The Beauty of Diversity

Nine years ago God called us back to Canada after serving as Global Workers in Thailand for ten and a half years. Before Thailand, we had the privilege of serving in a church with many nations and loved learning from and growing with other cultures. 

Moving to another nation was a very different thing. In Thailand we quickly realised the complexities of working within other cultures in a profound way. We had a lot of learning to do. There was a lot of self to surrender, a lot of adapting and adjusting and a lot of realization about how ethnocentric we were. I am so thankful for these lessons, even though many tears were shed in the learning process.

When we began serving in our church in Ottawa in 2016, I was struck by the thought that the congregation didn’t really reflect our city in age or demographics. 

Even on our very first Sunday we began to pray and dream about what the church could/should look like. Fast forward to 2024 and we are now celebrating with approximately 70 nations. Every Sunday I’m overwhelmed by the beauty of diversity and often tell others, “wow, we are so rich.”

When people from all over the world, who speak different languages, who come from different cultures and who originate from all walks of life; when they worship together, I’m pretty sure this is a tiny glimpse of heaven. 

I don’t know what it will be like in heaven, but I do know that God must be pleased when He sees us coming together in unity. I’m sure He saw this in His master design, and He must enjoy seeing us worship together as an intercultural, intergenerational church. 

His love for and value of every human being gives us a glimpse of what He intended for humanity. While we may demonstrate all kinds of differences on the surface, we are all at our core exactly the same, we are fearfully and wonderfully made by our Creator. 

I remember taking an Uber in Delhi India and asking the driver what were the most important things in his life. He answered, “my faith and my family.” When he replied, “my faith and my family,” I answered ‘Me too.” He then took us to see his Sikh temple as part of our tour. We honoured him by going. 

Sometimes people ask us how did Bethel change so much? What did you do? What was your strategy? Did you target specific cultural groups? 

To be honest, there was no strategy. We just wanted to love every person who walked in the doors and then we prayed, and still pray, that God will fill our church with His glory and then fill it with His people and that every person would know that they belong. “You Belong” are the first words you see when you walk into our lobby and it’s not just our tag line, it’s our deepest hope and prayer.

Before Covid our church was experiencing growth and increased diversity but after the pandemic it accelerated. When George Floyd was murdered things shifted. While George Floyd wasn’t the first or only, his murder was the trigger that focussed the world on racism and we felt the tangible, collective grief from our church family. 

Stumbling through this horrific pain as leaders we reached out to our congregation and started to ask people to tell us their story. This is one of the most important things we can do as a church family, listen, learn and then, love. We heard countless stories of how racism has impacted people and their families for most of their lives. 

We weren’t ignorant of racism in Canada before George Floyd, but we didn’t fully understand how this and countless other injustices are just the public stories. We learned that there are so many private, daily stories of racism that shape our church families lives and impacts what they teach their children. The grief was palpable. 

We wept together, knowing we didn’t fully understand and we still seek to learn. As a result of all this we decided we wouldn’t just respond in the moment, we wanted to respond in an ongoing dedicated way. 

Therefore, in 2020, we established our Racial Reconciliation Committee and began to learn and grow together as a church. We started with the Church Board and Staff by inviting an outside expert to teach us about the history of racism in Canada. 

The Racial Reconciliation Committee then developed a curriculum and all our volunteers are asked to participate in an Unconscious Bias Training Seminar which is offered twice a year at Bethel. This training is an eye opener, and we recommend it to all churches. It’s informative, confronting, and will probably require repentance. 

We also added a statement regarding racism on our website alongside our core values. Our Staff is diverse, our Church Board is diverse and we feel honoured to learn and grow from the many nations represented at Bethel. 

We now have a graphic in our lobby that lists the countries in our church as a reminder of how we value the people with whom we are privileged to worship. After the pandemic ended, we began to see a great influx of newcomers to Canada. 

Having lived as newcomers ourselves, in another nation, we somewhat understand how lonely and heart wrenching living in another nation can be. For many, the loss also includes financial loss, loss of respect and status in a community and loss of employment and career path. 

Nothing is the same for the newcomer. The food, the weather, the values and even the Christian community thinks in a different way. The systems, the pace of life etc. may all be different, but most difficult of all, the people they love deeply, they are very far away.

From a grass roots initiative our Women’s Ministry lead team began putting together information for newcomers to Canada. We developed a Welcome to Canada information page on our website and, with help from our church family, we have translated it into 6 languages.

We also now provide Spanish translation during the sermon through an app so our Spanish community can enjoy the messages in their own language.

Because our church is so diverse, we put our events through an intercultural lens. This means we don’t do everything the way we used to. It’s been a learning curve, we are still learning and we may not always get it right, but we want to honour the people that God has brought to us and be careful not to make all our decisions based on a Western mindset.

Diversity is beautiful. It’s like a stunning work of art, and every brush stroke matters. We’ve learned that our growth and strength lie in our differences. It makes us interesting; no beautiful symphony is simply one note. 

Diversity causes us to be more creative because, in the uniqueness of our cultures, we are inspired in ways we couldn’t even imagine. Diversity inspires unity, and “where there is unity, God commands a blessing.” (Psalm 133:3)

Diversity makes us so very, very rich.

Short listed for the Word Guild Awards 2025 (Page 3)