Rev. Hyuk Cho, author of Becoming an Intercultural Church, reflects on why that means being truly open to changing as we share life together
Many churches today sense that they are living in an in-between time.
What once felt stable—patterns of worship, leadership, belonging, and even confidence in the church’s place in society—no longer hold in the same way. Congregations are shaped by migration, racial reckoning, ecological crisis, and the long aftermath of colonial histories. Alongside these visible changes is a quieter reality: grief. The grief of loss, of uncertainty, of not knowing what comes next.
Too often, the church treats this moment as a problem to fix. We look for strategies, models, or quick solutions. But what if this season is not just about decline or adaptation? What if it is also a time of formation and re-formation?
That question lies at the heart of my upcoming book, Becoming an Intercultural Church: Companionship in a Wounded World. Rather than offering a manual for managing diversity or a checklist for institutional renewal, the book asks a more demanding question:
Who are we becoming as we live together across difference, history, and unequal power?
Drawing on this work, I will be offering a six-week course in the fall of 2026, running weekly on Wednesdays from October 14 to November 25. The course is designed for ministers, lay leaders, and congregations who are sensing both the strain and the possibility of this moment.
Intercultural Church Is Not an Achievement
An intercultural church is not something we simply “arrive at.” It is not a badge earned by adding diverse faces to leadership, translating worship occasionally, or hosting cultural celebrations—important as those practices may be.
Intercultural becoming is a way of life. It is learned slowly, through relationship, through discomfort, through listening, and through the willingness to be changed by one another. It requires more than inclusion; it calls for companionship.
Companionship describes a way of being with others that does not rush toward harmony or demand closure. It resists the temptation to smooth over differences or manage pain too quickly. Companionship remains present where histories remain unfinished and wounds are unevenly borne.
Staying with Shared Woundedness
One of the hardest truths for the church to face is that while woundedness may be shared, it is not evenly borne. Some communities carry the weight of racism, displacement, and exclusion—often shaped by the church’s own histories. Others have been sheltered by structures that now feel increasingly fragile.
Becoming intercultural does not mean pretending these histories are the same or equally felt. It means learning how to stay with one another without denial, defensiveness, or false reconciliation.
In both the book and the course, I draw on the Turkish concept of hüzün—a word that names a shared, dignified sorrow. Hüzün is not despair, and it is not nostalgia. It is the capacity to live with loss without rushing to fix it or explain it away. For churches, this may mean making space for grief: grief over colonial harm, racial injustice, declining numbers, and the loss of familiar ways of being the church.
Such grief is not the opposite of faith. It can be one of its deepest practices.
From Crumbs to the Banquet
Intercultural ministry often falters when it offers what I call “crumbs theology”—symbolic inclusion without shared power. Crumbs may appear generous, but they quietly protect the centre.
The gospel speaks instead of a banquet, where everyone is fed and where relationships are reordered. The question for the church is not only, “How do we welcome others?” but “How are we willing to be changed as we share life together?”
Intercultural becoming reshapes leadership, worship, mission, and decision-making—not through control, but through mutual accountability.
Formation Takes Time
Throughout the book and the course, I return to simple images: unravelling and re-knitting, waiting in Advent, walking through the wilderness, paddling together on moving water. These are not strategies; they are practices of formation.
Formation precedes resolution. Companionship sustains the work. Justice envisions God’s mission.
An intercultural church learns when not to act, when to listen before speaking, and when to trust that God is already at work beyond our plans and programmes. It learns to live without occupying the centre—and often discovers, to its surprise, that this decentring becomes a site of grace.
The waters around us are changing. The maps we inherited no longer match the terrain ahead. But we are not alone.
Becoming an intercultural church is not about saving institutions or recovering a lost past. It is about learning how to remain faithful—together—in a wounded and interconnected world.
The river is moving. Let’s paddle together.
—Rev. Hyuk Cho is an ordained minister of The United Church of Canada. He teaches at Vancouver School of Theology and serves in global ecumenical leadership through the World Council of Churches. His book Becoming an Intercultural Church: Companionship in a Wounded World explores how congregations can move from crumbs theology to God’s abundant banquet, through the practice of intercultural companionship.
Registration for the “Becoming an Intercultural Church” webinar is now open.
The views contained within these blogs are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of The United Church of Canada.