“My father is a pastor…you know, like, of a church.” I explained sheepishly.

“Oh, so you’re a pastor’s kid?” My co-worker asked.

I nodded.

“I dated a pastor’s kid once,” She continued, barely noticing my assent.”For four years.”

I apologized, and she smiled and continued. “No, he was a good kid. But I had to call it off when I realized I liked his parents more than I liked him. They were really nice people. Lutherans — really nice people. I could sit through his father’s sermons too. You know? I could listen to him. He didn’t talk down to people. He was just really wise and would just teach, not have to ‘preach’, you know what I mean? He was a smart guy, had a PhD or something, but you never could tell, he was just so humble and simple.”

Interesting. This co-worker of mine had exhibited allergy-like symptoms when topics of [Read more...]

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Being the husband to a pathologist, I get to learn a lot of new interesting (and molecular) metaphors for discussing matters of church, culture, and faith, which led to a previous post about “ecclesio-carcinoma” or how rapidly multiplying churches in the Korean American community can behave like a cancer (not that they always do, but that they can). This post is, in some ways, a response to that first post.

In any case, my wife and I have been discussing the challenges of church planting and the often painful ways that churches are forced to close their doors. She piped up suddenly and said that it was really a case of apoptosis versus necrosis.

I stared at her blankly.

“They are both cases of a cell death. Necrosis is when a cell dies through injury or cancer or something like that. It causes a lot of inflammation, a huge release of calcium, and can harm the body. The body has to expend a great deal of energy cleaning up after it and in general, it causes a lot of damage.

“On the other hand, apoptosis is peaceful cell death. The cell voluntarily dies because it is old, unnecessary, or when it is not well. There is no inflammation, no damage to other cells — it’s a clean death that helps the body grow.”

Certainly an interesting metaphor, particularly if you attend a “cell”-based church (har, har).

Wouldn’t it be interesting if older, aging churches chose to divest and invest in new church plants, like in the case of Quest Seattle and Interbay? Especially in the case of Korean American churches, where there has been prolific growth in the immigrant generation, will there be more mergers that occur in the second generation? Or will it be necrotic, leading to more disenchantment, more division, and more inflammation within the body of Christ? Here’s an interesting case study in the Chicago area, as recounted by my friend, John E.H. Lee. We need to see more of this type of healthy church apoptosis, but it is a choice that communities and their leaders must be bold enough and aware enough of the circumstances around them. Apoptosis is a natural occurrence in every living person, where 50-70 billion cells die each day in the average human adult.

One final interesting note about apoptosis, especially as it may be analogous to the development of the body of Christ is this — apoptosis plays a crucial role in the proper development of the body, it differentiates tissues and defines them. For instance, apoptosis is how your fingers separate, how your lungs form, etc. As the Asian American church plants grow out, one key point to observe for the overall health of the body, is to identify how the first generation churches rise and fall — apoptosis or necrosis? It is crucial to our development and whether it is possible to grow up as healthy churches.

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We had some good conversation on intergenerational churches Sunday and the Six Hats Thinking Method really helped to direct the flow of the conversation.

You can listen to our conversation below:

We had four participants on the conference call which made for some active conversation, but perhaps more interesting is that between the four of us, there was an interesting diversity of perspectives in terms of the ethnic church — Hispanic, Korean, Chinese, and African-American. So thanks to John, Joshua, and DJ. Here is Joshua’s review of the evening.

Finally, at the very end of the call, we seemed to have sparked an idea for the follow-up call for next month. Stay tuned to see if we can put that one together! Enjoy and thanks to DJ Chuang for hosting the audio.

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This post is a little overdue — but save next Sunday evening, March 4th — 9pm / 6pm (Eastern / West) for our monthly conference call.

The topic: Generational Issues in Asian American Churches.

To join in on the call, dial the following number:

Thanks to DJ for this starting point:

A launching point for the intergenerational issue can be the article in the Special Issue 2006 of Outreach Magazine, a piece about Pastor Daniel Kim and Sarang Church of Anaheim, California, titled “KingdomDreamers”, subtitled “A New Paradigm for Inter-Generational Ministry”. A PDF copy of the article is available at www.sarang.com/2005/pdf/outreachinside.pdf

Note, this will not be a “for” or “against” conversation. Actually, we are going to try to frame it a little more constructively using the “Six Thinking Hats” method. Here’s a couple of paragraphs as to why we’d like to try and approach this topic in this way:

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My friend, Jason, is a great example of brains and heart to me. Yesterday evening, we had a short conversation on worship that, with his permission, I’d like to share here. Be sure to check out his notes…Enjoy~

Jason: hey david… if you’re interested… here are some notes from small group the other day [On the topic of "Worship as Remembering"]

me: hey thanks i’ll check it out…great opening quote…really nice notes. are these notes prepared b4 the meeting or afterwards? what was some of the feedback you got back?

Jason: mostly after

me: very cool. interesting exercise. i would like to read over it again when i have more time

Jason: sure

me: do you think there’s something particular about asian american worship?

Jason: sorry.. i’m in a seminar, doing some work, and pondering the uniqueness of asian american worship….my initial thoughts have been that there is, but i feel like i don’t know enough about “our” culture to talk about it. i think most of my thoughts on the subject come from conversations with you

me: right…i know we’ve talked about this before but i know that you being in kind of an active worship leader role. just wondered if that had shaped your thoughts more

Jason: i guess i have some trouble figuring out what is the distinguishing feature of a group that sets it apart from another. two places where i have led worship lately are at aacf and at our belmont cell… now, i wonder if the differences i observe there in worship are due to cultural differences or just the fact that belmont people are.. you know.. belmont

me: valid question. perhaps you should increase your n [sample size]

Jason: i notice at aacf, people seem to like more organized and structured worship. i think that relates to one of the points in your worship manifesto post

me: to be more disorganized?

Jason: yeah.. more free. people get uncomfortable when there aren’t words to be sung
(in bewteen songs, etc.)

me: yes, i know. i don’t know why

Jason: and that’s not the case at belmont cell

me: sure

Jason: in fact…. those seem to be the best times of worship

me: hmmm…interesting

Jason: now.. is that something that is “wrong” with worship at aacf? or is there something there that can be cultivated from this need to be “prepared” (verse, chorus, verse, chorus x2, bridge, chorus!). when i went to church with amanda at belmont united methodist, i found myself initially thrown off by the seeming lack of freedom in worship there– the set readings and prayers, etc. but then i realized how these people around me were in intimate communion with God during worship and there is something to be learned from that style of worship. i’m not exactly sure what that is. ok… i’m going to stop typing for a bit…

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