Mission and History

New Immigrant Congregational Support provides the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) with resources aimed at facilitating entry of new immigrants groups into the life of the denomination. It was organized in 1999, one year after the General Assembly's approval of the "Racial Ethnic and Immigrant Church Growth Strategy."

The challenge is to intentionally facilitate communications and resources to assist middle governing bodies to reach out to and to welcome those Christian immigrant groups. At this time, the office only works with groups from the countries of Africa, South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh), Brazil, and English and French Caribbean. In the same Goal Area, Latino, Asian, Korean and Middle Eastern Congregational Enhancement offices serve their other respective international groups.

Models accepted by presbyteries*

1. Self-Forming Group: community of people who have come to the United States from the same country or region of the world with a common language, ethnicity and/or culture. They usually have a membership of fewer than 20 adults who do not hold PC(USA) membership.
2. Fellowship/Bible Study Group: an international group of Christian people who are accepted by a presbytery as part of their evangelistic outreach ministry. Usually, they have a membership of 21 to 75 adults but not yet PC(USA) members.
3. New Church Development (N.C.D.): a fellowship with a membership larger than 75 adults that either changes its status to be a chartered congregation or initiates the intentional process of becoming a congregation by its presbytery.
4. Congregation: a chartered church in the PC(USA).
5. Multicultural Church: chartered congregation with an ethnic diverse membership and church life.

(*Definitions vary according to each presbytery)

Theological Context

The Great Commandment: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind ... and you shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Matthew 22:37-39) as well as the Great Evangelistic Commission cited in Matthew 28:16-20 and Mark 16:14-18, are the basic biblical reflection for the mission of this office. Based on those principles, our challenge is to achieve the ministry goals inspired by Jesus' prayer in John 17:20-21: "I am not praying just for these followers. I am also praying for everyone else who will have faith because of what my followers will say about me. I want all of them to be one with each other, just as I am one with you and you are one with me. I also want them to be one with us. Then the people of this world will believe that you sent me."

Ministry Goals

Annual Presbyterian Immigrant Leadership Training. Photo by Angela Robards

• Help the PC(USA) become more inclusive by welcoming immigrants as equal partners in ministry and mission.
• Help presbyteries to organize new immigrant fellowships and their growth to new church developments.
• Identify and develop religious leadership, focus on young immigrants and women, facilitating their inclusion as ministers of the Word and sacrament, elders and committee members at all levels.
• Structure a network for communications and follow-up among immigrant fellowships, middle government bodies and offices of the General Assembly.
• Help immigrant congregations deal with matters related to church polity, presbyteries and synods under the Reformed theology.
• Develop immigrant field consultants as facilitators with the middle government bodies and their own ethnic group.
• Develop language-specific, generational and cultural sensitive resources for Christian education, worship, evangelism and mission.
• Facilitate the development of national organizations for new immigrant religious and social concerns.

The old college try

FC College, other Pakistan Presbyterian schools are making a comeback

CINCINNATI — A prominent Sunni Muslim parent in Lahore, Pakistan, came to Veeda Javaid seeking to enroll his daughter in a Presbyterian school in the city. At home a short while later, the girl — now a student at the school — heard a shouting match going on between Sunnis and Shiites in her family’s living room.

Veeda Javaid. Photo by Danny Bolin.

“She marched into the room,” Javaid recalled in an Oct. 24 presentation at the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s World Mission Celebration ’09 here, “and said, ‘My teacher has taught me that we are all children of God and should be living in peace.’ The shouting stopped.”

Two of that girl’s sisters are now also students at the Presbyterian school, said Javaid, executive director of the Presbyterian Education Board (PEB), an agency of the Presbyterian Church of Pakistan (PCP) which oversees a network of more than a dozen Presbyterian schools in the overwhelmingly Muslim country. [Read more]

David Zweh

St. Louis, Mo. (October 22, 2009) – Just as the Carondelet-Markham Memorial Presbyterian Church here was experiencing its own profound rebirth by welcoming the gifts of Liberian refugees into the life of the congregation, one young member was at the same time undergoing his own personal and spiritual transformation.

David Zweh, who had lived as a Liberian refugee in an Ivory Coast refugee camp for 14 years, had joined a wave of 15 Liberian immigrant families in 2005 to make Carondelet-Markham his church home. “I love the members of the church and they love me,” Zweh said. “We are in Christ and will remain in Christ for the rest of our lives.” [Read more]

Contact Us

Angel Suarez-Valera. Photo by Angela Robards

Feel free to contact us if you need any additional information. We would love to hear from you.

Angel Suarez-Valera, Associate
(888) 728-7228 x5135
Email