‘I’m all for it. . . . The church is more vital, more alive now.’--Ruth Adame : church member : Church Enriched by Its Ethnic Diversity

The Rev. Delwin Thigpen was clearly enjoying all the hustle and bustle.

After Sunday service, as he strolled over to the redwood tree where members of his English-speaking congregation were chatting over coffee and cookies, the tall, friendly minister stopped to greet scores of Chinese church members as they dashed off to the sanctuary for the Chinese-language service.

Less than 50 yards away, the smaller Korean congregation was gathering for its service in the small chapel vacated moments earlier by a group of Filipino churchgoers.

The Alhambra First United Methodist Church has not always been so international. And it hasn’t had such a large membership in years. Seven years ago, when Thigpen became pastor, church members were almost all white and the church was losing members at an alarming rate.

Now, like several other churches in the San Gabriel Valley, the Alhambra church has opened its doors to other ethnic groups, both to increase membership and to fulfill part of its Christian mission.

Church More Vital

“I’m all for it, because I see it as a way for our church to grow,” said church member Ruth Adame. “The church is more vital, more alive now.”

Like many older neighborhood churches in the nation, the 108-year-old Alhambra church was gradually losing members as children in the community grew up and moved away. Between 1973 and 1983, the church’s membership plummeted 46%, from 872 to 469. When Thigpen came to the church, more than two-thirds of the congregation was 70 or older.

“The handwriting was on the wall for the future of the church,” he said.

“One of the first things I did was to organize a long-range planning committee,” Thigpen said. “We began to look into things that we needed to do.”

One of the church’s earliest actions was to merge with the Marengo United Methodist Church, which had fallen on even harder times, attracting only about 35 people each Sunday in its last days. But the church’s most dramatic move was its decision to develop multiple congregations by reaching out to the rapidly growing ethnic community.

The strategy is one used by many churches to arrest declining memberships, and it is one that has proved successful for the United Methodists. In 1973, the United Methodist Church had more than 10 million members in the United States, but within 10 years, that number had dropped by a million, said the Rev. George Walters, secretary of the California-Pacific Annual Conference of the Methodist Church.

“But the trend is leveling off,” Walters said.

“There is a general belief in the church that much of the growth in the United Methodists will come from the ethnic community,” said the Rev. Dr. David A. Scott Sr., superintendent for the Pasadena District of the conference.

“For the past eight years, the church has had a deep concern for the ethnic minorities of the local church,” Scott said. “That’s the priority of the 38,000-plus Methodist churches in the United States.”

Scott said the emphasis on developing minority ministries stems from the immigration of Latinos and Asians. “Many of the persons to whom we are administering are new immigrants, and there are language problems,” Scott said.

Even within an ethnic congregation, there are linguistic differences.

“We conduct the service mainly in Mandarin, but we also translate it into the Swadow dialect,” said Samuel Wu, an assistant pastor of the Chinese congregation at the Alhambra church. Cantonese translations are also available during the service through earphones, Woo said.

Cultural Ties

The church also serves as a place where new immigrants can retain ties to their native cultures.

“I need to speak Korean and see the Korean people,” said Chung Choi, a 22-year-old nurse who recently joined the Korean congregation at the Alhambra church.

“I can have fellowship with fellow Filipinos, which I guess I did miss,” Roel Cruz, who frequently attends the Alhambra church even though he is a member of a largely white church in Whittier.

Within the Pasadena District of the Methodist Conference to which the Alhambra church belongs, 10 of 55 churches have at least one ethnic congregation, often referred to as a ministry. First United Methodist churches in Monterey Park, Glendale, North Glendale, Hacienda Heights and West Covina have Korean ministries in addition to their English-language congregations. There is a Latino ministry in Glendale, a Japanese ministry in Lancaster and an East Indian ministry in La Canada-Flintridge.

Facilities Shared

Four churches in the district also share facilities with independently chartered ethnic Methodist churches. For example, the Filipino congregation that meets at the Alhambra church is a separately chartered church within the Methodist Conference.

Churches of other denominations in the San Gabriel Valley have also developed ethnic ministries. For example, Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses, St. Paul’s Lutheran Church and Trinity Church of the Nazareth in Monterey Park all have Chinese congregations that coexist with the English-language congregations.

“Most metropolitan areas would have this arrangement, because the population concentration is greater,” said Robert Rhinehart, a Los Angeles County overseer of Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

“We do it so the facilities are not overcrowded,” Rhinehart said. “It’s the same principle as the year-round schools.”

The Alhambra First United Methodist Church, with four congregations and services in as many languages, has one of the most diverse conglomerations of members under one roof. The arrangement has helped the church regain the vitality that it enjoyed more than 30 years ago when two English services on Sundays were routine.

Koreans Were First

The first ethnic congregation joined the Alhambra church more than a year ago when a group of Korean Christians met there for Bible studies, Thigpen said. The Filipino congregation, known as the Asbury Church, started renting space at the church shortly thereafter when its own building in Los Angeles was condemned because it failed to meet earthquake safety standards. The Filipino congregation has about 60 members.

The Chinese ministry, with about 150 members, was started last August.

Initial reaction to the ethnic congregations was mixed, Thigpen said. He said that people did not voice their reservations directly to him, but he would overhear comments such as “Oh, we just have to keep the church like it was.”

“I think some people just felt afraid of the new, more than anything else,” Thigpen said. “It’s just human nature,” said Adame, who has been a member of the Alhambra church for 17 years. “Changes are hard for people to accept.”

Have to Accept Change

Communities have to accept change, said Silvia Dilley, music director of the English-speaking congregation. “No matter how afraid we want to be or how sheltered we want to be, we are going to have to deal with it, and I would rather deal with it in a positive nature and learn from it,” Dilley said.

“I have found that as they have gotten to know these people from these different ethnic groups, that they are just learning to love them and to make friendships,” Thigpen said.

“I think that the coming of the ethnic groups has created a much more optimistic attitude in our church,” Thigpen said. “Our whole parking lot is filled up every Sunday morning now. It looks good.”

On a typical Sunday, the congregations juggle schedules and rooms to accommodate four services, several Sunday School classes and numerous Bible study groups at the church.

At the same time the English service is being held in the sanctuary, members of the Chinese congregation are singing hymns in the fellowship hall. And after the Filipino congregation leaves the chapel for its weekly luncheon in a second-floor meeting hall, the Korean members quietly enter the chapel for their service.

The congregations have held joint services on special occasions such as World Communion Sunday, the first Sunday in October. Occasionally, the English-speaking congregation has forsaken its usual Sunday potluck lunch to join the Chinese members at their Sunday meal.

Little Interaction

Aside from these occasional gatherings and an exchange of greetings as the members pass one another in between services, interaction has been limited.

“It’s the language that keeps us from having more integrated activities,” Adame said.

But Adame and others hope to change that.

“I’m trying to teach people English so that we can communicate more easily,” said Hazel Nutter, who has been a church member for 30 years and who is one of many volunteers who teaches English to immigrants in Alhambra.

Nutter and others are planning to devote time to a Saturday English class that the Rev. Tai Chung of the Korean ministry hopes to start for members of his congregation. These classes would also help immigrants prepare for citizenship examinations.

In addition, Adame, a past president of United Methodist Women, hopes to attract more Asian women to that organization. Positions on various church administrative committees have been left vacant so that members from the ethnic congregations can join them as soon as possible, Thigpen said.

Children Socialize

The joint arrangement gives children from the four different congregations more opportunities to socialize, Thigpen said.

“The children in all four of these groups share in the joint Sunday School,” he said.

Language is not as big a barrier for the children of the congregations as it is for their parents. In the Sunday School class, which is conducted in English only, many of the Asian children chatter away in perfect, unaccented English. The children who have been in this acountry for only a short time pick up the language quickly, their Sunday School teachers said.

“The first Sunday, they hardly responded,” said Patty Sweet, an assistant Sunday School teacher, as she pointed to some of the more recent immigrant children.

“After they’ve been to school, their English is very good,” she said.

Children Will Bring Change

“The church will change because of the children,” said the Rev. Timothy Ting, associate minister of the church. “Very soon, we will need to have bilingual services (for the Chinese congregation) because the children won’t understand (Chinese).”

Already, young people have asked for sermons in English only, Ting said. “The children who were born here, they don’t want to hear two languages during the service. They say it’s distracting.”

Methodist leaders hope that the ethnic ministries will be necessary only while immigrants are getting acculturated.

“The thinking is that come the second and third generation, the separatism that now exists as a matter of need will no longer be there and that they will be part of the general church,” district superintendent Scott said. “At this point, there’s a need for this arrangement.”