League of nations

Seattle Presbyterians praise the Lord in a host of languages

by Jerry L. Van Marter

SEATTLE — Five worship services on one Sunday — in Farsi, Spanish, Kikuyu, Vietnamese and Swahili. None in English.

Such is Presbyterian ministry in Seattle Presbytery, where no fewer than 13 new immigrant churches and fellowships have sprung up in the past five years.

Some of their stories:

Persians

"Peace is seeing a sunset and knowing who to thank."

Mansour Khajehpour was a committed foot-soldier in the Islamic revolution that swept through his native Iran after the fall of Shah Reza Pahlevi in the late 1970s, a devout Muslim "ignited by the fire of Ayatollah Khomeini."

Khajehpour and his gang of true believers gladly followed the Islamic ruler's instructions, harassing and threatening Christians and burning down churches, sometimes in broad daylight.

Khajehpour had a "Damascus road" experience in the eastern Iranian city of Mashad in February 1981. Riding a bus, he spotted a cross atop a building that turned out to be an Evangelical (Presbyterian) church. He hopped off, knocked on the door, and told the youth pastor who opened it to him that he was going to burn down the church.

"The pastor responded by handing me a New Testament and inviting me back to discuss it," Khajehpour recalls. "I read it in three days, and was both fascinated and offended, particularly by the story of Jesus turning water into wine." (Devout Muslims shun alcohol).

When his curiosity led him to return for worship — "Muslims honor Jesus as a prophet, so I agreed," he says — he found "a lot of heresies, like women with their heads uncovered and the congregation singing," but also a disconcerting sense of peace and welcome.

"Three nuns who worked in a local hospital and couldn't be kicked out of Iran because they were citizens were humming quietly, and it was very touching emotionally for me," Khajehpour says. "Then, after worship, I was served snacks, and was given a warm welcome — I first thought it was just advertising, but then I came to know that it came from the heart."

It was that spirit that converted Khajehpour.

"Unconditional love, which is not in the Koran, is the key element of Christianity that converts Muslims," he says.

Three months after threatening to burn down the Mashad church, Khajehpour was baptized there at age 18.

While a student at the University of Tehran, Khajehpour was ordained an elder at the Presbyterian church in the capital, and "evangelized for Jesus with same zeal I had once dedicated to Khomeini."

Six months after Khajehpour got married, he and his new wife, Nahid, were arrested for "anti-revolutionary activities." Prosecutors sought the death penalty, but Khajehpour was sentenced to prison, and was released after just 12 days — on condition that he quit evangelizing.

"Of course I couldn't do that," he says, "so when the next wave of persecution came around, in 1997, I was advised to flee my country."

He and Nahid intended to go to Germany, where she had relatives, but they wound up in Greece, where they lived for six months and started a Bible study group that met weekly and soon had 150 participants.

"We never dreamed of coming to the United States, so we had no sponsor," Khajehpour says, "but we were only in Greece temporarily, and when our visas there expired we learned we'd been assigned to Salt Lake City as 'free case' refugees." They became members of Wasatch Presbyterian Church there. "We could not be very active," he says, "because we were working at least 65 hours a week."

When Khajehpour heard about a conference of Iranian Christians to be held in California in the spring of 1998, he and Nahed invested their life savings of $2,000 in a ticket for Mansour. During the conference, a friend from Iran now living in Seattle — Esmaeil Goltapeh — urged him to move there. In June 1998, he and Nahid arrived.

Now Mansour — along with Nahid and Esmaeil — leads the bustling Persian Presbyterian Church of the Good Shepherd, which is housed at University Presbyterian Church near the campus of the University of Washington. While a praise service attended by several hundred young people makes a huge racket downstairs in the sanctuary, two dozen Farsi-speaking Christians worship far more quietly in a small chapel a couple of floors up in the sprawling building.

The Persian church started with Bible study and support services for Iranian refugees, which Khajehpour describes as "giving a cup of cold water to a thirsty brother or sister in the name of the Lord." Now the ministry is changing. Since 9/11, the flow of refugees has "stalled," he said, so the church's ministry is moving to providing Christian education and nurture resources for Seattle's stable Persian community.

This has led the Persian church straight into the technological revolution. The church has a growing ministry of translating English materials into Farsi and develops audio and video resources. Soon Khajehpour will begin recording a series of seven-minute meditations to be broadcast into Iran by Trans World Radio.

And the Persian church is going "global" with a new Web site that Khajehpour calls "a wonderful, wonderful opportunity for us to minister with people all over the world." The site is www.kelisa.org.

Khajehpour, who received Commissioned Lay Pastor Training through Seattle Presbytery, is now pursuing a theological degree. But the heart of his ministry is Good Shepherd, which he wants to be as welcoming as the church in Mashad that took him in.

Worshipers know he speaks from the heart when he says in the benediction, "Peace is seeing a sunset and knowing who to thank."

Vietnamese

"If you stop learning, you stop leading."

Ta Huy Truong stepped into the pulpit of the Vietnamese Presbyterian Good News Church and greeted his 40-member congregation — a group of Vietnamese immigrants and a smattering of Laotians, Hmong and Cambodians.

Truong is accustomed to such diversity. That's why a screen on one side of the chancel flashes most of the liturgy and the outline of his sermon in English while he speaks almost entirely in Vietnamese.

Nothing seems to faze Truong, whose family came to the United States from Vietnam in 1994. "I always had a call to be a minister, but it was hard — because the church in Vietnam is underground," he says. He got his start in preaching when the pastor of his congregation in Vietnam was thrown in jail. "There was no one to care for the church, so I got a lot of experience," he says.

Truong's family settled in southern California. He got his first formal theological training at the Vietnamese Theological College in Los Ranchos Presbytery. After graduating in 2000, he came to Washington as associate pastor of a large Baptist church in Tacoma. He was let go three years later when the church decided to build a new facility and could no longer pay an associate pastor.

"I prayed to God for the chance to be a pastor, and to go to more theological school," Truong says. "There's an old saying in Vietnam — 'If you stop learning, you stop leading.'"

About this time, the founding pastor of Good News church, Binh Nguyen, resigned to work with the Mercer Island Presbyterian Church and Seattle Presbytery on international mission work — and a door opened again for Truong. He's now pastor of Good News church, and this fall, with scholarship help from Seattle Presbtery, he will enter a Master of Divinity program.

The Good News church's outreach programs are simple — prayer groups, youth groups and day care for young children.

"The most important ministry is prayer," Truong says. "When a church prays, it grows." He says youth programs are important, too, because, "If you keep the kids, you keep their parents."

That theory was put to the test last fall when Good News church decided to keep young people off the streets on Halloween by throwing a party. "We had never done this before, so we didn't know what to expect," Truong says. "We prayed for 40 kids, but when the party was supposed to start hardly anybody was here. Then they started showing up, and by the time we finished, we had way more than 40 kids. And they were Vietnamese, Cambodian, Lao, black and white."

That's the vision of Good News church, to be truly multi-cultural. "The key is the youth," Truong says, "because they are united by being Asian and by speaking English. An English-speaking Asian church makes them the most comfortable."

Good News church isn't self-supporting yet, but Truong is confident. "Seattle Presbytery is very good," he says, "but more than money, we need prayer and spiritual support. We know God will use me and this ministry to bring more people to Jesus Christ."

Latinos

"Never stop praying — it's like eating and breathing"

Jay and Astrid Ostos never intended to become pastors of Iglesia El Buen Pastor (Church of the Good Shepherd) in Auburn, at the southern end of Seattle Presbytery. Married in 1990, Jay, a Mexican, and Astrid, a Colombian, moved there in 1997 to manage a drug-, prostitution- and gang-infested apartment complex.

In the course of cleaning up that mess, they became leaders of a booming Latino community — which has quadrupled in size between 1990 and 2000.

They also became religious leaders. They started a Bible study group that met in the laundry room of the complex. When the group grew too large, they took a Sunday drive to find a home for their fledgling fellowship.

How they became Presbyterian is a story that calls to mind the Old Testament chronicle of Joshua and the battle of Jericho. "We found White River Presbyterian Church and knew immediately that this was where we wanted our congregation to be," Jay says. "So for seven days we drove around the church in the parking lot, praying that it would happen."

One Sunday, when an ecumenical coalition conducted a prayer march in Auburn, Jay met Jim Erno, a Presbyterian lay minister at Wabash Presbyterian Church, who offered his facility to the new congregation. However, the Ostoses said the rural location was too distant from the Latino community. He mentioned the White River church.

Erno contacted Boyd Stockdale, the executive of Seattle Presbytery. Stockdale contacted White River, and with the support of interim pastor Chet Gean and Elder John Kopp, the new church was up and running.

"We spent six months getting the groundwork laid, brainstorming ways to get this thing going," says Stockdale, "and there were tears in my eyes when Jay and Astrid were elected elders of White River with the purpose of making them Commissioned Lay Pastors of an Hispanic Presbyterian congregation." Jay and Astrid Ostos were commissioned as lay pastors last September.

"It's gonna be fun," Kopp says. "The key is to tie the leadership together, to provide an umbrella for the leadership of both congregations. ... The synergy here is wonderful and we've got the right pastor (newly-called Arleigh Champ-Gibson), who was attracted to this place because of what Jay and Astrid are doing and the impact it's having on the White River congregation."

Jay confesses that he "didn't think at first the White River arrangement was going to work." But in May 2002, the Ostoses were given the keys to their new church home.

Jay, who converted to Christianity in 1979, said he believes "God put all of us together for the benefit of the community." And he means the whole community.

In addition to worship and Christian education, Iglesia El Buen Pastor offers homework and tutoring assistance for students, classes in parenting and in English as a second language, free dental and eye clinics, emergency financial and clothing assistance and free childcare.

Iglesia El Buen Pastor also sponsors city-wide "clean-up days," and in December 2002, with six gallons of cooking oil purchased at a local supermarket, spent seven days anointing every street corner in Auburn "for the Lord." The congregation has since announced its intention to anoint every corner in all of Seattle.

"The key to success," Astrid says, "is to never stop praying * it's as important as eating and breathing." The congregation prays together for one hour every night, Monday through Thursday, from 6 to 7.

"They need something spiritual in their hearts."

Since its inception in September 2002, Seattle Presbytery's Taiwanese Fellowship has been a wild scramble.

The 60-member congregation, which nests at Mercer Island Presbyterian Church, has not had pastoral leadership since its organizing minister, Mai Chen Lai, returned to Taiwan in the summer of 2003.

"We invite all different speakers for Sunday services," says Elder Roger Wu, who came to Seattle 12 years ago from Taipei, Taiwan's capital. "We are happy because we have a retired pastor, the father of one of our members, coming for six months in July. ... People come here because they sense this is a Taiwanese gathering spot. From there, they learn the religious aspect, and gradually join as believers."

Wu notes that the Mercer Island fellowship is the only Taiwanese congregation on Seattle's east side, although there are two Taiwanese congregations downtown (neither of them Presbyterian).

Evangelism and faith-sharing are key components of the ministry, says Elder Andrew Kuo, "because the percentage of Christians in Taiwan is very low. We started the fellowship because they didn't come here as Christians, but we think they need something spiritual in their hearts."

Pastoral care is provided by a team of six or seven members who meet every Tuesday night. The fellowship conducts Bible study on Fridays, and worship and Sunday school on the Sabbath — all in Taiwanese, although Wu notes that "most of them understand English pretty well."

The focus is on first-generation Taiwanese immigrants.

"The second generation, we push into Mercer Island, because for them English is no problem," says Kuo. "Our feeling is that we're part of the Mercer Island family. We just have our own Taiwanese language services and programs."

Once every quarter the two congregations worship together (in English), and there are frequent fellowship events where the Mercer Island members can learn more about Taiwanese culture.

Wu and Kuo long for a permanent pastor. "We need help to get ourselves a little better organized, to be more effective and more efficient," Wu says. "We are small and young, but we have great potential."

"This is our family, because our real brothers and sisters are far away."

Community life is central to Kenyan culture. That's one reason the Kenyan Community International Church was formed in December 2000.

"We need each other, but instead of coming together, we were getting further apart," says Charity Kamau, one of two Commissioned Lay Pastors serving the 60-member congregation.

Stephen Maina was a deacon at Westminster Presbyterian Church when Charity's congregation, Rainier Beach Presbyterian Church, offered the Kenyans room to grow.

"There's a new generation of Kenyans and other Africans in this country," Maina says. "We didn't want them to lose their identity and culture. We want to hold onto our cultural heritage. There must be a starting point for building character and values so our young people have a solid foundation."

Language and culture present problems. "The elders don't know English and the youngsters don't know Kikuyu," Kamau says. "So blending worship is tough. We even try Swahili, because some who don't know either English or Kikuyu know Swahili."

Worshiping at 4 p.m. on Sundays is also problematic. "Many teenagers would rather go to the mall than to church on a Sunday afternoon," notes Edgar Kanjabi, chair of the congregation's youth committee.

In such an environment, Kamau says, the Kenyans in the congregation consider themselves missionaries. "Our focus is on children and youth, because churches that don't have children die," he says.

According to Kanjabi, the Sunday School is "taking off nicely." One Sunday each month is "youth Sunday," when the church's young people lead the service.

Another Sunday each month is designated "women's Sunday" to develop and highlight the leadership of women.

And the Kenyans haven't forgotten the folks back home. At the moment, a 20-foot container of supplies is en route to Kenya, donations for children orphaned by AIDS. It includes 100 quilts knitted by the women of the Kenyan and Rainier Beach congregations.

"We're trying to partner with as many others as we can, because the needs there are so great," Maina says. "AIDS is ravaging Kenya left, right and center."

With so much going on and so much to do, the Kenyans have launched a fund-raising campaign and hope to acquire their own building. "Rainier Beach has been very good to us; it's not about dissatisfaction," Kamau says. "We have this vision, and it may not make sense but we're going to obey. We have to accommodate our community."

The small congregation raised $40,000 last year and hopes to raise $100,000 this year. "We know God is faithful, because here we are three years later," Maina says. "You may not know what you can do, but God knows."

"It's the church's responsibility to provide a Biblical anchor."

The Rev. Kolinus Buntaran came to Seattle in 1994 from San Jose, CA, where he pastored the Indonesian Evangelical Church. It was there that he came in contact with Stockdale, now the Seattle Presbytery executive, who at the time was serving three presbyteries in northern California and Nevada from a synod office in Sacramento.

In Seattle, Buntaran initially served an Indonesian congregation nesting at University Presbyterian Church. He says that church dissolved in 1999 after its parent denomination "veered toward Chinese, not Indonesian."

Buntaran veered toward Stockdale. He was accepted as a minister member of the presbytery in 2000 and in 2001 the remnant Indonesian congregation was chartered as the Indonesian Presbyterian Church. "Through Boyd, it seemed like God opened the door for us to be PC(USA)," Buntaran says.

He has overcome the historic tension between native and Chinese Indonesians by establishing two worship services, one in Indonesian and one in English. "Many of our older members understand Mandarin (Chinese) better than English, so we've started a Mandarin-language fellowship, too," he says.

Such is life in a multi-lingual culture. Buntaran is beefing up the English-language ministry at the 150-member church, which nests at Wedgewood Presbyterian Church in Seattle's north end. "The second generation is trying to become more American, so the transition to English-speaking ministry will be difficult," he concedes. "But it is very important, because it is the church's responsibility and challenge to provide a Biblical anchor for their values."

Two years ago, the Indonesian church established a fellowship in Everett, an industrial city north of Seattle that has a giant Boeing plant. "Lots of Indonesians are moving there for jobs," Buntaran says. About 35 Indonesians attend the twice-a-month Everett services.

The church's relationship with Seattle Presbytery is a genuine two-way street, Buntaran says: "The presbytery helps us find resources and equip leaders for the Presbyterian wa, because we are new Presbyterians and want to become more mature."

In turn, Indonesian Presbyterians "will add a different culture to the presbytery and will bring a community- and family-oriented emphasis to the presbytery," Buntaran says. "We bring strong faith — in Indonesia, Christians are persecuted — to pull people together with the spark of Jesus Christ."