Prometheus 6

Preaching Diversity
Minority Pastors Help Expand Horizons of White Churches
By Phuong Ly
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 4, 2004; Page A01

Whenever he closed his eyes and listened, the Rev. Gerard A. Green Jr. was reminded that he was a black pastor leading a predominantly white church.

No one said "Amen" aloud during the sermons. The choir sang without clapping. And after the services, there were whispers among the parishioners of Epworth United Methodist Church in Gaithersburg: Why did their new pastor need to raise his voice and gesture to make his points?

Racial diversity is still a struggling novelty in most houses of God. Just 8 percent of Christian churches in the United States are multiracial, defined as one ethnic group making up no more than 80 percent of the membership, according to a 2002 study.

But increasingly, faith leaders are prodding churches to better reflect and appeal to the country's changing demographics -- and they are doing it from the top, placing minority pastors in white congregations.
In the past few years, the United Methodist Church has made cross-racial appointments a priority, held forums on the issue and commissioned a study on how such congregations can be successful. Presbyterian officials have asked recruiting committees to bring in minority candidates when a church is interviewing for a new pastor. Seminaries are offering classes on how to minister in a multiracial society.

Fueling the trend is the fact that more minorities, particularly blacks and Asians, are entering the ministry. Minority students make up about 25 percent of the enrollment at seminaries accredited by the Association of Theological Schools, compared with 6 percent in 1977.

For Green, who is serving the same community where he attended segregated schools as a child, integrating congregations is necessary to fulfill God's call, however difficult the challenge.

Many families left the church when Green became associate pastor in 1992, and a few others trickled out when he was made senior pastor in 1996. But others -- some of them minorities -- have joined, citing Green as one of the reasons, and kept the membership steady at about 1,000 parishioners.

"By doing this, we are representing the kingdom of God," said Green, 53. "We're not there yet. We're still working on the communication and feeling comfortable with each other. But the fact that we're in proximity to each other means that we're in that crucible where we can start to work things through."

Race has long defined many U.S. churches. In the 1700s and 1800s, blacks walked out of the Methodist faith to protest racial discrimination and formed their own denominations, including the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Southern Baptists, the country's largest Protestant denomination, barred black congregants until the 1960s. Evangelist Billy Graham and slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. have been widely quoted as saying that 11 o'clock on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour of the week.

In Catholic parishes, multiracial congregations are more common, because membership is largely determined by geography. Protestants, with more choices of where to attend services, still tend to associate with people of their own ethnic group, even as churches have tried mergers or joint worship services to increase diversity.

But changes clearly are occurring in ministerial leadership. Not only are there more black and Asian ministers in white churches, but some are becoming national and regional church leaders. Bishop Felton Edwin May, an African American, heads the Baltimore-Washington Conference of the United Methodist Church, the area's largest church organization, with more than 700 congregations.

The conference is considered a leader in cross-racial appointments. About 40 of its pastors had such assignments in 1999, and the number has stayed roughly the same because of turnover, said the Rev. HiRho Park, chairwoman of the conference's Commission on Race and Religion, who compiled the statistics as part of her doctoral dissertation.

Although the results of such appointments have been mixed, academic experts say the effort at least helps start a dialogue on race and culture.

"Certainly the more nonwhite pastors, the greater the interest in multiracial churches," said Michael Emerson, a Rice University sociologist who directed the Congregations Project, the 2002 national study of race and churches funded by the Lilly Endowment. "This is an issue they're going to want to talk about."

For some Asian American pastors -- who make up the fastest-growing ethnic group in seminaries -- serving a non-Asian church has been a necessity rather than a choice.

Park, a Korean immigrant, explained that many Asian immigrant churches are so traditional that they prefer to have older men as clergy. Others require language skills that many second-generation Asian Americans don't have. As a result, more than half of the Asian clergy members in the United States serve in non-Asian or multiracial congregations, compared with the 8 percent of black and white clergy members who minister outside their racial group, according to the Congregations Project.

Park said of Asian ministers who serve white congregations: "We feel this is our special call. This is our choice and our response to God."

Park, who served two predominantly white churches in the 1990s, said acceptance from the parishioners came slowly. Their biggest complaints were about her heavy accent and sometimes hesitant English. Her reaction was to not be offended and to provide transcripts with her sermon.

Eventually, some members praised her, saying: "Wow. You have a different accent, and it makes me listen more carefully. It helps me focus," Park recalled.

Park said that churches need to talk more openly about why integration is theologically necessary and that support from bishops and lay leaders is crucial.

The Rev. William C. Teng, moderator of the National Capital Presbytery, said he thinks more congregations are willing to try cross-racial appointments. Three years ago , Teng, a Chinese American, became the first nonwhite pastor at Heritage Presbyterian Church, a nearly all-white congregation in Fairfax County's Alexandria area.

The 250-member church has parishioners who work in international business and the military and are used to being with people of diverse backgrounds, Teng said. These days, "most people are much more mindful that they need to be more inclusive," he said.

But some academic experts say the biggest danger in cross-racial appointments is that they will fail so badly that a backlash against diversity may result. Many appointments have not been successful. At United Methodist forums on race, pastors have expressed loneliness and frustration.

The Rev. Dellyne "Dell" Hinton, an African American pastor who has spent the past seven years in predominantly white churches, compares the work to being a missionary. Hinton said that at a church in Harford County, Md., a parishioner who phoned to request a clergy visit used a racial slur.

Hinton said there were some successes. She and the parishioners learned about each others' different worship styles -- she learned to keep her sermons under 20 minutes; they responded to her preaching with more body movement and expression.

Still, the two churches that she has served as associate pastor have remained largely white. She said she is the only person of color most of her parishioners know. "This has been a long and difficult journey, and I'm tired," said Hinton, an associate pastor at Catonsville United Methodist Church.

At Epworth church in Gaithersburg, where the appointment of Green appears to have led to a more open and multicultural congregation, parishioners are starting to wonder whether the changes will survive when he eventually moves to another church. Terry Utterback, a district lay leader who has attended Epworth for 25 years, said that the changes in the church have been dramatic but that more work needs to be done. Participation in most social activities and committees is still overwhelmingly white.

Attendance at the worship service has gone from about 95 percent white to about 70 percent white. Many of the new members who are Indian, African and African American decided to come back for a second look after seeing a minority pastor.

"It's not something that happened overnight," Utterback said. "We are so pleased with the way it is now that we don't want it to go back to the way it was. To us that's not acceptable. But we'll just have to wait and see."

On a recent Sunday, Green baptized four young children. At the end of the service, the children's relatives surrounded them, snapping pictures. Green, the only nonwhite on the stage, excused himself and ran to a back room.

He grabbed his camera so he could take his own photos of the moment. They were his family, too.