wfn.org | Greater Flexibility Sought to Encourage Immigrant Church Growth

[PCUSA.NEWS@pcusa.org]

4-November-1997 
97414 
 
    Greater Flexibility Sought to Encourage 
    Immigrant Church Growth 
 
    by Alexa Smith 
 
LOUISVILLE, Ky.--A largely Brazilian coalition within the denomination's 
Hispanic caucus is pushing for more flexible interpretation of church 
polity so that immigrant congregations can be established more easily 
within the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A). 
 
    The group may recommend changes to chartering provisions in 
presbyteries and even to the "Book of Order" so that ethnic churches may 
start up more quickly and with fewer costs. The coalition's  goal is the 
chartering of 15 new Brazilian or Portuguese-language churches in the 
United States by the turn of the century. 
 
    A task force is studying how to develop more U.S. Brazilian churches 
and how to make recommendations for starting ethnic churches that will go 
to the next General Assembly as part of the denomination's strategy to 
increase racial/ethnic membership in the PC(USA) to 20 percent of the 
church's total membership by the year 2010. 
 
    "Those [presbytery and `Book of Order'] requirements can be a strong 
barrier to ethnic [church] development," said the Rev. Elias Dantos, a 
Brazilian pastor who is part of a one-year church-planting project in 
Ontario, Calif., and part of the coalition's task force to study planting 
Brazilian churches in the United States.  "We need to change the `Book of 
Order' to be more flexible. 
 
    "Perhaps ... to facilitate the process [we need] a special chapter 
dealing with ethnic churches.  And then," he said, citing differences in 
Anglo and Latino worship styles, "we need [more] cultural sensitivity 
between Anglo Presbyterian churches and other cultures' Presbyterian 
churches." 
 
    Specific hindrances to ethnic congregational development, according to 
the 15 Brazilian pastors who met here last week, vary presbytery to 
presbytery since chartering criteria change.  But some of those hindrances 
include 
 
    *  minimum salary and pension packages mandated for pastors by 
       presbyteries that immigrant groups often cannot afford, with the 
       added costs of bringing a Portuguese-speaking pastor here from 
       Brazil or Portugal 
    *  presbytery requirements that anywhere from 75 to 150 adult 
       communicants are necessary to organize a new church, figures some 
       immigrants call too high 
    *  already ordained Presbyterian pastors who are immigrants but cannot 
       be full members of presbytery until their church is fully organized 
    *  the lack of provisions in the "Book of Order" for ethnic fellowships 
       and their resultant inability to baptize or serve Communion though 
       some groups have been meeting for years, since there is no session 
       and no officially called minister 
    *  the need to be financially self-sufficient to be chartered as a 
       church, when financial stability is the toughest problem facing many 
       immigrants who are working low-paying jobs. 
 
    "You almost have to gerry-rig the structure," said the Rev. Roger 
Richardson of Central Florida Presbytery, where a presbytery commission is 
working now to validate baptisms, minutes and other actions of an 80-member 
fellowship of Brazilian Presbyterians that is seeking a PC(USA) charter 
after meeting for more than six years. 
 
    "We're just doing it. You need vision and understanding.  If we 
conducted ourselves by the book, we'd be in trouble," said Richardson, who 
is quick to point out that it isn't legalism that helps ethnic 
congregations establish themselves. 
 
    But numerous racial/ethnic constituencies perceive the slow organizing 
process outlined in the "Book of Order" as a kind of legalism that runs 
counter to how they would develop a church.  And the Brazilian coalition is 
no different, members reporting encounters with what they describe as a 
ponderous bureaucracy that slows rather than stimulates church growth. 
 
    "Brazilian culture is more informal.  American culture is focused on 
the fine points.  Rules matter," said the Rev. Silas Pinto of Wheaton, 
Ill., who believes that this year's "Year with Latin Americans" observance 
is a "kairos" time for Presbyterians to not only reach Latinos, but to 
embrace Brazilians like Pinto, who are already born-and-bred Presbyterians. 
 
    "We are talking here reverse mission," Pinto said. "The Presbyterians 
came to Brazil 100 years ago ... and now you have a sizable 
Portuguese-speaking community in the United States.  Recognize them. 
Empower them.  Plant churches in Portuguese-speaking communities." 
 
    That's also the feeling of elder Reuben Oliveria of St. Paul's 
Presbyterian Church in Newark, N.J., a 250-member Portuguese-language 
congregation that has been ministering for more than 68 years in an area 
into which Brazilians still immigrate in high numbers.  "There's room for 
more churches here -- no question about it," said Oliveria, who is 
frustrated at the quick start-ups that Pentecostal and even Presbyterian 
Church in America (PCA) congregations are able to effect in the New York 
metropolitan area.  "But again, you have to make [it] much easier to start 
[them]. ... 
 
    "There are more than 10,000 Brazilian Pentecostals in New Jersey," he 
said.  "The point is they could be PC(USA)." 
 
    One of the ironies in this whole debate is that the PC(USA) began its 
mission in Brazil in 1863 -- opening a church with only three members. 
Currently, the Presbyterian Church of Brazil has more than one million 
members.  And the Independent Presbyterian Church of Brazil, which is a 
mission partner of the PC(USA), currently reports 434 existing churches and 
400 new church development sites.  A third Presbyterian denomination in 
that country, the United Presbyterian Church, estimates its membership at 
around 2,000. 
 
    "So many of these immigrants are Presbyterians," said the Rev. Eriberto 
Soto, the Worldwide Ministries Division's liaison to Brazil, who stresses 
that they, like many immigrants,  legal and illegal, are consigned to 
low-paying, high-stress jobs while making the transition to another country 
and culture. 
 
    "These people have a lot of spiritual needs," said Soto. "And they're 
getting together already. But they can't afford to pay pastors the salaries 
we demand.  This new church development jazz is not practical.  They have 
immediate needs." 
 
    PC(USA) evanglism and church development associate director the Rev. 
Rosalie Potter told the Presbyterian News Service that several of the 
nearly 10 existing Brazilian fellowships are nesting in Presbyterian 
congregations here -- and have chosen to do so because of ecclesiatical 
ties and because of the pragmatic kinds of help in Christian education and 
in English language skills that come with close contact. 
 
    "They have good self-identity" she said, "but they want a Presbyterian 
church and they need it in Portuguese." 
 
    Potter said that racial/ethnic churches are growing within the PC(USA) 
and that the denomination's Korean caucus has committed to beginning 200 
more new churches in the next 10 years, adding to the 309 existing 
congregations.  She said there are now 19 Japanese, 35 Taiwanese, two 
Cambodian, seven Laotian, three Thai, three Vietnamese, and nine Filipino 
congregations.  Newark has the only chartered Brazilian congregation.  "We 
have Syrian churches, Iranian churches, Arabic- speaking churches. ...  And 
as we move into the next 12 years, racial/ethnic churches are going to be 
one considerable group. ... 
 
    "Everyone coming out of Sudan is Presbyterian," she said, adding that 
nearly 12 Sudanese fellowships are developing around the United States. 
"We need to be proud of what the missionaries have done.  But the work 
isn't done. ... 
 
    "It's a long process," Potter said, reflecting on the cultural 
adaptations needed in Anglo churches for what is now a multicultured 
Presbyterianism.  "And it doesn't happen easily." 
 
    Pinto is much more forthright. "This is still a very white homogeneous 
denomination and that should be an embarrassment for us.  In the next 40 
years, 50 percent of the U.S. population will be minorities.  Something," 
he said, of the PC(USA)'s current racial profile, "is not right.  We need 
to reinvent mission.  We need to make a paradigm shift in the way we do 
church in the PC(USA)." 
 
    Dantos is a firm believer that 15 Brazilian congregations will be 
chartered within the PC(USA) within the next 15 years.  "We already have 
eight to ten existing fellowships that are ready to come under the umbrella 
of the PC(USA).  There are two million Portuguese-speaking people in the 
United States -- and most are unchurched. 
 
    "This is a great mission field," he said. "Year by year, it is growing, 
growing, growing." 
 
    Acknowledging that recent amendments to the "Book of Order" expanding 
the responsibilities of commissioned lay pastors will help ethnic 
congregations get established, Amal Marks of the denomination's evangelism 
staff agrees that more has to be done.  "We have to open our churches.  We 
have to welcome them.  The sooner we welcome them, the better for us. 
 
    "Every time we delay," she said, "they go to another denomination." 

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