In Amharic, Karen and Spanish, worship is like home for migrants in heartland town

WORTHINGTON, Minn. — Come noon on Sundays, overlapping worship options reflect how much Worthington has changed from a typical Midwestern farming community to a majority-minority hub with migrants from around the world.

An overflow crowd is still swaying to thumping praise music from one of 10 Latino choirs at St. Mary’s second Spanish-language Catholic Mass of the weekend. Half a mile away, Ethiopian Orthodox Christians are wrapping up their six-hour service in what used to be the offices of the local newspaper.

And in the cornfields just beyond the town’s edge, refugees from Southeast Asia gather to pray and sing in Karen at a Baptist church founded by Swedish farmers in 1873, many of whose descendants attend the morning English-language service.

These and other churches are trying to preserve widely diverse cultures in ways that feel like home, while also offering a chance at integration for communities that tend to self-segregate.

“My job, at least in the two congregations, is to unite them,” said the Rev. Lucio Berumen, the Mexican pastor at Indian Lake Baptist Church. “You’ve been here 150 years, you’ve been here 15 years, you know the problems that you have. The only thing that I want to know is that you can work together.”

Berumen has been learning Swedish traditions like julotta (Christmas morning prayers), but also regularly sits through the two-hour Karen service, not understanding a word but praying silently for all his church members.

For Karen volunteer pastor Eh Ler Plaw Saw, who recently led the community in celebrating 15 years at Indian Lake, helping children practice Karen is as big a concern as the older generation’s struggles with English.

At St. Mary’s, the Rev. Tim Biren hopes to bridge the disconnect between Latino and mostly white communities with different pastoral needs and worship styles, down to the volume of choir music.

Some parishioners would like to try bilingual Masses -- “So we can learn some Spanish, and help them to build relationships outside their community,” said Pat Morphew, who has attended St. Mary’s since the 1980s.

For many members of the Spanish choirs, however, it’s been a relief to belong to something so familiar in a foreign land, said Dagoberto Mendez, who moved to Worthington in 2000 and directs the Nueva Inspiración group.

Three of his children and several fellow Guatemalans recently shook the rafters at Saturday evening and Sunday morning worship with the backing of trumpets, saxophone, an electric piano and the distinctive güira, a percussion instrument that resembles a giant cheese grater.

Big drums and tall sticks feature in Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo liturgy, which raised some eyebrows among the Lutherans who hosted the worshippers in their church for years until they built their own sanctuary.

“They don’t have a clue what we do, but they give us room for our worship,” Abebe Abetew recalled. “They’re God people.”

Today, most of the community’s 500 members gather before dawn in the sanctuary adorned with Ethiopian-made icons and start the afternoon with prayers over lunch in the basement.

“Church is basic for us, like eating the food. If you don’t eat you die,” Abetew said.