"God wants a multicultural heaven. Today, when we are learning to live and worship and do mission together as people from many different cultures, confessions and languages, we are having a taste of heaven." This ringing declaration by a German pastor who is in charge of four congregations, two of which are non-German-speaking, met with enthusiastic applause at a workshop in Wuppertal in May.

Some 40 ministers and church workers from the German Landeskirchen (territorial churches) and from a variety of Asian and African congregations in Germany shared their vision of mission in Germany today. While in earlier years African and Asian congregations often saw their task as "reverse mission": preaching Christ anew to Europeans who in previous centuries did mission in Africa and Asia, today the emphasis is more and more on "common mission".

Of course, to engage in common witness is not easy. Reformed, Lutheran, Pentecostal and Evangelical goals, emphases and approaches are not automatically compatible, and learning from and about one another takes time and tolerance. But the starting point is that Germany is increasingly becoming a multicultural society.

This implies great opportunities but also great challenges, such as increased xenophobia and racism. The churches cannot but take both the opportunities and the challenges seriously. And so here and there the body of Christ is coming alive in new ways as Christians of different cultures and languages are recognizing one another as complementary parts of that one body and begin to learn to do mission together, in Christ's way.

For the mission in unity project jointly sponsored by WARC and the John Knox international Reformed centre, the Wuppertal workshop presented yet another opportunity for learning how different churches within the Reformed family are grappling with this particular mission in unity issue. The project has taken relationships between mainline churches and churches of different linguistic and cultural backgrounds as one of its programme foci for the coming years, and hopes to stimulate a variety of initiatives in this respect.

One such initiative is a comparative Dutch-US case study. Both the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the Uniting Churches in the Netherlands have been exploring possibilities for greater cooperation between "mainline" and "immigrant" churches. The models of relating (and non-relating) that have emerged in the two settings are quite different. So the case study hopes to understand the models in their historical genesis and missiological assumptions, and then identify with sample groups of mainline and immigrant Christians what are their visions for common mission.

"We are doing the study with a multidisciplinary team of missiologists, staff from the Netherlands Missionary Council and resource people from the network of ethnic church groups and from the church office", says Elza Kuyk, project leader of the Dutch study. Antonio Aja, PCUSA associate for immigrant groups in the USA, delights in the prospect of sharing findings between the two churches, as this will sharpen up what each church looks for and discovers in its own setting.

Naturally, the purpose of the case study is not merely to document what has been happening or not happening, and why, but to develop realistic ways forward for greater community and more effective and creative cooperation in mission between the different ethnic groupings in both the USA and the Netherlands.

Also, it is very much hoped that this particular study and its recommendations will contribute to a wider debate and to the experimentation that is going on worldwide. In many countries, churches are already having "a taste of heaven" as they develop multicultural forms of life and witness, and "practising the kingdom" is indeed taking many different forms and shapes.

If you are engaged in mission in unity efforts between mainline churches and churches of other languages and cultures in your own country, the mission in unity project would be most grateful to hear from you.

Contact us through the main WARC office, or directly at: Mission in unity project 1999-2002, John Knox International Reformed Centre, 27 chemin des Crêts-de-Pregny, 1218 Grand-Saconnex, Switzerland.

Jet den Hollander, project secretary