Next Gener.Asian Church

Even though it’s already over halfway through the month, I thought I would mention that May is Asian Pacific American Heritage month. Check out Enscriptchun for some great links to various voices in the Asian American blogosphere. I definitely resonate with Enscriptchun’s words about APA Heritage month:

I’m quite aware of the issues surrounding the relegation of the vast sum of Asian Pacific culture and history being reduced to a single month celebration, but it’s nice to have some recognition of contributions of our people, right?

Many of us have endured more outright racism than we’d like to remember. Even innocent sounding questions like, “No, where are you really from?” or well-intentioned (but totally wrong) statements such as, “I don’t even think of you as being Asian” only serve to reinforce the notion that we don’t belong here, that we’re something other than “normal.”

This morning, I heard a piece on NPR by Dmae Roberts called Secret Asian Woman — you can listen to the audio here or watch this video she produced. Although she speaks specifically about her multiracial identity, I found myself relating to much of her story — the struggle, pain and weariness from being Asian in America and learning to forge a new sense of identity in the face of a culture that often belittles, dismisses or ignores us.

It has taken me many years to recognize my God-given identity as an Asian American follower of Christ. For so many years, I lived in the marginality of “neither/nor” — neither fully Asian nor completely American. While this sense of spiritual homelessness has made me cling to my ultimate heavenly citizenship, as I have walked with God over the years my perspective has shifted dramatically. I have begun to see myself as “both/and” — in all of the beauty and mess that being both Asian and American means.

In many ways, being “both/and” people uniquely positions us for missional leadership. Many of us, in order to survive adolescence, had to learn to navigate fluidly between different cultures inside and outside the home. We had to learn to process, filter and recontextualize information and learning to the appropriate cultural setting. As Friend of Missional describes, “A missional church knows that they must be a cross-cultural missionary (contextual) people and adopt a missionary stance in relation to their community.

David Gibbons has been talking about building third culture churches that reach out to the marginalized. Dave describes these communities in this way [h/t: DJ Chuang]:

Third culture is the mindset and will to love, learn, and serve in any culture, even in the midst of pain and discomfort.

Perhaps one of our greatest contributions (in addition to some pretty cool musical endeavors), as “both/and” Asian American followers of Christ, will be to build third culture churches who are actively engaged in the mission of God in the world.

Just something fun since I finish my last final for the spring semester today.

People on the ground level have said that the death toll is going to reach 40,000 – almost twice the number reported yesterday.

2 million have been displaced from their homes.

Understandably, the government of the nation once known and disputed as Burma is reeling. So on top of this, the military government, which was already in the news and under scrutiny for how they dealt with anti-government protests at the end of last year, is guarded about the help they receive and how “relief” is administered.

This means that relief workers are literally unable to get in the door to help. I heard this morning that when U.S. First Lady Laura Bush implied that the Myanmar gov’t was incompetent, visas to awaiting American relief workers were immediately denied. In effect, “thanks, but no thanks.”

So pray. Give.

Ken Fong is willing to go there. His church, Evergreen is hosting a talk along with the group, Christians on Social Issues (CSI), entitled “We Need To Talk: A Conversation on Homosexuality”. 

Here’s the info straight from the Evergreen web site. 

7:00 p.m., Saturday, May 10, 2008
WE NEED TO TALK: A Conversation about Homosexuality and the Asian American Christian Church
Sanctuary

Sponsored by the Christian Social Issues (CSI) group, an informal gathering of Asian American Christians who discuss wide-ranging social issues and how they relate to our Christian faith. Join three old friends – two straight and one gay – who will engage in a conversation that needs to happen more often in order to dispel ignorance, quell fear and hatred, and foster greater understanding. Debate about scriptural interpretation or scientific evidence is not within the scope of this dialogue. It is not our intent to resolve this highly complex issue. Though we may ultimately arrive at different conclusions, at the very least, we need to break the awful silence in our churches surrounding this subject. We really need to talk. 

If you have a friend or loved one who is gay, or you are gay yourself, or you are a Christian who is concerned about this issue, please join us in this much needed and long-awaited dialogue. Please remember that this will be about fostering a conversation, not conversion. To find out more, Click here.

Having met Ken face to face last year, one thing that impressed me more than his ability to speak was his ability to listen, really listen. And he has the courage to give others a voice and enable them in whatever capacity that he can. This is one example of where that ability of dialogue is particularly timely and necessary in our generation. Here’s a link to a slideshow that Ken has put together earlier this year. 

This conversation is a particularly difficult one among Asian Americans. Most churches don’t acknowledge the existence of the GLBT crowd at all. It’s a double stigma among socially conservative Asians and theologically conservative Christians. At this point in time, my own jury is hung. To borrow a line from that Jim Carrey movie,”Liar Liar”: “I hold myself in contempt! Why should you be any different!”

And although this is totally unrelated…here’s a trailer to a movie about Asian American homosexuals and the church. Attend the conversation if you can…and I look forward to Ken sharing some notes online so we can continue the conversation in the blogosphere…

Living differently. The last few years I’ve been attending SWBTS and lately the chapel sermons have been centering on living differently, esp. for those called to the ministry. I guess the message has not changed much over the years, but why has it been hitting me so hard lately? Do I act like the world? Do I need to change? I wonder is it all legalism? But I guess in a world where evangelical leaders are found out to be gay, drug taking fiends (hyperbole), well its not your mama’s church leader. Where even the question of homosexuality as a sin is questioned?

Should we be watching certain movies? Or listening to certain kinds of music? Is it ok to smoke? Can we drink a beer if we don’t get drunk? Is it ok to use profanity? Definitely I am convicted that we need to live a different kind of life. (If you have time, about 1 hour, check out this sermon by Paul Washer). The sermon calls on the carpet “American” Christianity…y’know stuff like how our divorce rate is higher than outside the church…

I also wonder where does being AsianAmerican fit into all this? (When being Christian is hard enough.)

John Cho of Harold and Kumar fame talks Asian American stereotypes in film.

I don’t even know what to think of this yet. But the title of this is: The Comprehensive Guide to East Asians.

Asian American Voices: Mixed Race Asians

Columbia University’s Asian American Alliance puts together their own “America’s Next Top Model Minority”

Bobby Nakamura tries video dating.

A presentation on the internment camps with original rap. Pretty sweet.

Another video history, this time just a general history of Asian Americans.

I guess you will have to view the site. http://www.paradise08.com/.

Basically on Memorial Day weekend a large gathering is planned for the geographic center of the US. That is Paradise, KS. The day is to be a day of worship. Nothing will be sold…

David’s recent post  made me think about church ministry.  I can’t guess where your church is at. Church plants can be  preoccupied or hampered with small manpower…and it just seems worthwhile to have ministries that confront our society (for the gospel). And David talked about the abuse of women, and in particular, in the Asian American/Asian community. We need to stop the violence. (that’s a great slogan, don’t you think?)

I have been thinking about outreach ministries.  I think that churches outside of the Bible belt have been working hard on presenting the Gospel in new, engaging, and challenging ways. Seems to me that we aren’t as innovative…until I came across a church in Alabama (the pastor was at Chapel a few years ago and had spoke at one of Dr. S. Tsoi’s Youth Camps in Phx).  The church decided not to televise a worship service but to have a hunting show. 

So I thought that my seminary should do a “This Old House” Type show…or that a Chinese church do a cultural broadcast, or cooking show, or martial arts, and of course like that hunting show, present the gospel at the end. 

For a few years I’ve been holding on to an idea about fixing up a Honda to appeal to the “Rice Rocket” crowd.  Then on the news I saw this story about the National Guard detailing cars to promote the guard, why not one of our churches “soup” up a car to present the gospel.  (The news segment was about a soldier who made a tribute car to his fallen comrades, the army saw it and asked the soldier to detail cars to promote the army).  We could “pimp” our church vans!  But seriously I know tons of Asian guys getting all into their rice rockets…can you see it, we can have gospel stickers to place on our windshields.  Jesus written in Kanji…ok, j/k about that…but definitely invision going out, opening up the trunk and sharing with the young men and women.  “Ladies; gents, your cars will rust away one day, just as we do too. Like our cars our souls need preventative maintenance…” 

That sublime John Mayer song, Daughters, has been ringing in my head lately (read the lyrics). 

Maybe it’s because I have a daughter now or maybe it’s because William Woo, the newest blogger to contribute here, recently wrote on women in church leadership. But tonight I’m thinking,church leadership matters aside, when will we be bold enough to take a stand against the egregious physical and sexual abuse that Asian American and Asian women face daily?

Check this out: The Asian Task Force Against Domestic Violence Organization conducted a study on the Cambodian, South Asian, Vietnamese, Korean and Chinese communities in Massachusetts in 2000.

That’s the percentage of women by ethnicity who reported physical abuse and/or injury by their partners. Here’s a link for more specifics on abuse of South Asian women.

Some more numbers listed in the above link from other studies:

•   81.1% of the women reported experiencing at least one form of intimate partner violence (domination/controlling/psychological, physical, and/or sexual abuse as categorized by the researchers) in the past year.
• 67% “occasionally” experienced some form of domination/controlling/ psychological abuse; 48% experienced it “frequently” in the past year.
• 32% experienced physical or sexual abuse at least “occasionally” during the past year.
• Of the 23 women who reported not having experienced intimate partner violence themselves, more than half (64%) said they knew of an Asian friend who had experienced intimate partner violence. Smaller proportions of respondents reported that their mothers (9%) and sisters (11%) had experienced intimate partner violence.
• 28.5% of the survey participants knew of a woman who was being abused by her in-laws.

And these numbers may be the more conservative ones. In a blog post entitled Sexism and Confucianism, the author Kai provides these stats…

This fact sheet indicates 60% of Korean American women experience physical abuse by an intimate partner sometime in their lives. 57% of Japanese American women experience an intimate partner’s physical violence by age 49. 47% of Vietnamese American women experience intimate physical violence and 30% experienced violence in that year. 40.8% of South Asian American women reported that they had been physically and/or sexually abused in some way by their current male partners and 36.9% reported having been victimized in that year.

Asian American women also have one of the highest domestic violence fatality rates in the nation…

And further provides this commentary on how male domination is rooted in Confucianism:

the flagrant sexism built into many Confucian tenets and practices, and the rigidity of many codified social hierarchies, must be expunged from East Asian culture, period….

 If Yin and Yang are to exist in balance, then the patriarchal order which has embedded itself into Confucian thought must be corrected, from the notions surrounding the special role of the “eldest son”, to the system of “obediences”, to the acceptable reasons for divorce (this one is key in addressing domestic abuse), to the traditions of inheritance. As long as these institutions remain in place, I don’t think we’ll be able to properly fight the epidemic of domestic violence Donna D writes about up top, because this backdrop of generally accepted sexism helps make this issue invisible and generates an atmosphere of apathy around directly combating gender violence.

Now here’s the kicker. The very first comment under the above post is this:

I see this sexism justified in Korean American communities, often through Christian rhetoric. If it ain’t one thing…

And before you or I get defensive, let’s first recognize that these statistics must hold some truth, that somehow, on our watch, physical abuse and sex crimes against Asian American women have happened and continue to happen on a regular basis. Someone you know has suffered. Someone in your church has suffered. And if we have made ourselves a stumbling block to the Gospel by allowing these types of heinous abuses or by dismissing them, we are as good as the perpetrators. Women in leadership is not the issue, the ways in which we serve and protect them are. 

Fathers, be good to your daughters
Daughters will love like you do
Girls become lovers who turn into mothers
So mothers, be good to your daughters too

Is there such a thing as Asian American preaching?

There is something distinctive about African American preaching, and it resists “whitenization.” 

I’m not trying to racialize everything about our worship experience, but I do think it bears at least asking, is there something distinct about our preaching, our proclamation of the Gospel? Or do we believe that the Bible is colorless or White for the most part? 

The fact that most EM’s operate in English and leave all other cultural aspects implicit, that is to say silent, seems to imply that true Biblical preaching is absent of culture, ethnicity, race, etc. As if the Bible could read itself for forty minutes on Sunday morning, we really wouldn’t need a preacher, because they would fall short of the text speaking for itself. 

We seem to accept the incarnation of Christ, taking on all the particulars of a human male, as though it happened in an anachronistic time. Jesus was a Jewish rabbi in a time when none of that racial, socio-economic stuff mattered. Jesus is transcendent, more God than man, more spirit than flesh. Therefore, we in church, reflect a negative view of the particulars and details of ourselves. We retain something of the gnosticism that denied physical aspects of Christ and thus of ourselves. We are escapist not only of this world, but of our own bodies. And thus, we are not comfortable in our skin or our voices and experiences. Ironically, even though those very things may have led us to Christ, we are hurriedly ushered to crucify that old man, rather than redeem him. We think of transformation as abandonment even though we should raise an eyebrow as to why resurrection would really matter if our hearts were the only thing that God looked at.

Please don’t misunderstand, I’m not saying we go all the way down that slippery slope to humanism and diminishing the divinity of Christ. I’m just wondering if we can hold both his divinity and humanity in tension because I think those details matter. I don’t mean to make my ethnicity an idol, but I think that we would dismiss the beauty of God’s wonderful design if we ignored the details of our own being and creation. Culture and ethnicity and history are part of God’s beautiful design, and facets of a wonderfully cut diamond of creation, when will we learn to polish it and appreciate it?

Edit: I got off on such a tangent that I forgot to link to this interesting article by Matthew Kim on Asian American preaching. Here’s the portion that triggered this post [emphasis mine]:

The trend among many preachers of multi-Asian and multi-ethnic congregations has been to discourage the promotion of ethnic culture and tradition within church walls. For instance, one Korean American pastor expressed that his church was not a Korean church or an Asian church, but rather a place for everyone regardless of their ethnic-racial background. He proceeded to lay down ground rules for the many Korean Americans in the congregation. First, he banned eating kimchi and other types of Korean food in the church. Second, he refused to make announcements for any Asian events in the community. Third, he prevented his congregants from going to Korea town for lunch. Michael Luo observes:

Today, despite [this pastor's] efforts over six years to make people of all races feel welcome, the 250 to 300 worshippers who attend the church’s three English services every week are almost all Koreans, with a scattering of other Asians. He has attracted only a handful of whites and blacks.

By de-emphasizing ethnicity and culture from the pulpit, some Asian American preachers prevent ethnic people from being themselves and are in a sense rejecting the beautiful diversity of God’s creative workmanship in human differences. Since every person innately possesses an ethnic and cultural tradition, Asian American preachers should make the most of illustrations that highlight examples from the various ethnicities, cultures, and traditions to which congregants belong.

It is important to contextualize sermons and assist congregants in embracing their ethnicities and cultures. For example, many Asian Americans dislike their physical characteristics and believe God made a mistake when creating Asians. Such ideas should be addressed and corrected through Asian American sermons. It is possible to overemphasize Christian identity to the complete neglect of ethnic and racial identities. Community will never be built in the Asian American church by shying away from our differences but rather by acknowledging them head on and conversing sincerely with those who are unlike us.