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Note #5931 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

Racial-Ethnic Worship Groups
6-June-2000
00229

	Southern California Presbyteries Cast Wide Net to Take In Racial-Ethnic
Worship Groups

	In the last two decades, Los Angeles has become a racial-ethnic smorgasbord

	by Evan Silverstein

LOS ANGELES - Presbyteries in southern California  - especially in Los
Angeles County, where no single ethnic or racial group constitutes a
majority of the population - are stepping up their efforts of the past
half-decade to attract more racial-ethnic and multi-cultural churchgoers.

	The Presbytery of San Gabriel, nestled among the foothills of the San
Gabriel Mountains in northeastern L.A. County, is an area that has seen a
seismic shift in its racial makeup over the past two decades. Of the two
million people who live in the area, one-quarter are whites of European
descent, and the other 75 percent is divided among people of several other
racial-ethnic backgrounds, the largest of which are Hispanics and Asians.

	In San Diego, where about 25 percent of inhabitants are Hispanic, officials
of the Presbytery of San Diego have spawned several racial-ethnic new-church
developments (NCD's), fellowships and worship groups to serve an
increasingly diverse population.

	The racial-ethnic explosion in the Presbytery of San Gabriel has resonated
throughout its 44 chartered congregations and its 11,000 members, most of
whom are white. The presbytery faces a daunting challenge to proclaim the
gospel across cultural barriers.

	"Our purpose is to reach out among the new groups of people that are in our
area," said the Rev. Bryce Little Jr., executive presbyter of the Presbytery
of San Gabriel. "The (non-white) 75 percent, we have to be responding to
that; that's where the future of our new-church development is. And that's
why we've got to work in that area."

	Freda Gardner, the moderator of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) General
Assembly, recently joined Little and other pastors and members of the
presbytery's newly chartered churches and new-church developments to hear
about the presbytery's efforts to diversify. Gardner was accompanied to the
meeting at Los Angeles True Light Presbyterian Church by her vice-moderator,
the Rev. Floyd Rhodes, and staff from the denomination's national offices in
Louisville, Ky.

	"We do need to send the denomination a message of how our country and our
church has changed, and what we have to do to really open ourselves up to
the directive God has given us," said the Rev. Curtis Kearns, director of
the PC(USA)'s National Ministries Division, which sponsored the moderator's
May 3-13 tour of Presbyterian-related missions and ministries in the Pacific
Northwest and in Los Angeles and San Diego.

	San Gabriel Presbytery, conscious of its increasing diversity, has welcomed
pastors from other countries, including many missionaries to the United
States. It has chartered two Arabic-speaking ministries in the past three
years, adding them to the presbytery's six other racial-ethnic and one
multi-cultural NCDs and two groups in "probe" fellowships, that are
exploring the possibility of becoming NCDs. There is a
Brazilian-Portuguese-speaking new-church development, a Spanish-speaking
fellowship, and Taiwanese and Filipino new-church developments, among
others. The rapidly developing suburb of Chino Hills, in western San
Bernardino County, is the site of the multi-cultural NCD that the presbytery
expects to charter soon.

	"We have to respond to the new people who come to be within our geographic
bounds, "and not say ‘We're not going to, just because they haven't
historically been Presbyterian,'" said Little. "We just need to be open. The
world has come to us."

	The change in the Presbytery of San Gabriel is just a reflection of the
extraordinary diversity of Los Angeles County. In 1960, four of every five
people in the county were white. But a wave of immigration has transformed
the county; now, two-thirds of residents are of racial-ethnic backgrounds.
The county's population of about 9.8 million is 44 percent Hispanic, 33
percent white, 12 percent Asian and 10 percent black. The Latino and Asian
populations have more than doubled in the past 20 years.

	What is happening here represents the leading edge of racial and ethnic
changes affecting communities all across America. Demographers predict that
by the middle of the 21st century, the whole United States will look a lot
like Los Angeles looks now: a rich tapestry of people whose sheer diversity
makes once-familiar notions of racial interaction obsolete. By 2050 whites
of European descent will be a minority in the whole nation, as it is already
in Los Angeles.

	Managing an NCD is challenging but rewarding, said the Rev. Darwin Ng
(pronounced -ing), pastor of Los Angeles True Light Presbyterian, an NCD in
Lincoln Heights, where immigrants from Vietnam and China have settled over
the past two decades.

         The building now occupied by True Light Church once was the home of
an Asian congregation that merged with a similar church elsewhere in the
Presbytery of San Gabriel. The now-True Light building was kept open as a
community center to maintain a strong Christian presence in the neighborhood
through worship, evangelism and social services. It became a NCD in 1998,
and is recognized by local residents "as a place to send their kids to
learn, to study Chinese, English, math, computer and music lessons," Ng
said.

	He said True Light's language school serves as many as 60 children, and
about 70 youngsters attend an after-school program. Senior activities also
are well attended. The congregation's Sunday bi-lingual Cantonese-English
worship averages 30 adults and 10 children.

	"Through the senior activities, through the after-school program, through
the computer classes, we hope at some point ... we are helping them with
their physical needs (and) spiritual needs, (and) that they have a glimpse
of the love of Jesus Christ through us and in us," Ng said. "We hope they
will come to appreciate what we are doing here, and why we are here - that
they come to join us in this spiritual journey."

	Chino Hills Presbyterian Church, an NCD that started about five years ago,
draws an average of 60 people to services its holds on Sundays at an
elementary school, reaching trans-generational and multi-cultural
churchgoers from the community - people from Cameroon, China, the
Philippines, Ghana and Indonesia, as well as Koreans and Hispanics.

	"It's our desire to become everything God wants us to be," said the
church's pastor, the Rev. Ron Musch. "It's a Christ-centered, Bible-based
(fellowship), led so that we might know Christ and make Him know us."

	Continuing to build racial-ethnic ministries is a must for the denomination
today, said an official of the Riverside Presbytery, which also serves
portions of the Los Angeles area. The presbytery recently established a
Middle-Eastern pilot ministry.

	"I really do feel that multi-cultural ministry is bringing us out," said
Jacquie Lyman, associate general presbyter of Riverside Presbytery, who
addressed the moderator's group. "It's helping us develop as whole people in
the family of God."

	Lyman thanked Little for his presbytery's close cooperation with Riverside
in helping churches cross racial-ethnic barriers, as encouraged by the
General Assembly.

       "I really hope this is just the beginning for us," Lyman said,
referring to the prospect of adding additional racial-ethnic churches to her
presbytery.

	Gardner, who as part of her "Mission USA" trip also visited churches in
Alaska, Seattle, Idaho and San Diego, said she was impressed with the
churches' racial-ethnic outreach.

	"The stories are moving," she said in Los Angeles. "They are witnessing
what you are doing, that struggle you are dealing with – and you just come
back for more. ... You often do not have big numbers and the best resources,
or adequate space."

	Gardner's delegation met later with officials of the Presbytery of San
Diego and a corps of pastors and representatives from its racial-ethnic
church developments. The San Diego Presbytery serves 33 chartered
congregations and almost 20,000 Presbyterians.

	 In 1997 the presbytery and its congregations completed the renovation of a
former commercial building as a place of worship and fellowship for the
thriving suburban Iglesia Presbiteriana Hispana, a mission church that also
serves the inner-city Hispanic population.
				
	The presbytery recently approved the launch of a Korean NCD, Antioch
Presbyterian Church. Other ethnic missions include a Sudanese worship group,
two chartered African-American churches, an Arabic-speaking new-church
development, and a Taiwanese worship group.

	With more Sudanese moving into the area and scattering to various churches,
presbytery officials are hoping to bring the Sudanese worshipers under one
roof. Fund-raising is under way for a new home for the Sudanese American
Presbyterian Church on land vacated by a former Presbyterian congregation.
	
	"We have a lot of meetings, a lot of encouragement from the presbytery that
we would really have a facility here for our own, just to pray God here,"
said Khak Both, who is from southern Sudan and serves as secretary of the
Sudanese worship group, which currently meets in Faith Presbyterian Church.

	In a vacant lot, Both stood next to a towering cross that stretched skyward
like a beacon marking the site of the proposed Sudanese church and the
remains of East San Diego Presbyterian Church, which merged with Faith
Church in 1995.

	The Rev. Peter Lual, pastor of the Sudanese American Presbyterian Church,
also an immigrant from southern Sudan, is optimistic that the planned church
will become a reality.

	"God will give us a church by his willing," Lual said as those in the
moderator's delegation joined hands to pray beside the cross. "And by the
willing of all the people of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the
moderator of the General Assembly and the presbytery. We are willing to pray
for that. God will give us a church."

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