday morning remain the most segregated hour in the most diverse city on earth?
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Add your commentPentecost was actually about everyone speaking perfect unaccented English so that all nations could assimilate into one Christian culture. That's just basic biblical history. (Someone please correct me before I say this confidently at my small group tonight.)
The real issue nobody wants to say: a lot of these separate congregations exist because white American evangelical churches in this city have historically been unwelcoming in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. You don't get to create an environment where people don't feel at home and then turn around and call their self-organized communities a 'missed opportunity for unity.' The segregation critique needs to go in BOTH directions or it's just pressure on minority communities to integrate into majority spaces. Again.
Born and raised in Flushing. Our Korean Presbyterian church has been on the same block since 1987. My grandparents literally could not have worshipped anywhere else when they first arrived — no English, no car, no connections. The church wasn't just church, it was the place you found out about jobs, got help with immigration paperwork, learned which landlord to avoid. You want to call that segregation? I call it survival and then some. The theology is sound, the community is tight, and we serve the broader neighborhood too. Don't lecture us about unity from the outside.
Fun fact: Revelation 7:9 describes heaven as every tribe, tongue, and nation worshipping TOGETHER before the throne. Together. Not in separate sections of the heavenly auditorium. If that's the eternal destination, shouldn't our Sunday morning at least be pointed in that direction? I'm not saying dismantle anything overnight but the complete lack of urgency about this in NYC church circles is strange to me.
My wife and I actually pastor a deliberately multiethnic church plant in Astoria and I won't pretend it's easy. It is HARD. Harder than anyone tells you in seminary. Music choices alone can start a cold war. But the moments when it works — when a Guatemalan grandmother and a second-generation Chinese deacon are taking communion together and genuinely know each other's names and stories — I wouldn't trade it. Both models can be faithful. I just think ours asks more of everyone and that cost is worth it.
Honest question for the New Yorkers here: how many of you have ever actually visited a church outside your own ethnic community on a regular basis? Not once for a special service. Regularly. I'll wait. Because I've lived in Brooklyn for six years and I notice we talk a BIG game about diversity in this city but on Sunday we all quietly retreat to our own corners. The subway is integrated. The church is not. That should bother us more than it does.
Nope. Hard disagree with the whole framing of this debate. 'Missed opportunity' implies there's a failure happening. These communities are not failed attempts at something better. A Cantonese-speaking church in Sunset Park is not a lesser version of some hypothetical perfectly blended congregation. It is complete. It is whole. It is the body of Christ for those people in that place. Stop measuring ethnic congregations against an imaginary multicultural ideal that mostly exists in conference brochures.
Acts 2 literally says every nation heard in their OWN language. Pentecost was not about everyone speaking one language, it was about the Spirit reaching people WHERE THEY ARE. So the multilingual church landscape of NYC is more Pentecostal in spirit than any forced blended service could ever be. Sorry not sorry.
i grew up in a haitian church in flatbush and honestly the worship style, the call and response, the way we pray — theres no translation for it. its not just language its a whole embodied tradition. you put that in a blended multicultural service and it gets watered down into something palatable for everyone which means it belongs to no one. i appreciate what the unity folks are saying but assimilation isnt unity.
I moved here from rural Ohio two years ago and the ethnic church thing genuinely surprised me. Back home everyone complained there was no diversity. Here there's incredible diversity and somehow Sunday is still sorted by ethnicity. Different problem, same result I guess. Though I'll say this — I visited a Nigerian Pentecostal church in the Bronx with a coworker and it was the most alive worship experience of my entire Christian life. So whatever they're doing, don't break it.
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