Minority Pastors Preach Diversity

Although the results of such appointments have been mixed, academic experts say the effort at least helps start a dialogue on race and culture.

"Certainly the more nonwhite pastors, the greater the interest in multiracial churches," said Michael Emerson, a Rice University sociologist who directed the Congregations Project, the 2002 national study of race and churches funded by the Lilly Endowment. "This is an issue they're going to want to talk about."

For some Asian American pastors -- who make up the fastest-growing ethnic group in seminaries -- serving a non-Asian church has been a necessity rather than a choice.

Park, a Korean immigrant, explained that many Asian immigrant churches are so traditional that they prefer to have older men as clergy. Others require language skills that many second-generation Asian Americans don't have. As a result, more than half of the Asian clergy members in the United States serve in non-Asian or multiracial congregations, compared with the 8 percent of black and white clergy members who minister outside their racial group, according to the Congregations Project.

Park said of Asian ministers who serve white congregations: "We feel this is our special call. This is our choice and our response to God."

Park, who served two predominantly white churches in the 1990s, said acceptance from the parishioners came slowly. Their biggest complaints were about her heavy accent and sometimes hesitant English. Her reaction was to not be offended and to provide transcripts with her sermon.

Eventually, some members praised her, saying: "Wow. You have a different accent, and it makes me listen more carefully. It helps me focus," Park recalled.

Park said that churches need to talk more openly about why integration is theologically necessary and that support from bishops and lay leaders is crucial.

The Rev. William C. Teng, moderator of the National Capital Presbytery, said he thinks more congregations are willing to try cross-racial appointments. Three years ago , Teng, a Chinese American, became the first nonwhite pastor at Heritage Presbyterian Church, a nearly all-white congregation in Fairfax County's Alexandria area.

The 250-member church has parishioners who work in international business and the military and are used to being with people of diverse backgrounds, Teng said. These days, "most people are much more mindful that they need to be more inclusive," he said.

But some academic experts say the biggest danger in cross-racial appointments is that they will fail so badly that a backlash against diversity may result. Many appointments have not been successful. At United Methodist forums on race, pastors have expressed loneliness and frustration.

The Rev. Dellyne "Dell" Hinton, an African American pastor who has spent the past seven years in predominantly white churches, compares the work to being a missionary. At a church in Harford County, Md., a parishioner who phoned to request a clergy visit used a racial slur, Hinton said.

Hinton said there were some successes. She and the parishioners learned about each others' different worship styles -- she learned to keep her sermons under 20 minutes; they responded to her preaching with more body movement and expression.

Still, the two churches that she has served as associate pastor have remained largely white. She said she is the only person of color most of her parishioners know. "This has been a long and difficult journey, and I'm tired," said Hinton, an associate pastor at Catonsville United Methodist Church.

At Epworth church in Gaithersburg, where the appointment of Green appears to have led to a more open and multicultural congregation, parishioners are starting to wonder whether the changes will survive when he eventually moves to another church. Terry Utterback, a district lay leader who has attended Epworth for 25 years, said that the changes in the church have been dramatic but that more work needs to be done. Participation in most social activities and committees is still overwhelmingly white.

Attendance at the worship service has gone from about 95 percent white to about 70 percent white. Many of the new members who are Indian, African and African American decided to come back for a second look after seeing a minority pastor.

"It's not something that happened overnight," Utterback said. "We are so pleased with the way it is now that we don't want it to go back to the way it was. To us that's not acceptable. But we'll just have to wait and see."

On a recent Sunday, Green baptized four young children. At the end of the service, the children's relatives surrounded them, snapping pictures. Green, the only nonwhite on the stage, excused himself and ran to a back room.

He grabbed his camera so he could take his own photos of the moment. They were his family, too.