Spanish-speaking church planters experience conflicts as they attempt to establish an ethnic ministry within an Anglo church.. The issues  are fairly common and can be minimized, if not eliminated, by the implementation of an integration strategy that can serve both groups. Here are seven points of consideration for such a strategy.

1.  Have a clearly defined philosophy of ministry and theology of multi-ethnic ministry. Prepare a written mission, vision and purpose statements. These statements declare, “This is who we are, what we do and why we do it”. The leadership of the church must not only embrace it, but they must also articulate it.  It should be taught to the congregation from the pulpit, in membership classes and communicated through all of the church’s media venues; bulletins, website, business cards, and banners.

2.  Facilitate the growth of the immigrant ministry. Facilities and meeting times must be continually evaluated to insure that they are conducive to the immigrant ministries growth.  The challenge for the established congregation is giving up the prime times and facilities to a growing immigrant ministry while their own is in decline.

3.  Appoint immigrant representation to the leadership boards.  This allows immigrant representatives to have a voice on decisions that affect immigrant ministry. Jerry Appleby alludes to the concept of governance issues.[1] He asks, “Who is the superordinate and who is the subordinate? Do all groups agree to this arrangement? Is this arrangement right? Is equality possible or desirable?”[2]

4.  Understand each other’s communication styles.  Cultural expressions are very different from one ethnic group to another. The Anglo community is time oriented, their Latino counterpart is event oriented. This difference in communication styles can create misunderstandings between both groups.  Cultural intelligence requires creating an environment that allows for connection and understanding to occur.[3]

David Livermore introduces us to cultural intelligence and its role in Effective Multicultural Ministry.[4] He explains cultural intelligence, “It’s less about becoming an expert about every culture and more about developing an overall capability that allows you to become effective and respectful in any cultural situation”.[5] In this writer’s experience minority cultures have a tendency to feel entitled to receive from the majority culture even to the point of being blinded to their own responsibility.

5.  Develop a facility use process.  Such a system allows for the scheduling of events and activities that avoid scheduling conflict. It provides all ministries in the church equal access to facility use.  Consideration may be given to the size of the group meeting, and the intent of the activity be it for in reach or out reach, with priorities given to worship services, funerals and weddings.

6.  Encourage Language differences. The use of a preferred language should be looked at as a cultural value from both the Caucasian and the immigrant groups. Learning a new language should never be forced upon members of another group. In the Hispanic culture the language of the heart is Spanish, and the standard language as immigrants to a new land is English. 1^st generation immigrants or recent immigrants for the most part prefer to worship in their native tongue or the language of the heart. Bigotry should not be allowed, “speak English, you are in America”, but neither should sentimental expressions that indirectly express superiority such as, “Spanish is the language of heaven”.

7.  Be sensitive to the socio-economic status of the immigrants. The economic realities of immigrants, such as limited English language proficiency, low educational attainment, unemployment, low paying jobs, housing cost, lack of transportation means that it will take a much larger immigrant congregation to be financially sufficient than it would take a North American congregation with members who are already established economically.