Walking into Unity United Methodist Church in Thomasville on Sunday morning, visitors might notice something different about the worship service.
For the past several weeks, the church has added bilingual elements including Spanish lyrics to worship songs featured in its services. More North Carolina churches are trying to extend open arms to Hispanic communities through new and integrated services such as Spanish-language bibles and services.
Unity United’s movement toward a more integrated worship service came because of demographic changes to the Thomasville area, said Rev. Rob Hutchinson, a leader at the church.
“We are trying to create a community here as best we can,” he said. “We are trying to make our church reflect here what the neighborhood around us is like –– it has been a pretty big transition in the last 10 years.”
The increase in Hispanic populations in North Carolina has compelled many other churches to find ways of reaching Hispanics in their native tongues.
The Summit Church in Durham has created its own separate service to cater to the Hispanic communities of the Durham and Chapel Hill areas. The church feels strongly about reaching as many people as possible, said Rachel Flores, the administrative assistant for Summit en Español.
“For one thing, we want them to be able to understand the preaching and worship,” she said. “We also believe that people can grow more when they hear in their ‘heart language’ — their native language.”
But some churches do not yet have the resources to accommodate to Spanish-speaking audiences in the way Summit and other churches do.
Christ Community Church in Chapel Hill holds services in English because of the strain of holding bilingual services. The church does not own its own facility, so it is impossible for church officials to lend the building out for Spanish services at this time, said Teaching Elder Byron Peters, a leading member of the church.
