Church’s Bilingual Services Have an Unusual Twist

It is Sunday morning at Immanuel Presbyterian Church on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles’ Koreatown, and its diverse congregation is singing “From All Four of Earth’s Faraway Corners.”

With gusto, they sing -- the first stanza in Spanish, the second verse in English. And, back and forth until they complete the entire song in two languages. At least part of the song seems to speak of the church’s diverse membership:

“From all four of Earth’s faraway corners,

From the Philippines, Scotland, Colombia.

From the African coast and from Asia,

Mexico, Salvador and Iran.”

The exuberant chorus of the choir, pastors and congregation, accompanied by piano, drums and trumpet, fills the sanctuary -- their songs soaring up the 80-foot-high Gothic-style ceiling. Suddenly, though there are only 140 people in the 1,800-seat sanctuary, it feels full.

Immanuel’s Sunday morning worship is a very unusual time of bilingual worship and celebration in three segments, lasting 2 1/2 hours. If one were to compare it to a play, it’s a three-act interactive performance that begins with Act I in Spanish, moves on to Act II in both languages, and concludes with Act III in English.

The segments are fluid, enabling congregants to come and go. Some slip out briefly after the Spanish portion for a cup of coffee in the hospitality area or to say hello to a friend, then return for the bilingual service.

No one seems to be bothered by crying babies or squirming youngsters. If anything, the commotion seems to inject warmth to the august church interior of dark wood, stained-glass windows and red-velvet seats where 5,000 worshipped in its heyday in the 1950s.

Experts in urban ministry say Immanuel’s bilingual service is a rarity even in polyglot Los Angeles. Many churches in Southern California have multilingual congregations under the same roof, but they usually worship separately as Immanuel used to do.

For example, at St. Basil’s Catholic Church nearby on Wilshire, English-, Korean- and Spanish-language congregations meet separately except for special holiday services. On Holy Saturday this year, the church conducted a two-hour service in three languages, said Elba Casanas, a church official.

Similarly, at Pasadena Presbyterian Church, which has English-, Persian-, Korean- and Spanish-language congregations under one governance, multilingual worship is held on special occasions, said the Rev. Mark Smutny, a co-pastor.

The Immanuel bilingual service began 2 1/2 years ago as an experiment after its pastor, the Rev. Frank M. Alton, learned of a Berkeley church that held bilingual services in English and Chinese. Now he expects it to remain, despite some difficulty.

The service has engendered controversy within the church. Some members have left because of it, and others have threatened to leave.

Still, after two evaluations, “a clear majority” of the congregation wants to continue, Alton said.

“We are clearly out of our comfort zone in doing this worship,” Alton said. “We do it out of conviction.”

As things stand now, “everybody is proud that Immanuel does this, and they’re honest enough to say it’s not fully satisfying,” he said.

The Rev. Michael A. Mata, an ordained pastor in the Church of the Nazarene who teaches urban ministry at the Claremont School of Theology, said Immanuel should be commended for the effort.

“The fruit of it is something the next generation can really appreciate,” said Mata.

But, Mata said such an undertaking requires time, effort, cultural competency and risk-taking because “it means that someone has to give up something.”

Immanuel, founded at another location in 1888, marked its 75th year this week at Wilshire and Berendo Street and the ninth year of Alton’s pastorate there. It has been one of the city’s most influential congregations. The church helped start the Union Rescue Mission, Occidental College and the Bible Institute of Los Angeles (now Biola University), according to Rod Sprott, church administrator.

Today, Immanuel is a different church. Rows of empty pews attest to what the demographic changes of the last three decades have wrought at tall-steeple, mainline Protestant churches in the Wilshire corridor as many of their more affluent, white members moved away. Immanuel was about to close its doors when Alton was given a three-year contract in 1995 to help turn it around. He has.

The neighborhood now has a heavy Korean commercial presence, though its residents are predominantly Latinos.

Among Immanuel’s members are immigrants from 14 Latin American countries and Europe, Asia and Africa. Numbering just under 300, the congregation is one-third white, one-third Latino and one-third Asian and black, with the fastest-growing group being people in their 20s and 30s, starting families.

Alton, 52, a third-generation Los Angeles native who is fluent in Spanish, is not a traditional Presbyterian minister. A social activist who spent nine years as a missionary working with the poor in Mexico, he believes the church must be involved in the life of its community. And that means sharing the church’s resources and coming together in the same time and space.

Not everyone at Immanuel’s Sunday worship stays through the entire service. But, most choose two: Spanish and bilingual or English and bilingual.

Orelia Daigeau, who is African American and has been a member of the church since the 1970s, attends the bilingual and English segments.

“I enjoy the fact that we can come together and worship even though I don’t understand all of it [Spanish],” said Daigeau, who is a church deacon.

For Ji-Hee Park, who came from South Korea just two months ago to study, it’s the ambience and the friendly congregants that draw her to the service.

Initially, she came to Immanuel to check out the Korean church that rents space there, but decided that she preferred the bilingual worship.

“It’s so special, so different,” she said.

Betty and Paul Winter, a white couple from Pasadena and Immanuel members since 1972, say they support the bilingual service.

“This church is in the middle of a community which speaks Spanish,” she said. “I see no reason why we shouldn’t accommodate [them].”

For Megan and Ricardo Guerrero -- she’s white and he’s from Mexico -- a bilingual service fits in with their lifestyle.

“We’re a bilingual family,” she said. “I speak English to my son, and my husband speaks to him in Spanish,” she said, as her husband looked on with 18-month-old Pablo in his arms.

Choosing music for the bilingual service can be challenging because one needs to think multiculturally.

For Sunday’s worship, music director Edward Murray’s selections included songs from South Africa, Bulgaria, Central America, the Caribbean, Wales and the Shaker community of New Lebanon, N.Y.

A highlight of Immanuel’s bilingual service is the “passing of the peace,” during which congregants walk all over the sanctuary to greet each other and offer each other God’s peace.

When Alton looks out at his congregation from the pulpit, he is reassured that the church is doing the right thing.

“Seeing this incredible gathering from around the world in the sanctuary, watching people give the peace to each other, knowing that a very wealthy Anglo person and a very low-income Latino person or an African person have a genuine friendship is very satisfying,” he said.