What Predominantly White Churches Get Wrong When They Talk About Diversity

Conversations about racial diversity in predominantly white churches have been happening with increasing frequency for a decade or more, and the quality of those conversations varies enormously — from genuinely transformative engagement with Scripture and history and relationship, to well-intentioned but ultimately shallow performances of commitment that change very little and leave the people they claim to be reaching for unconvinced and sometimes wounded.

This article is not an attack on the impulse. The impulse toward multiethnic, multicultural community in the church is a genuinely biblical one — the vision of Revelation 7, the breaking down of ethnic and social walls in Ephesians 2, the surprising inclusivity of Jesus throughout the Gospels, the radical social implications of the church in Acts where Jew and Gentile ate at the same table. The desire to embody that vision is right.

The mistakes that derail it, however, are common enough and specific enough to be worth naming directly.

Mistake 1: Treating Diversity as a Goal Rather Than a Fruit

Diversity in a congregation is not something you produce through programming and intentional recruitment. It is something that grows from genuine relationships of mutual respect and care across racial and cultural lines. The predominantly white church that sets a demographic target — "we want to be X percent non-white by Y year" — has mistaken the fruit for the goal and is likely to pursue it in ways that feel extractive to the people they are recruiting.

The question is not "how do we get more diverse people in our church?" The question is "are we genuinely committed to the wellbeing and belonging of every person who walks through our door, and to the relationships that would produce a community where different kinds of people would genuinely want to stay?" The second question is harder, slower, and more likely to produce the fruit the first question is chasing.

"Diversity is not something you produce through programming. It is a fruit that grows from genuine relationships of mutual respect and care."

Mistake 2: Making People of Color the Teachers Without Making Them the Leaders

A common pattern in predominantly white churches that are genuinely trying to grow in racial awareness is to invite people of color to speak, to share their experience, to educate the congregation about the realities of racism — while the actual leadership of the church remains predominantly white. This is not integration. It is the use of people of color as educational resources for the benefit of white congregants, without the commensurate power-sharing that genuine partnership requires.

If the church's commitment to diversity is genuine, it will show up in leadership — in who is on the elder board, in who occupies staff positions, in whose voice shapes the culture of the community. The church that hires a "diversity pastor" while the senior leadership team remains unchanged has added a role without changing the culture.

Mistake 3: Asking People of Color to Come to You Rather Than Going to Them

The final and perhaps most fundamental mistake is the assumption that a diverse church is built by convincing people of color to attend a white church. The more transformative and genuinely biblical vision is for predominantly white churches to pursue genuine relationship with predominantly minority churches — to be genuinely in each other's spaces, to collaborate on shared mission, to let the relationship reshape both communities rather than asking one community to accommodate the culture of the other.

This is slower. It requires more humility. It requires white pastors to be genuinely willing to receive from, be shaped by, and follow the leadership of their brothers and sisters of color. It is also closer to the vision of the kingdom than most diversity programming has been willing to attempt.