Of Immigrants and Excellence
Pastoral Engagement in Immigrant-impacted Communities
The Rev. Gordon Bechtel was an unexpected leader.
The long-time pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Emporia, Kan., he had never before engaged with the immigrant community that had labored for years at the massive packinghouse on the west side of town. Later, after he and Pastor Matias Coria of Iglesia Nuestra Capilla del Senor became good friends and partners in Friends in Faith Serving Emporia, they both, with good humor, publicly chided themselves for having taken so long to meet each other.
Back in 2001, when Bechtel was first approached about working with other churches to address immigrant issues, he was interested but cautious. “It sounds like community organizing,” he would say, red flags popping up in his mind. But, yes, he would invite other pastors to talk about the possibilities. As those conversations took place, Bechtel learned about a biblical and theologically-grounded approach to building relationships and trust deep enough to cross long-standing social, economic, cultural, and religious barriers. As he and the other pastors talked, the red flags came down, and Bechtel’s commitment grew stronger.
Several years later, in January 2003, Bechtel would stand with other church leaders in a packed community center filled with over 200 people—Hispanic, Black, Anglo, poor—seeking improvements in Emporia’s public transit system. As he looked out over the crowd, his trademark smile revealed wonderment and gratitude for the organization he had helped build.
Getting to that day had not been easy for him. Powerful local interests, seeking to ward off perceived challenges to the status quo, had him “for lunch,” Bechtel would say with that same smile. Some churches had vocally opposed the organization. And much work lay ahead to solidify the emerging relationships between the 11 Anglo and Hispanic congregations who were members of Friends in Faith. But on that cold January day in the community center, the crowd’s warmth and energy had made every challenge worthwhile.
Bechtel’s surprising leadership in Friends in Faith was to be short lived, for that summer, he died suddenly. While the organization continues to miss his quiet and effective leadership, he would be the first to celebrate its continuing success. Since then, the organization has made the transition to leadership by Spanish-speaking pastors and laity, which Bechtel always understood to be a primary goal. In addition to the group’s initial success in securing better public transportation to the local clinic and hospital, Friends in Faith has addressed a wide range of health care, education, and other immigrant and low-income concerns, and has become an effective grassroots, congregation-based presence in Emporia and beyond.
Pastoral excellence in immigrant communities begins with openness to the local realities—the often stark and dramatic realities—brought about by one of the largest global migrations of people in history. Driven by economic and political forces that both compel and attract people to risk everything for greater opportunity elsewhere, immigrants in the U.S. are now showing up in communities far beyond traditional metropolitan gateways. Hispanic immigrants, for example, now constitute over eight percent of the Kansas population.
Typically, many middle-class Anglo congregations are oblivious to immigrants in the community. If they engage the immigrant community at all, such congregations tend to operate from a traditional “mission” mindset, responding to the immigrants rather than working with them in relational partnerships. They do “care-taking” instead of “coalition-building.” Similarly, some congregations might develop their own “Hispanic ministry,” for example, which seeks to bring immigrants into their denominational fold—a lone ranger strategy that rarely builds community and rarely works well.
Pastors can play a pivotal role in guiding their own—and other—congregations to respond rightfully to immigrants and the complex issues and responses their presence evokes. To play that role effectively, pastors must first develop trustful, working relationships with other pastors, particularly with pastors in the immigrant community. Obviously, that process can be complicated by language barriers and differences in cultural and religious traditions. Given that many immigrant pastors are bi-vocational and have full-time jobs in addition to their church responsibilities, even scheduling a meeting can be a challenge.
To accommodate such realities, Friends in Faith leaders meet monthly at 5:30 p.m. to conduct organizational business. Why that time? Because that’s when the day shift ends at the packing plant, where several Hispanic pastors and lay leaders are employed. In short, flexibility and sustained effort are essential if pastors are to build relationships and work together on community concerns related to immigrants.
Another issue is the ecumenical nature of such work—the necessity of having Mainline Protestants, Pentecostals, Catholics, and Evangelicals gathered at the same table, out of a shared faith, to address concerns identified by the community. Of all the challenges to pastoral leadership and excellence in immigrant-impacted communities, this is perhaps the greatest. The theological, historical, and political rifts that separate us are still deep and wide.
But it is precisely in immigrant-impacted communities that these denominational rifts are being bridged, both out of openness and out of necessity. Storefronts and steeples. Clapboard and brick. Called out and seminaried. Independent and institutional. All finding commonality in the Word and the work. All building on trusting relationships and shared purpose developed and developing over months and years. There are no short-term solutions to immigration issues and other entrenched social, economic, and racial justice realities. Pastoral excellence is hanging in and leading in partnership over the long-haul in response to those realities.
Pastoral leadership of this caliber is not exercised “out front” as much as it is “behind the scenes,” intentionally cultivating and developing lay leaders in the congregation and community whose voices are usually not heard. Early on, pastors need to get leaders in their own congregation “on board” to ensure both that the congregation is supportive and engaged and that the relationships among diverse peoples throughout the circle of partner congregations are as deep and wide as possible.
Guided by such leadership, the participating congregations can together create a congregation- and community-based organization that will represent and advance the interests of both immigrants and the larger community impacted by their presence. An organizational voice that is rooted in congregations and parishes is especially critical today, when growing anti-immigrant sentiment is resulting in harsh state and local measures to restrict immigrants from securing housing and other basic needs. One pastor, one congregation alone cannot counter such measures, much less create positive change for immigrants and the larger community. But many pastors and congregations, working together, can.
Six years have passed since Gordon Bechtel became an unexpected leader who helped launch Friends in Faith Serving Emporia. Since then, the organization’s journey has been difficult at times. Key pastors have moved on to other calls and communities. The organization’s original staff person was let go. Rebuilding had to be done. Funding had to be secured in hard times. Recently, Somali Muslims have been recruited to work at the packing plant, forcing the organization’s leaders to rethink and reexamine the limitations of their own inclusiveness.
Last spring, on a day when hundreds of thousands marched in the nation’s largest cities for immigrant rights, Emporia was abuzz. Here, too, plans had been made for a march—an extraordinarily rare event in Emporia. Friends in Faith was in the thick of it, following its own and other community leaders in a march that drew more than 1,500 people to the streets of Emporia. At the fairgrounds, Pastor Matias Coria—Gordon Bechtel’s friend and partner, now chair of the Friends in Faith Board—helped rally the gathered crowd.
From that event, Friends in Faith garnered yet more immigrant leaders—especially fathers and mothers deeply concerned about problems their children faced in the public school system. In the following months, those parents and other Friends in Faith leaders developed detailed proposals to address those problems. In December, they presented the proposals to the School Board, which was searching for ways to better meet the needs of its Spanish-speaking students. At that meeting, Spanish-speaking parents who had never spoken in public, rose to present their concerns to the School Board. As they each took their turn at the podium, it was clear that, despite its many challenges, Friends in Faith is still carrying out its mission—and the mission of the pastors and churches that birthed and sustained it.
Gordon Bechtel would have been elated.
David L. Ostendorf is a United Church of Christ Minister serving as Executive Director of the Chicago-based Center for New Community, an SPE grantee for its Institute for Rural Pastoral Leadership.
