Many congregations hold joint baptisms or celebrate a bi-lingual communion service several times a year. Our church has exchanged choirs and pulpits with the Chinese church which shares our facilities. Cooperative potluck dinners and picnics, too, break down barriers and build friendships. Churches which share buildings only, are like ships passing in the night. Common work and worship vitally enrich the experience of the people of God.
Problems are inevitable when two families share the same house.
To Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, and a dozen other cities people are flooding from all over the world. The nations that were yesterday's mission fields are settling in our cities today. New congregations are winning the lost to Christ in Thai and Tagalog, Samoan and Spanish. We can ill afford the luxury of preserving our facilities for English speakers alone while scores of needy ethnic congregations struggle to be born. As congregations, we determine before God that our minor inconveniences will not prevent us from opening our doors that the gospel may be proclaimed.