Today?
“It is 8% — nowhere close to the 20% goal that we set out to reach,” the Rev. Rhashell Hunter, director of Racial Ethnic and Women’s Ministries/Presbyterian Women for the General Assembly Council, told 100 new immigrant ministries leaders at their 2008 convocation here Sept. 12.
“We aren’t where we want to be,” Hunter told the group, “but we aren’t where we used to be either.”
As signs of progress, Hunter pointed to the 76 new immigrant ministries currently active in the PC(USA), up from just nine in 2001. And since that goal was established 12 years ago, the PC(USA) has ordained its first two women immigrant pastors — Jemimah Ngatia, a Kenyan, in 2006 and Eliane Menezes, a Brazilian, in 2007. The denomination has also commissioned its first immigrant woman lay pastor, Charity Kamau, also a Kenyan.
“But we need more, many more,” Hunter said.
With new immigrants coming to the U.S. daily, “the challenge for the church has been one of welcome. How do we welcome the stranger?” Hunter asked. And the question is far more than one of welcoming strangers, she hastily added. “How do we welcome, NOT the stranger, but our brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ who come to us from different shores?”
The church has not always been sufficiently welcoming, Hunter acknowledged. “I am sorry and repent for the times when you were not welcomed. I am sorry and repent for the times when we did not listen closely enough to you. I am sorry and repent for the times when we did not respond sufficiently to you,” she said.
The PC(USA), she said, has elevated new immigrant ministries as a priority. “This consultation, facilitated through the office of my colleague Angel Suarez Valera in the office of New Immigrant Group Ministries in the U.S.A., is but one sign.
“In the Racial Ethnic and Women’s Ministries/Presbyterian Women ministry area, we are blessed to see a vision of Pentecost every day.” She continued, “we have GAC staff in the areas of Asian, African American or Black, Hispanic or Latino-Latina, Korean, Asian, Middle Eastern, Native American, and new immigrant ministries.”
In 1998 the General Assembly adopted a strategy to reach the 20 percent goal and supplemental strategies for various racial ethnic groups have been adopted in the years since.
This year, Hunter said, the Assembly adopted a new comprehensive church growth emphasis, “Grow Christ’s Church Deep and Wide,” that includes an effort to grow the PC(USA) in diversity. Other elements of the four-pronged emphasis — to grow the church in evangelism, discipleship and servanthood — are equally important, Hunter said, but the emphasis on diversity is particularly energizing for those involved in new immigrant ministry.
“Tell your congregations, your presbyteries, your synods!” Hunter exhorted the group. “This renewed commitment to diversity combined with the growth of our new immigrant congregations, Bible study groups and fellowships is an opportunity,” she said.
“We in the Racial Ethnic and Women’s Ministries Area welcome this emphasis with enthusiasm, but we cannot do it alone,” she continued. “The GAC can’t. We need partners. We need presbyteries and synods to get the vision — a vision of Pentecost today and every day, a community built by God and bound together by our love in Christ Jesus.”
Hunter thanked the group “for the challenges you put before us and the model of grace you offer to us” despite “the tradition in this country of division caused by race.” She noted that African immigrants to the U.S. are frequently treated better than Africans who were born in this country.
“Our woundedness is a product of discrimination and lack of understanding and many African Americans are struggling,” Hunter said, “but I know there are folk who want to talk earnestly about how to solve these problems. We need to put them together, as we are here, to figure out how to talk to each other and be in ministry together.”
Solving these problems and growing the church will take non-traditional approaches, Hunter said. “We’re going to have to build coalitions — between churches and with other non-profits and community organizations.”
