[color="Blue"](OK everyone - on the count of three. One....two....THREE! )

http://www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/news/state/15075665.htm

Posted on Wed, Jul. 19, 2006

Creating a multiracial place of worship takes work

SAM HODGES
The Dallas Morning News

HOUSTON - If Hollywood ever makes a movie about Wilcrest Baptist Church, the three-hanky scene will be the party for Rodney Woo's 10th anniversary as pastor.

[highlight]Before that 2002 event, he'd been exhausted by his long effort to turn a declining, nearly all-white congregation into a stable, thoroughly multiracial one.[/highlight]

"I only quit about once a week," he recalled with a laugh.

But at the party, Wilcrest's rainbow membership turned out in force. They brought Woo to tears as they read the list of 25 nations of birth in the transformed congregation, with representatives standing one by one.

It was a little like Jimmy Stewart coming to realize at the end of "It's a Wonderful Life" that things would have been worse for Bedford Falls if he hadn't stuck it out.

So far, Hollywood hasn't called on Woo and Wilcrest. But their story is featured in the new book "People of the Dream: Multiracial Congregations in the United States" by Michael Emerson.

The book's bottom line: Multiracial churches are rare, hard to sustain and worth the trouble.

"We live in what we call 'a tension,' and that tension is good for us," Woo said in an interview.

Emerson, a Rice University sociologist, added during the same discussion: "When these congregations are successful, there's a dramatic effect on the people involved, in terms of who they know and their understanding of faith. People get a much bigger view of God."

Emerson and his research partners spent six years studying multiracial congregations in the United States.

Their definition was any congregation in which no one race constituted 80 percent or more of the membership.

Decades after Martin Luther King Jr. popularized the idea that Sunday morning is America's most segregated time, Emerson and his colleagues found that only about 7 percent of the country's congregations are multiracial.

Even that overstates it, Emerson said, because many of those are headed toward being overwhelmingly one race.

"In terms of stable, integrated churches, it's more like 3 1/2 percent," he said.

Cultural differences in worship style, segregated neighborhoods around churches and the voluntary nature of church attendance (as opposed to, say, the forced integration of the military, public schools and many workplaces) help explain the rarity of multiracial worship.

Churches that commit to diversity do so for different reasons. As People of the Dream makes clear, Wilcrest was trying to survive.

Wilcrest, a Southern Baptist Convention church, opened in 1970 in a predominantly white area along southwest Houston's busy Wilcrest Drive. It flourished, reaching a membership of about 500.

But social change came fast, and by 1990 the neighborhood was only 24 percent white. With white flight, Wilcrest's membership plummeted.

The pastor wanted the church to move farther out, but deacons rejected the idea, and he resigned. In looking for a replacement, Wilcrest's leaders learned of Woo, then a 29-year-old seminary-trained pastor of a rural church south of Fort Worth.

[highlight]Woo is one-quarter Chinese. He grew up in a mostly African-American neighborhood of Port Arthur and is married to a Mexican-American woman. His father was a Southern Baptist "home missionary" in Port Arthur, working with all races in various social programs.[/highlight]

When Wilcrest called, Woo was eager to follow his father's lead in multiracial ministry. But in a dramatic interview with church members, he said he would take the job only if they would follow his lead in reaching across racial and cultural boundaries.

The church hired him early in 1992, but before his arrival, more families left. He learned that one member proposed asking him to add a "d" to his last name, worried that "Woo" would scare people away.

But most were with him on the general idea of becoming a diverse church.

"One person summed it up best," Woo said. "She was a godly matriarch of the church, and she said, 'Pastor, we hear what you're saying, and we know it's right. We just need somebody to teach us how.' "

[highlight]Woo began by insisting that members enthusiastically greet all nonwhite visitors and ask nonwhites they knew from work to try the church. He made an extra effort to call on such visitors at home.[/highlight]

In that first year, he and the members also drafted a vision statement, which continues to be prominently displayed in the vestibule: "Wilcrest Baptist Church is God's multiethnic bridge that draws all people to Jesus Christ, who transforms them from unbelievers to missionaries."

A milestone came when the church hired, on Woo's recommendation, a young black man named James Darby as youth minister.

"That broke all kind of barriers," Woo said. "It changed the mind-set, that you could have a leader of a different race."

[highlight]After a gang-related drive-by shooting in the Wilcrest neighborhood claimed the life of a black teen, Darby led 125 church members on a march that ended in prayer at the bloodstained spot where the shooting occurred.[/highlight]

That sent a powerful signal that Wilcrest Baptist cared about the community and had diversified its leadership, Woo said.

Soon, the church had an infusion of nonwhite members, particularly young people, and modest growth overall.

But there were problems. For example, the different races had different attitudes about starting meetings at the appointed time. [color="blue"](aka, "colored time") And some groups felt comfortable calling the pastor "Rodney," while others saw that as an insult, insisting on "Pastor Woo."

Balancing the church's lay leadership proved difficult, as did balancing worship style.

Kimberly Parnell, who's black, professes deep love for Wilcrest. But when she began attending about a decade ago, the music choices held little appeal.

"Oh, my goodness, 'Bringing in the Sheaves,' " she recalled, droning out a few bars to demonstrate Wilcrest's previous hymn singing.

[highlight]Music minister Monty Jones gradually included more contemporary "praise music," as well as African-American and Hispanic songs and styles.

But the changes drove off some white members.[/highlight]

People of the Dream has a chapter titled "Shadows" that describes various internal struggles. The normal stresses of church life rise "exponentially" in a multiracial church, Woo said.

[highlight]In fact, some white members who were initially committed to change finally left. "They just got tired," he said.[/highlight] [color="blue"](Translation: Multiculturalism realized is not quite what they thought it would be.)

Woo felt close to burnout himself, especially when Darby, the youth minister, and Jones, the music minister, moved on in the late 1990s. Although the church was far more diversified, whites remained a majority, and growth had stalled.

But Jones soon returned, deciding he felt called to multiracial worship. The church gave Woo a sabbatical for rest, reflection and study.

Then in 2002 came his 10th anniversary party, which he describes as an important public affirmation that the multiracial approach was working.

Since then, as described in People of the Dream, Wilcrest has caught a second wind, growing and further diversifying.

[highlight]About 500 attend Sunday morning worship services; the number of native countries has surpassed 40. No race has a majority. Instead, Wilcrest has large percentages of whites, Latinos and blacks, with some Asians and several interracial couples. About 60 of the members Woo inherited remain, including some young adults who have returned to the church they grew up in.[/highlight]

The stresses haven't gone away, but the church has begun to pull in members from around Houston who want to worship in a multiracial setting, seeing that as a fulfillment of the Gospel. Wilcrest also is sponsoring a new multiracial church near Houston, led by Darby.

Emerson writes in People of the Dream that there are five major racial groups in the United States, but also what he calls "sixth Americans." These belong biologically to one of the five groups but form important social relationships across racial lines, overcoming stereotypes and helping to create what King called the "beloved community."

Congregations like Wilcrest are an incubator for sixth Americans, Emerson suggests. Woo agrees, and he notes a growth in worldview and spirituality among those who persevere in the church.

Parnell, for one, is glad she stuck it out.

"I have friends of every race," she said. "That's what I like about Wilcrest - it forces you to reach out to somebody who doesn't look like you."