Multi-Ethnoracial Belonging in a Local Newfrontiers Church

Abstract

This thesis explores which elements facilitate or hinder belonging in a multi-ethnoracial Newfrontiers church, considering the experiences of British-born and first-generation migrants to the UK, deploying focus groups (based on narrated photography) and semi-structured interviews. Participants’ experiences are critiqued using the twin lenses of social psychology and Pauline familial metaphors.

This thesis found that belonging is dependent upon participants’ experience of the church as a coherent, loving, nurturing and performative family. This is because belonging is conceptualised within principally familial metaphors. Within these, leaders are perceived as spiritual parents, guides and exemplars of Christ, expected to model qualities such as authority, approachability, care, prayerfulness and adaptability. Fellow congregants are viewed primarily in siblingship (and occasionally parenting) terms in which belonging is promoted when familial relationships of positive affect and depth are established, mutual care simultaneously experienced and performative serving expressed.

Furthermore, belonging is dependent upon an expansionary instinct in which relationships and serving competence undergo constant, positive and additive transformations. Consequently, illegitimate imbalances in leadership representation across ethnoracial and/or male/female delineations are aversive when they are perceived as contractions of relational and performative engagement, especially problematic in Newfrontiers ecclesiology, historically wedded to privileging uniquely male senior leadership.

This thesis further shows that the balance of gains and losses is different for non-British-born congregants. Finally, this thesis unveils unique ‘Ephesian moments’ comprising salubrious theological and sociological disclosure uniquely made possible by ecclesial ethnoracial diversity.