Jose Palos, coordinator for the National Plan for Hispanic Ministries, recalled that the National Hispanic Plan was adopted as a challenge to the whole church to minister with the growing number of Hispanics in many neighborhoods. The national committee recently planned a series of consultations to investigate Hispanic ministries carried out by non-Hispanic congregations. The committee identified 100 congregations and invited 37 to meet in regional consultations. After the consultations were held, they were analyzed and three recommendations were made:

• Have a national convocation on Hispanic ministries for non-Hispanic churches.
  
  
• Develop a resource about ministering with Hispanics for non- Hispanic churches.
  
  
• Take a proactive stance with key annual conference leaders.

The first two recommendations were fulfilled when a national convocation was held in Houston April 8-10. Taking part were 189 participants from 34 annual conferences. The resource Partners in the Mighty Works of God: A Manual for Non- Hispanic Churches in Ministry with Hispanics was presented to participants.

Participants worshipped and studied the Bible together, engaged in community building, attended briefings from key leaders on several aspects of the national plan and Hispanic ministries, and heard several witnesses on how God is acting through Hispanic ministries.

Palos said that as a result of the convocation, 245 non-Hispanic congregations in 52 annual conferences had been identified as being in ministry with Hispanics. An additional 152 congregations were interested in starting ministries. Ministries already under way include outreach, community developing, vacation Bible school, and bringing Hispanics into non-Hispanic churches. An example of the last is found at Beneke United Methodist Church in north Houston, whose pastor, David Avis, does not speak Spanish but whose congregation included five Hispanics in a mainly Anglo congregation. Through the services of a food pantry, a ministry was opened to other Hispanics in the neighborhood and the congregation now has some 50 Hispanic members. Services are held in both Spanish and English.

In answer to a question about youth involvement, Palos said that youth ministries had been developed in several places, including Rockford, Illinois, and the Yakima Valley, Washington.

Only about 10 to 20 percent of the ministries involve shared facilities, Palos said. A discussion of shared facilities arose, from which the following insights emerged: shared ministry is better than shared facilities, and shared social activities are still better for forming links of fellowship between congregations sharing the same space.

Task Force on Korean-American Ministries

Jong Sung Kim, executive secretary of Asian-American and Pacific Islander Ministries, Mission Contexts and Relationships, said that at the end of the 1970s The United Methodist Church had approximately 30 Korean-American congregations. At the end of the 1980s it had 300. There are now 320 such congregations.

There are over 500 active and 40 retired Korean-American clergy. Eighty of the active clergy are women. One hundred and thirty of the clergy are serving in non-Korean churches.

The General Conference Task Force on Korean-American Ministries surveyed 540 clergy. Seventy churches were randomly selected and each church was forwarded seven questionnaires for laity response. A high percentage responded 43 percent of the clergy and 39 percent of the laity. The task force also had 13 focus groups in the five jurisdictions. The data collected confirmed some conventional wisdom:

• Language is a two-edged sword a weapon for growth but also a barrier.
  
  
• Korean speakers would participate more readily if the leaders were Korean.
  
  
• There is room in the UMC for a Korean-speaking church.

There were also some surprises from the data:

• While some Korean-American churches are growing, others are not.
  
  
• Most are satisfied with sharing facilities. (According to Kim, the major problem mentioned besides the language barrier is use of the same church kitchen to prepare food.)
  
  
• The clergy have had a mostly good experience with the appointment system.

Kim summarized the seven goals of the task force:

• Providing a community of unity and harmony.
  
  
• Growing in mission participation.
  
  
• Nurturing existing congregations while developing new ones.
  
  
• Developing better lay and clergy leadership.
  
  
• Developing a better relationship between Korean-Americans and the rest of the UMC.
  
  
• Developing leadership and ministries for second-generation Korean- Americans in the UMC.
  
  
• Improving the appointment-making process through sensitivity training.

Kim said the highest priorities were leadership for second-generation Korean- Americans and training in church history, structure, and polity in the Korean language. The reason for the first priority is dramatized by the statistic that 90 percent of youth coming from a Korean-American United Methodist Church do not return to church after being graduated from college. According to Kim, they are more likely to remain unchurched than to seek another denomination.

Although he said the task force knew of only one Korean clergy serving a Korean congregation, two Korean-American women present said they knew of at least four. Jungrea Chung, editor of Korean resources in Communication, and Hea Sum Kim, consultant in the Women's Division, also said there were 15 Korean women clergy serving beyond the local church, three commissioned Korean mission pastors who are women, and two or three associate pastors.