08. The Wrong Ethnicity, God’s Kingdom Has No Preferred People
Who Are You Preventing From Leading? · Part 08
Peter had followed Jesus, preached the gospel, and witnessed the Holy Spirit move powerfully.
Yet Peter still carried assumptions about the kinds of people God would accept.
Then God sent him to the home of Cornelius, a Gentile.
Crossing that threshold required more than entering another man’s house. Peter had to cross a barrier within his own heart.
Standing before Cornelius and his household, Peter declared:
“Truly I perceive that God doesn’t show favoritism; but in every nation he who fears him and works righteousness is acceptable to him.”
Acts 10:34-35 WEB
God was not asking Peter to tolerate the Gentiles.
God was showing Peter that He had already chosen to receive, empower, and use them.
The Church Can Carry Prejudice Without Recognizing It
We may never openly say that one ethnicity is superior to another.
But our decisions can reveal what our words conceal.
Whom do we naturally trust?
Whom do we invite into leadership?
Whose theology do we immediately question?
Who must prove themselves longer before we believe God could use them?
Sometimes we welcome people from another ethnicity into our churches while quietly resisting the possibility that they might lead us.
That is not biblical unity.
It is hospitality without equality.
Look at the Church in Antioch
Acts 13 describes a remarkably diverse leadership team:
Barnabas, Simeon called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen, and Saul.
Different backgrounds. Different life experiences. Different social positions.
Yet they worshiped, fasted, listened to the Holy Spirit, and led together.
From that multiethnic church, the Holy Spirit launched a missionary movement that carried the gospel across cultural and geographic boundaries.
The diversity of Antioch was not a problem the church had to overcome.
It was part of God’s preparation for reaching the nations.
The Great Commission Requires More Than Cross-Cultural Evangelism
If we truly want to make disciples of all nations, we cannot merely preach to people from every ethnicity.
We must disciple, trust, empower, and release them.
We must believe that the Holy Spirit can speak through them, lead through them, and send them, without requiring them to adopt our culture before we recognize their calling.
The goal is not to reproduce leaders who look, speak, worship, and think exactly like us.
The goal is to help people obey Jesus and make disciples within their own families, communities, cultures, and nations.
Movements accelerate when local believers are trusted to lead.
They stall when outsiders insist on remaining in control.
Who Might We Be Overlooking?
God may already be raising up the leader we have been praying for.
But that person may speak with an unfamiliar accent.
They may worship differently.
They may come from a community we have misunderstood, or an ethnicity we have unconsciously distrusted.
The question is not whether they resemble the leaders we already know.
The question is whether the Holy Spirit is present in their lives and producing faithful obedience.
God’s kingdom has no preferred ethnicity.
Every culture needs redemption, and every people group contains men and women whom God desires to empower for His mission.
Before we ask God to raise up more leaders, perhaps we should ask:
Would we recognize God’s chosen leader if that person came from an ethnicity we unconsciously distrust?
God’s kingdom has no preferred ethnicity.
Every people group contains men and women God desires to empower for His mission.
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