“Ama naming makapangyarihan sa lahat . . .”[1]I could hear my father as he started to pray. He had been asked to give the closing prayer for the worship service that Sunday morning at the Peninsula Church of Christ in San Bruno, California. Not quite confident in his English, he prayed in his native Tagalog. The sanctuary was full. The congregation was Caucasian except for our family. We were the only ones who understood what my father said in his prayer.
No sooner had the last strains of “Blest Be the Ties That Bind” faded, when three ladies came to my father, each one shaking his hand and thanking him for his prayer. The last one hung on to his hand and said, “What a beautiful prayer!”
“Oh, but you could not have understood it,” my father answered with a smile.
“Yes, I did. I knew in my heart that you were praising and thanking God.” The lady added, “Isn’t it wonderful that though we speak different languages, in Him we have a common language of love?”
Church Home
That was 32 years ago. My father and mother, my sister Ruth and I were the last ones of our family to come over from the Philippines. My sister Lu was the first to come to San Francisco. On a layover in Hong Kong, she became acquainted with the William Rees family, missionaries with the Christian churches. Concerned that she would be without her family in the United States, brother Rees wrote the Peninsula Church of Christ and put them in touch with Lu.
The church welcomed my sister with open arms, helping her get settled in the new country in every way they could. When the rest of us came, we, too, became part of this “extended family” of believers. It was of no consequence that we spoke English with a Filipino accent, or that for potlucks we brought pancit or lumpia, dishes that most of the congregation had never seen before. And it was of no consequence to us that we were the only non-Caucasians in the congregation.
The church was such a comfort to us in our unsettled state of transition into another culture and country. New and foreign though we were to this country, we found something that we were familiar with – the God we worshiped and the way we worshiped Him. This was the same God we worshiped in the Philippines. When we gathered around the Lord’s table each Sunday, we felt a kinship with our brethren though they looked different from us.
Separation or Inclusion
Today there are multitudes of so-called ethnic churches in San Francisco and the bay area. They fill 11 yellow pages of the phone book. It is said that the most segregated hour in the United States remains 10:00 o’clock Sunday morning. This has always puzzled me. I wonder if people are being shut out or if people are shutting themselves in.
It is true that we all want to stay within our comfort zones, working and living with what we know, what we’re used to, what we grew up with. However, I wonder how much we lose by not venturing out of what is known to us. That Sunday morning when my father prayed in Tagalog before a congregation that did not understand one word he said, he trusted that they would pray with him just the same. And the elder who asked him to pray trusted that he was a man who loved God, with whom the congregation could pray regardless of the language he used. What a bridge that prayer was to our two cultures!
Both men were willing to leave their comfort zones and venture into something new because they were confident they worshiped the same God. When I see an ethnic church, I see a church that says, ‘because you look different from me, because you speak a different language, because you have a different way of doing things, I will have difficulty praying with you, worshiping with you or breaking bread with you, although we worship the same God.”
It also says to me that there is a group of people who want to stay comfortable within a circle of people who look like them, talk like them, sing like them, and think like them. I realize that the lack of proficiency in the English language may be sufficient reason for the existence of some ethnic churches, but I have been to some where English is used and where a majority of those in the congregation are very conversant in English.
I know of an ethnic congregation established a few years ago. When I asked the leaders why they were establishing a Filipino church in a city where there were quite a few congregations of their brotherhood, I was told that they had tried going to some of them, but they never felt comfortable or part of the church. I wonder if people were slow at stepping out of their comfort zones.
When Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well, He definitely was out of His comfort zone. Here was a woman traditionally hostile to His own, and one of ill repute to boot. But He sought her and brought her living water. Consequently, a whole city came to know the Savior. What are we losing because of our reluctance and fear to venture into what we’re not familiar with?
Many years after my father’s Tagalog prayer, I met my future husband. Don is a native Californian. At that time, he was minister at the Peninsula Church of Christ. A year after we were married, we left for missionary work in Indonesia. Coming back to the bay area in 1982 after a couple of years in Cincinnati, we were involved in the ministry of the Alta Vista Church of Christ in South San Francisco.
God has woven a beautiful tapestry of our lives together. The colors have not always been bright, but the interweaving of the various shades and hues have all been necessary for creating His designs. I wonder how much I would have lost if, 32 years earlier some people had refused to step out of their comfort zones to reach out to others who did not look, talk, nor do things like them.
[1]Our Almighty Father
*This article was originally published on March 10, 2002 by the Christian Standard, Standard Publishing Company, Cincinnati, Ohio
Our hearts resonate with the thoughts you've expressed, Raquel. The glorious unity which the Holy Spirit enables us to find in Christ is precious, and so much deeper than unity based upon merely cultural commonalities.
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