Category: Reconciliation

  • Accessable vs. Authentic

    June 3, 2010 | Kirk Ward | New City Fellowship, University City

    Multicultural worship is always striving to find the balance between worship that is accessible to whole group and worship that is authentic to the particular cultural styles represented.

  • Intentionality in Multicultural Ministry

    December 1, 2009 | Kirk Ward | New City Fellowship, University City

     I can say that we care about breaking down walls, stereotypes, and institutional racism, but if I fail to demonstrate it, then it’s all just talk. Intentionality plays a big part in my job.

  • How To Self-Educate on Multicultural Music For Free!

    August 13, 2009 | Kirk Ward | New City Fellowship, University City

    There’s a few tools that I’ve learned to employ to train myself in different cultural styles of worship that I can share with the blog readers. Of course, when you work for a church like mine, there’s not much of a music budget, so I’ve had to learn to be resourceful with the awesome power of the web. Here’s a few places to get started:

  • Who is this Mzungu? On learning African music

    May 30, 2006 | Kirk Ward | New City Fellowship, University City

    That means that to show love to the Congolese, Kenyan, Liberian, Nigerian, Zambian, Togolese or whomever I need to actively pursue understanding their music better. It's like marriage; I have a calling to pursue my wife by getting to know everything about her.

  • The 150% Person

    November 2, 2005 | Kirk Ward | New City Fellowship, University City

    For us as the followers of Christ, we are called, as Paul said in Philippians 2, to have the same attitude of Christ. We humbly enter into the world and culture around us and become 'babies' in order to become one in spirit and purpose. This is one of the core values of New City Fellowship. Racial reconciliation is a process of humbly submitting ourselves to each other in love and unity through having open and teachable hearts. The authors of this book believed that Jesus becoming the 200% person was something impossible for anyone but God. They postulate that we can't give up more that 75% of our original culture, but we strive to adopt 75% of the new culture. We are called to be a kind 150% person.