Fruit of a prayer

When Ron Higey took over as pastor of Birmingham International Church in 2004, the congregation was, like many other churches in the area, a traditional white Southern church.

Aware that there was a large group of international people not being reached, Higey set out to make a change.

“We started challenging the church to pray for internationals,” Higey said.

It took time to see the fruit of that prayer, Higey said. About two years later, a few Chinese men walked in the door and asked if they could rent the building to use for a Chinese congregation.

“My answer was, ‘No, I’m not interested in renting our building,’” Higey said. “But if you want to come in as brothers, then you’re welcome to use our building. They said, ‘What do you need for rent?’

“I said, ‘You don’t understand. Brothers don’t charge brothers for rent,’” Higey said.

The Birmingham Chinese Christian Church used the facility for six years before eventually obtaining their own property, but in those six years, they partnered with the church on service projects and held a monthly worship service together.

Before the Chinese congregation left, a group of Kenyan congregants came and asked Higey about using their facility. Higey agreed, and months later, a Latino congregation came, followed by a Korean congregation.

Now, Birmingham International Church is living up to its name, with six languages spoken among its members. The various cultures represented by the church are most visibly seen in a combined worship service on the first Sunday of each month, during which pastors from each congregation rotate preaching in their own language, with the translation projected on screens. After the service, everyone gathers together to share a meal.

While Latinos, Koreans and Kenyans have their own congregation within the church, there’s also a group of members from France and the Ivory Coast who help each other when it comes to understanding the message, along with expatriates from many other countries who live in the Birmingham area.

“We’re used to a little more noise in the church,” Higey said, noting he’s been stopped and asked to clarify something while preaching.

The church is a “multicultural effort,” Higey said, and finds its mission statement in Ephesians 2:14 and Revelation 7:9. The first verse alludes to Jesus breaking down cultural barriers and the latter points to a time when Christians from “every tribe and tongue” will worship God together.

“If you listen to the culture, everyone wants everyone to get along,” Higey said. “We seem to be further from that than ever [before]. We’ve decided that, as a church, we need to model what not only is biblical, [but] the way it’s going to be when we get to heaven, because there, no one gets to sit in their Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist group. 

“Jesus is going to mix the pot. If we can’t demonstrate it here, how are we going to function in heaven?”

Pablo Moscoso pastors the Latino congregation at the church, and said Birmingham International is a family.

“With Birmingham International Church, we are one family,” Moscoso said. “No matter what the culture is, what the language is, what the country is, we are a family of God. God called us to be united, not divided.”

The church was founded in the 1940s in downtown Birmingham across from the bus station, and Higey said it was “stressed” like many other churches during the civil rights movement. Some of those churches chose to move to the suburbs.

“Our church didn’t immediately give into white flight; they moved out to Vestavia in the late 1980s. They tried to stay downtown as long as they could,” Higey said.

After the church began to grow in its international impact when Higey took over, he said it took time to learn how to serve many different cultures. Lessons have been learned, sometimes the hard way, on how to relate to those who didn’t grow up in the southern U.S.

The church once held an empanada cook-off, Higey said, and he ended up with eight empanadas on his plate. Not wanting anyone to feel offended or left out, he ate them all.

“I didn’t realize you could make empanadas that many different ways,” Higey said.

Higey also had to learn that members of a Kenyan service expect to hear his wife speak as well, so now, he said, she makes sure to prepare something to say when they visit.

Joseph Kirwa, the pastor of the Kenyan congregation, said the parent figure is very important in his culture, and Higey, along with the rest of the church, have become parent figures for many in their congregation, making it an easy decision to drive to church.

“Even though members come from different parts of greater Birmingham, we don’t consider distance a challenge,” Kirwa said. “Vestavia Hills is a wonderful place.”

Having a congregation to meet both spiritual and practical needs for those not originally from this culture is a huge benefit, said Minkyu Lee, who pastors Grace of Cross Church, the Korean congregation.

“[The church] provides a place to worship in their language,” Lee said. “... Right now, the congregation is happy; they feel like a family with them. [They] don’t have many [other] chances to be regarded as family in this area.”

Before coming to Birmingham, Lee spent more than 10 years in California, and he said the Korean community there doesn’t have to venture outside of their own geographical area, so there’s not much interaction with English-speaking people.

“In Birmingham, there is no Korean community,” Lee said. “In this building, in this church, we are learning to be mixed up. … We are learning to be one body in Christ.”

English-speakers in the congregation will offer to help foreign-born members when they require assistance with schools or navigating life in America. Higey said he’s planning on bringing in the Vestavia Hills Police Department to help teach members how to interact with the police, which can be a daunting task for many who are not lifelong residents or whose main language isn’t English, he said.

The other pastors have also helped Higey in his life, becoming close friends.

“I am so much better because of these men and their people,” Higey said. “... When you learn about culture, you realize how much richer your life is because of these people, and money can’t buy that.”

God has answered Higey’s prayer by allowing the church to serve as a model for unity among various cultures, he said. That answer was again seen at the church’s 2018 Christmas service, when a Korean child played King Herod during the nativity play.

“The kids don’t see the difference,” Higey said. “They just see people, and the adults are at the same point.”

If the church cannot be a model for unity, there’s no hope for the world, Higey said.

“We live in a world that is extremely fractured, and everyone talks about peace and unity, but no one does it,” Higey said. “I look at what we’re doing as a testimony to the world that, in Christ, what they want is actually obtainable, but only in Christ. The reason the world does not have it is Jesus is not central, but because we keep Jesus central, it transcends all the differences. … It is a God-given unity.”