When I arrived in New York as a Bible worker at the New York Center immediately following seminary, I attended a church on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.  Sermons were in German, and translation was offered in the back two or three rows for the few of us who did not speak German.  Of course, everyone in the church spoke English.  Nearly all of them had been speaking English longer than I had been alive.  But there was no doubt about the congregation’s identity.  This was the German New York Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Five years later I was called to develop an English congregation in this church.

It was not easy for these old Germans to cede their church to a young, non-German congregation, but they did so with amazing grace.  The language and hours of worship changed.  We remodeled the basement and the sanctuary, bought a new organ, voted in non-German elders, deacons, Sabbath School superintendent, treasurer.  Probably the most momentous change was our name.  When people were looking in the Yellow Pages for a church, they were unlikely to be drawn to The German New York Seventh-day Adventist Church.  But how do you persuade people who have forty to eighty years of personal investment in a particular church identity to buy a new identity? 

The old Germans deserved enormous respect.  After all, they had invited us into their church home and provided the financial and human resources to operate the church during the years of transition from German to English.  But we had to have a new name. 

I found my answer carved in stone on the front of the church: Haus der Advent Hoffnung.  House of the Advent Hope.  Since we were in a neighborhood full of Catholic, Episcopal and Orthodox churches we voted for a new name that fit our neighborhood and connected with our German heritage:  Church of the Advent Hope.  It worked, and we developed an English-speaking, young adult church.

Ethnic transitions.   They are hardly ever easy.  It is never a simple matter to distinguish between the essentials of faith and accretions from culture.  But as difficult as it is to change the ethnic identity of a congregation, there is another ethnic divide that is perhaps even more complex and emotionally charged, and that is the divide between generations of recent immigrants.

What happens when parents from the old country confront the Americanization of their children?  To what extent should the church be committed to preserving the values, traditions and mores of the old country among children who are, in every respect except their family of origin, ordinary Americans?   How can the “old ones” be expected to make fine distinctions between what is cultural and what is universal when their own identity is under constant assault from the alien and domineering culture of America?   If the church does not support the family values of these parents, why would the parents support the church?

On the other hand, how can young people who have grown up in this country be expected to maintain their loyalty to a church which makes no meaningful distinction between its cultural identity and its core identity as a Seventh-day Adventist church?  These kids attend American schools, speak the American language, wear American clothes, absorb American attitudes.  If the church of their parents represents an alien culture, a fading culture, then how can we expect the children to embrace it?

These are not easy questions.  But they deserve our attention.  As America continues to diversify, these are questions that we as Adventists will confront with increasing frequency. 

The old Germans at Advent Hope handled the transition with amazing equanimity but only after all of their children and grandchildren had gone elsewhere.  I hope that the newer ethnic churches (and the graying Anglo churches) will not wait that long .