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April 11, 2008

9th annual multicultural conference kicks off in Texas 

Evangelism in a multicultural world is focus of gathering of all ‘nations and tongues’

by Evan Silverstein
Presbyterian News Service

The New Covenant Fellowship Praise Band from Austin, TX, performs during the opening of the ninth-annual multicultural conference of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Photo by Evan Silverstein

SAN ANTONIO, TX — A rousing sermon, spirited worship, thought-provoking panelists and high-octane praise music helped kick off the 2008 Multicultural Conference of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) on Thursday (April 10).

“I love it. There are so many emotions. You can’t even describe it,” said Nancy Diaz, an elder at San Pablo Trinity Presbyterian Church in Houston, who was attending her first national multicultural conference.

Diaz raised her hands and arms high above her head, swaying them back-and-forth as the New Covenant Fellowship Praise Band from Austin, TX, performed a pulsating rendition of “You Are Good.”   

Next to her, fellow church member Norma Hernandez also celebrated with equal enthusiasm.

“As soon as the music started, I felt the Holy Spirit. It’s just an awesome feeling,” said Hernandez, who was also attending her first national multicultural symposium.

The two women were among some 460 Presbyterians from all over who gathered here for the ninth-annual multicultural conference, which included people of Asian, Hispanic, African and Middle Eastern descent.

Nancy Diaz

A mariachi band got the opening celebration started. Later, giant puppets depicting people from a variety of nations and cultures were paraded through the conference venue as those attending stood and clapped. Conference presenters and other participants issued apostolic greetings in several languages, including Korean, Arabic, Pilipino, Tagalog and English.

The four-day event at the San Antonio Airport Hilton 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.

The conference is being sponsored by the PC(USA)’s office of Multicultural Ministries in cooperation with Mission Presbytery, the Synod of the Sun, the Presbyterian Multicultural Network, and the Cross Cultural Alliance of Ministries.

During opening remarks, the Rev. Raafat Girgis, a conference planner and the PC(USA)’s associate for Multicultural Ministries, called those in attendance the true force behind the denomination’s growing multicultural movement.

The Rev. James Hickson Lee

“It is about you because this movement has defined itself from its beginning as a grassroots movement,” he said. “You are the ones who are doing it. You are the visionaries. You are the ones who believed in the impossible and made it happen.”

Also in attendance were staff and leaders from the denomination’s Office of the General Assembly and the General Assembly Council (GAC), including the Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, stated clerk of the PC(USA)’s General Assembly, and Elder Linda Valentine, the GAC’s executive director. The Rev. Joan S. Gray, moderator of the PC(USA)’s 217th General Assembly, was also present.

This year’s conference is focusing on the need for the PC(USA) to revitalize and strengthen its commitment to evangelism in a rapidly growing multicultural world as reflected in the official conference theme, Gather All Nations and Tongues: Good News for All Congregations, inspired by the prophesy of Isaiah 66:18.

Organizers said they hope the event will help participants to rediscover and utilize the tools of evangelism with equal emphasis on spiritual renewal, growth and social responsibility.

They said the mandate for the multicultural movement is as old as the Christian faith and deeply rooted in it. That the PC(USA) is called on to establish a new openness to its own membership, by affirming itself as an inclusive community of diversity, becoming in fact as well as in faith a community of women and men of all ages, races, and conditions.

The Rev. James Hickson Lee, a Texas pastor who presented the opening sermon, talked about the church as an inclusive community, challenging those present to welcome people from all races and backgrounds.

Reading from Acts, Lee said, “When the day of Pentecost had come they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.”

But unfortunately church members often would rather legislate than commit the time or energy that is required for building meaningful relationships, said the evangelizing pastor of New Covenant Fellowship, a multicultural new church development in Austin, TX.

Lee said Christians are called to a ministry of reconciliation that “we receive it to God and then we carry it out with one another so that we can forgive one another, work together with one another as the body of Christ.”

He asked when it comes to building a multicultural church welcoming of people from different ethnic, educational and geographical backgrounds “are we going to respond by celebration or will we ridicule that which we don’t truly understand, that which we’re trying to work to discern and to understand?”

Lee said he believes Christians are called to celebrate and honor their diversity “allowing room because not everyone would agree and not everyone is ready, we must allow room for all to discern God’s truth for now and for the future.” 

Multicultural congregations are increasingly vital to the PC(USA). By 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.

The PC(USA) is currently about 92 percent white, but a growing number of churches are attempting to incorporate cultural traditions of more than one ethnic or racial group, Girgis said. He estimates that more than 1,700 congregations (out of some 11,000 in the denomination) are at least moving toward a multicultural identity.

Among the many models: bi-lingual or bi-cultural congregations; congregations with one cultural majority and significant influence from other cultures; and congregations with no single cultural majority. Another is that of “nesting” churches, which provide homes for congregations of different cultures and immigrant fellowships.

The event’s first day concluded with a panel discussion about multicultural ministry made up of five ministers and one elder: the Rev. Jin S. Kim, founding pastor of the Church of All Nations, a multicultural PC(USA) congregation in Columbia Heights, MN; the Rev. Wanda Lundy, pastor of multicultural First Presbyterian Church in Edgewater, NJ; and the Rev. Buddy Monahan, member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and the Maricopa tribe and chaplain at the Menaul School in Albuquerque, NM.

Also on that panel were the Rev. Magdalena I. García, pastor of Ravenswood Presbyterian Church, a multicultural and bilingual congregation in Chicago; the Rev. Robert Chestnut, retired pastor of East Liberty Presbyterian Church, a multicultural congregation in Pittsburgh; and elder Ruben P. Armendariz, church development consultant for Mission Presbytery.

Giant puppets depicting people from a variety of nations and cultures were paraded through the conference venue, including this one representing Mexican heritage. Photo by Evan Silverstein 

“The multicultural church movement must not be one more desperate attempt by white churches trying to co-op ethnic minorities for its own institutional preservations,” Kim said. “We do not confer dignity on ethnic minorities if we say, ‘OK, we’ve tried white flight in the suburbs, we tried first steps and mailings and friendship evangelism and every possible thing. OK, so since the wedding banquet is still empty, now let’s go get the lepers and the blind and the poor and the lame and see if we can preserve our white churches.’”  

Kim said Christians “in turn for eating the crumbs of white privilege” have turned their backs on groups such as African Americans and Native Americans who have been historically oppressed in the United States.

And in order for the multicultural movement to truly take hold, he said, “we really must make the multicultural church movement a genuine expression of the ministry of reconciliation in our time.”

Lundy said that God has an intention for each of us and that the joy of life is to discover what that intention is and to share it with the rest of the world.  

“To me that’s what multiculturalism is about,” she said. “It is about that we are all different, we are all unique, we are all intentional, we are not mistakes. And rather than spending the rest of our lives trying to be like someone else, what would it look like if we asked God to help us?”