"Santa Clara County is on the brink of a linguistic milestone: Within the next few years, more people will speak a foreign language at home than the number who speak English, recently released census data shows," according to the San Jose Mercury News. "Santa Clara County has the largest population of Hindi speakers among all counties in the United States, the second-largest population of Vietnamese speakers, the third-largest population of Persian/Farsi speakers, and the fifth biggest number of Chinese speakers … The San Jose Unified School District teaches English to students who speak about 40 languages at home," the story continues. For more, see at the Mercury News .

Immigration is no longer the main driver of growth in the U.S. Hispanic market. It has been surpassed by natural growth of the in-country population, according to a Mercanti Group report. This trend will have big implications for organizations trying to reach Hispanics with tailored marketing programs, including choice of language and media. From ’00 - ’05, growth was split between immigration and natural increase of the resident. Now, natural growth has the upper hand, with a substantial base population tending to produce families larger than the national average (3.87 vs. 3.19). While 73% of Hispanic immigrants prefer Spanish to English, the number falls to 25% of their children and just 1% of their grandchildren. With a larger proportion of Hispanics being born in the U.S., English will increasingly supplant Spanish as the most effective language for marketing messages. third-generation U.S. born Hispanics do retain a sense of Hispanic identity and heritage. For example, one popular new magazine, Urban Latino, is an English-language publication catering to the New Generation Latino (18- to 34-year-olds). The same phenomenon is powering the emergence of a new, mostly English-language radio genre, “Hurban” (Hispanic Urban).
MediaPost Publications 5/22/07

David Anderson in his work Gracism, has given us a new term to describe what the church ought to be actively pursuing if it is to model to the emerging culture the reality of Christ.  In his book Anderson focuses upon seven key sayings adapted from I Corinthians 12 to pursue within the church.

These being:
Saying One: I Will Lift You Up
Saying Two: I Will Cover You
Saying Three: I Will Share with You
Saying Four: I Will Honor You
Saying Five: I Will Stand with You
Saying Six: I Will Consider You
Saying Seven: I Will Celebrate with You

In response to the sturring within my spirit, I need to make a more intentional effort to connect with those of other backgrounds in order to allow this vision for a diverse new church to begin to take shape.

Interesting stats regarding increased diversity at both the State and National level.  Here's the start of the article:

Minority Population Tops 100 Million

     The nation’s minority population reached 100.7 million, according to the national and state estimates by race, Hispanic origin, sex and age released today by the U.S. Census Bureau. A year ago, the minority population totaled 98.3 million.

     “About one in three U.S. residents is a minority,” said Census Bureau Director Louis Kincannon. “To put this into perspective, there are more minorities in this country today than there were people in the United States in 1910. In fact, the minority population in the U.S. is larger than the total population of all but 11 countries.”

     The population in 1910 was 92.2 million. On Oct. 17, 2006, the Census Bureau reported that the overall population had topped 300 million.

     California had a minority population of 20.7 million — 21 percent of the nation’s total. Texas had a minority population of 12.2 million — 12 percent of the U.S. total.

You can read the rest of the report here: US Census Data

Tale of Two Churches article in Covenant Companion.  Pursuing diversity...