Homogenous Unit Principle

Over the years I reckon quite a few Oak Hill students must have written some top drawer essays on the Homogenous Unit Principle (HUP) for the Missions in the Modern World course. It would be great to see lots of these up on-line. Happy to host!

I guess it would also come up in a big way in the newish Race & Religion course?

I thought Dean Jensen spoke a lot of sense on the subject:

Some homogenaity is inevitable once you decide to have church at a particular time and place in a certain language and so on.

We must keep Eph 3:10 in mind: the church is intended to display the manifold (variagated, multi-coloured) wisdon of God.

Remember that there are different types of homogeneity: race, class, education, wealth, language etc. A congregation that is homogenous in one way may be very diverse in another.

A firm principle is that there should be no Christianized aparthied: any congregation should always be open to all.

Having said all that, just because some homogeneity may be inevitable, that doesn't mean that one should give up on the fight for a diverse represntative church.

I think there is much more of a case for homogenous units as a temporary evangelistic stratergy with converts eventually being potted-on into a more deliberately diverse proper Sunday Morning Church.