Allow myself to re-introduce myself in the post-blogging age in my first video blog entry. And true to the metaphor of being Asian American, I’m driving from one place to another. Enjoy~
Where are you from? DJ Chuang
January 23, 2012 By 2 Comments
As we start a new season here at Next GenerAsian Church, our team of contributors have reconnected and been reinvigorated to continue this team blog as a place for stories and conversations about faith and culture. Even though this blog had been dormant for quite some time, its appearance in the Top 200 Church Blogs list signaled significant interest in this blog’s topics.
To launch this new season, we’ll have a round of introductions from each of the contributors. By sharing our back stories, we hope this humanizes and personalizes our voices as we drill-down into issues regarding faith and culture.
Most of us Asian Americans have been asked the question, “Where are you from?” And that’s sometimes followed by “Where are you really from?” when wanting to find out someone’s ethnic identity. This can be annoying or offensive for some.
Let’s re-frame that question. I’ll share where I’m from, and where I’m coming from.
My name is DJ Chuang and I’m from Orange County, California. Moved here 4 years ago from metro Washington DC. I came to America when I was 8 years old; my family immigrated from Taiwan; I’m the oldest of 3 boys. My parents are Chinese, so our family was fairly traditional and not religious. Our family ran a motel business in a humble small Virginia town. Life was practical, routine and mundane, and I thought that’s all there was to life: you go to school, graduate, get a job, get married, have children, lather, rinse and repeat. A very predictable narrative. Intuitively, I yearned for something more in life.
I discovered this as I learned about the Christian faith during my college years. After working as an engineer for a few years, I sensed a disconnect between my (English-speaking) Asian American friends and the typical church — be it the ethnic Asian church or mainstream mostly-Caucasian church.
Thus began my life journey to see if God might use me to make a difference. I took a leap of faith and went to seminary. I pastored for 5 years — 2 years in an ethnic Chinese church and 3 years in a multi-Asian/multi-ethnic church plant. I started blogging. I worked with a private family foundation to develop Asian American leadership.
Now I’m well into my 40s, and the same issues keep recurring about the bicultural tensions of being Asian and American, both at the same time. The mainstreaming of Asian America hasn’t resolved this dilemma (cf. 20-something freddiew describing the sigh from his Asian parents).
Supposedly, there is a surge of Asian American participation in college ministries and American churches, but you wouldn’t be able to tell from looking at Christian media and books and conferences. I’d like to think that being Asian American can be much more than just being Asian or just being American.
I believe how we live out our Christian faith is much more than prayer and Bible study and church attending and serving. There is a whole cultural and relational layer that’s has to be contextualized and incarnationalized into our lived theology. That is, an Asian American Christian marriage and an Asian American Christian family will look different in its practical theology because of its cultural and relational context.
More specifically, 2 issues I’m particularly passionate about (or, burdened for) are: 1stly, how we relate to one another. How can Asian American Christians better demonstrate reconciliation, conflict resolution, forgiveness, and restoring relationships? And, 2ndly, how we can accept and value the average Asian American person and the broken-hearted too. There’s an ugly side of Asian cultures that devalues those who don’t get the top grades, have superb performance, and/or attaining social status, not to mention those who are struggling with life, be it mental illness, addictions, hurts, and hangups. In Christ, we have nothing to prove and no one to impress. That’s good news! And we have a long ways to live that out as Asians and Asian Americans.
I’m glad there’s a place online like Next Gener.Asian Church to have these vital conversations to flesh out our faith in a richer and more fully-textured manner. There’s much to talk about — let’s get on with it!
A Measurement of Assimilation
December 2, 2011 By 2 Comments
This is an interesting study that shows the degree of similarity between native and foreign-born adults in the United States. The findings are fascinating and worth an in-depth look, but I’ll highlight a few that pertain to Asians here and attach a couple of fascinating graphs associated with the study. Discuss!
- The degree of similarity between the native- and foreign-born, although low by historical standards, has held steady since 1990. Assimilation declined during the 1980s, remained stable through the 1990s, and has actually increased slightly over the past few years
- Economic and civic assimilation often occurs without significant cultural assimilation.
- Immigrants from developed countries are not necessarily more assimilated. Immigrants born in Korea, which the World Bank classifies as a high-income country, have a collective assimilation index value lower than that of immigrants from Cuba or the Philippines, which are classified as low-income countries. Several factors can explain this pattern, among them the fact that immigrants from developed countries do not necessarily become naturalized citizens more rapidly than those from the developing world. The United States often attracts immigrants who belonged to the economic elite of their origin country.
- Immigrants from Vietnam, Cuba, and the Philippines enjoy some of the highest rates of assimilation. However, these groups assimilate more rapidly in some respects than others. For example, they are far more assimilated economically than they are culturally. Curiously, all of the countries mentioned have experienced U.S. military occupation.
- This pattern implies that policies restricting bilingual education, or requiring that government business be conducted in English, will have little impact on economic or civic assimilation. Indeed, erecting linguistic barriers to civic participation might actually retard assimilation along noncultural lines. Some observers may believe that policies promoting cultural homogenization are desirable. What should be clear, however, is that such policies do not appear to promote civic or economic assimilation.
Answer Me This
December 1, 2011 By Leave a Comment
I was recently at the ANACEFC annual conference and got to sit in on a session where as a group the leaders wrestled with many questions together. It was really refreshing to do this in an Asian setting out of a seminary context. It was also interesting as a Korean American to listen to the concerns of Chinese American pastors and church leaders. We are surprisingly similar yet with some differences. First of all, let me express my respect and admiration for my Chinese American brothers and sisters who have a greater capacity and tolerance for differences than I have witnessed in Korean settings. I was also encouraged by the presence of women at the highest levels of this conference. And lastly, as we tackled questions together, I was impressed by the presence of dialogue as a problem-solving tool even as we discussed passionately and laughed together over difficult questions.
I would like to share some of their discussion questions with you in the hope that discussion can happen here that might help us all. Please feel free to jump in…
- How do we embrace and empower the second generation ministry?
- Is it really necessary to delete or change the word, “Chinese” in the name of the church? Is it more appropriate to adopt the usage of term “a church of Cantonese, English and Mandarin Ministries” and avoid the term, “a church of Cantonese, English, and Mandarin congregations.“
- With respect of a church of multiple ministries, what is the role of the Senior Pastor? Give your views on the structure of pastoral staff.
- How do we effectively resolve conflicts between pastors, boat members, and pastors, among board members, boar dan members of the church and etc.?
Talking Around Each Other
November 26, 2011 By 1 Comment
Found the above on YouTube and found it to be a classic example of how Asian Americans and their parents talk in a way that doesn’t fit the definition of communication. And of course, while it is parody, it certainly sounds similar to some of the conversations I’ve had with my own parents. In some ways, it’s not just about our parents learning English, it’s about trying to keep up with this emerging, techno-illogical world that literally has only been blown up in the last two decades. It is the rare parent that can keep up with a serious discussion about the changing nature of work in the digital economy, expectations about the predictive capacity of the SAT for success, and whether or not having a secretary constitutes as a bragging right. Sometimes all they care about are their videos. And we, our YouTube.
I Won’t Confess
November 24, 2011 By 8 Comments
Some of the stereotypes are simply true. We have a culture that has made it hard for us to talk about ourselves. At times, we have very little sensitivity to what is going on inside of us and can barely name our emotions. Sure, there are the exceptions, but it’s one thing to be loud and obnoxious about the stuff that doesn’t matter, even if they are taboo subjects to Western sensibilities. The stuff that is hard to get to is the stuff we keep under our vest.
Here’s the thing, I know Asian American brothers and sisters who can analyze the junk out of the stock market, or a book of financial reports, or a research project, or even theology…or even Asian American churches. But my heart remains a closed, unanalyzed place. And the miscarriages, the marital strife, the wilderness season when I dropped out of college, the wrestling with pornography, my temper tantrums, and oh my fears, my fears and doubts. And my hatreds. I am just getting to know me.
And therein lies one of the chief problems with talking about what is wrong with the Asian American church, is that I am part of the problem, and I barely know how to talk about myself. And neither do many of my brothers and sisters.
6 Postures of Ethnic Minority Culture Towards Majority Culture
November 21, 2011 By 4 Comments
This very important article, “Six Postures of Ethnic Minority Culture Towards Majority Culture,” resulted from a collaboration of 4 Cru ethnic student ministries: Epic (Asian American ministry), Destino (Latino ministry), Nations (Native American ministry) and Impact (African American ministry).
Download the PDF or read each section on their blog:
- Sixth Posture = “Equal and Empowered Partnership” and Moving Forward
- Fifth Posture = “Unity as Assimilation”
- Fourth Posture = “Duty and Pleasing”
- Third Posture = “Silent and Resigned”
- Second Posture = “Angry and Wounded”
- First Posture = “Unaware”
- Introduction
post-tsunami order, asians in the library, and the multicultural church
March 17, 2011 By 4 Comments
there’s been more than one story talking about the calm and order in post-tsunami japan. columnists are pointing out the lack of looting and lawlessness; kristof even prophesied the strength of japanese society when the earthquake hit. the unspoken comparison, of course, is what happened five and half years ago in new orleans. but the most memorable post-katrina quote, courtesy of kanye west, helps us understand why the social fabric of japan is woven differently: ”george bush hates black people.”
japan thrives because of its homogeneity. and they’re not the only nations. when the annual list of best nations is published, invariably, homogenous nations like denmark top the list. and the challenge of the “other” has reached its breaking point all over western europe. the leaders of germany, france, italy, and the united kingdom have all declared that multiculturalism has failed and is unwanted.
but america clings to the idea that our society is stronger because of the melting pot salad bowl, or at least we say we do. until the “other” starts to irritate us… like those asians in the library.
and are things really different in the church? rebecca kim chronicles how campus fellowships experienced their own white flight when asians started outnumbering them in her book, god’s whiz kids. church growth experts have consistently warned that the pursuit of diversity compromises growing numbers. even the utopian church of acts 2 devolved into alarming ethnic strife by acts 6.
but the Bible (well, it’s mostly the new testament) stubbornly clings to this idea that the church should be comprised of all people—gender, race, culture, sexuality, and class. it would be easier to be monocultural, but the apostles’ solution was not to divide into a jewish and gentile church, nor was it to force gentiles to adopt jewish practices. if we could just ignore those that don’t look or think like us, it certainly would be more efficient and effective. but our crucified and resurrected LORD rarely seems to take that route.
#prayforjapan
March 15, 2011 By Leave a Comment
The heartache and loss of the Japanese people in the aftermath of the 9.0 magnitude earthquake, the tsunami it triggered, and now the potential nuclear meltdown are almost impossible to describe.
Below, the following bloggers offer insight and perspective on this massive tragedy:
- Amazing First Person Video of the Japanese Tsunami, by Eugene Cho — “The relief response needs to be varied and diverse but I think the local Japanese churches have a very unique perspective and role in the relief efforts and I hope that many churches consider these kinds of partnerships.”
- Share in the Japanese Sadness, by Daniel DK Kim — “This is a wake-up call to all human beings to respond with greater compassion, generosity, and unity”
When faced with tragedy on such a massive scale (over 10,000 people killed, thousands missing or unaccounted for, 500,000 homeless or displaced, billions in damage), it is easy to turn away or shut down. However, let us not forget the stories of those who are grieving, even as they search for loved ones.
Yomiuri Shimbun /AFP/Getty Images: This woman was calling out the names of her family in the city of Soma in Miyagi prefecture earlier today (March 14, 2011).
How to Help:
- CRASH (Christian Relief, Assistance, Support and Hope) Japan: “A network supporting Christians to do relief work in Japan and around the world. CRASH equips and prepares churches and missions to be there to help their communities when disasters strike and coordinates Christian volunteers to work with local ministries in the event of a disaster.”
- Evangelical Covenant Church: “Covenant World Relief is responding to the devastating earthquake and tsunami in northeast Japan with our sister denomination, the Japan Covenant Church.”
- World Vision: “World Vision plans to distribute relief supplies to meet the daily needs of quake and tsunami survivors. We will also focus our efforts on responding to the emotional needs of children, who are the most impacted after such a traumatic event.”
- Presbyterian Disaster Assistance: “This designated account supplements the One Great Hour of Sharing (OGHS) offering to enable a significant response for relief and disasters in Japan.”
- Asian Access: “Pray for Japan, for the Church and for us as we prepare to come alongside the Church and other partners to deliver aid and respond with well-prepared teams as the opportunities arise.”
Key Series: Why we need Asian Americans to be Asian Americans
December 20, 2010 By 4 Comments
Read this insightful series by DJ Chuang about why we need Asian Americans to be Asian Americans. It is a powerful introduction to many of the conversations we have here at Next Gener.Asian Church.
As DJ writes in his initial series post:
All to say that our American society needs more Asian Americans to be Asian American. It is to say that at this state of the union, we have too few. We certainly don’t have too many. We’d do well to have a few more to stand up and represent. We’d do well to think through and have more robust conversations about what it means to be Asian Americans. We’d do well to allow the richness of our Asian American’ness to overflow and not hide it under a bushel.
The disclaimers DJ writes at the outset are, alone, worth the price of admission:
