Following my review of Jonathan Downie’s Multilingual Church and a suggestion that distinct services for different languages was at best ‘sub-optimal’, I thought I’d try and lay out the information and questions in a different format.

I imagine that the first reason why I’m doing this is self-justification. I’ve found that to be a pretty strong motivating factor for a huge amount of human behaviour and in response to challenge. Often the very first thing we do as people and organisations is to defend the status quo and to justify why you’re doing what you’re doing.

But my second reason is the issues of languages, language service provision (so interpretation/translation/learning) is a constant issue for us. By that I mean we don’t regard the current position as necessarily permanent. So this is me thinking out loud about the issues of language and church.

So let’s do a language audit of Grace Church & its context and ask various questions. I’d love to have your thoughts.

Locally dominant language: Swedish ¹
First languages spoken: Afrikaans, Arabic, Cantonese, Dutch, English, French, German, Hindi, Igbo, Italian, Kinyarwandan, Malayalam, Mandarin, Marathi, Portuguese, Romanian, Shona, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Tamil, Telegu,Yoruba (25 at least, I may have forgotten someone!)
Service language: English

Downie has a section in Chapter 5 (Different languages, one service) titled The Problem with English followed as you can probably guess by an extended complaint about the dominance of English (but remember he is writing in and to an English-speaking context). He quotes Manuel Ortiz who says, “The multi-ethnic church includes culturally diverse people who meet together as one congregation, utilizing one language, usually English.” ²

So that describes one of our services. Very multi-ethnic but not very multilingual. And so you could see English in this context not as a problem but as a blessing. English allows people with over 20 different mother tongues who find themselves in a country with a different dominant language to worship together without the need for translation or interpretation. That is a wonderful thing. Isn’t it?

But.

What language should the service be in? Should it be in Swedish + English? That would be the dominant local language and the dominant common second language. Should it be in Swedish + All the languages? If it is a glorious mix, exactly how do you mix 25 languages and how often and what for?

Comprehension & Recognition

Now the more I’ve thought about it, I think there are two different assumptions at play in Downie’s book: the need for comprehension and for the need for recognition. Many times Downie gave illustrations of a guest who couldn’t understand anything in the language of the service and asked, ‘so what should we do?’ That’s the challenge of comprehension. How can we understand one another? When language is a barrier to comprehension and therefore fellowship, what should be done? That’s a barrier we hit with our Congolese group. They could not understand Swedish (locally dominant language) nor our common language of English.

I still need an interpreter if I am to have a meaningful conversation with many of the adults, and those conversations are slow. Really slow. I have to plan for at least triple the time that conversation might take if we could easily communicate with each other. Behind language is culture and worldview which means even if I understand the words being interpreted I often don’t understand the thinking behind what I am hearing and that takes a lot of time to figure out. That’s a massive issue to which I might come back to another time.

But even if we can understand one another there is also the need for recognition. To recognise and honour one another by hearing your mother tongue spoken can be very powerful and it does express the idea that there is a unity that we have that transcends our culture and that to be accepted you do not have to suppress your cultural and linguistic heritage. I personally love those moments when we’ve figured out ways to do that.

The risk of sanctified blandness

While reading Andy Ollerton’s book on Romans (which is excellent by the way), I came across the following quote.

And I think that is something we need to constantly work on. If we’re not careful what we’ll have is bland uniformity as everyone is operating in their second everything. Second choice language, second choice music, second choice theology (maybe). In other words churches like ours are sometimes a mix of everyone compromising and what you end up with is the lowest common denominator in order to come to worship at all. Yet the cultures & languages present every time we gather is significantly richer than that. Although even with the best of intentions it is still dependent on the gifts & talents the people make available to you. You might want to do more but the ability simply isn’t there right now. We’re often in that place. But being very honest, I’m not sure we’re consistently making as much advantage of that as we could. We hit this target sporadically at best.

Reaching the heart

The logic of “they’ll learn our language anyway” prevails over thoughts of allowing people to encounter God in their heart language. ³

This is for me one of the most powerful reasons to keep working at the issue of languages and also one of the main reasons why I am not opposed to different language services. I want the gospel to get to the heart. Pure and simple. And language can be a barrier for that. Reaching the heart 99% of the time requires comprehension. Someone must comprehend in order to apprehend the truth of the Gospel. And so why wouldn’t we in Sweden, want preaching in Swedish? And worship in Swedish and fellowship in Swedish? Well, of course, we do!

So with an established English-language service that ministers to many people in their second language what were our options to reach Swedish speakers in Sweden?

1. We could just ask them to cope with English
2. We could have made the services bi-lingual: Swedish & English. Which we regularly do.
3. We could make the services multilingual: lots of different languages
4. We could make the whole service in Swedish & ask everyone else to adapt to Swedish.
5. We could offer a separate service in Swedish

Are there other options? Anyway, we opted for #5. And one of the things we’re already noticing is that we are drawing in people who don’t have Swedish as their first language nor English as a second language. Swedish is their second language. So even in this service at some point we will face the question of how do we recognise the culture and languages of those present?

But why did we opt for #5, well despite Downie calling this model ‘less than ideal’, & ‘problematic’ he does say that

There can be few deeper ways of welcoming people than by creating a space where their language is heard, seen, and sung. Of course, people will feel more valued when they hear their language spoken. Creating spaces for that can also make it easier for people to build friendships and community.

Different services in different languages can and probably do help to build relationships and community. They should, if done well, build an environment where people feel free to worship in a way that means the most to them. ⁴

And that pretty much is the explanation for why we adopted that model. People feel more valued, making it easier to build community, and freedom in worship. I think those are pretty strong reasons. And currently that feels richer than the multilingual alternative if we were to do that permanently. Especially because we are not trying to blend just two languages but 32 languages!

So if we should change, what should we change to? What is the goal for a church like ours?

Fully multilingual church?

Downie’s position was that,

In this kind of fully multilingual church, the languages people hear and see from the front are more than just affirmations that different languages exist. They affirm that these languages hold an equal place in the life of the church…In such a church, no one group has the monopoly on decision making and no one language is given more importance than any other. ⁵

To be honest I’ve no idea how that would work in a church of 30 different languages (when we add the other languages spoken in our other services). Not just on a Sunday but throughout the church. I don’t know how one of my Congolese friends with no English and poor Swedish could effectively pastor someone who he couldn’t communicate with. I don’t mean preach to but visit with & disciple. I don’t think it’s possible and having tried to do that, I know how hard that is.

Maybe that’s not even what Downie is suggesting but sometimes it seemed like it was. Even now re-reading some sections I’m imagining what would be the perfect answer to this question that a guest might ask : What language is the service in? They ask that of course because they want to be able to comprehend and if not is there language service provision. I’m imagining that for Downie the right answer is: all of them.

I’m just not sure I can yet see the ideal of a service with songs in Hindi, prayers in Yoruba, a sermon in Finnish and the notices in Tagalog. Gloriously expressing that we as the people have no dominant language or culture but gloriously incomprehensible. How could a local church of say, oh I don’t know 70, translate for that week in week out? I honestly have no idea. Which is probably why we don’t do it.

1. there are 5 official minority languages but we don’t currently have anyone who speaks any of those and we make no provision for it either [↩]
2. Jonathan Downie. Multilingual Church (Kindle Locations 993-994). Kindle Edition. [↩]
3. Jonathan Downie. Multilingual Church (Kindle Locations 724-725). Kindle Edition. [↩]
4. Jonathan Downie. Multilingual Church (Kindle Locations 945-949). Kindle Edition. [↩]
5. Jonathan Downie. Multilingual Church (Kindle Locations 1051-1052). Kindle Edition. [↩]