Usually, we do not think of competition when reflecting on ministry. Yet competition is such a part of our culture that we scarcely consider its impact on our lives. Some faith traditions seem in fierce competition , a sort of spiritual battle royal to gain the hearts and minds of real or assumed competitors. This contest, however, is not merely between historic faith traditions; it entails a pitched contest between, and sometimes within, denominations.

Several years ago, Alfie Kohn wrote No Contest: The Case Against Competition [Why We Lose in Our Race to Win]; it depicts the facts and fiction regarding competition, especially in the U.S. Here competition exists as “an endless succession of contests.”1 However, competition’s roots are not as organic and innate as some might suppose. Society creates social situations wherein groups and individuals seek to best others in pursuit of status, fame, and/or wealth to legitimize certain qualities, abilities, or virtues as superior.2 Kohn’s linchpin idea concerns social situations; for, as he demonstrates, competition is not biological as may be assumed, and therefore not determinative of human behavior. It is both an unspoken collective as well as individual choice. Kohn argues that competitive situations fall into two categories: structural and intentional. Structural competition is “mutually exclusive goal attainment (mega),” an arrangement that forces having a winner. Put another way: someone or group must lose.3 Scarcity of resources or survival has nothing to do with it. Intentional competition refers to psychological disposition; that is, an individual’s propensity to compete whether or not in a structured setting.4 Kohn offers an example of this as a person who “arrive[s] at a party and [is] concerned to prove he (or she) is the most intelligent or attractive…in the room even though no prizes are offered and no one else may have given any thought to the matter.”5 Kohn’s point is that despite all the evidence otherwise, we operate on the notion that competition is deeply biological rather than socially constructed and, therefore, inevitable. And if inevitable then competition is a natural expression of who we are, of how we parcel out resources and operate society’s mechanisms.

Though the popular operational presumption concerning competition is that it functions as a kind of Maslowian shadow child (a base need that must be fulfilled), competition is not biologically rooted. Competition’s alternative, cooperation, may seem counterintuitive. Cooperation, Kohn argues, is innate. People working together to maximize resources, to attain that which may otherwise be unobtainable, is natural and biologically significant.6 What is more, cooperation works to assure survival. For me, this notion of the competition versus cooperation schema gets to the heart of framing multicultural ministry: Finding ways to cooperate is both spiritual and deeply part of who we are and a powerful reason as to why we are here.

Given the troubling rising tide of religious bigotry and inhospitality, the need for refining what cooperation means and how it is achieved in a context of plurality/ethnic diversity may be the defining measure of ministry in 21st Century America. In The Bush Was Blazing But Not Consumed, Eric H.F. Law observes the ideological range multicultural ministry spans from the simplistic ideal of “…a melting pot in which all the uniqueness of the different cultural groups disappear so that they can become one,” to the complexity of “…a dynamic process in which the various cultural groups maintain their identities while engaging themselves in a constructive dialogue with each other.”7 Caleb Rosado picks up on Law’s constructive dialogue-complexity matrix and enlarges upon it to include “beliefs and behaviors which are sensitive to the needs of the culturally diverse population within a church’s field of service,”8 “drawing the circle wider” as to what multicultural ministry implies in a pluralistic society.9 America’s racial sin exacerbates our cultural fragmentation. If racial sin stands at the core of our fragmentation, then structural competition (in the form of social Darwinism) is a significant contributing aspect of that system which drives social compartmentalization and fear. The surreptitious nature of competition infects the psyches of people who sit in our pews. This condition is life-negating. Multicultural ministry, a ministry of cooperation and collaboration, finds life and impetus in a vision that is inclusive and which embraces others with hospitality.

Multicultural ministry requires deep commitment, a commitment born of the Kingdom of God vision. It entails more than assisting the predominant ethnic group to consider creating a comfortable space for others, for it is in the places of discomfort and tension where the Spirit of God leads and where we grow. This is the high ground of cooperation, the field of creative collaboration; the place where the struggle to embrace the strength and promise of our diversity is realized, and we experience the meaning of being more than the sum of our parts. Speaking of parts, the Apostle Paul remarked to the church at Corinth that Christians are the body of Christ, a cooperative divinely inspired and empowered to achieve as Christ’s church what no one group of people can do alone.10 What gives this body cohesion and effectiveness is its unity in Christ and human diversity. This can become a model for understanding not just the nature of the body of Christ but for the necessity of nurturing the intentional establishment and growth of multicultural congregations to better relate and minister to our increasingly pluralistic communities and diversifying nation. Being the hands and feet of Christ is more than a motto. It is a conscientious, collaborative, winning choice.

Notes

1. Alfie Kohn, No Contest: The Case Against Competition, rev. ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, ©1992).

2. Ibid, 7–10.

3. Ibid, 4.

4. Ibid, 5.

5. Ibid

6. Ibid, 11–44.

7. Eric H F. Law, The Bush Was Blazing but Not Consumed: Developing a Multicultural Community through Dialogue and Liturgy (St. Louis, Mo.: Chalice Press, ©1996), ix–x).

8. Caleb Rosado, “Multicultural Ministry: The Theory,” (1996), www.rosado.net/pdf/Multicultural_Ministry_Theory.pdf (accessed: November 24, 2014).

9. Gordon Light and Mark Miller, “Draw the Circle Wide” (2009), YouTube.com, http://youtu.be/-e6bfgV6N8s (accessed November 29, 2014).

10. 1 Cor. 12:1–31

About the author

Ernest Jones wrote one article for this publication.

Dr. Ernest H. Jones is in the sixteenth year of his pastorate at The Greenwood Baptist Church of Brooklyn, NY, a multiethnic congregation. He is also an adjunct faculty member of the New York Theological Seminary; serves as chair of New York Methodist Hospital Pastoral Care Advisory Committee, and on the Board of General Ministries of American Baptist Churches USA, where he is ABC USA’s representative to the National Council of Churches of Christ Convening Table on Interreligious Relations and to Shoulder to Shoulder Interfaith Campaign confronting anti-religious discrimination.

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