 Regardless if you felt the election of Barack Obama was an exciting victory or a crushing loss... one thing is certain: our country is changing. The 2008 election was just one more powerful sign of how rapidly most of the major institutions in our country are becoming multi-ethnic. The question on my mind is: "When will the church become multi-ethnic?" Unfortunately, many of our churches and ministries look similar to the way they did fifty or even a hundred years ago while our country changes at light speed all around them.
THE CHALLENGES: We are doing our best to equip leaders who want to build multi-ethnic Christian communities. But, honestly, it often feels like an uphill battle. Please keep us (Michaela, Stephanie, our board/volunteers, and I) in your prayers as we face the following challenges:
• financial support: This has been our most challenging year in regard to financial support. We are in urgent need of additional funding or we will need to scale back our efforts significantly. If you are interested in helping to sustain our work through financial support please let us know—we could really use your help at this time.
• "we're interested, but...": While many churches and ministries are talking about the need to be more multi-ethnic, few are at a place where they are willing to invest the energy and resources necessary to see that happen.
• stretched thin: With just one full-time and two part-time staff we are s t r e t c h e d very thin at times. It can be challenging to manage all of the details of running a non-profit along with doing our ministry.
Fortunately, its not all been challenges! Here are some of the encouraging things that happened this last year...
 TRAINING AND PARTNERING: We enjoyed providing teaching, training, and strategic behind-the-scenes roles for a variety of churches, organizations, and events. For example, last month in Columbus I played a central role with a large evangelistic event featuring Jim Tressel and some OSU fball players which was facilitated by over 60 ministries (of many ethnicities). Approx. 7000 people attended and we saw 1300+ decisions for Christ. With the help of over 500 volunteers were able to follow up 90%+ of the contacts within seven days after the event.
THENEWCULTURE.ORG:
After over nine months of development we launched our new website, TheNewCulture.org, which contains hundreds of Bible-based resources (books, articles, videos, talks, movies, etc.) to help Christians build and sustain multi-ethnic community. We have been very encouraged by the positive response the site has received from leaders across the country. It is already attracting over 150 visitors a day and we expect to see that number increase in the months to come.
 NEW FREE VIDEO : We recently produced a short (23 min) video titled "Is the Church Ready for a Multi-Ethnic Future?" In the video I present some of the reasons we started ReNew, statistical data, historical reasons for divisions, and some suggestions for Christians to work toward change. We hope and pray the videos will be used by churches, home groups, campus ministries, etc. Click here to view the video online or let us know if you would like for us to mail you free copy of the video on a DVD.
TRAINING MATERIALS: Over the next few months we plan to produce a variety of training materials which address some of the most common challenges involved with building and sustaining multi-ethnic community. We plan to publish the resources on our website and use them as a part of our training programs. We are approaching multi-ethnic veterans/leaders from across the country to help prepare the materials. We have been encouraged by the response we have received so far. We plan to share more about this in our next update.
Thank you so much for your interest, prayers, and continuing partnership in our efforts to help build a more ethnically-unified church for Christ's glory.
- Chad Brennan, Director of ReNew Partnerships
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