Multiethnic church planting in diaspora movements : practicing the heart of Christ to walk the diaspora road with migrant ministry leaders for the common good of the city

Wos, Bradley Thomas

Etd

Multiethnic church planting in diaspora movements : practicing the heart of Christ to walk the diaspora road with migrant ministry leaders for the common good of the city

Public Deposited

MLA citation style (9th ed.)

Wos, Bradley Thomas. Multiethnic Church Planting In Diaspora Movements : Practicing the Heart of Christ to Walk the Diaspora Road with Migrant Ministry Leaders for the Common Good of the City. rim.ir.atla.com/concern/etds/b99ef71b-e027-4067-b744-cc3103ba60f5.

APA citation style (7th ed.)

W. B. Thomas. Multiethnic church planting in diaspora movements : practicing the heart of Christ to walk the diaspora road with migrant ministry leaders for the common good of the city. https://rim.ir.atla.com/concern/etds/b99ef71b-e027-4067-b744-cc3103ba60f5

Chicago citation style (CMOS 17, author-date)

Wos, Bradley Thomas. Multiethnic Church Planting In Diaspora Movements : Practicing the Heart of Christ to Walk the Diaspora Road with Migrant Ministry Leaders for the Common Good of the City. https://rim.ir.atla.com/concern/etds/b99ef71b-e027-4067-b744-cc3103ba60f5.

Note: These citations are programmatically generated and may be incomplete.

Creator

Wos, Bradley Thomas

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In Copyright

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to explore how migrant ministry leaders plant multiethnic churches to network the diaspora community for the common good of the city. The praxis of the study is to apply the findings to a multiethnic church planting residency in the city of St. Louis. By 2025, St. Louis plans to be the fastest growing foreign-born city in America. The God of scripture is a missionary God who created all people in his image to walk with him and learn to practice his gentle and humble heart, by faith alone, in Christ alone, so all families will be fully known through grace alone. The church in America in the last twenty-five years has experienced the largest religious shift in history toward pluralism. This rapid social change has led to isolation, spiritual pride, and loneliness. Furthermore, as the global Christian epicenter moves to the Global South, God is sending migrant ministry leaders to the American church as multiethnic church planters. This study walks with sojourners to listen, learn, love, lament, and establish migrant ministry leaders for a diaspora movement of multiethnic church planters in St. Louis. The Bible speaks to immigration from the heart of God. The three main areas of literature review for the study are: diaspora mission, multiethnic church planting, and developing culturally intelligent leaders. This study utilized a qualitative design using semi-structured interviews with eleven migrant ministry leaders from various denominations in St. Louis, representing six continents. The interviews gathered data using four research questions to identify the challenges that migrant ministry leaders face as sojourners, how the four movements of God’s story of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration are lived in their ministry, the role of cultural intelligence in shaping the mature character of Christ, and how networks flourish in the immigrant communities of their city. The literature review focused on three key areas: the challenges multiethnic church planters face in rapid social change in America, the divine design of multiethnic motivations to practice the heart of Christ to love the sojourner, and the glory and affliction of those who network diaspora communities for the common good of the city. This study found three necessary components to multiethnic church planting in diaspora communities: the brokenness and beauty of diaspora mission, the glory and affliction of practicing the heart of Christ in multiethnic church planting, and the beautiful community of a diaspora network for the common good of the city. Related to these three components, this study also found that multiethnic ministry leaders face five major challenges: trust, trauma, isolation, conflict, and identity in cross cultural complexity. The Harvard study of five domains of Human Flourishing are also explored as a resource for building networked communities. The praxis of the study is to implement a residency training for migrant ministry leaders to seek the common good of the city of St. Louis by living the gospel to transform the idolatry of the city. Migrant ministry leaders multiplying whole life disciple making in beautiful community are redeeming the idols of parochial, prideful, and prejudicial attitudes. Migrant leaders are modeling humility in suffering for the American church to see the glory of the beatitudes lived as a city of ambassadors from all families of the earth. This study is a call to learn in community from the diaspora to establish apostolic church plants with five core networks and seek shalom and flourishing for the common good of the city of St. Louis.

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