the collision of faith and Asian American culture
Fun class today asking the question for church, is change possible?
Here are a couple of quick videos we saw in class regarding different aspects of change:
the easiest route to take is to apply technical solutions when what is necessary is change of heart, behavior and value. We need to change how we live…
And what changing an organization often feels like:
Heard about this movie tonight. Sounds interesting. Here’s a snippet, but check out the entire review:
Three gunshots ring out from a Korean bar on New York’s West 32nd Street. A 14-year-old Korean-American boy is arrested on the spot for killing the manager of the bar, played by Jeong Jun-ho. The boy’s sister Lila (Grace Park) tries to prove her brother’s innocence, and second-generation Korean American lawyer John Kim (John Cho) takes the case as a way to get acceptance in the mainstream. While investigating the underworld of the Korean community, he meets “1.5 generation” Korean-American gangster Mike Juhn (Kim Jun-sung), who has replaced the dead manager. The meeting of the two ambitious men brings unexpected twists…
And another review describing the movie as exploring “New York’s Korean Underworld”: A quick snippet again:
What’s interesting about the movie, besides it’s effective use of both Korean and English to convey how the people in this hierarchy are upholding a lot of Korean traditions as second- and third-generation Americans, is how very little in the movie is black and white. Kim begins to fall for his client’s beautiful sister Lila (Grace Park of Battlestar Galactica), affecting his judgment. He also seems to be both enamored and disgusted with the antics of Juhn and his crew; Kim wonders if he would be part of that crew — drinking, womanizing and getting into fights — if his parents didn’t detach him from the Korean community by moving away from Queens. Juhn isn’t a pure molten-evil bad guy, either; he’s making his way and trying to advance in his field, just like Kim. It just so happens that Juhn’s field happens to involve illegal and violent acts. Suki (Jane Kim), one of the escorts that work Juhn’s club, wants to see justice done, but for reasons of love rather than hate. And even the movie’s resolution defies standard Hollywood conventions, showing how people sometimes compromise themselves to get to a particular result.
Now that I’m all grown up and don’t even live in the same city as my parents, I can go months without being around full-blooded Korean Koreans. And suddenly when an occasion arises when I’m in that environment again, it’s a bit awkward. It seems, at least to me, very apparent that I’m a stranger even unto myself in that space with these people. That here in this place with people who look very much like me, I feel somewhat like an impostor. Yet I understand it all, the jokes, the questions– but I fumble for the right words…I find myself regressing to a much younger age, a more self-conscious time.
And yet there are moments within that moment where it feels warm and affectionate. How I enjoy the laughter and the knowing looks. I love especially how playful the language is and how the eyes dance. I love the politeness in tone, the smacking of the jaws over good food, and the covering of mouths at a good laugh. And I’m at the age now where people use the honorific with me which tickles my ears now. People use the term “jundosanim” so freely, as though I had actually earned a real title, how odd that matriculation into a seminary does that. I don’t know what to do with that.
There is a great divide between 2.0′s and 1.0s. The dialogue between the two is about as difficult as trying to refuel an airplane in mid-air. We are both moving targets…often moving in different directions. And knowing the Korean psyche, there is such a pragmatism, such an impatience, that we often tire very quickly of one another. But here in this place, I am more true to myself in this tension than I am in most places. I cannot merely accept the road of least resistance if it means that I cannot return here. So here’s to the dangerous mission…thank you Lord for making me a person who lives in the gray. I’m beginning to see your wonder here.
I can barely believe it. Next Gener.Asian Church (NG.AC) has made it to 2 years of blogging! So I can’t help but put in a note of celebration for the 250+ posts and over 50,000 views on such esoteric subject matter as Asian American culture and faith.
The blog really started with a lot of encouragement from DJ Chuang. He urged me to blog my thoughts as a Korean American Christian in that while many Asian Americans were Internet-savvy, they rarely discussed matters of church and faith for the world to read. How terrifying and humbling at the same time. For someone who doesn’t pastor at an Asian American church, have a seminary education (although I have since started pursuing one) or have some built-in audience, this has been a challenging and formative place for me and hopefully for others.
I never thought that I would have much to say, but the deeper I have explored the subject matter, the deeper it has gotten and I have thoroughly enjoyed the process. While I still don’t consider myself anything close to an expert, I have really broadened my notions of church, culture, and faith here can see how wide-reaching the conversations truly are.
Not that anyone’s keeping score, but here are some of the most popular posts over the past two years:
My personal favorites are: True Colors and Anna Lee’s Woman, Thou Art Loosened. I remember watching the video the first time and weeping with my wife because she knew exactly how those young girls felt. And when Anna wrote her post I felt that weight all the more. Oh yes, to this short list of favorites I’d have to add, To Know Her Is To Love Them, which is a bit about my wife’s testimony. Thanks for your love and support, Sunita — I’d have nothing to say or write without you.
And thanks to you for reading and commenting…the best (hopefully) is yet to come.
soli Deo gloria…
Continuing from that previous post about incompetent management, here is a follow-up from Fast Company that talks about Developing the 3-Dimensional Leader, here are the Cliff Notes. I’ll let you draw the implications to your own context.
I believe that this leadership crisis is in reality a leadership development crisis.
…the traditional methods used to train and educate leaders have not kept pace with the monumental changes taking place in the world. Potential leaders receive essentially the same education as did their predecessors — education that was appropriate to the demands of a different era.
…on-the-job experiences and development frequently do not produce the leadership our organizations need. Many argue that 70% of learning takes place on the job but what is it that our leaders are learning? Most develop a narrow functional-technical perspective as a result of spending their entire career in one area. Many are risk-averse due to the severe consequences of making mistakes, which severely inhibits learning.
The three-dimensional framework calls for the development of an individual’s business, leadership, and personal effectiveness skills:
- Business Dimension: Mind-sets and capabilities needed to identify and address critical business challenges
- Leadership Dimension: Fully developed leadership capacity needed to lead the organization confidently into the future
- Personal Dimension: Personal effectiveness skills needed to achieve excellence, balance and ongoing renewal
I just “found” this paper by C.S. Song, although it was originally presented in 1995 at the Conference on World Mission and the Role of Korean Churches. There are times in the paper where my allergic reactions to universalism flare up a bit, but I think it brings up important points for the evangelical church to ask about how we can better welcome and interact with people of other faiths. Speaking from a personal disposition where people in my own extended family wince when they hear that I’m Christian, it’s always good to give ourselves a gut-check so that Christianity as it is presented is not an obstacle for relationship. So keep that in mind if you read the paper…it’s born out of a context hostile to Christendom, but not necessarily Christ.
Check out these insights from a paper now twelve years old…
For the Christian church this is a season of distress and adjustment: distress because the ambition of “Christianizing” the world is not fulfilled, and adjustment because its centuries-old life-view and world-view have become obsolete and new ones have to constructed. As to Christians in Asia, this is an age of expanding our ecumenical horizon that to us God’s ways with the nations and peoples with which we have not seriously reckoned in our faith and theology before. It has become increasingly evident to thinking Christians that the future of Christianity cannot be separated from the future of other religions, that the well-being of the Christian church is closely bound with the well-being of the larger community around it, and that Christians and their neighbors are fellow pilgrims on earth in search of the meaning of life the and the fulfillment of it.
Some Christian theologians in Asia, particularly some of us from the reformed tradition, have taken upon ourselves the arduous task of doing Christian theology in this vast part of the world historically and culturally shaped by religions other than Christianity. We find ourselves questioning the ways in which traditional theology has gone about its business for centuries. We have no alternative but to listen to the voices from the world we share with our fellow Asians.
If there is salvation only for those who believe in Christ, as “extreme Christians” affirm, and salvation for them means eternal life in God, then what will be the fate of the great majority of the people of Asia, or more than two-thirds of the human race?
So, the weekend in Chattanooga was really a great experience — with over a hundred Asian American students from all over the SouthEast.
EMERGE 2007 was a really well-organized (no thanks to the Sheraton hotel) conference and had a great balance of small group intimacy (I loved my guys — props to Micah, Nick, Tim, and Richard) and large group worship (biggie ups to Jacob, Josh, Ray, and Matt). Tom Lin blew us away with his simple, authentic approach to following Jesus and living that risky life.
Despite my sleep deprived state and sinus infection, I pulled together my first seminar entitled, “You Are The Future Of The Asian American Church” (Click for the presentation).
Beforehand, I really thought that there would be no way that I could go the entire 60-75 minutes for the workshop, but I really found myself trying to cram down tons of information in the twenty-five minutes or so on top of some wonderful conversations. I was talking a mile a minute towards the end there….starting to sound like I was auctioning churches off, not help any survive.
Almost thirty students attended my workshop and they were really experts on diagnosing some of the problems in the Asian church – divisions over language; lack of resources; inability to collaborate across ethnic lines; intergenerational walls; lack of input from young adults; lack of involvement with the surrounding communities; and even questioning the validity of an Asian American church. I was really encouraged with the depth and maturity of their critique as well as their hunger for some good constructive answers.
We’ll have a “TalkBack” conference call on this subject later this month, but hopefully the presentation notes will help generate some more food for thought. Til then…
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