Immigrants Meet Need to Build Multicultural Pews

By Audrey Barrick, Christian Post Reporter Sunday, February 18, 2007

While U.S. lawmakers consider beefing up border security to control high immigration rates, many churches are seeing more opportunities for building up what they call "ethnic" churches.

"The changing demographics continue to provide exciting ministry opportunities to expand God's kingdom among burgeoning people groups," said Scott Temple, director of Intercultural Ministries for the Assemblies of God, according to the Pentecostal group's news service. "During this season of national debate about sealing off our borders, we must remember Jesus came to tear down walls that separate us from our brethren around the world. The Kingdom has no borders."

The Pentecostal group says that many immigrants are Christians and some are starting up congregations in the United States to reach ethnic minorities – people groups that many mainline denominations have a hard time bringing to their pews.

Although ethnic churches are increasing, many of them remain separate from other people groups.

"America has taken the gospel to other nations for many years, but here the races have stayed separate," said Steven Siaji, a pastor from Kenya and now head of a multicultural church in Texas. "It's about time we change."

The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination, reported that 59 percent of the churches it started in 2005 were either African American or ethnic congregations.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA), a reportedly 97 percent white denomination, is faring well with ethnic churches but is struggling to integrate the minority people groups with white congregations. The ELCA is currently taking initiative to bring in other ethnic groups, particularly African Americans, into the dominantly white congregations to create more multicultural churches.

Pentecostal churches are seeing more multiculturalism. Ethnic congregations make up nearly one-third of the Assemblies of God churches where the majority of attendants is nonwhite, the news service reported. The largest ethnic church is the Hispanic congregations. While some continue to remain separate culturally, more of the Pentecostal churches are becoming a diverse composition.

Siaji, who believes that ethnically separated congregations are not "the biblical concept of doing church," pastors All Nations Church in San Antonio, Texas. The congregation consists of black, South Korean, Filipino and Ukrainian believers.

"We need each other," he said. "Our differences are gifts God has made available to us. If we decide to stay aloof, we miss out experiencing a wonderful blessing."

And the influx of diverse ethnic groups to the United States has created new churches characterized with "exuberant worship, dynamic prayer and passionate preaching," Temple noted.