Thursday, February 26, 2009

Doctoral Project Finished!

I FINISHED MY DOCTORAL PROJECT! YEA!

The project is about moving a church from an all white church, through being a multiracial church to being a multiethnic church. And we are making some progress but it's going to take a long time.

My thesis is that God gives us gifts through our brothers and sisters from different cultures. Those gifts begin with hearing Bible stories in different ways. But then it goes on the learning different ways of worship and fellowship from different cultures until we all appreciate the gifts God gives us in each other.

The first result of this is that we are starting a second worship service so that our friends from Togo can worship in their own language. Exciting huh?

And the attendance at worship has gone from 25 to 30 to 45 to 50!

More later

Pastor Bob

2 comments:

Viola Larson said...

Congratulations Bob. That is a great topic. We have in the past had Russian Pentecostals, Ethiopians and I thing it was Korean but I am not sure which Asian church was meeting at are church. However these were separate Churches which later moved on to their own buildings. Yet many of them did interact with our Church. The Russians sang for Fremont. And oh how they can sing. And the Ethiopians cooked a meal for our Ethiopian night which we still have. Their food is wonderfully spicy and good.

My husband and I often sneak over to my daughter’s small Presbyterian Church which is truly multicultural. People from Spain, Asia and several African nations attend their Church. Eating meals there is fantastic. And of course worshiping is best.

John Shuck said...

Bob,

My prayers are with you in your upcoming procedure.