Churches Reinvent Streets for God
by Tim Peterson and Lam Thuy Vo
When St. Jacobi Lutheran Church in Sunset Park celebrated its 118th anniversary on a recent Sunday afternoon, the solemn hymns and songs that once filled this majestic old building had been replaced with the voices of Chinese immigrants signing Cantonese karakoke pop songs from the church’s basement.
The future of this church on Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn was uncertain only 15 years ago. Founded by German immigrants, it had only a handful of parishioners when volunteers from the surrounding mostly Chinese neighborhood offered to take over the premises and breathe new life into this once thriving faith community.
Faced with a steady decline in the number of longtime parishioners of European descent and a rapid increase in Chinese residents, St. Jacobi’s Lutheran Church is one of many houses of worship here in New York’s third largest Chinatown that are adapting to the demographic shifts in their neighborhood. They are opening up their doors for community centers and they are trying to proselytize and market faith to their new and often Buddhist neighbors.
Five years ago, the Chinese branch of the Mormon Church moved one of its churches to 60th Street in Sunset Park from Midwood. Now missionaries like 20-year-old Elder Ezra Lau stand at the corner of Eighth Avenue and 60th Street, approaching passersby with Chinese translations of the Book of Mormon.
In another example of a faith community responding to the changes, the Second Free Evangelical Church on Eighth Avenue recruited a Chinese Canadian pastor three years ago and added Bible studies, Masses and parenting classes in Mandarin to its weekly schedule.
A few blocks away on 59th Street and Fifth Avenue, the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help recruited a Catholic priest, Peter Cao, from Vietnam two years ago to preach in Chinese. Half a year ago he started holding services in Vietnamese and now preaches to a small congregation of about 30 people every Sunday.
A century ago, immigrants from Norway, Finland, Germany, Ireland, and Poland made their homes and built their churches in this neighborhood in southwest Brooklyn, near the Gowanus Expressway. Hispanics, mostly from Puerto Rico, began moving into the neighborhood in the 1950’s, and Spanish was more frequently spoken during church services.
In the last couple of decades, Mexican and Chinese immigrants are the most recent arrivals. According to the 2000 Census, 17 percent of the Sunset Park’s population is Asian, with 38 percent White, 33 percent Hispanic, and 12 percent Other. Given the growth of the Chinese population in Sunset Park since 2000, the percentage of Chinese is likely to be higher today. The census data does not include religious affiliation.
For many of these nearly empty churches, adapting to the demographic change that has taken place in recent decades and serving the most recent arrivals is more than offering a service - it is a matter of survival.
"It costs around $10,000 per month to run a church like this," said Lelia Johnson, 54, the financial secretary at the St. Jacobi’s Lutheran Church and a reservation clerk at Seafarer’s and International House in Manhattan.
Johnson has been going to the church since she was four years old and has seen it evolve from being a mostly white to a mostly Chinese Evangelical congregation.
She volunteers around 10 hours each week to deal with the church’s finances. About half of the church’s operating costs, including electricity bills, wages for the part-time pastor, and expenses for special events, are paid for from the Eck Trust Number Two, a charitable trust fund set up by one of the original members of the church, William Eck, shortly before he died. Donations from parishioners have to cover the remaining costs, she said, noting that it was difficult and the church struggles to pay its bills.
Though only four original parishioners still come to the church, approximately 30 percent of the church’s costs are covered by donations from them and other original parishioners who are no longer attending the church but are still affiliated with St. Jacobi’s Lutheran Church. The other 20 percent come from a small but growing number of Chinese people, Christian parishioners and Buddhist or atheist friends of the church.
“When you have a house of worship it should always be open to others,” she said. “We don’t want to take anyone from other faiths or churches. I think the more people you have, the better it is.”
To attract new parishioners or attendees, churches like St. Jacobi’s Lutheran Church offer members of the community a variety of activities, including ping pong evenings, Tai Chi lessons and ESL classes. In exchange, they hope for new parishioners, supporters or volunteers.
There are about 58 Christian churches in Sunset Park, including four Baptist, five Lutheran, four Catholic, and nine Pentecostal churches. In addition, there are two mosques and two Buddhist temples in Sunset Park. Yet churches continue to find opportunity to expand here.
At St. Jacobi’s Lutheran Church, the congregation has been mostly Chinese since 1992, when Pastor Lai took over and started to offer services in Chinese in a nearly empty church that, in its heyday, was filled decades ago on Sundays with about 300 German and Irish parishioners. The congregation swelled to 100 under Pastor Lai’s direction, but the number of parishioners fluctuates. Currently, the number of congregants at St. Jacobi’s is approximately 30, according to Rosalia Siu, St. Jacobi Lutheran Church’s Parish Council President.
Some of the biggest obstacles facing the Christian churches as they try to increase their membership in this neighborhood include the significant number of Chinese immigrants who adhere to their Buddhist upbringing or do not belong to a faith community at all. To get people in the door, the church runs a "Culture Club" on Saturday nights with ping pong, Badminton and Chinese karaoke. Family members and friends show up. However, only one of the twelve people attending Culture Club at St. Jacobi’s Lutheran Church on a recent Saturday evening described as Christian. And she said she attends a different church.
It’s hard to reach out to the Chinese, said Fragrance Cheung, a Chinese Christian volunteer at St. Jacobi’s Lutheran Church who organizes Sunday school and Chinese lessons at the church. She says that it takes a long time to convince some of the people attending the culture club to attend even one service.
“The result may not turn out so great,” she said. “But the result is not just based on the numbers.”
To Cheung, reaching out to the Chinese and spreading the word of God is “a natural thing to do as a faithful Christian,” she said. “And the reward – going to heaven – should not be measured in numbers,” she said.
Though progress is slow, the church is celebrating small victories: recently, St. Jacobi’s Lutheran Church hired a new pastor, Reverend John Young; the celebration of the church’s 118th anniversary was well-attended with a crowd of about 50 people; and the non-Christian, Chinese volunteers, like David Ju, a construction worker who recently fixed parts of the roof for free, are helping to keep the church lively and in good shape.
"We added two more parishoners," said Siu, "And that’s good."
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