A Lack of “Minority” Church Leaders is Killing the Church

A Lack of “minority”[1] church leadership is killing our economy which includes the health and future existence of our Church.

Zoe Henry for Inc.com recently cited research from the Center for Global Policy Solutions stating that “Discrimination–whether open or covert–could be leaving as many as 9 million jobs and $300 billion worth of income on the table.”

As a “minority” living in the US, I was very intrigued by this statement. As a former pastor, I naturally, and almost immediately began to think about how this impacts the present-day American Church.

For the U.S. Church, it is no secret that numbers have declined, churches, seminaries, and Christian colleges are closing, and/or laying off their staff at exponentially scary rates. Times are changing; a majority of millennials are now POC; a greater majority of millennials no longer trust institutions, identify as “Christian,” or attend a church service regularly.

As we’ve seen the businessfication of the church, conforming to the US economies capitalistic ways (not always a bad thing), there is naturally a direct correlation to the decline of the institutionalized version of Christianity we see today and the $300 billion worth of income being left on the table.

The correlation is strong and I don’t think it’s happenstance.

“About one in five churchgoing Americans now attend multiracial churches…”

It’s said that “About one in five churchgoing Americans now attend multiracial churches,” yet these “multiracial” churches have seemingly not progressed, adapted, or changed in order to better accommodate their newly diversified congregations. If we’re honest, it’s tough for any pastor (regardless of their color) to name more than 5 reputable theologians that are not white or male; our churches foundations are built upon extremely Eurocentric theologians negating the reality and existence of the person of color (i.e. the future majority of our country, and the present majority of the millennial generation).

“Multiracial churches end up catering to the sensibilities of white congregants…”

While “Multiracial churches end up catering to the sensibilities of white congregants,”  the gospel has become irrelevant and the Americanized version of Jesus un-relatable; naturally, the person who cannot identify with the pastor’s depiction of Jesus, will leave and go elsewhere.

After all, discrimination in the American church has been no secret (e.g. involvement with slavery, prohibiting interracial dating, a misogynistic complementarianism, etc.). We haven’t arrived yet, and still, have much work to do. I truly believe that a vast majority of our nation is anti-racist (not to be confused with the huge chunk of progressives that think they’re anti-racist but are ironically super racist). But, with this change is possible at abnormally rapid rates; we can co-opt these exclusive “white men’s clubs” and change them into inclusive meant-for-everybody-clubs (i.e. what Jesus intended for the Church to be).

If any business, or church, wants to succeed in this ever-progressing nation they need to be willing to also adapt and change.

If you’re a pastor, leader, or wanting to be a future pastor or leader for positive inclusive social change, hit me up over on my Facebook page (via messaging me) and I’ll send you a PDF I made that goes with this titled “INCREASING SUCCESSFUL CHURCH LEADERSHIP IN COMMUNITIES OF COLOR.”