Asian-American vs multi-cultural church, part 3

From a strictly personal perspective, I wanted to share a little of my story. After reading a post from Daniel’s Random Platypus blog: “Why are Asian American church leaders so obsessed with multi-ethnic church?” I feel like the debate over multi-cultural or multi-ethnic churches is somewhat divisive in itself. So, I wanted to clarify a little bit. Apparently there is a perception that Asian-American church leaders have their own personal baggage and that is a motivating factor to the desire for multi-cultural, ethnically-diverse churches. The actual reasons that Daniel lists in his blog are:

1. Theology and hermeneutics
2. Ethnic church baggage
3. Identity issues

The only one I can even relate to here is theology, but only in a subcontext (used to confirm my position, but not the motivating factor for my position). For me the reason is simple. I live (and feel called to plant a church) in a community that is incredibly diverse. Here are the demographics for Rancho Cordova, CA from wikipedia:

As of the census^[7] of 2007, there were 59,060 people, 20,407 households, and 13,550 families residing in the CDP. The population density was 2,445.4 people per square mile (944.0/km²). There were 21,584 housing units at an average density of 958.6/sq mi (370.1/km²). The racial makeup of the CDP was 66.66% White, 11.34% African American, 0.95% Native American, 8.24% Asian, 0.54% Pacific Islander, 5.72% from other races, and 6.54% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 12.90% of the population.

With only 66% of the population being Caucasian (note: this does not take into account immigrant groups like first generation Russian/Slavik/European people which have prominent neighborhoods within the community) it means that there are 34% of the people that are not. A portion of the other ethnic groups worship in segregated churches (African-American, Korean-American, Mexican-American), yet most of the second generation people of these ethnic groups do not worship anywhere. They just don’t feel like they fit in anywhere. With this much diversity, there is no single church within the city limits that I can think of that reaches out to all people effectively (not a criticism, merely an observation). Without exception (that I can think of it at this moment) there is no church in the community that has a white senior pastor and also has someone of color on the pastoral staff. Same is true for the churches of African-American congregants with a black senior pastor will not have a Caucasian or Asian pastor on that same staff. In essence, the white church remains white, the black church remains black, etc.

It’s interesting to note that as I sometimes enjoy eating Asian foods that I prepare, when I go to the local Asian supermarket, there are mostly Mexican men putting out produce and stocking shelves and that the majority of the patrons are Russian or Eastern European. No matter what day or time it seems to be like this. It used to be exclusively Korean cashiers, but these days there is a Russian girl, Indian girl, Korean guy, etc. The grocery store reflects ethnic and cultural diversity, yet I can’t think of one existing church that does.

What this breaks down to is this: It’s not about being multi-cultural per se, it’s about being a gathering of people from diverse backgrounds all living and working in community with each other, all welcome to worship or seek the Lord in His church. I don’t want to be known as the Japanese-American pastor that crossed cultural lines to develop a multi-cultural ministry. I want to be known as someone that has a heart and a calling to minister the gospel to a specific community with a missional mindset and action behind our faith. I want to be able to make my experiences and testimony relevant to someone that is hurting and far away from the Lord whether they are black, brown, mocha, yellow, pink, creamy banana smoothy, hazelnut cream or whatever skin color. I want to be able to speak to people in a loving and caring way regardless of whether they lost a job, got turned down at the college of their choice, can’t make ends meet financially, etc. because I’ve experienced all aspects of life with highs and lows. I want to be relevant to those outside of the church because I was outside of the church for the first 37 years of my life and most of the questions they have about God, religion, or church are the same ones I had and I am not better than they are because I profess faith in Christ and they do not.

You see, it’s not about some mission to reach every cultural and ethnic group in my community because segregated ministry is inherently evil. I’m not searching for some better way because I can’t relate to the ethno-centic church I was raised in or because I’m not “white” enough for Caucasians, yet not “yellow” enough for Asians. So, I have to disagree with the suggestions within Daniel’s post and argue against anyone that believes there is some underlying baggage that must be causing my desire to be outside of the Asian-American church.

In the end, if I am faithful to the calling I believe God put on my heart and this is the community I am supposed to minister to, then I am not in control of who the Lord sends and I cannot manipulate who I want to connect with us. If our church is 95% Asian in 3 years, so be it. If it ends up being 95% African-American, so be it. However, if it ends up being 66.66% white, 11.34& African-American, 8.24% Asian, and 12.9% Latin/Hispanic then I’m going to feel pretty confirmed in the vision I feel came from the Lord and I won’t refer to it as some multi-cultural formula, but instead it will truly be a church of the city. As I mentioned in Part 2, I don’t want to be viewed as a Japanese pastor leading a multi-cultural church, I instead want to be known as a visionary leader, faithful to God, His people, and His Word doing my small part to see the kingdom of heaven reign on earth with God getting all the glory and transformed lives promoting the love of Christ for all to see. This is my journey.

Tags: Asian-American, diversity, japanese, multi-cultural church, multi-ethnic, rancho cordova