Racial Equality & Diversity

As a church, we are committed to building a diverse community that better reflects God‘s Kingdom and great passion for humanity - that though we are all created unique and different - we would join together as one. In the book of Revelation, we catch a glimpse of the worship of heaven that we hope to see here at Gas Street.

“I looked again. I saw a huge crowd, too huge to count. Everyone was there—all nations and tribes, all races and languages... standing before the Throne and the Lamb.”
Revelation 7:9

At Gas Street, we acknowledge that racism and discrimination are, tragically, very much alive in our world. We believe that racism is a sin and are therefore committed, as a whole church, to anti-racism, doing all we can to remove any systematic racism and work towards the biblical vision of unity and oneness.

In November 2020 we formed the Imago Dei Working Group which seeks to encourage, guide, and hold to account the church on our progress in seeking to be a more inclusive and diverse community in terms of racial & ethnic diversity.

We have a lot more to do, but our prayerfully considered sense is that we are making progress that we can be proud of. Of course, real change is needed in culture, but statistics can be a helpful measure. Therefore, as of February 2023, here are some of the measured data we have available to us:

  • 44% of the adult congregation we have data for belong to ethnic minority groups (compared with 24.8% in Sept 21)

  • 21% of the Staff Team belong to ethnic minority groups (compared to 10% in 2018, and 24.8% in Sept 21)

  • 38% of those serving on GS Teams are from ethnic minority (compared to 23% in Sept 2021)

  • 45% of GS Groups have ethnic minority leaders (compared to 30% in Sept 2021)

  • 27% of our GS Leaders belong to ethnic minority groups

  • 51 nations are represented in our community

We are intentional to do all that we can to create a unified church family while fully acknowledging this cannot be done overnight.

Some of these measures we have already actioned include:

  • Equality and diversity training for all GS Staff

  • Content for GS Groups to discuss issues of racism and what the Bible teaches on equality and unity

  • Intentionally seeking to be more culturally diverse in the food we serve, the songs we sing, and the issues we pray for

  • Joining and working with the Birmingham Time4Change Charter

Some of our goals for the future include, but are not limited to:

  • Increasing ethnic minority representation on our staff team, leadership groups, preachers and congregations

  • Inclusion of more diverse writers and cultural references in teaching

  • Teaching & training for all our volunteer leaders

  • Creating spaces, places and opportunities for cross-cultural engagement and connection within the church family

  • Actively encouraging, empowering and inviting those from ethnic minority groups to join our various teams

Please pray for us as we continue on this journey. It’s not always easy, and sometimes we get it wrong, but we are committed to seeing change.

If you would like to view our Equal Opportunities policy, please click here.
If you have any questions or would like any more information on the steps we are taking to become a church that better reflects the Revelation 7:9 passage, please contact us.