It began when Canon Susan Moss, metro missioner in the Diocese of Minnesota, introduced the Rev. William Bulson, vicar of Holy Apostles Episcopal Church, to her longtime Hmong friend Sy Vang.

Hmong people, who came originally from the borders of Laos and Cambodia, arrived in Minnesota after the Vietnam War. Their culture is now a blend of languages and cultural traditions. St. Paul’s has 25,000 Hmong residents, according to the 2000 United States Census, although Minnesota officials estimate their number at around 60,000.

“Sy Vang shared with me the difficulties her congregation was having with their replacement priest since their beloved priest, an Anglo priest who was fluent in Hmong and had been with them for 15 years, died tragically and unexpectedly,” Bulson said.  “A group of them [Hmong] were considering leaving this congregation.”

At the time, Holy Apostles was an aging congregation that fit the profile of an urban church shrinking because of economic changes, said Bulson, vicar since 2000. Sunday morning attendance ranged from 50 to 55 people, although it sometimes increased in spurts with a “multicultural feel,” he said.

“Over time we began to get more African families, [and] there were Spanish-speaking families here
that were longtime members,” he said. “There was also an Ojibway family that had been coming here for about six years, and a few Filipino families started attending.”

In the fall and winter of 2004, Bulson and Vang started meeting with the Hmong group she had told him about. Some Hmong families attended Holy Apostles and a few even joined. But the “Hmong culture is like a lot of traditional cultures in that the larger group works together, decides together and acts together,” Bulson noted.

Bulson reiterated that the doors of the church were open to the Hmong community and began to have even more conversations with some of its leaders.

An emerging tidal wave

In early February 2005, Bulson said, the “tidal wave started.” “More and more people had come after their elder said, ‘I think I’m going to go to Holy Apostles.’” By March, their attendance doubled. In April, the Hmong elders and other leaders handed Bulson a list of 74 families totaling 527 people who would be joining Holy Apostles.

“Now we average about 150 people on Sundays, and on Pentecost Sunday [May 15] we baptized four Hmong people and had 240 people in attendance, even though the church seats 170,” Bulson said. Kao Chang of Brooklyn Park, Minn., joined Holy Apostles in March with his wife, children and parents.

“My parents were from Laos and brought us here to Minnesota in 1982,” he said. “We were Catholic, and in the Catholic Church, priests cannot marry, but the Episcopal Church allows their priest to marry. We are a family-oriented community and thought this was a place where we [Hmong] could grow.”

In 50 years, the Catholic Church “has only produced two priests that are Hmong,” he said.
The Rev. Winfred Vergara, missioner of the Episcopal Church Center’s Office of Asian American Ministries, celebrated the Pentecost baptism service and preached in Hmong.

“Today, we stand at the edge of mission in the 21st century, when American mission is no longer understood to be physically going to the jungles of Africa, the forests of Latin America or the islands of Asia,” Vergara said. “Rather, mission is simply opening the door of our hearts and flinging open the door of our churches to receive the peoples that God has brought upon our doorsteps. As we can see today, the Anglo-Europeans are among us, the Africans are among us, the Latinos are among us, the Asians are among us — and, pardon the pun, the Hmong are among us. In the beginning is the word, and the word is ‘hospitality.’”

Bishop James L. Jelinek of Minnesota is setting a date to receive the Hmong faithful en masse at St. Mark’s Cathedral, Minneapolis, Bulson said. In June, Bulson and others attended the Episcopal Asian American Consultation in Seattle and to be introduced as the first majority Hmong congregation in the Episcopal Church.

Bulson is studying Hmong and has assembled a team to translate the prayer book into Hmong.  Holy Apostles also is integrating into leadership roles, Bulson said.

“You’re pretty much left breathless,” Bulson said. “It’s overwhelming, it’s beautiful, it’s frightening, and it’s exciting -- the way it probably felt to Moses when he was in front of the pillar of fire or the way it might have felt at the first Eucharist at the Last Supper, when the disciples were sharing Christ’s body and blood. Beauty and [a] sense of one’s smallness, sense of being beloved and provided for.”