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.”

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.

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.