Apostle Malcolm Sobers
We embrace the Antioch church model as a relevant New Testament model for our church leadership today, as well as other areas like Plurality in Leadership; Prophetic direction;Leaders uniting in prayer, then we should be willing to see that the Antioch Church leadership was a Multicultural one. Barnabas, Simeon, Lucius, and Saul were from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds.
Malcolm L Sobers.
There seems to me to be a great deal of sloppy think thinking around the terms ‘race’ and ‘culture’. While the church should and must be accepting of all races without exception, the same cannot, indeed should not, be accepting of all cultures. Some cultures are completely destructive of people, degrading to women, justify tyranny and legitimate violence. These cannot be accepted. While these terms overlap because of accidents of history, they are not the same, and therein much sloppy thinking lies. Often it is the physical appearance of people that is crucial, whether because of facial disfigurement, dress, and colour that determines the way people respond to each other. The other point is that if ‘race’ is defined in terms of DNA, then it is possible that a Black person (in appearance) might actually have 75% White DNA, and a White person, vice-versa.