Are differences only skin deep?

I have been thinking about the comment Karis posted and what caught my eye was what she said about liking people that are similar to us. I have worshipped at El Milagro a number of times, and if you haven't been to the latino service for a baptism you haven't truly experienced the Todos Los Santos community. El Milagro is struggling with what it means to be bi-cultural, but is not the only congregation in the City South Cluster to be experiencing merging pains. A little over a decade ago Minnehaha Lutheran Church and Holy Communion Lutheran Church merged to become Minnehaha Communion Lutheran Church. Both of these congregations were of Scandanivian heritage. What I found most interesting in speaking with the former pastor was the difficulty these two peoples had in coming together. He said for the first 4 or 5 years one side of the aisle were people from Minnehaha and the other side Holy Communion. New people, when they showed up weren't quite sure where they could sit. He said it was around year 9 or 10 after the merger that the idea of 'us' and 'them' had begun to leave the vocabulary of the members and they actually began thinking of themselves as members of Minnehaha Communion.

That said, I wonder how long it will take people who have vastly different ethnic heritages to come together at El Milagro - or for that matter any multi-lingual congregation. Perhaps the departure of the Bronx-boy Tony will create a situation where the two sides of the aisle as it were would come together faster than Minnehaha Communion' s congregation. On the other hand there may not be any movement toward commonality until a new leader emerges - lay or ordained.