Ministry in a Multi-Cultural and Unchurched Society

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Mi n i s t r y i n a Mu l t i -Cu l tura l and Unchur ched Soc i et y

Appendix 57 Statistics on Urban Diversity Compiled by Rev. Dr. Don L. Davis

People from about 140 countries comprise more than eight and one-half million residents of Los Angeles County today. Some of these populations are substantial. Los Angeles is the second largest Mexican, Armenian, Korean, Filipino, Salvadorian, and Guatemalan city in the world, the third largest Canadian city, and has the largest Japanese, Iranian, Cambodian, and Gypsy communities in the United States, as well as more Samoans than American Samoa.

Zena Perlstone. Ethnic L.A. Beverly Hills: Hillcrest Press, 1990.

[The] 600,000 children enrolled in the Los Angeles Unified School District in 1988 speak about 96 different languages.

Today there are about three million Hispanics in Los Angeles County (35% of the total population) with thousands more arriving every year; the population grew by 22% between 1980 and 1985, and by 2010 there may be more Hispanics than Anglos . . . [this] population is large, relatively concentrated, lives near and keeps in touch with their home countries, tends to marry other Hispanics (80%) and continues to speak Spanish at home. . . . The people groups are here. . . . Ethnics in America communicate in 157 distinct languages. . . . The number of such people-groups is increasing and the number of people within most groups is multiplying rapidly. . . . All together these total around 60 million, about 25 percent of the total population . . . the majority of these people are in our great cities.

Charles Chaney. Church Planting at the End of the Twentieth Century . Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, 1989.

It was estimated in 1977 that of the 40 million Americans who were immigrants or the children of immigrants, “one-third do not speak English in the home.”

Earl Parvin. Missions USA . Chicago: Moody Press, 1985.

Hispanics are highly urbanized. In 1980, a higher proportion of Hispanics (87%) lived in metropolitan areas (and in their central cities) than did the total American population (74%). . . . This process of moving into cities is most obvious in California, where 93% of the state’s Hispanics live in cities.

Joan Moore and Harry Pachon. Hispanics in the United States . Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1985.