Crossing the Ethnic Divide

It is commonly accepted that the way to build church growth is to target specific ethnic or racial groups. People prefer to worship with their own, the theory goes, and if growth is what you want you have to accept that fact. Kathleen Garces-Foley challenges the accepted wisdom and puts forth an alternative hypothesis. Through the story of one successful multiethnic congregation in Southern California, Evergreen Baptist Church, she seeks to understand how themultiethnic church works as a new and unique social institution. The driving force behind the formation of multiethnic churches, Garces-Foley says, is a new generation of Christians, who have been raised in diverse urban settings and have internalized a value for diversity as taught in the publicschools.