Multiethnic Symposium

The landscape of immigration in America is constantly evolving, offering cultural enrichment and contributions to communities through increasing diversity. This new context offers the church unique opportunities to share the Gospel with people from all nations. In this session, Dr. Heath Lewis will guide participants in an exploration of two specific immigrant generations, 1.5 (people who immigrated before or during their teenage years) and 2.0 (children of immigrants who were born in their host country). Using current research, Lewis will examine Gen 1.5 and 2.0 immigrant demographics, attributes, cultural identities, motivations and more, before discussing their implications for ministry in today’s Christian church.

Werner Auditorium

The Future is Now:

Improving our Cultural Intelligence for Effective Ministry Among and by Hispanic and Latino/Latina Gen Z

This presentation examines Cultural Intelligence (CQ) as a pathway to effective ministry among and by Hispanic and Latino/Latina Gen Z. Through the lens of CQ, this presentation also examines strategies for pastoral leadership in multigenerational, multilingual and diverse cross-cultural contexts.

Werner Auditorium

How might the Gospel be heard as good news? How might the church be a meaningful community to belong to? These questions always matter. But they are more urgent where, like it is in the United States, there are people from various places and of different generations. This presentation will explore how we go about discerning faithful answers to these questions so that the Gospel and the church might truly be for all people and every generation.

Werner Auditorium

In this plenary, Dr. Tesfai Tesema will share how first-generation immigrant churches and missional host culture churches can support second-generation immigrant English language churches with the goal of becoming multiethnic and multicultural congregations.

Werner Auditorium

In this response to the 17th Annual Lecture in Hispanic/Latino Theology and Missions, Rev. Lincon Guerra will identify and address the challenges of the church in the areas of outreach and ministry to second- and third-generation Hispanics in the United States.

Werner Auditorium

This session takes a fresh look at Asian American ministry and addresses some of the following issues: Who and why Asian American ministry? What are the generational dynamics from immigrants to second generation to next generation? What is ministry “to, through, by and beyond, and with” Asian Americans? What is “Multi Asian” ministry? What are ministry models and church planting models? What are the do’s and don’ts when hosting a different culture in your congregation? How is Asian leadership different? What is Intercultural Relational Leadership Development?

Presidents Room

Many denominations in the United States, including Lutherans, are engaged in helping immigrant congregations plant mono-ethnic congregations. This is mainly due to the choice of first-generation immigrants to worship in their languages. The key challenge that these ethnic congregations face is how to accommodate the younger generations into the life and ministry of the church. Whether the immigrant communities are African, Asian or Hispanic, these challenges are strikingly similar. There exists fear within immigrant congregations that younger generation immigrant American Christians are leaving their parents’ churches and abandoning their faith. This presentation will discuss the challenges of the Ethiopian immigrant congregations in Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minn., and focus on their struggle to understand how to incorporate second- and third-generation immigrants into their communities.

Presidents Room

Sarah and Maykou Seying share their stories and missional experiences from the Hmong perspective.

Werner Auditorium

Antonio and Brandon Boos share their stories and missional experiences from the Filipino perspective.

Werner Auditorium

This interactive session will explore the opportunities and challenges of translanguaging and will help participants rest and delight in the heavenlike experience of praising God with people of many languages. Many people use multiple languages smoothly with multiple people in their lives. They may think of speaking either Dari or Spanish, Korean or Chinese. But the use of language is rarely as on and off as that. Many people translanguage — meaning that in one conversation, they move smoothly between languages depending on the topic, the participants and the emotive aspects of the discussion. Christians would do well to translanguage in multilingual situations as they share Christ’s grace and truth. Translanguaging takes many forms, but the main feature is that an appropriate combination of languages is used so that everyone in a community is included and understands. Translanguaging may look different in a Bible study, a worship service or a council meeting. However, as believers minister multiethnicly, becoming comfortable with translanguaging is essential for all to feel welcome. Members of a congregation who speak only one of the several languages of the community may benefit from awareness building and extra encouragement as some activities use more translanguaging.

Presidents Room

Luciano Vega-Ayala and Noemí Guerra share their stories and missional experiences from the Hispanic perspective.

Werner Auditorium

St. Louis resettled about 1,000 refugees in 2022, and this year will resettle about 800 more. As St. Louis increasingly becomes home to our new neighbors from various countries with different religious, language, ethnic and cultural backgrounds, our schools and secular institutions increasingly see activities geared toward serving these new friends. More importantly, as the community of faith, the church is called to reach out, connect and serve our new neighbors living in our neighborhoods. In St. Louis, Christian Friends of New Americans (CFNA) seeks to mobilize and partner with the hopeful church to pass on our story of faith to this in-coming generation of immigrants, especially the 1.5 and 2nd generations. These young immigrants who represent their traditional birth culture while also incorporating elements of the new (American culture and probably Christian faith), highlight both the challenges and opportunity for the future church. By partnering with local LCMS congregations and its believers, CFNA is jointly in mission to venture out in faith to engage different ethnic communities to serve, bless and expand the future kingdom of our Lord in St. Louis.

Presidents Room