Dr. Jerry Appleby, author of Missions Have Come Home to America convincingly makes the case for a new mission focus “inward” toward the foreigner in our midst. He writes, “Our time, our buildings, our leadership, our money, and—above all—our Lord must be shared if the ethnic harvest of America is to be reaped. This is not easy! Our resources must be God's possessions.”

Dr. Ray Bakke in his book The Urban Christian states the following: “Missions can be divided into two categories: First, there is the traditional mission to people who are geographically distant from us. The second category of mission is to people culturally distant from our church, but living under the shadow of its spire. However large the numbers of those unreached by the gospel in the traditional mission fields, it seems likely that there are many more millions on church doorsteps, in the cities. The existing churches will not reach these huge and rapidly growing populations without cross-cultural missions at home.”

In the book of Acts, the Antioch Church where Paul and Barnabas were leaders was the first trans-cultural faith community. It is estimated that Antioch had a population of half a million. We know that in Antioch there were at least five large ethnic communities: Syrians, Jewish, Latin, Greek, and African. Within the great outer city wall of Antioch, there were secondary walls, which divided these groups. When the gospel reached Antioch, people began to cross the walls to meet in Christian fellowship.

Dr. Ray Bakke, in his book entitled Integral Mission In The City states: “Paul and Barnabas went on to plant churches patterned after the model of the church of Antioch—a church that brought together ethnically, racially, socio-economically, and linguistically diverse elements of the city and that met with equal integrity the needs of the ‘haves' and the ‘have nots.'” The Antioch Church can serve as an inspirational model of the first multicultural faith community in the New Testament—a church that brought together a multicultural community.

In the final vision analysis, we need to experience Pentecost as well as a glimpse of heaven in our congregations as the Apostle John who saw the vision: “After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands” (Rev. 7:9). We need to open the doors of our churches to people from all races and nationalities. Our churches must reflect their communities and heaven as people from different nations and languages come to worship Jesus. “Salvation belongs to our God and to the Lamb.”
"Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Mt.28:19).