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At Urbana ’87, Sri Lankan ministry leader Ajith Fernando referred to Jonah’s hatred of the Ninevite people and said, “For some reason, ethnic hatred is one of the toughest areas for God to change.”

Where does racial reconciliation and inter-ethnic peacemaking fit in our ideas about making disciples?

We’re convinced that Jesus’ commission sends us to make disciples of all ethnicities, but we’re not sure how being a disciple affects how we view the “other.” Especially in a context of ethnic division, even believers can sort people as “us” and “them.” How do issues like ethnicity and nationality relate to my being a follower of Christ?

I don’t have the answers, but I do have three related questions to wrestle with if we seek to build toward that great multi-cultural, multi-ethnic worship service of Revelation 5:9 and 7:9.

What does it mean to be “one new person” (Eph. 2)?

Paul describes the theological base of the relationship between disciple-making and ethnicity in this passage. The church is where dividing walls are broken down in Christ. God makes “one new man” out of two ethnically different, historically alienated people.

Jesus does not make us into one homogenous unit; instead, he takes us in our diversity and makes a new kind of person out of us all. Chrysostom, a famous early church preacher, described this transformation as melting down a statue of silver and a statue of lead, and the two becoming gold.

But such unity in diversity seems rare. Are most Christians only partially converted? At the Lord’s table, do we all keep our eyes on the crucified Lord and fail to notice the others kneeling beside us? Do ethnic specific ministries allow people to become a saved member of their ethnic specific group without dealing with their perspective on the other, including old enemies? Do they never proceed to the point of seeing others who are different as fellow family members in God’s household?

An inner-city pastor working with converted gang members required that these young Christians leave their “colors” (gang identity) and weapons at the altar before receiving communion. Christ’s death vividly made peace and created a new family. How does this picture translate in other contexts?

How much does our disciple-making need to wrestle with history?

On a recent trip to Bosnia, our host explained that the 1989 Serbian aggression toward the Muslims was related to a 1389 event. The 600th anniversary of Kosovo Muslims’ defeat of the Serbs stirred Serbian nationalism.

I heard this story and thought, “How can an American like me—whose entire national history is about one-third as long as this—teach a Serb to follow Jesus and love those he’s been historically indoctrinated to hate? How does Christian discipleship help people deal with, as Donald Shriver says, “the leftover debris of their national pasts?”

Many of us come from cultural contexts where we think little about the past: witness how seldom we white Americans want to deal with the lingering issues of slavery or racism or the “ethnic cleansing” of Native Americans (First Nation Peoples) centuries ago. Most of us are naive optimists like Rodney King who wondered, “Why can’t we all just get along?” Until we start wrestling with our respective and our collective histories, we won’t really know how to address the historical hostilities we find elsewhere.

History can urge us to preach reconciliation with greater resolve. In light of the fantastic progress of Pentecostalism in the world, I’ve often reminded leaders of their own roots concerning the signs of the Holy Spirit. William Seymour, a key figure in the Azusa Street revivals that birthed the modern Pentecostal movement, “came to believe that the truest sign of the presence of the Holy Spirit was not speaking in tongues but the demise of racial barriers between Christians” (Harvey Cox, Fire from Heaven).

What is the role of remembering versus forgetting?

In Mostar, Herzegovina, a sign on the city’s Muslim side reads, “Don’t forget.” Older Muslims don’t want the younger ones to forget the atrocities committed against them by Orthodox Serbs and later Catholic Croats. But if there is no forgiveness and forgetting, the peace between peoples will be, in the words of one writer, nothing more than “hatred that is sleeping.”

Miroslav Volf, himself a Croat who suffered under Serbian aggression, describes his own story of remembrance and forgetting in his book, Exclusion and Embrace. A question provoked his pilgrimage toward forgiveness: “Can you embrace a cetnik [the violent Serbian aggressors who had sown desolation in Croatia and elsewhere]?”

Like Corrie Ten Boom confronting her former Nazi prison camp guard who had become a follower of Christ, Volf had to face the implications of giving grace to the ultimate evil other. It’s the same question that Sri Lankan Christians—Sinhalese and Tamils—face as a 20-year civil war ends (I hope). Christians who are Jews and Arabs, Kurds and Iraqis, Yoruba and Hausa, blacks, whites, Hispanics, and all who make up the USA must learn to ask for and receive forgiveness if there’s any hope of racial unity and building the new household of God.

What does this reconciled fellowship look like? Is it the young Armenian Christian sharing the gospel with Istanbul Turks? The Christians of South India deferring to the leadership of those in the North? Will it be like the church in Toronto where congregants from 43 different African nations—some of whom are historical enemies—worship together under the Lordship of Christ?

The local expressions may vary widely, but a reconciled fellowship always involves diverse, repentant people becoming a new family under Christ.

Paul Borthwick trains leaders with Development Associates International and mobilizes others toward global ministry through Urbana 2003 and Gordon College.