Valley Churches Putting Faith in Diversity

Black gospel music thundered from a boombox perched atop a chair in a makeshift sanctuary that was once an elementary school auditorium.

A Vietnamese woman rocked to the driving drumbeat and soulful piano riffs. A white man raised his hands above his head in unabashed joy. A white woman closed her eyes and bobbed her head in time with the music. And an African American woman tilted her head back and rhythmically tapped her feet on the tile floor.

With power and conviction, the gospel choir of the West Valley Christian Church belted out songs of praise at its weekly rehearsal with an abandon rivaling the Sunday morning worship services of black churches. The choir is not only a blend of voices, but a blend of people who have sufficiently set aside racial, cultural and socioeconomic stereotypes to share a common faith.

While most churches are predominated by a single race, some congregations, such as West Valley Christian, are trying to break down barriers that have kept Christians of different backgrounds from worshiping together for generations.

“If you don’t put diversity on center stage, it makes a [negative] statement about your church,” said the Rev. Glenn Kirby, founding pastor of West Valley Christian, an independent Christian church. “You have to give equal opportunity to all ethnic groups, then people will feel more comfortable and be inclined to attend.”

Valley churches are diversifying at a time when national religious organizations are publicly acknowledging their complicity in the perpetuation of systematic racism.

The Southern Baptist Convention, born of the North-South split over slavery in 1845, overwhelmingly passed a resolution in June 1995 apologizing for its “historic acts of evil, such as slavery, from which we continue to reap a bitter harvest.”

“We apologize to all African Americans for condoning and/or perpetuating individual and systematic racism in our lifetime,” the resolution stated. “We genuinely repent of racism of which we have been guilty, whether consciously or unconsciously.”

Christian Coalition Executive Director Ralph Reed called for a day of national racial reconciliation in 1996, and pledged that his politically conservative organization would raise $1 million to help rebuild African American churches damaged in a series of arson fires last year throughout the South. The coalition also launched its Samaritan Project, an attempt to atone for white evangelicals who stood on the sidelines during the civil rights movement, and to help solve problems plaguing inner-city America.

And Pope John Paul II demanded in a papal policy statement in 1994 that the Roman Catholic Church publicly repent for its failure to speak strongly against slavery in the Americas as well as Europe’s Holocaust.

The theme of racial reconciliation also was sounded recently at a Promise Keepers rally at the Los Angeles Coliseum, where about 44,000 professing Christian men promised, among other pledges, to promote racial reconciliation by establishing friendships with men of other races.

Living out the principle of racial reconciliation is what led Pete Van, an African American minister, to accept a staff position as singles pastor at Shepherd of the Hills Church in Porter Ranch.

“People are giving lip service to racial reconciliation,” he said. “I decided to take the lead in this area--even if it meant working with men and women who are not like myself--and not allow my blackness to be the issue, but rather my relationship with Jesus Christ.”

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Like West Valley Christian, Shepherd of the Hills is an increasingly diverse congregation that intentionally places minorities in positions of leadership during its worship services.

On Sunday mornings, people from an array of ethnic backgrounds stream into the sanctuary to sing songs led by a racially mixed choir, watch Van baptize new converts, hear a white pastor preach and receive Holy Communion from a cadre of white, black, Asian and Latino ushers.

“Jesus’ final words to his disciples was to go and reach people of different backgrounds,” said Dudley C. Rutherford, the church’s senior pastor. “This is not an option; it’s what we are supposed to be doing.”

Bridging the communications gap between English-speaking congregants and recent immigrants with limited English skills is a big hurdle many churches must clear--especially in the East Valley, where black churches have begun reaching out to Latino neighbors, often through social service programs.

The Rev. Andrae Crouch, a Grammy award-winning gospel singer and pastor of Christ Memorial Church of God in Christ, discovered that a simple act of kindness can communicate volumes--despite language differences--and serve as an entree into a community in need.

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On a sizzling summer afternoon two years ago, Crouch invited a group of mostly Latino people into the Pacoima church’s air-conditioned sanctuary while they waited for the church to begin its food distribution program.

“Mi iglesia, es su iglesia. Sus problemas, son mis problemas. Yo soy su pastor,” Crouch told them in halting Spanish.

Enough Latinos began visiting the church in response that today the church offers a weekly Spanish-language worship service.

On Thursday nights, about 60 Latino men, women and children gather at Centro Cristiano Memorial de Cristo, a chapel next to Christ Memorial, to study the Bible, pray and share what God has done in their lives, presiding pastor Daniel Paredes Jr. said. Eventually, Parades said, he would like to see black and Latino believers worshiping together as one congregation in Christ Memorial’s main sanctuary.

Regina Gladney, a native of Sao Paulo, Brazil, is a congregant who has found a spiritual home at the African American church. Divorced from her African American husband and struggling emotionally, she sought out Christ Memorial after visiting once with a friend and feeling comfortable there.

“When God put me in this church he didn’t see my color--he put me here to save me,” she said. “God is proving that he is the God of love and forgiveness and that he’s here for all races.

“When I first heard gospel music, it was amazing,” said Gladney, who was raised Catholic. “How come in my country we didn’t sing this way for God?”

Overcoming the language barrier--through the services of a bilingual interpreter--may prove easier than spanning the cultural divide, Parades said, especially when it comes to worship styles such as clothing.

“At Christ Memorial, everyone gets really dressed up on Sunday morning,” Parades observed. “But most of the Latino people are poor and don’t have the apparel,” which may make them uncomfortable about attending church.

Parades said he hopes the newfound alliance will improve race relations between Latinos and blacks. “If they have a true relationship with Jesus, then they will become more open and accepting of other people.”

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As churches become more multicultural, they also must find a musical style that embraces worshipers from vastly different backgrounds. Indeed, music often serves as a unifying force that allows members to express their faith, without feeling self-conscious.

For generations, Christ Memorial was deeply rooted in the African American worship experience. And, like many black churches, it rocked with gospel music’s driving rhythms and lyrics, praising God’s transforming power in the lives of believers.

As the church began to attract more Latino, Asian, black and Middle-Eastern members, however, worship leaders added more praise songs--the contemplative numbers that focus on devotees’ belief in God’s supremacy.

“Praise and worship music tends to blend denominations together because its music and words help people to focus on Jesus,” Crouch said. “You see a crumbling down of self-centered desires and a melting down of self-will.”

Still, some African American Christians may be less willing to join a church where black gospel music is not part of the worship service.

“In some ways, blacks are giving up a central part of their culture to worship in a more Anglo congregation,” acknowledged Kirby of West Valley Christian.

Juanita Potts, an African American member at West Valley, faced that dilemma five years ago after the 1992 riots, when she no longer felt safe driving from her home in West Hills to her black church in Watts.

“In coming to West Valley, initially, I thought I was going to have to give up the music,” she said. “But then I thought, ‘Why do I have to miss it? Why not bring it here?’ ”

Potts began by occasionally singing solos. “People would come up to me afterward and tell me how much they loved the music and that they wanted more,” she recalled. With Kirby’s blessing, she invited gospel artists and eventually started the gospel choir.

“It’s been a positive change,” said longtime member Stephen Moss, a retired FBI agent who has become a gospel choir member. “Some people still like the hymns, but for the majority of people, they like the direction we’re going in.”

Before churches can begin to break down music and language barriers, however, they must first commit to the notion that God does not place one group above another, said Laurence C. Keene, senior minister of Church of the Valley, a multicultural Christian church with campuses in Studio City and Van Nuys.

Over the past 15 years, the church has become more diverse, Keene said, by inviting minorities to worship services, making them feel welcome once they arrive and by reaching out to black and Latino gang members in Van Nuys. “Once churches cross the color line, they will discover a vitality and excitement that they never knew before,” he said. “In that moment, they become a complete body because they are coming back to what God wanted them to be: a church without division.”