May 9, 2003
by Evan Silverstein

SEATTLE, WA - Unlike most Indonesians, 36-year-old Musiko Ing Budi was raised in a Christian household.

The son of Muslim parents who converted to Christianity before getting married, Budi attended seminary and became an ordained minister in a Presbyterian and Reformed denomination in his homeland.

Budi, who emigrated to the United States two years ago, now leads an Indonesian-language service at First Presbyterian Church in Colton, CA.

Before joining the staff of the church near San Bernardino, Musiko had been leading an Indonesian fellowship in the area. Last year his growing flock started searching for permanent quarters for worship so that they would not have to continue meeting in members' homes.

The search ended last October at the predominately white 70-member First church, which had been planning to broaden its outreach to the Hispanic community in Colton, whose population of 48,000 is about 60 percent Latin American.

But the church's serendipitous encounter with the Indonesian worshipers brought about a change of plans.

The influx of Indonesians has rejuvenated the First church congregation and expanded its multicultural boundaries, which already included 15 members of Hispanic descent.

Church leaders rose to the challenge of ministering to an increasingly diverse but more vital congregation.

"We were born from a multicultural church since the day of Pentecost," Budi said during a recent interview, "so I think it's our call for the PC(USA) to be a multicultural church."

Budi and about 270 other Presbyterians from around the nation - including people of other Asian, Hispanic, African and Middle Eastern heritage - gathered here recently for the PC(USA)'s fourth annual Multicultural Conference.

The four-day symposium, which started on April 24, brought together members and pastors of multicultural churches, representatives of middle governing bodies and others interested in ministering to a diverse membership.

The participants shared a vision of a church enriched by worshipers from a broad spectrum of races and cultures.

"Yes, it's excellent," Budi of the conference. "For myself, it gives me a kind of big picture of how to do multicultural ministry. What we are doing in Colton is, we want to blend together to integrate together and serve the Lord together, hand in hand."

Since the Asian group started worshipping at First church, average attendance for the regular Sunday service there has nearly doubled, from 25 participants to about 40, many of them previous members who hadn't been attending regularly.

About 25 members of Indonesian descent have become active members, including three who are elders and serve on the church session. The new members prompted Budi to launch the Indonesian service, which attracts nearly 40 worshipers on a typical Sunday evening.

"The influx of people and energy and commitment to the Lord certainly has energized the entire congregation," said the Rev. Carolyn A. Fritsch, First Presbyterian's pastor, who attended the conference with Budi. "I believe the multicultural church is the cutting edge of this denomination. And that it will bring us back to the reality of the power of God in the life of this church."

The symposium, whose theme was Becoming the Body of Christ: Breaking Barriers and Building Communities, was sponsored by the ERCD, part of the Evangelism and Church Development Program Area of the National Ministries Division (NMD).

The theme reflects the hope of PC(USA) leaders and conference organizers that they may one day belong to a truly multicultural, multilingual and multigenerational denomination.

The PC(USA) is more than 90 percent white now, but many at the conference believe that will change.

"As I look out at you, at all of you, I see people who are enthusiastic," said the Rev. Curtis A. Kearns Jr., the NMD director and a conference speaker. "People who are committed and hopeful about building up the body of Christ. About building it up as a multicultural, as a multiracial, as a multinational community that believes in the power of God to overcome barriers - physical barriers, emotional barriers, social barriers."

The conference featured networking, workshops, greetings from church leaders, speeches lifting up inclusiveness, and discussions of racial-ethnic and immigrant church growth.

There was matzo and cornbread at the Communion table. Colorful African gowns and turbans from the Middle East added color and spice to conference events. There were Latino blessings and Native American-style worship.

"I would say multiculturalism creates more credibility to the power of the gospel, in our psyche, in our lives, because the gospel becomes alive," the Rev. Fahed Abu-Akel, moderator of the 214th General Assembly of the PC(USA), said during a conference address. "Why? Because the power of the gospel changes the lives of every person, and when they come into that community of believers they are going to grow spiritually."

To achieve true multiculturalism, Presbyterians must be willing to make themselves "humble" and "vulnerable" to "help us embrace one another and help us enter into a deeper level of communion," said the Rev. Young Lee Hertig, a Presbyterian minister of Korean descent who writes about multiculturalism.

"As we are talking about the body of Christ, it's community, not uniformity," said Hertig, who delivered the opening-night keynote address in place of the Rev. Robert N. Burkins Sr., a New Jersey pastor who could not attend because of illness.

With new waves of immigration, the United States is steadily "browning" and moving toward the point where the majority of the population will be composed of so-called minorities.

With the shifting demographics, PC(USA) congregations are sensing a call to become more inclusive. Evangelism officials believe the denomination now has about 350 multicultural congregations - defined as those that incorporate the cultural traditions of more than one ethnic or racial group. Several hundred other churches in the denomination are attuned to a single ethnic or racial culture.

Where an immigrant congregation cannot be developed, existing congregations often develop specialized ministries to immigrant communities, encourage worshiping "fellowships," and gradually incorporate multicultural customs and perspectives into worship.

"The landscape has changed in our cities and urban areas, as well as our rural areas," the Rev. Antonio (Tony) Aja, the PC(USA)'s former associate for immigrant groups in the United States, said in a sermon titled Who's Rebuilding the Church?

Aja said the Bible teaches inclusiveness and justice, regardless of race, culture, ethnicity, lifestyle or social status, and that Christians need to lead society in accepting and affirming, not just tolerating, people different from themselves.

"We have a mandate to rebuild our church," said the Cuban-born Aja, now associate director of People in Mutual Mission in the Worldwide Ministries Division. "A mandate to develop communities of faith by breaking down barriers. ... So, given those dynamics, who is going to help us break the barriers and build communities in the Presbyterian Church (USA)?"

The 1996 General Assembly (GA) set a goal of increasing racial-ethnic membership in the PC(USA) to 10 percent by 2005 and to 20 percent by 2010. Racial-ethnic membership now stands at about 7 percent.

The 1999 GA endorsed a new Church Growth Strategy that created a process intended to make the church's racial-ethnic communities vital parts of the denomination. It also declared the United States a key mission field.

Conference presenters warned, however, that building a "kingdom" representative of God's vision for an inclusive church will be a daunting task for an overwhelmingly white church.

The Rev. Raafat Girgis, associate for ERCD, said multicultural ministry isn't easy. "With so many different cultures and backgrounds it is very hard," he said. "It is sometimes messy. But so was the cross."

The Rev. Karen Hernandez-Granzen, of Trenton, NJ, told the conference that building a church the embodied the diversity and inclusiveness of God's kingdom "takes a long time, and patience."

One barrier to multicultural ministry is that some in the PC(USA) don't like the idea of a more colorful church, Kearns said.

"I know there are people in the church, close to the feet of Jesus, who are skeptics," he told the conference participants. "They lack the enthusiasm that you possess. They don't have the commitment that you show. They don't have the optimism or hope that you have learned from first-hand experience. There are skeptics ... anxious to find fault with what you're trying to do."

PCUSA News Service