"Pilgrims in the Port" offers Rotterdam as a laboratory for learning about migrant churches. Congregational study methods are used to look at how they construct identity. Traditional denominational or ethnic terms failed to do them justice and this publication analyses their context, development, titles, leadership and public activities.
This publication investigates new ways of understanding international churches. Based upon recent fieldwork, six migrant Christian communities in Rotterdam were analysed using congregational study methods on how they construct identity. Through the frames of 'koinonia', 'diakonia' and 'kerygma', this research reflects on their composition, characteristics, leadership style, language and social capital. Language is found to be an important shaper or 'carrier' of identity and acts both as badge and bridge of identity. In building identity, MCCs do not behave in ways expected or consistent with the process of integration.
Rotterdam - migration studies - group identity - koinonia - kerygma - leadership - diakonia - social activities
Robert Alasdair Calvert pastored three city congregations in Glasgow, Rotterdam and Dundee as a Church of Scotland minister. His researches on migrant Christian communities and lectures on urban ministry.
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