|
ideas, share experiences, attend workshops, listen to expert speakers, network with colleagues and come together in worship.
Participants from abroad included a group from the Presbyterian Church of Taiwan. The executive committee of the PC(USA)’s General Assembly Council took time off from a retreat elsewhere in New York to attend opening worship.
Speakers and workshop leaders addressed such issues as how to get a transformation under way; how to develop leaders in multicultural ministry; how to adapt to changing demographics; and how to create transformational worship.
“They’re getting a sense of hope that it can be done,” said the Rev. Steve Boots, a conference organizer. “They’re getting it not only from the keynoters, the workshop leaders, the worship; they’re getting it from each other. That’s one of the purposes of this conference — to bring people together to share those visions.”
The event combined two always-well-attended annual PC(USA) conferences: The National Multicultural Conference and the Churchwide Transformation gathering. The merger made sense, organizers said, because church transformation and multicultural ministry go hand-in-hand.
Boots said the big crowd was “an affirmation of the fact that people in the church are ready for transformation, ready for becoming a multicultural congregation.”
Conference presenters challenged participants to live out Christ’s vision by taking risks, crossing social, cultural, religious and racial barriers to create a Pentecost church and demonstrate the transforming power of the gospel.
The Rev. Cynthia Rigby, a professor at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, said Christians are called to “bear witness to God’s radical hope” for change.
“We talk about salvation, and we talk about God’s grace, and we talk about God’s hope, the hope of transformation, the hope of resurrection, in a way that is premised on this idea of change,” she said.
Cultural change, especially shifting demographic patterns, has profound implications for many congregations. Some have responded by retrenching and going into “survival mode,” but others are embracing the changes.
Church transformation, once known in the PC(USA) as church “redevelopment,” takes many forms, speakers said. Sometimes it requires a fundamental overhaul of a church’s mission and ministry, and sometimes it’s as simple as a session retreat to fine-tune existing programs.
Often, the seeds of redevelopment take time to germinate, many said.
The event’s theme,Witnessing to God’s Radical Hope (Luke 24:2-5), was a reminder that God has plans for everyone, even when it isn’t clear where or how to start.
“The challenges are huge, and no one in this room is an expert on how we’re going to become that new thing that God is trying to work in us,” Ufford-Chase said. “We know that … once size doesn’t fit all, don’t we? Multicultural and transformed is going to look different in different places for different people.”
Multicultural congregations are increasingly vital to the denomination. By the year 2056, sociologists say, the majority of the U.S. population will be non-European and non-white. Already, Asians, Africans and Hispanics make up one-fourth of the population.
Multicultural churches are those that incorporate the cultural traditions and dimensions of more than one ethnic or racial group.
PC(USA) officials believe the denomination has more than 1,900 congregations (out of 11,200) that relate to at least one multicultural church model, said the Rev. Raafat Girgis, associate for the PC(USA)’s Office of Evangelism, Racial and Cultural Diversity (ERCD), a conference co-sponsor.
“This is a nurturing process, and growing every day, and there is no specific model — there are many,” he said.
Some of the models: bi-lingual or bi-cultural congregations; congregations with one cultural majority and significant influence from other cultures; congregations with no single cultural majority; new churches starting out in multicultural neighborhoods.
Another model is that of “nesting” churches, which provide homes for congregations of different cultures, a practice at John Knox Presbyterian Church in Marietta, GA. A Brazilian Presbyterian church worships in the fellowship hall of the predominately white congregation.
“We came here to get ideas about how we can take the next steps in our relationship with the (Brazilian church), because there aren’t any maps out there,” said the John Knox pastor, the Rev. Fritz Bogar. “We also think we have a story to tell, and so we want to share what we are doing because we think it’s important.”
Thao Giang, a 21-year-old Vietnamese-American, said she would go home with a challenge for her fellow worshippers at the Church of All Nations in Minneapolis, MN, a 200-member multicultural congregation chartered last year. Most of its members are Korean and African immigrants, although it has some Euro-American members.
Giang said there is more work to be done.
“I want to challenge our congregation to stop being who we are and learn other people’s culture,” she said. “I think it’s great to challenge our faith to step out of our comfort zone and embrace other people’s culture, their way of living.”
Giang said the Minneapolis church has an immigrant ministry, an African choir, and “special Sundays” featuring foods indigenous to members’ homelands.
“On Easter Sunday we may eat Korean food, and then on Pentecost Sunday we may eat food from Kenya,” said Giang, adding that it’s not unusual for worshippers to attend services wearing traditional native garb.
Giang, a former Buddhist who converted to Christianity three years ago, said the strong turnout for the conference made her optimistic that the overwhelmingly white PC(USA) has a more colorful future.
“The majority of people here are Caucasian, but they are all here willing to change their congregations, and I think that’s very inspiring,” said Giang, who leads a multicultural campus ministry at the University of Minnesota.
A spirited opening worship included praise bands and dancers whose performances were broadcast on large screens. Dancers helped the audience turn the hall into a multicolored sea of twirling scarves intended to reflect the vibrant face of multicultural transformation.
“So far, I’m learning that we shouldn’t be afraid to venture out,” said the Rev. Andrew Aboagye, pastor of a fellowship of Ghanaian immigrants in Columbus, OH. “We should take the risk. We should break barriers and just lunge out. I’m being very much encouraged, because the group that I pastor is a little bit closed (to change) and they don’t understand.”
The gathering was sponsored by the Presbyterian Multicultural Network, the Evangelism Racial and Cultural Diversity Office, the Network for Churchwide Transformation, the Office of Congregational Transformation, Stony Point Conference Center and the Office of the General Assembly. A number of local sponsors also were involved in planning, including the Synod of the Northeast and presbyteries of New York City, The Palisades, Long Island, Hudson River, Newark and Elizabeth.
During opening worship, the Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, stated clerk of the General Assembly, said: “I believe God is calling us in the Presbyterian Church (USA) to go far by going together, to be a church that welcomes and encourages the small church and the large church, that encourages people of every race and tongue and nation among us.”
Attendees were warned that making an inclusive church won’t be easy. Bible-study leader Rodger Nishioka, said the challenge facing the transforming church is witnessing to Christian values in a culture of “consumerism, of selfishness, of hopelessness, of sin, of death, of destruction, of convenience.”
|
