outreach to the various ethnic communities in the area,” he said, despite the fact that some Latino congregations have existed for 60 years and Asian congregations for 20 years. Horner said the synod’s goal is for existing ELCA congregations to find growth in their own backyards. “We’re hoping that congregations take seriously the eth- nic makeups of their neighborhoods so they can see these communities as opportunities for mission,” he said. Advent Lutheran Church, Manhattan, focuses on a second-generation, middle-class and professional Latino community. The Latino worshiping community at St. Luke Lutheran Church, Woodhaven, Queens, has tripled in size. Sion Lutheran Church moved its ministry from Spanish Harlem to St. Peter in Manhattan. At the first combined Latino service at St. Peter in September, 160 people attended. “That’s a great start. When congregations can part- ner with each other, they can create a powerful team,” Horner said.
Throughout the ELCA, 38 percent of 60 ministries
started in 2011 were Caucasian, with the rest from vari- ous ethnic communities, said Mary Frances, associate program director for new congregations. “It is definitely better progress than before,” she said. Of the 62 percent that are ethnic congregations, 17
percent are Latino, 13 percent are multiracial, 10 percent African-American, 10 percent Asian-Pacific Islander, 7 percent American Indian or native Alaskan, and 5 per- cent African nationals, according to ELCA records. So far in 2012, nine of 23 new ministry proposals involved ethnic communities. Ministries join the ELCA in one of three ways: an
existing congregation reaches out to serve new people in the neighborhood; a local synod, conference or group of congregations notices a new community and leads the creation of a mission; or a group of immigrants seeks their own church under ELCA auspices.
No more Norske?
Pastors and bishops are pleased with an increase in such outreach, even as the ELCA remains 95 percent white and 5 percent ethnic overall, and as the historic alterna- tive languages of German and those from Scandinavian countries are dying off. Congregations reporting worship services in German dropped by 57 percent since 1990 (from 61 to 26); Finn- ish by 86 percent (from 42 to six); and Norwegian 86 percent (from 42 to six), according to ELCA records. But there’s a challenge too: Many of the missions are startups needing financial help, at the same time as 630 congregations (and their mission funding support) have
left the ELCA as of Sept. 20, largely due to the 2009 Churchwide Assembly’s sexuality decisions. Bishop Murray D. Finck of the Pacifica Synod, where
24 of 118 congregations are other-than-English specific, said, “Our congregations and [synod] leadership believe that the Lutheran church is indeed intending to reflect the gifts, joys and challenges of our demographic diver- sity and changes.” The Pacifica Synod encompasses Hawaii and the southernmost part of California. Sixteen dialects are spoken in the synod.
But Finck noted that new immigrants are often work- ing low-wage jobs and need long-term assistance for their ministries to become self-supporting. The synod is currently working on mission possibilities with people of Arabic, Hispanic, Indonesian, Samoan and Vietnamese descent.
“In the meantime,” Finck said, “we have people in the candidacy process who will lead congregations speaking Taiwanese and Mandarin, Swahili and two Ethiopian dia- lects, Amharic and Oromo. In the past 15 years, we have enjoyed one or two of these new start missions each year. When we have the opportunity to begin five or six within the same year, the need for missional dollars is huge.” The cost to the synod and churchwide can total $60,000 or more for each ministry annually during their first several years.
The result is a start toward the ELCA’s goal of attract- ing half of all new congregations from ethnic communi- ties. It’s also a baby step toward repositioning the ELCA from its long-standing reputation as a “white” church into one that’s open to new voices. (See page 46.) From its founding, the ELCA’s goal has been to be a church of at least 10 percent African-American, Latino, American Indian and other ethnicities. The ELCA benefits in part from first-generation immigrants and other immigrant communities finding work in rural areas where dairy farms, meatpacking plants and natural gas drilling are booming. Of the 2011 ministry starts of ethnic origin, 32 per-
cent are in cities larger than 250,000; 18 percent each in rural areas and small towns (fewer than 10,000 people); 12 percent in cities of 50,000 to 249,999; 8 percent in small cities of 10,000 to 49,999; and 5 percent each in suburbs of large- and medium-sized cities. The immigration trends give the ELCA “a wonderful opportunity to be a welcoming community,” Frances said.
Indeed, language is a critical component of worship
for first-generation immigrants because it’s the people’s “heart” language. “It’s not an either-or situation,” she said. “The language is also vital for outreach.”
November 2012 15
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