Tag Archives: hispanic

What Anglos can learn from Latinos

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One and TwoThere are lots of things that I think the Latino culture in general has to offer to the mainline “Anglo” church. Things like a relaxed attitude toward time (do we REALLY have to apologize if the service is longer than one hour and fifteen minutes?), how to greet and acknowledge people, the value of family, etc.

Two of the biggest have been thrust on Hispanics here in the States, yet are major traits that the church as a whole needs. One is the ability to separate church and country. The Hispanic community has 14 different countries which have contributed significantly to its makeup, not counting the United States. There is a greater awareness that the church is larger than any one country.

The other major thing is the awareness of being strangers and aliens in this world. Not all Hispanics are aliens, yet there is a greater sensitivity to what that lifestyle really means. Some rebel against that feeling and that reality, just as some Christians seek to blend in rather than seeking to stand out. The church needs to be called back to the fact that we are all aliens, we are all foreigners, no matter what country we’re living in.

Those are the main things I see. Want to add to the list?

Anglos and Latinos

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One and TwoI mentioned on Monday the classes that I’m preparing for the Summer Celebration at David Lipscomb University. (we had a major storm on Monday night which kind of complicated my posting anything yesterday) I mentioned addressing what Anglos and Latinos have to offer one another in a congregation.

I do plan to address the inaccuracies of those terms and the folly it is to try and see those groups as two distinct sets of people. Some thoughts:

  • Anglo is a misnomer. It is used to differentiate from Hispanics, but the term really applies to people of Anglo-Saxon descent. As used, it’s applied to Germans, Italians, etc., even though they are hardly Anglos.
  • Latino is too wide a group to deal with. It includes people of all races and a wide range of cultural backgrounds. It often encompasses indigenous peoples who have nothing Latin about them.
  • These groups are fluid. That is, there are people of Hispanic descent who are completely out of place in a typically Hispanic church and feel quite at home in a predominantly “Anglo” congregation. And there are people like me who often feel more at home in a Hispanic group than one where most people look and sound like me.

Given those limitations, I still think the discussion has merit. Over the next couple of posts, I’ll spell out some of my ideas about what each of these nebulous groups has to offer to the other.

Bilingual church vs. bilingual ministry

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futureWhat’s the difference between a bilingual church and a church with a bilingual ministry? Basically it comes down to integration. Many churches have a bilingual ministry that is one of many ministries that they do; a bilingual church has a bilingual ministry that is part of every ministry they do. Benevolence, missions, youth… every aspect of the church includes the minority culture members (Latinos, in the scenarios that I’ve been discussing).

When a church decides to become bilingual, they plan for the day when every ministry in their church will be bilingual. It’s easy to say, “Hispanics are less than 10% of this church; we’ll wait until we have more Hispanic members.” Problem is, it’s hard to get more Hispanic members when they’re being treated as a small subset within a larger whole. The church needs to think and plan as if the ethnic mix were 50-50. That doesn’t mean that all meetings have to be held in Spanish or that every committee must include a Hispanic. What it means is that every group, committee, ministry within the church has to be thinking about how it will operate when the church is fully bilingual. You can’t wait until you get there to lay the groundwork.

Too often congregations have the Hispanic group meet in the basement “until they get more members.” Or they wait to make announcements available in Spanish or print bulletins in Spanish “when the demand is greater.” As long as Latinos are made to feel a secondary group within the congregation, they will be a secondary group within the congregation.

It’s a lot like the old “act as if” technique I learned in school, where you act the way you want to be, not the way you are. To be happier, you act happier. To come to like someone more, you treat them as if you liked them. Etc. To become a bilingual congregation, churches need to act like bilingual congregations.

First steps toward becoming a bilingual congregation

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plansSo how would a non-Hispanic church move toward becoming bilingual? Some would argue that the first step is to hire someone from Latin America, set aside an unused room in the building and let them go to work. I’m not convinced.

The first step, I think, is for the congregation to make a conscious decision that they are willing to do what it takes to mix different languages and cultures. Some congregations, to be honest, aren’t willing to make that sacrifice. I think that many, however, are willing to do some things now to prepare for the future.

Next, the members need to become more aware of their Hispanic neighbors. Meet them, look for opportunities to form relationships, become aware of the make up of the Hispanic community where they live. Are they mainly immigrants? Is there a large concentration from a certain country? (We used to be able to assume they were mainly Mexicans here in Texas; that’s not always true today) Are you dealing with a Hispanic community mainly composed of long-term residents or have most of them moved to your area recently?

These questions help the congregation know if the outreach will be done primarily in English or in Spanish, if the community needs ESL classes and GED classes and citizenship courses, etc. It will also help, when it comes time to find someone to lead the outreach, determine the profile of the person you need. Bringing a preacher from Nicaragua may not be the best choice for a community made up of long-time U.S. residents. A Spaniard may not be the best for reaching a Puerto Rican community. Those sorts of things need to be considered.

Next week I’ll talk some about some of the decisions I think a congregation needs to make when moving toward being a multi-language, multi-culture body. For now, I’d like to hear some of your thoughts.

Should we be preparing to be bilingual?

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Picture 2Yesterday I wrote about a successful bilingual church in Stockdale, Texas. As I look at the changing demographics in the United States, I can’t help but think that more and more churches are going to need to go that way. Many people agree to that in theory, but few congregations are doing anything to prepare for that.

Especially in the Southwest, Anglos are going to be in the minority soon. Maybe not this year nor next , but soon enough. So what will churches of Christ do? Content ourselves with primarily serving a minority population? Force Hispanics to adapt to our current way of doing things? Or is there something I’m not thinking of?

What, if anything, do you think our congregations should do to prepare for this cultural and linguistic shift in our communities?