On Sundays, the churches of Worthington, Minnesota, reflect how much the town has changed. Over the past generation, the Midwestern farming community filled with immigrants from around the world.
A crowd sways to praise music from one of 10 Latino choirs at St. Mary’s second Spanish-language Catholic Mass of the weekend. Half a mile away, Ethiopian Orthodox Christians wrap up their six-hour service. Refugees from Southeast Asia pray and sing in the tonal language called Karen at a Baptist church founded by Swedish farmers in 1873. Many of those farmers’ descendants attend the earlier English-language service.
These and other churches are trying to preserve widely diverse cultures. They also want to offer opportunity for integration for communities that tend to self-segregate.
“My job, at least in the two congregations, is to unite them,” says Pastor Lucio Berumen. He’s the pastor at Indian Lake Baptist Church. “You’ve been here 150 years; you’ve been here 15 years . . . The only thing that I want to know is that you can work together.”
Born in Mexico, Berumen is learning Swedish traditions like julotta (Christmas morning prayers). He also regularly sits through the two-hour Karen service. He doesn’t understand a word but prays silently for all his church members.
Karen volunteer pastor Eh Ler Plaw Saw’s community recently celebrated 15 years at Indian Lake Baptist. For him, helping children practice Karen is a big concern. The older generations struggle with English. (Karen is mostly spoken by people in parts of Thailand and Burma.)
At St. Mary’s, the Reverend Tim Biren hopes to bridge Latino and mostly white communities with different pastoral needs and worship styles.
Some parishioners would like to try bilingual Masses. “So we can learn some Spanish, and help them to build relationships outside their community,” says Pat Morphew, who has attended St. Mary’s since the 1980s.
For many members of the Spanish choirs, however, it’s a relief to belong to something so familiar in a foreign land, says choir director Dagoberto Mendez. From Guatemala, he moved to Worthington in 2000.
Big drums and tall sticks feature in Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo liturgy. That raised some eyebrows among the Lutherans who hosted the worshippers in their church for years until they built their own sanctuary. But the Ethiopian congregation was grateful.
“They don’t have a clue what we do, but they give us room for our worship,” Abebe Abetew recalls. “They’re God people.”
On Sunday, most of the community’s 500 members gather before dawn in the sanctuary and start the afternoon with prayers over lunch in the basement.
“Church is basic for us, like eating the food. If you don’t eat, you die,” Abetew says.
Behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. — Revelation 7:9
