Point well taken on your example of the Korean church. I realize my observations are limited to the South East Asian region (Malaysia, Singapore, etc..) where I grew up.

Thanks for the comment. You articulated the point I was trying to make much better than I could.

However, I do want to make one point about the Southeast Asian church being influenced by signs and wonders vs. sound doctrine. I think that the opposite case, take Korea for instance, even where the Presbyterian church and Reformed theology is more strongly emphasized, they still have a problem with authoritarian leadership as well. I’m not sure if you can correlate excellent leadership with doctrinal statements in as much you can correlate spiritual revivals to a particular denomination.

That being said, I’m absolutely not poo-poo’ing on sound doctrine and Christian character, I’m just making the point that it does seem that our cultural skin is much thicker than our hearts.

I love this post because you’re really onto something about the discrepancy between the perception of “too humble” asian business leadership and “authoritarian” asian spiritual leadership. Let me jump in with my two cents.

OK it’s a little controversial but I dispute the notion of the “humble asian culture”. Humility without Christ is no true humility…even when humility is regarded as a prime virtue as it is in asian culture, it ends up being skewed. Dare we admit that “asian humility” is often an inverted pride that is concerned about “losing face” or “not appearing virtuous”.

Sin is common to all men and all races and asians are no exception. On the other hand, authoritarian leadership as pointed out by Sam Metcalf is also evident here…although muted, because of there are behaviors that are not socially acceptable in an American culture built on Judeo Christian roots. I would argue that the reason for the observed authoritarian asian leadership in south east asia is only partially because of the culture. It is also because the church there is greatly influenced historically by pentecostal roots that have led to an emphasis on signs/wonders rather than sound doctrine and christian character.

My point is to say – you’re right – a new perspective of asian christian leadership isn’t one that reaches back into our “roots” but one founded on Christ alone resulting in godly confidence and humble service.

Now, in a global international multinational context, it takes a different set of skills to lead well in a diverse mix. In that multinational context, I think what happens is certain values from one culture may take precedence over another culture’s, and depending on the corporation or organization, and how it measures “success”, that may well be efficiency, or profitability, or harmony, or global dominance of market share. There’s more than one way to slice the economic pie.

From the Kingdom of God perspective, there is one world, and one leader: Jesus Christ, king of kings, lord of lords, leader of leaders. What that looks like and how that plays out, we’ve yet to see fully on this side of heaven.

And while the point I was trying to make may not have been clear, I believe that Asian leadership in our churches in our mother countries have stalled when it comes to creating change to the culture itself per Sam Metcalf’s commentary. Granted, his criticism may have been a perspective smacking of cultural superiority, but in light of the Gospel, don’t you think he brings up good questions re: leadership issues?

In any case, I think you are absolutely right, both Western and Asian leadership styles need to be re-evaluated in light of what we believe, else our faith be made irrelevant. I would think this is where AA churches could be a great breeding ground for a new kind of leader, but we are just now getting into the sweet spot of this generation, so there is much hope and great expectations.

In any event, Asian and AA leaders struggle with the same human sins that other do, just with the added complexity of being “minorities” so that their particular issues seem outsized in comparison. If the measure is Christ then we all come up short.

In some ways the Asian church may be better served by people being more intentional about drawing on their own culture than by abandoning it – rather than trying to follow some other model and stumbling over ones own culture in the process. Does that make any sense?