Ethnic Churches, Reverse Mission, and Urban Adventism in North America (original) (raw)
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Migrant-shaped Urban Mission: The Missionary Nature and Initiatives of the Church of Pentecost, USA, 2015
In contemporary literature on urban mission, cities are often characterized as spiritual deserts: the “unreached,” “unclaimed frontier” of Christian mission. However, it is precisely within these contexts where vibrant immigrant congregations are thriving. The places disproportionately affected by immigrant flows are not necessarily countries, but cities—85 percent of immigrants in America live in the 100 largest metropolitan areas. In a time when nearly 70% of immigrants to the United States self-identify as Christian, this paper challenges assumptions that cities are unreached and the wider tendency to neglect how Christian immigrants are transforming the American religious landscape. Using qualitative data from research on the Ghanaian-led Church of Pentecost, USA, this paper explores African Pentecostal migrant-shaped mission in the city, focusing on its church planting initiatives and transnational orientation through embodied practice as migrants and their descendants seek to bring the gospel of Christ to bear on the needs and realities of life in a new context.
Is the Church for Everyone? Planting Multi-Ethnic Congregations in North America
Global Missiology English, 2004
Normal 0 MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 I grew up in one of the oldest towns in the Americas: San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico. My parents were missionaries, essentially Dutch-American immigrants to Mexico. Born and raised in Mexico, I was therefore the second-generation of an immigrant family. As such, I grew up as what I call a "double-minority." I was part of a small group of about one hundred and fifty Protestants in a Spanish colonial town of 65,000 people who wished we did not exist. And ours was one of only four or five "foreign" families in town: "Gringos," strangers, pilgrims in a strange land. Now that I live in the U.S., I consider myself a Mexican-American immigrant of Dutch descent. So when I think of immigrants, ethnic minorities, and multiple cultures in North America, I tend not to identify with the dominant descendants of Europeans, but with immigrants from Latin America–past and present. I’m sure this colors the way I approach t...
Sociology of Religion, 1998
In 1945 Seventh-day Adventism in Metropolitan New York was divided administratively into two conferences, one of which had an almost completely Caucasian membership, the other Afro-American. Both groups grew substantially during the following twenty-five years, but this growth was accompanied by the beginning of a flow of immigrants who had become Adventists as a result of missionary activity in their homelands in the developing world. Since 1970, the influx of immigrants and of conversions among their non-Adventist peers-has burgeoned, while American-born members, both black and white, have declined sharply in total number and precipitously as a proportion of the total. The data presented here show that in this region "new immigrants" now account for almost 90 percent of the Adventist membership. While the situation in New York is more extreme, it mirrors a transformation taking place among Adventists throughout North America. Without the flow of immigrants, North American Seventh-day Adventism would now be in a situation of numerical decline akin to that of many of the mainline Protestant denominations. This paper sets out to account for the demographic transformation of Adventism in Metropolitan New York-for the decline of the American segments (Caucasian and Afro-American) and the huge growth among the new immigrants. It argues, drawing on modernization theory, that a strict church with a rigid doctrinal system and behavioral code will decline among constituencies with growing sophistication if it does not acconmmod ate to modem values, but may succeed in the short-term by attracting less modem people.
2019
Since 2013, with the approval of the document, It’s Time: The Urgency of Urban Mission (2013), the Seventh-day Adventist Church’s worldwide headquarters has given a new emphasis in the evangelization of global metropolises. This incentive has taken place during the presidency of Ted N. C. Wilson. Wilson began his pastoral ministry in New York City in 1974 and defended his doctoral dissertation at New York University in 1981 regarding Ellen White’s view on how the church’s evangelistic work should be carried out in the largest city in the United States. However, this renewed emphasis is not only due to the efforts of Wilson, but especially to the few Adventists in many large American and European cities, as well as in the urban conglomerates emerging in Asia and Africa (Sahlin 2011). A mapping of the Adventist presence in cities around the world that had more than one million inhabitants was published in 2014. Using the studies of demographer Thomas Brinkoff, the authors cataloged 50...
Journal of Adventist Mission Studies, 2022
This article explores the response within the Seventh-day Adventist Church after Ellen G. White's death to the dual emphases in her writings on the city and rural living. On one hand she strongly encouraged large Adventist institutions and families raising children to locate out of the cities. This was because of the advantages natural surroundings have on physical, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing, and to shield children and young adults from the evils and temptations of the city. While she recognized the evils in the city and God's impending judgments, she aggressively pushed church leaders to take a more active role in evangelizing the cities, precisely because of their great need. The church was slow to respond to her plea for greater mission to the cities during her lifetime. Once she passed away, the gains made in city mission during her lifetime were gradually lost. Leadership focused on foreign missions but work in the cities seem to have fallen by the wayside, being replaced with a drive for all Adventists to move to the country. This paper's focus is on the period from the 1910 through the 1990s.
Congregational Responses to Growing Urban Diversity in a White Ethnic Denomination Downloaded from
How do congregations from a white ethnic denomination respond to growing urban diversity? Using an ecological perspective, we examine 14 Christian Reformed congregations in Southeast Grand Rapids, Michigan over a 30-year time period (1970 to 2000). We track neighborhood composition, residential patterns of congregation members, and congregation membership totals. As white residents declined in urban neighborhoods, congregations from this historically Dutch denomination had difficulty sustaining themselves as neighborhood churches. Tracing the history of these congregations revealed churches reaching beyond their neighborhoods for members as the surroundings changed. Such activities resulted in niche overlap, heightened competition, and jeopardized organizational sustainability. Older, more traditional churches in the most dramatically changing neighborhoods saw membership plummet. Newer, more suburban congregations showed greater stability. Fastest growing were mission churches originally formed to serve non-Dutch constituencies but now attracting diverse members from a wide area. Implementing organizational ecology theory, our conclusions address issues of adaptation , institutional interrelationships, and the contingent nature of competitive advantage. Grand Rapids, Michigan is typical of many Northern industrial cities. A burgeoning industrial base in the nineteenth century attracted a steady stream of immigrants. Early immigrants were Dutch, Polish, Lithuanian, and German, among others. The character of the city traces its roots to these early white ethnics, most notably the Dutch. By mid-twentieth century, the complexion of the city was changing. African Americans immigrated north in increasing numbers to industrial, rust belt cities like Grand Rapids. They settled largely in working class neighborhoods on the southeast side of the city. In later decades, Hispanic immigrants would follow a similar path. This changing complexion had profound social consequences. A familiar process of " invasion-succession " reshaped urban neighborhoods. As nonwhite residents, especially African Americans, moved into a neighborhood, white residents relocated to outlying areas. This process, aided institutionally by banks and real estate agencies, led to a type of hypersegregation in U.S. residential life (Massey and Denton 1993). Today, with a population of approximately 200,000, nearly 40 percent of whom are nonwhite, the city of Grand Rapids is diverse but largely segregated. The purpose of this study is to consider the religious implications of growing urban diversity in Grand Rapids. How do congregations from a historically Dutch denomination respond to ethnically changing neighborhoods?
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 1999
The Seventh-day Adventist Church in the United States has been following a well-defined trajectory from sect toward denomination for the past century: it has reduced tensions with its surrounding environment by removing antagonisms between itself and the state and other religious organizations and as its members have become less peculiar in their lifestyles and beliefs and more integrated into society. However, over the past 30 years it has received an influx of immigrants from countries of the developing world who, generally, are more sectarian in their beliefs and behavior and more confrontative of other religious groups than is the typical American Adventist today. This process is especially advanced in some metropolitan areas such as New York, where Adventism has been transformed from a church of Caucasians and African Americans to a body where nine out of 10 members are now "new immigrants." This paper poses the question of whether the influx of immigrants will reverse the trajectory of Adventism in North America, making it generally more sectarian. After considering data gathered primarily in metropolitan New York, it concludes that the flow of immigrants has resulted in a temporary slowing of the movement from sect toward denomination at the local level where the immigrants are concentrated, but that the process of immigrant assimilation ensures that the dominant trajectory will continue.