Differences Aside: At Integrated O.C. Church, Mixed Is a Blessing

The part-time preacher left. The collection plate held less money each week. Membership, once a robust 200 congregants, dwindled to fewer than 50.

The Church of Christ of Cypress, made up mostly of white senior citizens, was dying.

Sixteen miles away in a small Santa Ana building, the Westside Church of Christ--filled with young African American families--was very much alive.

The booming congregation needed bigger quarters to house the worshipers, their Sunday school, social functions and Bible studies.

And so the two needy parishes--one white, one black--did something nearly a year ago that’s unimaginable in most of the Christian church world: They integrated.

“What’s really amazing is that it’s even noteworthy,” Minister Graylon Freeman said. “We should be one in Christ.”

But that’s been Christianity’s longtime paradox. Sunday morning is still the most segregated time in America, nearly a half-century after Martin Luther King Jr. first made the observation.

Academics estimate that only 2% of America’s churches have successfully developed multicultural congregations. A mixed church is defined as having the congregation’s minority make up at least 20% of the membership.

The Cypress church hopes to become a permanent member of that elite multicultural club, which in Southern California includes Solid Rock Christian Center in Ventura, Mosaic Church in East Los Angeles and St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Long Beach.

Despite those successes, Southern California churches largely have failed to attract integrated congregations.

“Why do churches spend $40,000 to go to Africa but they won’t walk across the street to invite an African American to their church?” asked Ken Hutcherson, whose diverse Antioch Bible Church in Redmond, Wash., has attracted 3,500 members and spawned six daughter churches in 14 years.

Ten months into the experiment in Cypress, the church has maintained the original diversity numbers it inherited from the merger. Of the 130 in its congregation, about 70% are African American, 20% white and 10% Latino.

An affirming byproduct are the post-Sunday friendships that have formed between some white and black members, with couples getting together for frequent dinners and nights out. The relationships have been formed along generational, not racial, lines.

“We’ve become very close friends,” said Chuck Hays, a longtime member of the Cypress church who, along with his wife, Linda, has befriended a handful of black couples of similar age. “I know good and well that if we can’t get along with people down here, we’re not going to be able to get along with people in heaven.”

Freeman hopes to be part of a growing but still tiny number of pastors who have been able to put racially and economically diverse people into their pews.

“You’re getting more and more pastors, seminarians and priests who are embarrassed that churches are segregated,” said Michael Emerson, a Rice University professor and author of “Divided by Faith.”

Emerson said the Catholic Church has had better success at diversity than other denominations because its parishes draw from the surrounding neighborhood. Still, many churches offer separate worship services in different languages, creating segregated congregations within the same church.

The new breed of diversity-inspired clergy believe they’ve been called to add color to today’s monochromatic churches.

“If the leader doesn’t have a passion or vision in his heart [for diversity], that’s really not going to cut it,” said David Anderson, pastor at Bridgeway Community Church in Maryland and founder of BridgeLeader Network, a nonprofit group that consults with churches and corporations on issues of diversity. “Then you really don’t want your culture to change. You want to be a black church with some white people. Or a white church with some black people.”

Doug Olson decided that he needed to inject diversity into his small, all-white church in Steilacoom, Wash., just outside Tacoma. Within months of that announcement, half of Olson’s church of 80 had left, including most of the leaders, the entire worship team and “a huge chunk of the finances.”

A troubled Olson called Hutcherson, who also founded the Antioch Global Network to help churches struggling with diversity.

“Hutch just laughed,” Olson recalled. “And he said, ‘What did you expect?’ ”

But over the past year, Olson has rebuilt the worship team into a multiethnic band. He meets regularly with a group of black residents in the community, asking for ways to make his church “less white.” And the congregation’s numbers have climbed back to 70, though nonwhite membership is at just 15%.

Olson said his church will hit a “financial wall” this summer and will ask for financial help from Antioch.

Differences Over Style Rather Than Race

Still, Olson has no plans to back off his vision. “I’m still excited about it,” he said.

At Cypress, some members from both congregations left in the wake of the merger. Church elder Harold Terrell, who is black, said both sides had members who would rather leave than sit in a pew with someone of another color.

“We knew there was going to be some fallout on both sides,” Terrell said. “Some people didn’t think we could have a harmonious merger. But we did it.”

The struggling white congregation--with no minister or music director and few members--had to adapt to the new culture brought by the 100 new members from Santa Ana. Services sometimes run nearly three hours now, congregants shout “Amen!” and “Preach it!” during the sermon, and the potluck meals now have a Southern culinary flair.

“In all honesty, Westside didn’t have to compromise very much at all,” said Ken Rogers, who came from the Santa Ana church. “The Cypress congregation didn’t have any established leadership, so they took our leadership and what naturally flows from that.”

Glenn Davis, a member of the Cypress church for years, said he thought the members who departed had disliked the new worship and preaching styles.

“Some people went away, but it had more to do with style than a racial thing,” Davis said. “We’re determined to make it work. We feel Satan doesn’t want it to work.”

Churches of two different cultures, pushed together by mutual need, have difficulty staying integrated, according to Brad Smith, president of the Leadership Network, an organization that describes itself as “advance scouts for the emerging church.”

“The larger one usually takes over the smaller one in terms of the culture,” Smith said.

But the Cypress church also has some built-in advantages. The first is a gifted preacher whose sermons take on a mesmerizing fire-and-brimstone quality that can leap racial divides. Freeman has toned down his trademark preaching a bit so the more reserved white congregants can get used to it.

“That’s been very difficult for me to do,” Freeman said. “People of the old church ask what’s wrong with me. Others say I’m still too much.”

Has Freeman heard an “Amen!” come from one of his white members?

He smiled: “Not yet.”

His church also has a head start on one of the trickiest obstacles to diversity: music.

“Music is probably the best communicator of culture,” Anderson said.

Successful multicultural churches put on what amounts to an eclectic concert each week, designed to give everyone a little taste of something familiar.

But the conservative Church of Christ worships without any musical accompaniment--as first century Christians did. The result is that both congregations are familiar with singing standard hymns a cappella, though the songs have taken on a distinct gospel tone since the merger.

The Cypress church has just two elders, both of whom are black. Chuck Hays, who is white, will become an elder in the fall.

There are other mixed congregations in the region to serve as models. Mosaic Church in Los Angeles counts among its 1,300 weekly worshipers an even split of Latinos, Asians and whites, and a socioeconomic mix that includes two billionaires along with the working poor.

Pastor Gerardo Marti said a diverse staff and appealing music have helped. The church also sends missionaries throughout the world.

“We are always encountering people who are different,” Marti said. “You can’t step through our doors without facing your prejudices.”

In Ventura, Lonnie McCowan started the Solid Rock Christian Center six years ago. It has grown into a congregation of 1,200 black, Latino and white members. The senior pastor also recruited multicultural leadership and offered a variety of quality worship music.

“No matter what people say and how much they love the Lord, cultures make a difference on how they worship,” McCowan said. “We make sure we offer a smorgasbord, so everyone can feel at home.”

American churches haven’t always been segregated. Before the Civil War, blacks and whites, slaves and owners, attended the same church, though they sat in different sections. Still, they sang the same hymns and heard the same sermons.

After the war, blacks quickly became frustrated after being denied leadership positions in churches. Within a few years, they started their own denominations.

“Those churches became bastions and carriers of the black culture and practice, including music, black-owned businesses, political activity,” Emerson said.

And so the churches diverged and matured along separate paths.

Emerson and George Yancey, a University of North Texas sociology professor, are studying today’s multicultural churches. Their goal is to better understand cross-cultural relationships in America, which flourish best in the church setting.

Freeman said God’s word ultimately will prove to be his church’s saving grace. “People will see our true passion for the teachings of Scripture,” he said. “They’ll look past the idea that it’s coming from a black messenger. That’s our hope.”