COMMENTARY:
Do we want to manage diversity or conflict?
___By Tom Billings
___Terrorist attacks. Marathon peace negotiations.
___Conflict is in the news. I wonder when we are going to learn that diversity is easier to manage than conflict.

TOM BILLINGS

___Union Baptist Association is one of the most diverse associations in the Southern Baptist Convention.
___One weekend in October, I spoke (through an interpreter) on Friday night to a gathering of ABLA, our Hispanic fellowship.
___On Saturday, I participated in a commissioning service for Dr. and Mrs. Victor Wong. The Wongs came to Houston from Hong Kong and now have returned to their homeland as missionaries. Since I am even less fluent in Mandarin than I am Spanish, I again spoke through an interpreter.
___ On Sunday I spoke to Kingwood's First Baptist Church's English-speaking congregation. Kingwood also has a Hispanic work and a Romanian work.
___ Once UBA was an association of exclusively Anglo churches. We probably didn't think of ourselves as exclusive. It's just the way things were done then. Today, only one-half of our nearly five hundred churches are Anglo. The remainder represent various languages or cultures: African, African-American, American Indian, Arabic, Cambodian, Chinese, Deaf, Eritrean, Ethiopian, Haitian, Hispanic, Indian, Indonesian, Japanese, Jewish, Korean, Laotian, Multi-Ethnic, Philippine, Romanian, Russian, Thai and Vietnamese.
___ But diversity is not limited to language or ethnicity. We have a wide variety of church types: "traditional" churches, house churches, cell churches, seeker churches, GenX churches. And they come in all sizes.
___ We practice a wide variety of worship styles, from formal, liturgical and highly structured to spontaneous, unstructured, neo-Pentecostal, and everything in between. Sometimes this even happens in the same congregation. When I go to speak at a church now, I not only have to ask the worship times but also the dress code. A suit and tie is not always appropriate.
___ I treasure the richness that comes from our diversity. We are a better association for it.
___ But lean into the diversity issue with me a bit more. What you need to know is that in UBA, Baptists on all sides of the denominational issues serve side by side on the same teams and boards. We are not polarized on the local level. How can that be? We are committed to managing our diversity!
___ How do you manage diversity? The answer is not simple, and we do not do it perfectly. I need to openly acknowledge that, because we are still learning how to do it.
___ So how do we do it? If I might borrow a well-worn phrase, we've chosen to keep the main thing the main thing. Our "main thing" is a clear and compelling vision--healthy, growing congregations cooperating to transform our communities--Houston and the world.
___ Our vision is big enough to embrace all our churches, whatever the language, culture, church type or worship style. To realize the vision of seeing our city transformed by the power of God will take all of us.
___ In the words of James Clark, a UBA pastor, "We've discovered that diversity is easier to manage than conflict."
___ I hope you'll join me in saying to that "Amen, brother, preach on!"

___Tom Billings is director of missions for Union Baptist Association in Houston.





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