Check out the full link here, but in essence, “138 prominent Muslim scholars” organized by “the Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought, a non-governmental organisation based in Amman, Jordan” wrote a letter to the Pope and other Christian leaders about what is required for the adherents to the world’s two largest religions to live in peace.

The institute said: “This historic letter is intended by its 138 signatories as an open invitation to Christians to unite with Muslims over the most essential aspects of their respective faiths – the principles of love of one God and love of the neighbour.

“It is hoped that the recognition of this common ground will provide the followers of both faiths with a shared understanding that will serve to defuse tensions around the world.”

Wow. I’m floored. The article notes that this letter coincides with the end of Ramadan and shows a great deal of intention and awareness to what is at stake, both ecumenically and geopolitically. I don’t know if every Muslim would agree with the purpose of this letter, but it certainly shows the humanity underlying this simple and beautiful gesture.

The letter begs a question …have we as Christians ever written such a letter to Muslims? Who would I send it to? I guess I could find the address of this institute…I’m so humbled by this letter, even though it wasn’t addressed to me. To the point, I don’t even know that many Muslims in the city I live. I’ve never thought about this, but I guess I should say…I don’t have enough Muslim friends to make reconciliation a reality in my own life.

The article lists the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury as recipients of the letter…I barely know who they are though we share the same moniker of “Christian”, but I suppose as Protestants, decentralized and fragmented across tens of thousands of denominations, there’s no way that this letter would have ended up in my mailbox.  But I’m glad it was sent. Now if I can just live out my reply…

Romans 12:18 – “If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men.”

Some ministry leaders and pastors say there is no need for contextualizing ministry and only the Gospel and its doctrines is essential. Some say that only multi-ethnic churches are needed, where everyone is equally incorporated in a church’s life and corporate culture.

But, when I read remarks like this, it helps me to see that a different flavor of church really is needed for next generation Asian Americans.

This remark is from Josh Deng, a college senior:

I was thinking about where I’d really find my place in the future, what kind of church I would be involved in. I decided that a purely chinese-speaking congregation was not my place. But on the flip side, a purely American (read: white) church would have me still feeling slightly out of place. Wonder where I fit in?

In class the other day, we were asked the question of what the communities we grew up in looked like. What were common values and ideals…

I raised my hand and said something like, “As an Asian American, I come from a community of people that survived by small business. Everyone I knew owned something whether it was dry cleaners, beauty supply, gas station, restaurant…I come from a community of hustlers.”

I left out an important detail in my profession before the class, which was that my father was a pastor. His “job” was to pastor this community of hustlers.

I admire my father now for reasons that I used to hate him. For instance, we moved around a lot when I was younger. I hated the farewells and the arduous awkwardness of making new friends. But I remember my father saying once, “When a church has no problems, it’s time to move on to a church that does.” Even in my youth, I realized that meant we were going to be moving again soon.

When I share with my father the gripes I have with the first generation of immigrants. Sometimes he would nod and chuckle, but there are times, when his eyes burn and he’ll say very gently, “You don’t understand the immigrant life.”

To be a hustler is a dangerous thing. You can never sleep deeply. You are always nervous. You are always at the mercy of the host country. One thing can go wrong and it’s game over. You could get sick, break a bone, catch the flu, get caught speeding, get scammed by your own family, your kid needs braces, grandmother falls down the stairs, a key shipment doesn’t come through, you might get robbed, your visa sponsoring company goes bankrupt, your international phone bill equals your rent, you’re lonely, you can’t trust people from your country any more than you can trust people from this country, and you wish you had studied English more when you had a chance, but now it’s too late because you’re playing for keeps now and it all matters now because children have lives and it might be OK for you to ruin yours, but you thought you could keep from ruining theirs…so you can’t stop now, can’t quit now. Even if you’re doing something illegal now, what else could you do? It’s only illegal if you don’t get caught. So what should we do? We’ll pray. Pray for this hustling life. Because if it works, it must be good. And if God is good, He’ll make it work.

Perhaps this is why urban rap music is so attractive to the sons and daughters of these hustlers.

Perhaps this is what happens when churches are a gathering for hustlers. Churches can shelter visa sponsorships. Pastors help people get their driver’s licenses. Sunday school can be the first hour of the week you don’t have to look your kids in the eye. SAT class at church can help your kids get into college. Churches can help the community.  Pastors aren’t hustlers by nature…they’re just trying to reach them. Some in the process become them. Some of them try to teach them that hustling ain’t the only life, but that might have to come later, pastor. But if you could ever get those problems resolved…even for just one moment…it’s time to move on, you’re needed somewhere else.

No kidding, a pretty comprehensive list here put together by ReligionLink, with the subtitle: “Helping journalists cover religion with balance, accuracy, and insight”.

Here’s the summary and the categories of information:

A guide to Asian-Americans and religion

Asian-Americans are one of the fastest-growing segments of the U.S. population, and they are stunningly diverse culturally and religiously. ReligionLink presents a guide to experts and organizations that focus on this group.

How to use this guide

This guide is organized into several major areas. Click on the topic to jump to it. Sources may appear in more than one category.

• Issues To Explore
• Organizations And Research Centers
• National Sources
• 10 Top Scholars
• Activism/Anti-Discrimination
• Buddhism
• Christianity
• Hinduism
• Islam
• Mormonism
• Politics
• Second-Generation/Generation X
• Sikhism
• Unitarian Universalism
• Women
• Background
• Demographics
• Publications And Web Sites

And DJ, you made the list under “Christianity”! Congrats…I’ll have to send them an email regarding NG.AC…

They provide a list of issues that I’d like to tackle at some point on this blog…

• Some of the largest evangelical campus ministries in the U.S. are populated by Asian-Americans. How are Asian-Americans influencing American evangelicalism?

• Asian-Americans are courted by a wide variety of Christian denominations and traditions in the U.S., and many denominations are starting new churches and programs to appeal to their growing numbers. How is their presence influencing practices in these denominations?

• Explore the diversity of congregations. Coverage tends to focus on immigrant churches rather than churches of the children of immigrants. Korean-American second-generation churches get a lot of attention, but less is paid to Vietnamese, Chinese, Indian, Japanese or Filipino second-generation churches. Also, a new wave of multiethnic but single-race churches includes young Asian-American congregants from a variety of backgrounds.

• How do religious and generational differences play out in Asian-American families? What are the challenges of child-rearing in multireligious families? How are second-generation Asian-Americans adapting religious practices to American life?

• How does the church function in diverse Asian-American communities where class divisions exist? How do Hindu, Muslim and Buddhist second-generation Asian-Americans address these issues?

• Americans’ understanding of Hinduism, Islam and Sikhism is often shallow; how are adherents addressing that? What role are civil rights organizations playing?

• What role does faith play when young Asian-Americans become involved in social and political issues? For example, young Korean-Americans have been working with young Latinos and African-Americans in Los Angeles since the 1992 riots to address racial and ethnic tensions.

• How do tensions among national, cultural, religious or ethnic groups internationally play out in the U.S.? For example, what conflicts exist between Indian and Pakistani immigrants in the U.S.?

• What types of pilgrimages are Asian-Americans making to historical places, such as internment camps?

Check out this crazy good video, “Information R/evolution” by Digital Ethnography at KSU:

The rate of information growth is so fast, that I wonder where and how theological education and institutions try to “hold ground.”

Is the traditional setting and format for receiving theological instruction the same as it was 500 years ago? What kind of impact does this type of technological revolution have on The Word?  What does this mean for “seekers” and churches that are “seeker-sensitive”? Perhaps we need to engage them where they’re looking and googling, not in our pews.

Some notes again from my class, “Emerging Models of Church” with Prof. Steve Hayner. Today, we’re discussing Mosaic or intentionally multi-ethnic churches. I’m not going to try transcribing every word like I did last time, but I will be trying to get the high points. Enjoy~

We started today’s class with a viewing of “King of the Hill” looking for a new church (h/t: pomomusings).

Point #1: Everyone is ethnic. And by ethnic we mean:

ethnicity describes the characteristics of our origins – our family, tribe or national identity—our customs and characteristics—our corporate identity as a member of a unique people group.

Culture is one of those weird words. Anyone who has studied anthropology may know how slippery this word is. Some definitions then…

• Culture: variously defined–all culture participates in both the dignity of humanity created in God’s image AND in the brokenness of humanity.
• Multiculture: either pluralistic, where each culture contributes to the whole, or particularistic, where concern is to preserve the particular characteristics of each.
• Multiethnic: consisting of people from various “people groups” (cultural, tribal, national identities = “the ethnos”)
  • Preference not to use the word, race. Race is a 20th century invention that is designed around external characteristics…race is not a good enough indicator of who a person is as is ethnicity.
• Counterculture: intentionally discerning direction contrary to norm based on faith .If multicultural ministry is not countercultural, it is simply political correctness.

Globalization, tribalization (aka balkanization), immigration are huge phenomenons affecting the world we live in.

John Long, Director of US Census Bureau. By 2040, we can extrapolate these demographic changes:

• White 54%
• Black 14%
• Hispanic 22%
• Asian 7%
• Multiracial 2%

[Read more...]

Tim Keller from Redeemer Church for the Exponential Conference. Discussing Acts 1:8 – Part 02.

Dr. John Franke, Author and Professor at Biblical Seminary, Hatfield, PA, discusses how the gospel relates to culture.

Oh yes, and one more video that I think is emblematic of the pushback on emerging and missional thinking: What do you think?

“When you have a hammer in your hands, all you see are nails.”That’s certainly how I’ve been feeling with this book in my hands.

Paul Hiebert is quoted in the book, “The Shaping of Things to Come” with some brilliant insights into critical contextualization.

Frost and Hirsch, the authors share Hiebert’s thoughts (pp. 89):

A missional church ought to be filled with students of the Word of God. He [Hiebert] says: “This step is crucial, for if the people do not clearly grasp the biblical message as originally intended, they will have a distorted view of the gospel. This is where the pastor or missionary…has the most to offer in an understanding of biblical truth and making it known in other cultures. While the people must be involved in the study of Scripture so that they grow in their own abilities to discern truth, the leader must have the meat-cultural grids that enable him or her to move between cultures.”….

”(The gospel) is a me to which people must respond…It is not enough that the leaders be convinced about changes that may be needed. Leaders may share their personal convictions and point out the consequences of various decisions, but they must allow the people to make the final decisions in evaluating their past customs.”

He[Hiebert]wants leaders to trust the congregation, something that clergy have been notoriously poor at doing in the past. If the process is guided effectively, he suggests a number of ways a congregation might respond to old beliefs and customs. [Read more...]

My friend Tim and I have been close friends since we met in 2001 or so, but over the last two years or so, we’ve been “holding each other accountable”. (Although we’re overdue for a phone conversation, I’m calling you this week Tim!)

As men who are learning to be honest and vulnerable, strong and broken, we have found that there are many obstacles that keep men isolated even in the most friendly of circles. Simply put, men don’t talk, don’t know how to talk, and don’t know what to say if and when they ever get there.

As an Asian guy, I would say this is doubly hard for me. Just to say that I have a problem or that I even need to talk elicits all kinds of conflicted feelings including guilt, shame, and even the occasional fit of despair, all before I’ve even said anything at all.

Tim, on the other hand, is all-Americana, a once-farm boy from the big city of Wabash, Indiana now living in Nashville, TN and can’t stand it when I can’t say what I mean, or even worse, when I don’t do what I say.And so, Tim has held me accountable for the last two years, often kicking and screaming.

But in that span, I will say that I have found freedom. I have learned to be more honest about the temptations and proto-addictions that I face. I have gained the strength to talk about them more openly and ask for help from my wife. I have seen God’s power to be more than just friends, but to be active in the process of forming one another in the image of Christ.

In my new and growing understanding of temptation, idolatry, and addiction, I have found that we tend not to name the things we value most. We often make weak, watered-down confessions that objectify the thing, “I have a problem with lust” or “Pray for my problem with work”, but never subjectify it–”I am a sex addict” or “I am a procrastinator”. We are rarely specific nor do we own up to the fact that the “thing” is in us, has infiltrated our very being, has grafted itself into our very DNA, family life, church life, etc. [Read more...]

Confucianism is the backdrop of a lot of Asian churches and the interractions that take place within them.One of the ways this hierarchical and (my father might say) aristocratic system plays out is pastors and leaders are deferred to almost out of hand.

And why not? There is plenty of scriptural texts to back that up — where “one” leads “the many” –Moses, Joshua, David, so on and so forth.

A great deal of value is placed on the leader and the position carries more weight than on the average layperson. It is hard to see a pastor/reverend consider himself a mere teaching elder and it is even harder for a layperson to limit the pastor/reverend to that role. The pastor/reverend is not merely a teacher, or a theologian, he or she is authoritative, well-networked, and dare-I-say-it, a shaman of sorts.

Is it any wonder then, that this centralized way of looking at leadership could be harmful to the body? Is it possible that by professionalizing our clergy, we have done the church a great disservice?

I wonder if out of self-interest and self-preservation, many pastors take on greater roles in order to validate their work and refuse to give away their power and authority. Or perhaps they draw the line even more distinctly between themselves and laity in order to protect the commonly held notions of power and that Confucian sense of order. Perhaps, they like being trusted, needed, looked up to. And alternatively, they find it very hard to believe that you may not need them…even harder to believe that you could do ministry without them.

Please don’t misunderstand, I’m not saying this with a bitter or mean spirit. I’m just bringing up the worst case scenario between the laity idolizing our pastors and the clergy pressing down upon the laity. There can be a great deal of mistrust on both sides. And while I appreciate Confucius, I think it might be high time, for Asians especially, to deconstruct him.

Because while I trust my pastor, there is another I trust more.