"The Beautiful Community" by Irwyn L. Ince Jr. A Review
We had been in-country for less than a week, but my roommate was already depressed. He was just beginning his 12-month rotation in Turkey, and I was starting my 24-month tour of duty. He couldn’t grasp why these Turks didn’t speak English and understand American ways, since “we’re the world’s superpower!” I was aghast. Even at 20 years of age in 1981 I could see the trouble. So, I pointed out the uncomfortable reality, “Man, if anything, we should be the ones learning Turkish and picking up their ways because we’re the foreigners here.” Clearly, that didn’t go over well, and he spent most of his 12-month assignment sulking in his dorm room and drinking the months away. But getting into another culture for two years gave me a deep appreciation and sensitivity for reaching across cultural hurdles. And in many ways that is what “The Beautiful Community: Unity, Diversity, and the Church at It’s Best” seeks to foster. This new 176-page softback is compiled by Irwyn L. Ince Jr., a pastor at Grace DC Presbyterian Church, moderator of the forty-sixth General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America, and director of the Grace DC Institute for Cross-Cultural Mission. Ince has worked for years in planting and growing multiracial churches in my denomination, and graciously writes from that experience. As the author notes, “We are no longer in 1965. Progress has been made, but the work is not done” (52). And his aim is to help further the work that is not yet done.
The book is mostly focused on beauty, a beauty “that is created and recreated by God” (11). Ince pulls from Aquinas and unpacks the traits of genuine beauty: integrity or perfection, proportion or harmony, and brightness or clarity. Based on his description of beauty, the author then shows how beauty de-centers us with delight in another, so that we come to see that the beautiful is not selfishly serving my own interest or our interest. Rather, it “captures it. There is a magnetism, if you will, to beauty” (32). From there, he further grounds communal, ecclesial beauty in the Trinity, where we “experience a vision of beautiful community as we experience the inner life of God” (38). This trinitarian communal beauty, then, exhibits itself through us where “we are mutually glorifying, speaking, and acting in ways that enhance the reputations of one another, striving to bring praise and honor to others, exhibiting a mutual deference, a willingness to serve another and submit to one another – especially across lines of difference” (55).
Ince then moves to more tangible aspects of our trinitarian communal beauty as he addresses cultural ethnic ghettoes that shaped us, and that we bring into the church. This section of the book was initially hard for me, especially as the author speaks to “whiteness” and takes it to task because it is the dominate culture of most of American Christianity. But then the author slips in a curveball when I wasn’t looking. Rightly he notes that our ethnic identity is a form of idolatry, and the Gospel of Jesus Christ and union with Christ, has made that ethnic identity subservient to (not annihilated by) our identity in Christ. Unfortunately, “our Blackness, our whiteness, our Asian-ness, our Latino-ness still tends to be at the center of our identity even after faith in Jesus Christ!” Our only hope is that our Lord Jesus is able to bear the weight of our differences, and “God alone has the wisdom, power, and grace to weave the tangled webs of different people, with different cultures, customs, and languages, into a single tapestry of glorious beauty.” Therefore, the Spirit doesn’t wipe out our differences and diversity, but rather “he enables us to love, hear, seek, understand, and pursue one another in our diversity” (96-7). The curveball continues to move over the corner of the plate as Ince shows that what he says for mono-ethnically white churches trying to become multiracial, also applies to mono-ethnically Black or Asian or Brown churches attempting to become inclusive.
Though I have a few nit-picky questions for the author, specifically regarding “whiteness” and how that is defined, dominate cultural preferences in worship, and the place of the church speaking to civil government, nevertheless Ince is on the right path. The heart of this path is the trinitarian communal beauty, where our “local churches…look better in the eyes of the world and reflect the multicultural heart of the Father” (88). And toward that end we must see and celebrate that our new life in Christ “is not simply about us as individuals…God isn’t making a new me, he’s making a new we” (143)!
“The Beautiful Community” is a book meant to mercifully challenge – not militantly chafe – mono-ethnic congregations. Ince’s graciousness is clear on every page and leaves one feeling as though they could sit down over a cup of coffee or tea with him, have a meaningful conversation, and walk away blessed for having done it. This volume is fit for pastors and parishioners alike and would make a good addition to an elder board’s reading list and book discussion. I highly recommend the book, and happily propose that we all give thanks with the author that faith in Jesus Christ “has replaced overt exclusion with radical inclusion” (93).
I am grateful to IVP for responding to my request and sending the copy of this book used in my review. I’m also thankful that they make no provisos or pronouncements but allow me to make my own conclusions and write my own evaluations.
Comments