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Challenges Facing Asian Churches in North
America
By Shiao Chong, Christian Reformed Campus Minister
& Director of Leadership, Culture &
Christianity
Serving at York University, Toronto
www.logoscrc.ca |
chaplain@logoscrc.ca
Introduction
I am a 1.5 generation immigrant to Canada. I came when I was 21, as an
international university student, and officially immigrated when I was 32. But
prior to my journey to Canada, I was already a 2nd generation immigrant back in
Malaysia. My father was an immigrant from China to South East Asia, and I was
born and raised in a Malaysian culture. In addition, my current ministry as a
university campus minister gives me a window into the future generations.
It is out of this background that I pose the following reflections on challenges
that I believe face the Asian (including South East Asian) churches in North
America. I do not presume that any of the following is ground breaking news to
any Pastor or Ministry Worker in an Asian church. In fact, it may not even be
news for any minister in any ethnic immigrant community context. Other ethnic
immigrant churches also face many of the following challenges as well. I
perceive, at least, four challenges:
#1: Eastern (Asian) vs. Western (North American)
An obvious challenge is the clash of cultures and values that comes with being
an immigrant church in a different dominant culture. For instance, it is often
documented that Asian culture is “situation centered” whereas Western culture is
“individual centered”. This difference means, among other things, that Asian
culture is collectivist, emphasizing duties and obligations, hierarchy and
deference while Western culture is individualist, emphasizing rights and
privileges, equality and self-assertion.
1
The clash between first generation immigrant parents and their second generation
children often manifests itself into a clash between East and West, with first
generation maintaining Asian cultural values while the second generation,
influenced by the dominant North American culture, seeks change and adaptation.
This cultural clash spills over from home into church, manifesting itself in
various other clashes – worship styles, leadership styles, leadership
composition, roles of women, language of worship and instruction, etc. Often,
the sad result of these clashes is the “silent exodus” from the churches of the
second generation and even of the 1.5 generation.
2 What
is even sadder is the fact that a vast number of those who leave do not
necessarily “feel at home” in an Anglo church either, and can become
church-less.
Most Asian churches have attempted to stem this tide by creating
English-speaking worship services for their second generation members; in
essence, establishing a congregation within a congregation. The success of this
move corresponds highly with the extent to which the English-speaking
congregation is independent of the first generation congregation and also led by
younger generation leaders.
#2: Mono-cultural vs. Multi-cultural
Having an English-speaking service or congregation, however, does not fully
address the second major challenge. Second and 1.5 generation Asians are not
only more comfortable in English language and Western contexts they also
increasingly study, work, play and even marry within multi-cultural urban
contexts. Yet the Asian churches that their parents attend, and to which they
are pressured by parents to attend, are still largely mono-cultural.
Furthermore, the experiences of the younger generations shape to benefit from,
at least, two different cultures, giving them unique perspectives that neither
their first generation parents nor the dominant Anglo groups share.
Thus, as mentioned above, these Asian Christians may feel lost in both Asian
immigrant and Anglo churches that are mono-cultural. An English-speaking
all-Chinese congregation, for example, does not fully address this second
tension. Planting new multi-cultural churches may be the best way to reach these
generations, even if they are, initially, multi-Asian churches. These younger
generation Asians increasingly view mono-cultural churches as inauthentic ethnic
enclaves. 3
They see mono-cultural churches – whether Anglo or Asian – as inauthentic
because they seek a different paradigm for church.
#3: Immigrant Church vs. Missional Church
Younger generation Asians have three popular images of the immigrant church
experience:
1. Art Museum, where people come to show off or brag of their own or their
children’s achievements, even if it is done in a self-effacing Asian way.
2. Ethnic Cultural Center, where preserving one’s language and culture is the
unspoken rule in the Asian church. Subtle forms of exclusion of “outsiders”
occur, e.g. discouraging interracial dating or marriage.
3. Pseudo-Extended Family, where tight knit relationships of loyalty,
responsibility and obedience define the church “fellowship” – where turning away
from the Asian immigrant church is akin to turning away from one’s (extended)
family. 4
My experience in ministering to some 1.5 and 2nd generation Asian university
students confirm these images of the Asian immigrant church experience.
Of course, these images are distortions of reality and the positive ministries
and work of immigrant churches tend to be clouded over in the memories or
perceptions of these younger generations. But these distorted images occur
because immigrant churches fail to articulate clearly their mission or purpose
for being. Initially, almost all immigrant churches began in an effort to reach
out to a growing ethnic immigrant group. But does this mission capture the
imagination of younger generations? Increasingly, the younger generations see
the local church’s mission as community based, rather than ethnic based, for
“all nations” rather than for one nation. The perception – I stress,
“perception” – among the younger generations is that the immigrant church is not
missional or at least not missional enough.
#4: Incarnation vs. Transformation (Assimilation vs. Marginalization)
Finally, this leads to another challenge. Admittedly, this is a theological
challenge to Asian churches (indeed, to all churches) that underlies the three
earlier tensions. This tension relates to how the Christian church ought to
engage the culture that it finds itself in. Generally, I find there are two
opposing approaches that churches have used: (1) incarnation and (2)
transformation.
The incarnation approach seeks to immerse into the culture and find ways to
“contextualize” or “translate” the gospel into the worldview, the language, the
customs of the dominant culture in order to communicate and preach the gospel –
to make the Christian faith relevant. It seeks connecting or common points
between the gospel and culture.
The transformation approach, however, assumes the lack of connections or
commonality between culture and gospel, seeking rather to change and transform
culture according to the gospel worldview. Instead of making the Christian faith
relevant, the emphasis here is on making the culture Christian.
Rarely, however, does a church employ only one approach in engaging culture.
Often, churches tend to shift from incarnation to transformation depending on
which area or issue of cultural engagement is at hand. I must stress that, in my
opinion, the Biblical approach is an incarnation for transformation approach or
incarnational transformation. Our Lord Jesus Christ is the epitome of this
approach. Jesus incarnated as one of us, entered our world, in order to
communicate to us, to identify with us, in order for us to see the image of the
invisible God. However, Jesus’ incarnation was not simply to identify with our
brokenness or to bear relevant witness. Jesus, as human, also challenged the
injustices and the corruptions of the Jewish authorities (e.g. the cleansing of
the Temple, Mark 11:15-18; Matthew 21:12-13, Luke 19:45-48). He observed the
Sabbath but he also challenged its abuses and taught his disciples its proper
observance (Luke 6:1-5, 13:10-17, 14:1-6). Ultimately, God became flesh – the
incarnation – in order to bring about reconciliation and salvation –
transformation. Hence, these two approaches – incarnation and transformation –
are not either-or options. Both are needed for a faithful engagement with
culture.
Unfortunately, incarnation often morphs into assimilation where the gospel is
assimilated into the culture and becomes almost indistinguishable from it.
Transformation, on the other hand, often morphs into marginalization where the
gospel, though clearly different from the culture, becomes irrelevant and
“foreign”, even threatening, and is, therefore, marginalized. These distortions
become even “messier” when we realize that churches who employ marginalization
towards a dominant culture have, almost always, assimilated the gospel into
another, albeit non-dominant or no longer dominant, culture. To use a non-Asian
example, the Old Order Amish Christians stand clearly in a marginalized position
towards the dominant North American culture, in many ways as a communal
prophetic witness and challenge to North American consumerism and hedonism.
However, the Amish embodies this gospel challenge and marginalization in the
clothes of a 16th-17th century Swiss/German cultural form of Christianity that
requires men to keep untrimmed beards, for instance. Thus, the Amish have
already assimilated the gospel into an old order European culture in the first
place.
Similar dynamics occur for Asian immigrant churches (probably all immigrant
churches). Asian Christians who immigrate to North America bring various degrees
of the gospel’s assimilation to their native Asian cultures. But against the
dominant North American culture, these churches assume a marginal stance, but
also with varying degrees of gospel transformational challenges to the status
quo. Often, in an attempt to transform the dominant culture, these churches
unwittingly further assimilate the gospel into their native cultures. Hence, the
phenomena of “ethnic cultural centers” the younger generations perceive in the
immigrant churches.
The problem increases when younger generations fail to see their own
assimilation of the gospel into the dominant North American culture and seeks
only to transform the Asian cultural values of their immigrant churches or
faith. As a result, tensions and conflicts arise as in #1, #2 and #3 above.
I believe that the (local) church’s missional stance towards its culture should
be an incarnational transformation one. But most churches are not intentional
about this missional stance towards their culture. And the forces of cultural
assimilation are too strong to resist without such intentionality, resulting in
assimilation of the gospel. And when the dominant culture evolves or shifts, the
church with its assimilated gospel assumes marginalization as transformation.
Some Suggestions for Moving Forward
What steps can we make to address these challenges in faithful and fruitful
ways? Here are my suggestions starting from the easiest and most practical to
the more difficult and theological:
1. Asian Churches should collaborate among themselves, or even with non-Asian
churches, to birth multi-ethnic, or at least multi-Asian, church plants that
will target 1.5 and 2nd generation Asians. For instance, in the Christian
Reformed Church (CRC) denomination, a Korean CRC, a Chinese CRC, and a South
East Asian CRC within an urban center could all collaborate and share resources
to plant a multi-cultural church using their own younger generation members and
leaders as the core for birthing the church. In this way, the new church plant
will be seen as part of the Asian immigrant churches’ mission rather than as a
competitor. Such new church plants will fare better in the long run than
English-speaking ministries within established Asian churches.
2. Asian Churches need to review their missional focus. This is not easy as it
questions the very basis for an immigrant church. What is the mission of the
church and of the local church in particular? Does this mission allow for
permanent ethnically segregated congregations? Is a mono-cultural ethnic church
a faithful embodiment of church? Is an immigrant church sustainable? These are
tough questions but necessary ones in the light of new Biblical research on
issues of diversity and racial reconciliation. They are also necessary in light
of changing neighborhood demographics. I do not want to prescribe answers here.
But Asian churches (indeed, all churches) need to wrestle with the growing
literature on mission-focused churches, on local churches as God’s mission
outposts in the communities God has placed them, to see how the vision of an
ethnic immigrant church can or cannot connect with them. The hoped for outcome
of such honest “wrestling” is a refocused and rejuvenated church with a clear
mission.
3. Asian Churches need to think of other ways to pass on the treasures of Asian
culture besides using the church. We must be honest that Asian parents would
like to pass the treasure of their Asian heritage on to their children. I do not
see this as something misguided but rather as natural and positive. The keys
here, though, from a Christian perspective are: (1) the “treasures” of a culture
must be distinguished from the “garbage” and the “baggage” of that same culture;
(2) the church’s mission is not as conveyer of culture. Thus, some discernment
needs to be carried out in regards to Asian culture and different vehicles need
to be identified or created for the passing on of these cultural treasures for
the blessing of the nations. An analogy from the Christian schools system within
my Christian Reformed Church heritage might be helpful here. Education from a
Christian worldview perspective is important but, from a Reformed perspective,
it is not the church’s mission to run schools and to dispense education. Hence,
separate Christian school boards are developed to start and run Christian
schools that teach public curriculum within a Christian worldview framework. And
churches can partner with these schools but the schools are independent, run
mainly by Christian parents. Could a similar arrangement be found with cultural
heritage? Can we not agree, first and foremost, that parents are the main
vehicles of cultural formation? Can Asian parents create a separate organization
to help them in this regard that is apart from, but in partnership with, the
Asian church?
Asian Churches, as part of that renewed missional focus, need to intentionally
adopt an incarnational transformation pose, first, to its own Asian cultures
and, second, to the dominant North American culture. This suggestion tackles
both challenge #1 and #4 as they are related. Asian churches need to do some
serious soul-searching to see how they may have assimilated the gospel into
their Asian cultures, and how some parts of that Asian culture may have
contributed to the younger generation’s unpleasant images of immigrant churches.
The hoped for outcome here is not the abolishment of Asian culture but rather
the redemption and purification of Asian culture by the gospel. Such renewed and
recommitted Asian Christians can be an invaluable gift to the North American
culture, churches and Christians as they provide critiques and perspectives that
are unique to them. Only having been so purified can these Asian churches bear
their fullest fruits for an incarnational transformation of North American
culture, which also requires purification by the gospel. Indeed, many North
American Christians have already embarked on that journey in critiquing their
own culture via critiques of the Enlightenment and Greco-Roman past. Asian
Christians might have to begin a similar journey first with their own Asian
heritage. This is not merely a theological and intellectual exercise. This
journey feeds into an honest review of missional focus, feeds into discerning
cultural treasures from cultural baggage, and feeds into the theological
foundations for a multi-cultural or multi-ethnic church. Furthermore, such a
journey taken together by both first generation and second generation Asians
will help both generations move beyond the East vs. West impasse to see how the
gospel says both “Yes” and “No” to different aspects of both cultures. Hence, in
one sense, we end up with where we began. Of course, this project will require
further research or thoughts into how such incarnational transformation of
culture actually look like. How do we actually carry this out? What are some
examples of such incarnational transformation? This too will be part of further
dialogues.
Notes
1. This comparison of Asian and Western cultures is
taken from John Ng’s D. Min. dissertation “Cultural Pluralism and Ministry
Models in the Chinese Community”, Fuller Theological Seminary, 1985, quoted in
Following Jesus Without Dishonoring Your Parents (IVP 1998), p. 13.
2. See Lee, Helen. “Silent Exodus: Can the East Asian church in
America reverse flight of its next generation?” in Christianity Today (August
12, 1996). Also see Following Jesus Without Dishonoring Your Parents (IVP 1998),
pp. 145-147.
3. Lee, Helen. “Silent Exodus: Can the East Asian church in
America reverse flight of its next generation?” in Christianity Today (August
12, 1996).
4. Taken from Following Jesus Without Dishonoring Your Parents
(IVP 1998), pp. 146-147.
Copyright © Shiao C. Chong 2007
This article can be copied and distributed freely provided its content has not
been changed. This resource cannot be sold or distributed for financial gain. It
must be free. And it must be unedited. Otherwise, the author reserves all rights
to the resource.
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