While most churches say they already have or are working on having a multicultural congregation, the majority fall short when it comes to reflecting a diverse community of believers coming together during church services on Sundays, said an expert on multi-ethnic church planting and staffing.

"If you were to judge church brochures across America you would say that there is not a multicultural problem in the American church," Tony Kim, former pastor at Newsong Church in Irvine, Calif., told The Christian Post recently. Kim is the Communication Lead Associate for Slingshot Group. The Orange County-based organization specializes in church staffing and coaching pastors and leaders. "So everyone is open to it, but very few are willing to make a decision to step into that."

Kim said the Internet has created a deeper transparency between the church and the community. Someone new to a community, looking for a church to attend, can simply go to a church's website, take a look at the staff page, and make assumptions as to whether the church is representative or accepting of their ethnicity. more >>

The church is coming, says Bishop Harry Jackson, leader of a new community of faith being developed in Central Florida that will launch next year. The plant, Hope Connexion Orlando, will serve as a clarion call for the Christian Church to confront its prejudices and take on its prophetic role of speaking truth to power in its own communities and abroad. Or at least, that's the vision.

Despite the growing presence of diverse congregations across the U.S. that mirror the biblical image of Jesus Christ's followers being of every nation, tribe and language, there are still cases in which some churches and Christians seem to stumble over the explicit command for diversity Christ makes in the Great Commission and that the first century church modeled.

Last year, a Mississippi Baptist church made headlines because its predominantly white congregation denied a black couple's wish to be married at the church by their pastor allegedly due to their race. The year before, a Kentucky pastor reversed his congregation's vote to bar interracial couples from becoming members. There have also been questions about white churches having black leaders, predominantly black churches embracing white leaders and the apparent oddity of a Korean-American pastor leading a "predominantly African-American" congregation." more >>

IRVINE, Calif. – Brad Lomenick, who is the key visionary and president of one of America's most influential leadership movements, said it is time for Christian leaders to take responsibility for equipping the millennial generation to lead successfully.

Lomenick's recently released book, The Catalyst Leader, is about him sharing more than 20 years of leadership, including the last ten years at the helm of the 14-year-old Catalyst movement. The movement has found a community primarily inside a series of successful conferences throughout the year.

"Part of the whole premise of the book is that the next generation is called, but not equipped," Lomenick told The Christian Post recently at Catalyst West held at Mariner's Church in Irvine, Calif. "They are passionate. They want to change the world, but they have not been given tools because in many ways we have skipped a leadership handoff that my generation is responsible for. more >>

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Pastor Rick Warren, originally scheduled to lead two Bible studies at a major church planting conference in Orlando this week, is instead scheduled to talk about his 27-year-old son's suicide during a live webcast hosted at the event Tuesday.

Warren, who has not made a public appearance since his son's death on April 5, will be interviewed by LifeWay Research President Ed Stetzer on his webshow, "The Exchange." Stetzer will be doing the show at the Exponential 2013 conference and Warren will be speaking from another location. The interview session will be available on the Internet. more >>

IRVINE, Calif. – More than 4,000 Christians interested in becoming better leaders packed out the Catalyst West conference held at Mariner's Church in Orange County beginning last Wednesday and ending Friday.

"We were praying that for every leader here this would be a bench mark for them or a marker on the road of leadership for them," Catalyst President Brad Lomenick told The Christian Post backstage at the event. He said that he hopes leaders would be able to look back at the conference and say that it was a significant turning point in their lives.

"We pray that with a fearless sense and an aggressive belief that it is going to happen for leaders individually," Lomenick said. "I feel like that it is happening [at Catalyst West]. The unity, the fun, and the energy are here. It's always here [at Catalyst conferences], but we feel like we dialed it up a bit." more >>

CARY, N.C. – The global media organization Trans World Radio (TWR) said that within less than two years they will be able to deliver Christian content to nearly 60 percent of the people in the world in their own language. The ministry plans to do this by integrating its broadcast capabilities through radio, Internet, and smart phone technology.

"If you can imagine a Web portal with hundreds of ministries coming to one location to have their Christian content (audio, text, or video) available," Ralf Stores, U.S. Director of Media Development and Services, told The Christian Post recently. "Not only the content of hundreds of ministries, but have that content available in every one of the major languages of the world."

Stores said that TWR is currently the largest media ministry in the world when it comes to radio. Through their broadcast stations and outlets placed in strategic parts of the world, the 60-year-old ministry's primary method of delivering Christian programming is through AM, medium and short wave radio stations. more >>