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Note #7635 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

(Multicultural) home on the range 
03141
March 18, 2003

(Multicultural) home on the range 

Immigrants described as potential 'gold mine' for country churches 

by Evan Silverstein	 
						 
DUBUQUE, IA - The Rev. Bob Houser is trying to find new ways for small
Presbyterian churches in rural Nebraska to reach out to the state's growing
Hispanic population.

Spanish-speaking migrant workers, lured by jobs in the meatpacking industry,
have flooded Nebraska and neighboring states.		   
	
The Rev. Sandra Jewell, foreground, addresses the Rural Ministry Conference
as co-presenter Jean Morehouse looks on. (Photos by Evan Silverstein)	     
	
 Houser, executive of the Presbytery of Central Nebraska, knows that it won't
be easy to get its mostly-white rural congregations to consider tapping into
the throngs of multicultural newcomers.
	
"We're still kind of in the denial stage, of saying, 'We need to relate to
these people as people,'" Houser said.
	
Many of the presbytery's 41 congregations are in small, remote, declining
towns that seem as if they might dry up and disappear like tumbleweeds
rolling across the prairie.
Often these houses of worship are many miles from other Presbyterian
congregations, in locations where the wide-openness of the Great Plains
serves as an "isolating factor."
Houser recently attended an annual Rural Ministry Conference here, sponsored
in part by Presbyterian-related University of Dubuque Theological Seminary
(UDTS), to learn how to make Nebraska congregations more inclusive.
	
"I'm hoping that I can ... find ways to help get some of our church leaders
and ministers connected with this kind of training, this kind of support,
this kind of network, as they deal with the issues that are right there in
their backyards - or their front doors, even," Houser said.
	
Rural and small-town churches must learn how to welcome an increasingly
diverse population into their lives and mission, organizers told participants
in the 22nd annual conference.
	
For white American Christians, globalization must mean more than an overseas
trip or a series of dialogues with people of another culture, the
conference-goers were told. To be truly inclusive, churches must make a
commitment to breaking down walls of separation.
	
That was the thinking behind the theme of the March 9-11 symposium - Reaching
Out, Inviting Others. The sponsors of the event included UDTS and Wartburg
Theological Seminary.
	
At least 35 Presbyterians engaged in rural ministry braved chilly weather to
join more than 200 other Christians on the two Dubuque campuses in this
Mississippi River town.
	
They joined Methodists, Lutherans, Catholics, Episcopalians and members of
the United Church of Christ. They were farmers, educators, pastors, church
staffers, seminary students, lay leaders and church members. They were from
states including Tennessee, Indiana, Nevada, North Carolina, Georgia and New
York. And there were a few international participants, from Canada and
Scotland. The gathering offered workshops, worship, networking opportunities
and messages from guest speakers.     
	
Diana A. Stephen, left, the Rev. Iain Sutherland and the Rev. Shannon Jung.
	
"I'm surprised just how many parallels there are (between rural ministry
challenges in the United States and Scotland)," said the Rev. Iain
Sutherland, who convenes the Church of Scotland's Rural Ministry Committee.
"We all talk about the 'global village' now, and we all talk about the world
economy. And also the issues of pricing and supermarkets and the smaller
farmer's struggle."	   
	
 Wartburg, related to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), and
UDTS, affiliated with the Presbyterian Church (USA), work closely together in
preparing students for rural ministry through a cooperative venture, the
Center for Theology and Land (CTL), established in 1987 to strengthen rural
churches and communities.
	
The other sponsors of the conference were the PC(USA)'s Rural Ministry
Network, the ELCA's Rural Ministry Resources and Networking Desk, and the
United Methodist Church's Heartland Network for Town and Rural Ministries.
	
The conference focused on welcoming new African-, Hispanic- and
Asian-Americans, because those ethnic groups are most prevalent in rural
areas. Organizers said many Bosnian and Rwandan refugees are moving into
rural communities.
	
Conference speakers and workshop leaders, primarily from Presbyterian and
Lutheran schools, organizations and churches, discussed such topics as
Multi-cultural Ministry in a Cornfield and The Global Goes Local: Reaching
Out to Immigrant People.

There also was music, fellowship and an Agape Meal billed as "A Taste of New
Rural."
	
Some saw the conference as a reflection of Christ's vision for a fully
inclusive church.
	
"If we agree that Jesus is Lord, then we can work together," said the Rev.
Sandra Jewell, of Kankakee, IL, an ordained ELCA minister.
	
Jewell addressed the conference together with Jean Morehouse, the ELCA's
resource project manager for Multilingual and Culture Specific Resources.
They used a lighthearted delivery to present their joint address, Practicing
Hospitality: Welcoming African-Americans.
	
"What do we mean by hospitality?" asked Jewell, who leads a congregation
working to combine African-American and traditionally Anglo groups.
	
"I'm a person who believes that if you start up at the same place as the
others like yourself, you get where you're going together," said Jewell, who
is African-American, who said hospitality means helping people "to be
comfortable with you when they arrive."
	
"Comfortable, and I think, at ease and at home," added Morehouse, who is
white.	       "To me that's what hospitality is." 
	
The conference also explored such aspects of multicultural ministry as
creating effective multicultural worship, identifying and overcoming barriers
in multicultural congregations, and adapting to change.
	
"I'm just really pleased that church rural ministry is dealing with questions
of ethnicity and how to reach out," said Presbyterian elder Jane Busey, a
first-year student at Dubuque Theological Seminary. "They are beginning to
realize that church is more than who comes on Sunday morning, and that the
community is richer and has something of value in people who are a little
different than they are."
	
Conference officials said change is coming, like it or not. They described
the influx of immigrants as a potential "gold mine" for rural congregations,
but said many churches don't extend invitations to minorities in search of a
church home.
	
"We need ways of welcoming and having folks become part of and also transform
our congregations. You are the people who can make that happen," said the
Rev. Shannon Jung, a Presbyterian minister and director of the Center for
Theology and Land.
	
Racial-ethnic persons in the U.S. are expected to outnumber whites for the
first time by the year 2050. The country's minority population, which
includes Hispanics, blacks, Native Americans, Asians and others, grew by 43
percent between 1990 and 2000, to 87 million people, about 31 percent of the
nation's population of 281 million.
	
The Hispanic or Latino population - America's fastest-growing minority group
- mushroomed from about 9 percent in 1990 to 13 percent in 2000, when 35
million people claimed that heritage.
	
Program leaders said this "browning of America" will have profound effects on
everything in society, from politics and education to industry, values,
culture and churches.
	
"We want to be in ministry with (racial-ethnic populations) in any way that
we can," said the Rev. Ron Whitlatch, an ordained Methodist minister from
Iowa. "The way we understand ministries, it not only has a spiritual
dimension but also a social dimension."
	
Whitlatch, a missionary since 1983, was most recently based in Argentina. He
now works with Iowa churches, including Presbyterian congregations, to
develop Hispanic ministries. He said people of Hispanic descent account for
nearly 50 percent of the populations of some small communities in the state.
But he said rural churches, including Methodist congregations, have been slow
to respond. 
	
"It's not great numbers yet," he said. "Here in Iowa, they're pretty much
just getting started. But it is picking up." 
Houser, the executive presbyter, said Presbyterians are facing the same
scenario in at least one Nebraska community, Lexington, where half of all
residents are of Hispanic descent, but "our Presbyterian presence there has
been very minimal."
	
Evangelism officials believe the PC(USA) now has about 350 multicultural
churches - those that incorporate the cultural traditions of more than one
ethnic or racial group, in matters ranging from worship and education to
mission and ministry.
	
While about 95 percent of Presbyterians are white, and most PC(USA)  churches
are losing members, multicultural churches in the denomination increased from
about 100 in 1998 to 255 in 2000 (with a total membership of 34,207).
	
"I believe that the church is able to open itself to appreciate new songs,
new languages, new traditions, new neighbors," said Diana A. Stephen, the
PC(USA)'s associate for Network Support for Rural and Small Church
Ministries, a conference speaker. "The question is, are we able to reach out,
invite and then receive new neighbors?"
	
Stephen said churches can network together with other congregations,
presbyteries and community groups in reaching racial-ethnic members. She said
hospitality "is at the heart of Christianity, at the heart of our church life
... at the heart of our Christian witness."
	
Stephen, the recipient during the conference of this year's Friend of Rural
Ministry award, offered some advice to congregations wanting to open their
doors and hearts to multicultural members.
	
"Pursue a bold vision of becoming more inclusive, by taking seriously
Christ's call to 'make disciples of all nations,'" she said, reading from a
racial-ethnic and immigrant church growth strategy adopted by the General
Assembly in 1998.
	
In her presentation, Rural Evangelism for an Inclusive Future, Stephen said
congregations should re-examine their understanding of evangelism and mission
every few years.
	
"How did our ancestors sing their songs in a strange land?" she asked. "Are
we able to reach back into the history of our congregation? Was it begun by
new immigrants? Has it served new immigrants?
	
"Our family history and our congregation's history will serve as building
blocks for our future ministry and mission."
	
Churches should offer refuge to the rejected, across all cultural, racial,
social and economic divides, said the Rev. Harold J. Recinos, a professor in
Southern Methodist University's Perkins School of Theology in Dallas, TX.
Recinos, an ordained United Methodist Church minister, opened the conference
with a stirring address about life and faith at the margins of society,
describing his own experience as a Puerto Rican growing up on the streets of
the south Bronx. 
	
It was a life of despair, poverty, drugs, violence and racial discrimination,
he said in his speech, titled Practicing Hospitality: Welcoming Hispanic
Peoples. It was an existence mitigated occasionally by religious faith,
through the words of the city's ever-present street preachers or those of a
pocket-sized Bible Recinos carried. He said he often gleaned inspiration from
a passage in the Old Testament Book of Isaiah.
	
"I became on the streets a drug addict, shooting dope" after being abandoned
by his destitute parents when he was 12 years old, he said. "(Doing drugs)
made going through restaurant garbage dumpsters in search of food easier to
do. It made it easier to drop out of junior high school."
	
It was on the streets, among strangers, Recinos said, that a religious
conversion led him to God and enabled him to rise out of poverty and squalor.
	
"On the street I found the God of hope who restores dignity to the rejected,
the God who is loving, merciful and partial to rejected human beings," he
said. "This awakening to faith leads me today to say that the church can make
room for God by showing hospitality to strangers."

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