Our church rents one of our meeting venues from another church in the central part of the city. When we meet, downstairs in the basement level a French-speaking Congolese church is also meeting. On Saturdays, I know an Eritrean church meets in the venue and there may even be more churches all renting the same space from the same Swedish Lutheran Church. But we (at least as far as Grace Church is concerned) don’t have anything other than a financial/contractual relationship with our landlords. I’ve never been invited to meet, and I confess have not yet sought to meet, the priest overseeing the host church.

On Easter Sunday we offered to a group of about 50 or so Sudanese believers to use one of the rooms we’re paying for so they could celebrate Easter. And just recently we’ve invited this same Sudanese group to share the space we’re renting for our Congolese congregation so they can begin to meet more regularly. But although we have more to do with them and know them, we’re separate churches. We’re giving, they’re receiving and that’s currently the end of it.

When our Easter service began there were three people speaking at the front. I spoke in English and was then interpreted first into Swedish and then into Swahili. We had worships songs that swapped between English & Swedish, we sang (sort of) in Swahili and we even sang How Great Thou Art in all 3 languages.

But Easter Sunday was an exception, most weeks all three of those languages have their own service. We share one overall leadership and all come under the one financial & legal organisation, our leaders meet together, we cooperate on youth work and other initiatives and seek to help each other as much as we can. But most weeks we worship separately.

Our language story doesn’t stop there however, because our English-language service is made up of people who primarily have English as a second language and on any given Sunday we probably have speakers of at least 20 different languages in the room. So on Easter Sunday as we took communion and sung of the resurrection, I invited people to come to the front and read John 1:29, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” in their own language. It was a wonderful moment as we heard Cantonese, Dutch, Italian, Albanian, Yoruba, Tagalog, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Swahili, Swedish, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Hindi and others all proclaim the same truth.

English despite what some believe is not an official language of Sweden, but 15% of the city is foreign born¹ so there are many, many different languages spoken in our city. We reflect that reality just a little.

Therefore when it comes to trying to figure out languages and the church, it matters a lot to us. I have skin in the game. So I read Jonathan Downie’s Multilingual Church² with great interest. Jonathan is a researcher, professional interpreter and consultant in language services to the church. His knowledge of the variety of options, pros and cons, and best practices of all the various options is very evident throughout the book.

Yet this is not just a guide to interpreting options (although he does do that in chapter 12) but more profoundly this is an extended argument for, wherever possible, multilingual church. Downie is advocating for churches to deliberately challenge the position of the locally dominant language for the sake of the gospel and its witness in an increasingly multicultural and multilingual world.

Biblically he anchors his case in two places: Nehemiah 8 and, not too surprisingly, Acts 2. The Nehemiah passage (Nehemiah 8:8) is interesting because I had never seen it in view of linguistic interpretation before. Downie points out that after decades in exile in Babylon their Hebrew is probably not all that great any longer and so people translated or interpreted for them. I had only ever thought about in the sense of commentary, so that it functioned a bit like a preacher explaining the text.

Acts 2:6-12 is no surprise, as the mighty works of God are heard in a multitude of languages. And that is a powerful statement that many of us have not properly reflected on. Then after working his way through selected New Testament passages Downie concludes,

The kind of church Paul preached and the kind of church God started building on Pentecost was a multilingual, multiracial, multigenerational, multicultural church that could only be sustained by the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit.³

Yet the treatment of Acts 2 fell a little bit short for me. In Nehemiah Downie was very attentive to the linguistic situation of the audience, and he is attentive to the linguistic significance of Acts 2. However after the outpouring of languages Peter gets up and preaches and that sermon was almost certainly delivered in a lingua franca. At least there is no indication in the text anyway, that it was an interpreted sermon or that the miracle of just a few moments ago was continuing during the sermon. Peter spoke and people understood him enough to repent, believe and get baptised at the end of it all.

Still having made his case for the pattern of multilingualism Downie says,

The question is no longer whether God wants all people to hear the gospel in their own language, but how will the church engage in that process? ⁴

Helpfully he then looks at the variety of ways a church can engage in that work. As he works his way through the options for a church in responding to people who speak a different first language to the locally dominant one I recognised all of them. In fact I opened this article with a description of most of them. The rental model, the space-sharing model, the joint leadership model before arriving at Downie’s preferred model: different languages one service.

Downie explicitly challenges not our Easter Sunday service but our current model of separate services saying,

By having two separate services in two different rooms, we are making a statement that underlines the differences between the congregations, not their oneness in Christ. ⁵

Are we though? Or if we are, is that the only statement we are making? Our differences are certainly not the main reason we started a Swedish language service when many Swedes are perfectly comfortable in our English language service.

When language competency flows in one direction it is far more effort to create a space where speakers of the locally dominant language can worship in their language in order to reach people in their first not second language. One of the key lessons I’ve learned about interpreting (consecutive or simultaneous) is that it works very well if you only understand one of the languages. It is deadly dull if you understand both.

Downie, does recognise the complexities of working out all the different options of language provision and he is repeatedly clear in saying that something is definitely better than nothing. However multilingual is better than monolingual anywhere where there is a multilingual community. It is also clear that he thinks more churches should do more to provide options for people.

We must admit up front that there will be discomfort but accept that the burden of change cannot and should not simply be thrown on speakers and users of other languages, as if it is their job to become like us. ⁶

What he never fully discusses though, despite mentioning language cafes and classes, is whether & what burden there might be on speakers of other languages to learn & use the locally dominant language? Most of us don’t expect tourists to learn more than a few words to show effort & goodwill (and it would be nice if more English tourists did the same when abroad). But is there a reasonable expectation on the migrant? In Stockholm for the educated this often comes in a form of an unspoken pact around the use of English. Let’s all agree to use our second or third languages to understand each other. Is that OK?

But what about the long term poor? Our Congolese friends who are part of our church, especially the adults, are having a really hard time making progress in Swedish. They have free classes but for some, 5 years on, they can barely string a sentence together. The kids are mostly fine, the parents not. What should we ask of them regards learning Swedish? Does providing interpretation help them or hold them back or both? What should language provision aim for? I don’t think this should be worked out in a paternalistic way, but if they say ‘we want to learn Swedish so we can get jobs and integrate’, what should we do?

I think there are some unspoken assumptions at work, I think we assume, that of course they should learn the local language for all sorts of reasons. But because this is never actually articulated, I don’t know if this is true or not. The burden to both be understood and to understand seems a little one-sided and seems to me to fall on the local church. Now, I think churches should be alert to this and should be willing to make much more of an effort in this regard.

Downie’s book has helped me clarify what are some of the better options and which ones are affordable for us as we seek to keep working on this area. I’m grateful for that help & clarity.

Despite these reservations this book shines a light on a much-needed topic. Languages are a barrier to fellowship & mission and they do create imbalances. Churches need to be aware of this and work to overcome them in creative ways and in doing so we demonstrate that God truly is a God of every tribe and tongue.

1. https://worldpopulationreview.com/world-cities/stockholm-population [↩]
2. affiliate link [↩]
3. Jonathan Downie. Multilingual Church (Kindle Locations 1570-1572). Kindle Edition. [↩]
4. Multilingual Church: Kindle Locations 652-653 [↩]
5. Jonathan Downie. Multilingual Church (Kindle Locations 934-935). Kindle Edition. [↩]
6. Jonathan Downie. Multilingual Church (Kindle Locations 1660-1661). Kindle Edition. [↩]