You are currently subscribed to the PCUSANEWS listserv of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
============================================================
This story and photos are located at: http://www.pcusa.org/pcnews/2006/063 33.htm
Celebrating diversity
Conference-goers envision a multicultural future for PC(USA)
by Evan Silverstein
ORLANDO, FL - When Gelina Georges first arrived in the United States 18 years ago, the membership at All Nations Presbyterian Church in Miami, FL, was mostly white.
The 57-year-old native of Haiti, who speaks Creole, French, English, and a little Spanish, said that over time many longtime members of the church moved to new suburban digs as the congregation's North Miami Beach neighborhood, once predominantly Euro-American, became more racially diverse.
Now the 70-member All Nations church is living up to its inclusively suggestive name with Jamaican, Trinidadian and Haitian members making up a majority of the rolls. Services are held in French, Creole and English, and worshipers with German and Italian lineage also are turning out.
"It is a melting pot, but together we are worshiping one God," said Georges, whose husband Jonas is the church's pastor. "We have one aim, to bring everybody to the knowledge of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. That's our aim. That's the purpose for why we are doing it. Because we are all created by God, and he loves us."
The Haitian-born elder recently joined about 460 other Presbyterians here, including people of Asian, Hispanic, African and Middle Eastern descent, at the seventh annual Multicultural Conference of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
Georges' comments echoed the event's Many Peoples - One Family theme that envisions a Presbyterian church with members representing a full spectrum of races and cultures coming together to worship as one body of Christ.
The four-day conference, held in late May, brought together clergy and laity, representatives of middle governing bodies and others interested in or engaged in multicultural ministry. All gathered to exchange ideas, share experiences, attend workshops, listen to expert speakers, network with colleagues and come together in worship.
"It is fantastic," Georges said of the symposium. "It brings all the Presbyterian people together in unity, as one. The Lord teaches that we should love each other and serve each other. So I find it very helpful to me as a Presbyterian."
The conference was sponsored by the Office of Evangelism, Racial and Cultural Diversity (ERCD), part of the PC(USA)'s National Ministries Division (NMD). Also involved in the planning were the Presbyterian Multicultural Network, the Synod of South Atlantic, and Florida's six presbyteries.
During opening remarks, the Rev. Raafat Girgis, a conference planner who is associate for ERCD, called those in attendance "pioneers" and "catalysts " in the PC(USA)'s growing multicultural movement.
"You are the ones in the field and the ones who make it happen," Girgis said. "And with this great awakening spirit of our Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), God developed the possibility of continuing the journey. We must continue the journey with all of the sacrifices that we can make."
Girgis said the PC(USA) is currently about 92 percent white, but pointed out that it has a growing number of multicultural churches, which incorporate the cultural traditions and dimensions of more than one ethnic or racial group.
Girgis said more than 1,900 PC(USA) congregations (out of 11,200) are "reaching out to include the whole family of God" by relating to at least one multicultural church model. He said multicultural churches could account for up to 20 percent of PC(USA) congregations by 2010.
"These congregations, many of them are here today representing a variety of models of the church that God intended for it to be," Girgis said. "A multilingual, multiracial, multicultural and multigenerational church."
Multicultural congregations are increasingly vital to the denomination's future. By the year 2050, sociologists say, the majority of the U.S. population will be non-European and non-white. Countless churches in the cities and suburbs (and increasingly in rural areas) are located in the midst of very diverse racial ethnic communities.
Participants celebrated their collective diversity by exchanging opening-ni ght conversation in their native languages and formed a friendship circle that trailed through the program venue during a "cultural celebration" the final night.
The melody of African song filled opening worship. There were also Brazilian dancers, choir music, sermons, communion, Christian-rock music and keynote speakers advocating racial and ethnic inclusiveness during the event.
Many agreed there can be no church transformation or even new-church development without considering multicultural ministry.
When neighborhood demographics shifted during the 1970s, predominately white College Hill Community Presbyterian Church in Dayton, OH, faced closing if it refused to transform by reaching out to new arrivals.
The area surrounding the urban congregation went from mostly Caucasian to predominately African-American during the decade as the church's Euro-Ameri can membership began to dwindle, according to Melanie Monzón, a member of the Dayton church who attended the conference.
After a series of retreats, the College Hill congregation decided to transform itself by opening its doors to newcomers.
Today the church boasts 289 members of which about 65 percent are Africa-American. There are some white members, such as Monzón, with about five Korean worshippers, and a few families from Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya.
Founded more than 60 years ago, the church hopes to soon attract its first Hispanic members as a minister from Mexico, hired specifically to bolster outreach to the Latino community, begins work this summer.
Sunday services are already a blend of English and Spanish and there's Bible study in three languages: Spanish, English and Swahili.
Spanish classes also are being offered with plans for adding a Swahili language class.
"It's a neat situation where the eldest people in the church now can lead us into the future because they've already done it once and have been through the (transformation) process, which is kind of exciting," Monzón said. "In our particular church the people most interested in change are the elderly, which is unusual I think."
In nearby New Carlisle, OH, Mexican immigrant José Vidal has sparked interest in Hispanic ministry at predominately white Honey Creek Presbyteri an Church.
When the 36-year-old arrived on the scene three years ago, the aging church was doing little to promote multicultural worship. Thanks to his encouragement, the 100-member congregation now holds services in Spanish twice monthly with 10-30 Hispanics typically turning out.
The longtime Presbyterian from Chiapas, who has a nursing and farming background, was once a member of Emmanuel Presbyterian Church in Ocosingo, Mexico. He later became an elder at Jesus is the Light of the World Presbyterian Church in Comitán, Mexico.
Vidal chose the mostly white church near Dayton "because I wanted to learn more about the culture," he said through an interpreter. "I wanted to learn about their language."
The church has a strong relationship with Vidal and one Hispanic family, and its session was excited about sending Vidal to the multicultural conference, according to the Rev. Jayne Ruiz, coordinator for Hispanic and Immigrant Ministries with Miami Presbytery, which includes the Dayton area.
"Still, he wants the church to have more ownership and more relationships with the Hispanic community," said Ruiz, also a conference attendee.
Vidal, who fled Mexico after an armed paramilitary group seized his farm, described the conference as an important step in building cross-cultural bridges.
"We both need the support to understand each other," Vidal said through Ruiz. "It's not just the Americans that need the help, but it's all of us together who need to understand each other. It's important to understand one another."
During the conference, speakers and workshop leaders explored such aspects of multicultural ministry as creating effective multicultural worship; leadership development in multicultural congregations; how changing demographics affect multicultural ministries; and the unique challenges faced by multicultural new-church developments.
Organizers attracted more families this year by including conference tracks for children, youth and young adults.
Participants were challenged to continue living out Christ's vision by taking risks, crossing social, cultural, religious and racial barriers to create a diverse "Pentecost" church and demonstrate the transforming power of the gospel.
The Rev. Jin S. Kim, pastor of the Church of All Nations in Columbia Heights, MN, discussed racial and cultural reconciliation within the PC(USA).
The opening conference speaker said despite recent efforts, "a racialized, ethnically and socio-economically segregated church remains the inescapable reality.
"There can be no renewal in the church without reconciliation," said the Korean-born Kim, a former president of the evangelical group, Presbyterians for Renewal.
Members at Western Boulevard Presbyterian Church in Raleigh, NC, finally accepted that the mostly white, mostly aging congregation needed to start looking more like the diverse neighborhood that had emerged around it or eventually close its doors for good, according to the Rev. Betty Connette, the pastor.
Now the 300-member church offers an afternoon mentoring program twice a week for Latino children who live in the area. There's also a weekday multicultural pre-school with 85 students of whom Euro-Americans are in the minority with Asian and Latino students comprising the majority, Connette said.
"The denomination is dying and certainly God's call in the Bible as we have been hearing all through this conference is 'Many Peoples, One Family,'" she said. "We are all called to be one body."
The pastor said Western Boulevard church is active with New Hope Presbytery 's recently formed Multicultural Committee, which aims to stoke interest in cultural diversity among the middle-governing body's 133 congregations.
That sounds good to Dawn Marie Scott-Omokunde, a conference attendee whose mother was part Irish, German, Swedish and Polish. Her father was of Cherokee and African-American descent.
"I have been bathed in multiculturalism," Scott-Omokunde. "So to come to an environment that doesn't offer that salad bowl, you just don't want the soup. You want the whole salad bowl."
Her husband, the Rev. Tolokum Omokunde, is pastor at Timothy Darling Presbyterian Church in Oxford, NC, which also is active with New Hope Presbytery's multicultural committee.
The couple donned traditional Nigerian clothing at the conference. During a spirited worship, Tolokum Omokunde shook a percussion instrument from Africa called a "shekere."
The predominately African-American congregation is taking "baby steps" in becoming more inclusive by partnering with Oxford Presbyterian Church, a predominately white congregation nearby, Scott-Omokunde said. The two congregations gather at Christmas and during other holidays "for doing more of that exchanging and fellowshipping," she said.
A new monthly Birthday Fellowship at Timothy Darling church has slowly gained steam as members bring traditional foods from their family backgrounds to celebrate recent birthdays. The church receives some Latino visitors as well.
"We as African Americans have always been multicultural since the slave ship," said Tolokum Omokunde. "So it's a matter of people receiving our welcome into our congregation."
Turnout for the conference was about 460 people. About 1,000 turned out last year when the multicultural conference was combined with the PC(USA)'s Churchwide Transformation (redevelopment) Conference in New York City. More than 500 people attended the multicultural conference in Irving, TX, in 2004 when it was last held on its own.
Despite the well-attended conferences and increasing number of multicultura l congregations, Sunday worship continues to constitute "the most segregated time in our country," according to the Rev. Wanda Lundy, pastor of Edgewater, NJ's First Presbyterian Church, a multicultural congregation.
Lundy, who led the conference's programming track for children ages 6-12, said she would always see her ministry in a multicultural context "because that's the way God created it."
Her 50-member congregation, which is also known as "The Church on the Edge," holds worship in multiple languages. It started the Edgewater Multicultural Center, which includes an after-school program, summer camp, an art gallery and music programs.
During summer camp participants focus on learning about a different country each week along with its food, language, and culture.
"We see each person the same," Lundy said of her church, which includes African-American, Spanish, Native American and Korean worshippers. "I believe that's important when we're talking about becoming a multicultural, diverse denomination."
Another pastor of a multicultural church in New Jersey, who also led a conference youth track, said she believed children are the key to realizing a multicultural PC(USA).
"I do not believe the youth are the future church, but the youth are the church," said the Rev. Karen Hernandez-Granzen, pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Trenton. "I think if we train them well, as in making them culturally proficient ... that they will be more effective leaders for the kind of transformation that needs to happen in our denomination."
============================================================
You are currently subscribed to the PCUSANEWS listserv of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
To unsubscribe, send a blank message to
mailto:PCUSANEWS-unsubscribe-request@halak.pcusa.org.
To update your email address, send your old email address and your new one to mailto:PCUSANEWS-owner@halak.pcusa.org.
For questions or comments, send an email to mailto:PCUSANEWS-owner@halak.pcusa.org.
To learn more, visit http://www.pcusa.org/pcnews/
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) 100 Witherspoon Street Louisville, KY 40202 (888) 728-7228