Friendships Form as Black and White Churches Integrate

The part-time preacher left. The collection plate held less money each week. Membership, once a robust 200 congregants, dwindled to less 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 better house the worshipers, its Sunday school, social functions and Bible studies.

So the two congregations--one white, one black--did something that’s unimaginable in most of the Christian church world.

They integrated.

Academics estimate that only 2% of America’s churches have successfully developed multicultural congregations, defined as having a minority population that makes up at least 20% of the membership.

Ten months into the experiment, the now-majority-black Cypress church hopes to become a permanent member of that elite multicultural club. There are a few other examples in Southern California, including Solid Rock Christian Center in Ventura, Urban Mosaic Church in East Los Angeles and St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Long Beach.

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

An affirming byproduct is the post-Sunday friendships 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 has befriended, along with his wife, Linda, 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.”

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

Freeman hopes to be part of a growing but still tiny number of pastors who have put both 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.”

Some members from both congregations left when the Santa Ana congregants moved to Cypress. 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, music director or many members--had to adapt to the new culture brought into the church building 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 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.”

Integration Remains Difficult to Maintain

Churches of two different cultures, pushed together by mutual need, have difficulty staying integrated, said Brad Smith, president of the Leadership Network, a networking 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.

The Cypress church has some built-in advantages. The first is Freeman, 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 so the more reserved white congregants can get used to it.

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

Has Freeman heard an “Amen!” 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.

Many successful multicultural churches put on what amounts to an eclectic concert each week, designed to give everyone a little taste of something familiar. The conservative Church of Christ worships without any musical accompaniment--as 1st century Christians did. 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 Hayes, who is white, will become an elder in the fall.

The church’s latest brochure shows photos of both black and white members throughout. To attract more Latinos, Asians and whites from the neighborhood, it has organized free health fairs, financial seminars and computer workshops.

There are some signs of success: Donations have increased 25% since last summer.

There are other mixed congregations in the region to serve as models.

The Mosaic Church 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.

In Ventura, Lonnie McCowan started the Solid Rock Christian Center six years ago. It has grown into a congregation of 1,200 with a strong mix of black, Latino and white members.

The senior pastor also recruited multicultural leadership and offered a wide variety of 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 soon became frustrated after being denied leadership positions in the church. 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 as institutions that are “different than integrated schools or other institutions,” Yancey said. “People develop real friendships. It may provide some solutions to the problems in race relations.”

Freeman envisions a church where “people will see our true passion for the teachings of Scripture. They’ll look pass the idea that it’s coming from a black messenger. That’s our hope.”