Teologisk refleksjon når menighetsutvikling møter etnisk mangfold: Hvordan baptist- og pinsepastorer i Norge tolker og anvender bibeltekster om enhet og misjon

Abstract

Theological reflection when church development meets ethnic diversity: Norwegian Baptist and Pentecostal pastors' interpretations of biblical texts on unity and mission.

Baptists and Pentecostals in Norway have become multiethnic movements, creating a need for theological reflection on ethnicity in church development. This article contributes to that task by examining how pastors from these traditions interpret and apply biblical texts on unity and mission when they theologically justify church development in contexts marked by ethnic diversity. The study draws on two focus group interviews and engages literature from both the multiethnic church movement and the church growth movement. The analysis is structured around two theological themes: unity and mission. Unity texts such as Galatians 3:28 and Ephesians 2:14–22 are treated as normative but interpreted differently. Although there is no evidence that pastors are directly influenced by scholarly debates, their interpretations correspond strikingly with wider theological discourses: church growth literature shaped by more traditional Pauline interpretation, and multiethnic church literature often informed by the New Perspective on Paul. Mission texts, by contrast, are in the main interpreted similarly but applied differently. Pastors appeal to the love commandment in John 13:34–35 and the principle of contextualization in 1 Corinthians 9:19–22 to justify different monoethnic and multiethnic strategies. Where migrant pastors change practice toward greater ethnic diversity, this shift is triggered not primarily by new textual interpretation, but by a new reading of their congregation’s situation and ethnic identity, which leads them to reapply the Great Commission (Matt 28:19) and the temple vision (Mark 11:17) in light of the gospel’s universality.