Is the Church for Everyone? Planting Multi-Ethnic Congregations in North America

Authors

  • Chuck Van Engen

Abstract

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 the issues in this paper, and I hope the reader will take that into consideration.

Published

2010-03-30

Issue

Section

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