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On the Ground, In the Moment Growing a Young Multiethnic Church 8 There were things I thought were Christian that I came to learn were just Anglo. —Pastor Curt Cutler Entering a Sunday service at Resurrection Bible Church (RBC), a first-time visitor might wonder if she or he has stumbled into the wrong place—a public meeting about local police activities, perhaps, or a delegation of international tourists. Walking into the worn but well-kempt halls of the public high school Resurrection leases for services, the visitor is greeted by volunteers of all colors and backgrounds around an archipelago of tables arrayed in the makeshift lobby. Each station offers something: pamphlets about the church and its growing hydra of programs and services; headsets for simultaneous translation in Spanish and Swahili; sign-in for children’s church; platters of homemade cookies, empanadas , and other refreshments. Amplified live music drifts out of the auditorium where dozens of congregants mingle. More spill into the lobby, conversing in Spanish, English, and African languages. Sunday dress ranges widely, from jeans and T-shirts, to suits and ties, to elegantly decorated African gowns with matching head wraps. It is hard to imagine any space in Denver, Colorado, in which this particular mix of populations would be together on purpose. Many Denverites aren’t aware their city is this diverse. The high school is a fitting choice for this multiethnic church (MEC) as it expands , a symbol of Resurrection’s efforts to “establish a presence” in a changing urban neighborhood. Once an institutional jewel of the local African American community, the high school has suffered painful reorganization efforts in recent years after the district declared it “failing” on account of high drop-out rates and low test scores. It serves mostly low-income black and Latino students, despite a surrounding neighborhood that is growing whiter and solidly middle class due to 224 Bridging the Future rising real estate values. Like many urban schools, it struggles to regain confidence within a fraught and increasingly class-segregated public school system.1 Resurrection began leasing the auditorium after outgrowing a smaller church sanctuary. My first visit to RBC’s new location reminds me of how far, in many respects, lead pastor Curt Cutler and his young church have come in a short time. I have watched the church grow from a mishmash of individuals attempting to build an “inner-city church community” to this lively, expressive, and still sometimes awkward crazy quilt of cultures, languages, and music styles. The learning curve is steep, but Resurrection has an undeniably vibrant messiness beyond what its pastor ever envisioned. “If it’s a marathon, I’m at mile three,” he sighed in one of our last interviews, reflecting on Resurrection’s progress and early setbacks. Though we never said it, I’m not sure either of us was convinced, when we first met, that the church would still be standing three years out. Resurrection started in 2008 with a small group of well-intentioned and, Curt admits in retrospect, “deeply naive” white ex-fundamentalists from the suburbs. Although borderline monoracial at first (having begun with about 90 percent white congregants), today the church clearly meets the definition of a multiethnic congregation. Approximately 25 percent Latino, 10 percent African immigrant (mostly Burundian refugees), 5 percent African Americans and other minorities, and the remaining 60 percent Anglo, the diversity of the church’s base is obvious.2 By mid-2012, Sunday services at Resurrection averaged about 260 people, about half of whom had formally become members. At this writing, there is a core team of five paid pastors (four Anglo, one Latino), and the church is working to replace one of the white pastors with an African American. There are also five paid elders, twenty-five deacons, and sixteen paid staff. While the majority of the staff are also white, some key paid positions are held by people of color, and other kinds of diversity are represented among them: some live below the poverty level; others are or were homeless.3 The leadership team aims to bring the ethnic makeup of its leadership into alignment with its Sunday morning composition, but that is no easy task, Curt reports. I met Curt serendipitously in the summer of 2008, when I received a visit at my front door from an enthusiastic member of his church-planting team. (I live two blocks from RBC’s current location.) The church was looking for people to join their brand...

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