Congregations with largely white memberships in Toluca Lake and Tarzana will welcome Filipino American women as pastors this month in a striking example of how women and ethnic minorities are increasingly filling United Methodist Church posts in Southern California.

Also, a Korean American associate minister will augment the staff at Northridge United Methodist Church. Two more white clergywomen will join pastoral ranks in the Valley, one replacing a male minister in North Hills and another going on the staff at Westlake Village.

"We have felt it is timely and crucial to bring in more women clergy and racial-ethnic minorities, especially in the San Fernando Valley," said the Rev. Brandon Cho, the Chatsworth-based district superintendent. Cho oversees 62 churches, nearly half of them in the Valley area.

The appointments, which were effective Friday, reflect the recommendations of Cho, a Korean American, and the final decisions of Bishop Roy I. Sano, a Japanese American who leads the denomination's California-Pacific Conference, or region, from the Pasadena headquarters.

Under the United Methodist "itinerant" system of rotating ministerial assignments, a fair number of pastoral changes are announced each year.

Twenty of nearly 120 recent ministerial changes in the conference were "cross-cultural" appointments--those in which the pastor's racial or ethnic heritage differs from that of the assigned congregation, Sano said.

"We can proceed in this direction because of the graciousness and openness of congregations to accept pastors from a different cultural background," said Sano, who succeeded Bishop Jack Tuell two years ago.

The 8.7-million-member United Methodist Church, the nation's second-largest Protestant denomination, has worked for decades toward church-wide racial and ethnic diversification and opportunities for female ministers.

The trend is accelerating in Sano's region, which covers Southern California and Hawaii:

Only one white male is among 22 candidates for full ministerial status. Of seven elders--the next step to full minister--three were white women, two were Asian men and two were African American women. Among 15 deacons, "only one is an Anglo man, four are Anglo women and the rest are Asian or Pacific in background," Sano said.

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No current statistical breakdown was available for racial and ethnic ratios among United Methodist ministers in Southern California and Hawaii, but "we are catching up in our clergy ranks to reflect the changing demographics," said the bishop.