United in faith

<p>Two young white girls stand on their chairs in the last row at Santa Rosa Alliance Church, playing paddy-cake to the rhythm of electric bass and drums.</p><p>Without missing her mark, one of the girls, in pink sweater and pants and straight blonde hair, sings: “Eres mi amigo fiel. Tu amigo soy.”</p><p>She smiles, paying no attention to the big-screen projection over the band of the song's words, shown in English and Spanish. She easily alternates between the two.</p><p>A little later, during an impassioned sermon from the church's newest addition, Pastor Julio Orozco, a petite Latina sits in a chair toward the back of the auditorium, softly speaking into a headset microphone, translating Orozco's words into Spanish. About half a dozen Latinos wear headsets with small receivers.</p><p>This is an experiment. Not a social experiment but a religious one, an orchestrated effort that could define the future for this 125-year-old evangelical church in west Santa Rosa.</p><p>Alliance Church's lead pastor John Schmidt officially launched this new direction on Feb. 7 by combining both English and Spanish Sunday sermons into a single bilingual experience. It happened after three years of trying to unify the church's two congregations, one Latino, the other Anglo.</p><p>“In a lot of respects, this is almost like a new civil rights movement,” Schmidt said. “We went from two churches in the same building to one church in two congregations to one church in one congregation,” Schmidt said.</p><p>Schmidt, 52, has been pastor for the past three years. He was recruited with the hopes of rebuilding the church and halting the current decline in membership.</p><p>With about 170 members — 110 white and 60 Latino — church membership is at an all-time low. A separate Cambodian ministry also holds services in Alliance's 19-year-old building at the corner of Fulton and Occidental roads.</p><p>At different periods in the past, Alliance has seen peaks of as many as 600 people in its membership.</p><p>The causes for the current decline are manifold, Schmidt said, including the economy and the transition from one pastor to another. Schmidt and several other Alliance members did not shy away from the possibility that prejudice may have driven some members away.</p><p>Members who leave often indirectly take with them friends and family, creating the kind of momentum Schmidt and other Alliance members hope can be reversed with new members and new community partnerships.</p><p>Last Tuesday, about half a dozen families gathered in the church auditorium for one of the “small group” prayer gatherings that have become an opportunity to build bridges between Latino and Anglo church-goers.</p><p>With the pews removed, portable basketball hoops held court in the auditorium. A young Latino boy, barely more than a yard-stick in height, asked Schmidt if the hoops could be lowered.</p><p>“That's as low as they go,” Schmidt said. “You might try using the smaller balls.”</p><p>A line of folding tables offered a banquet of Mexican and American-style food, including taquitos, molé, pasta, homemade wheat buns, tortillas, deviled eggs, chicharron, strawberry freezer jam and more.</p><p>Basty Cordero, 31, one of four sermon translators, sat at a round multipurpose table with her sister, Damaris Rodriguez, 33, who is five months pregnant. Across the table, Karen Hudson, a member of Alliance for a quarter century, smiled warmly, catching Spanish words here and there.</p><p>“Do you know if it's a boy or a girl?” Hudson asked Rodriguez.</p><p>“No,” she said, speaking with a Spanish accent. “I went to the doctor but he was hiding ... cruzaba los pies.” A quick translation from Cordero, “He had his legs crossed,” drew laughter from those at the table.</p><p>Exchanges such as these, as well as the playful games that involved adults and children alike, appear to be the essence of Alliance's fellowship efforts.</p><p>Mayra Gaspar, a 43-year-old immigrant from Honduras, said Alliance's new direction gives her the chance to bridge the cultural gap that is developing between her and her children, who were all born in the United States. Eventually, she said, her kids will begin leaning more toward the English-language prayer.</p><p>Since her arrival in the United States in 1990, Gaspar has pushed herself to learn English, taking ESL classes at Santa Rosa Junior College, watching television until she got headaches and building a vocabulary list from magazine articles.</p><p>“We have to get involved in the spiritual growth of our children,” she said, speaking in Spanish, a default that allows her more complex expression. “Their world is in English. They understand that better than anything. We don't want our kids to be handicapped.”</p><p>From the stage, Pastor Julio Orozco delivered a fiery sermon that examined Christ's approach to Nicodemus in John 7:50-51 and the Samaritan woman in John 4:39.</p><p>Orozco is a native of Nicaragua who came to Alliance eight months ago after 26 years of ministry, mainly to Latinos, in the Washington D.C. area. He bent forward and moved from one end of the stage to the other. His hands came together, he pointed and he looked people in the eye.</p><p>In many ways, the path toward unity being taken by Alliance is being defined by the relationship between both pastors.</p><p>“Julio is a very engaging guy,” said Tom MacPhee, a 54-year-old former geothermal production engineer who lives in the subdivision next to the church on Fulton Road.</p><p>“He has a different perspective than John Schmidt,” he said. “I think they make a great combination. They are different but they're complementary.”</p><p>You can reach Staff Writer Martin Espinoza at 521-5213 or martin.espinoza@pressdemocrat.com.</p>