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While responding to a blog post recently I was compelled to introduce a concept to those that follow my blog. It’s a story that was briefly introduced awhile ago, yet only engaged new Asian readers into the discussion, while most of my readership is not Asian. Asian or not, this is an issue that we must face within the church and I’m curious what you all think.

A reply to one of my comments on the blog was:

“In the short-run, you are right, i don’t think you’ll see much positive growth at all, but ethnicity needs to validated as a gift from God and our inheritance from our immigrant parents. so while i agree with your implication that many would benefit from a multi-ethnic or missional church (culture/ethnicity can be viewed as an inefficiency from many people’s eyes, but), an honest exploration into the question of why God created us to be from a certain place and of a certain people should inspire us to discover our ethnicities and cultures in a redemptive light.

This is where i think the example of the people of israel and the biblical practice of remembering, remembering what God has done, who God is, and who God has made us to be, a very real practice to engage in the ethnic context.”

First of all, let me state very clearly that I am extrapolating something from a post that had a larger context. It is not my intention to argue or criticize the blog author or anyone that shares his viewpoint. I am just taking the statement and inflecting my experiences and ideas in the hopes of engaging in some dialog about the subject (hopefully) from both Asian and non-Asians.

Okay, so I’m Japanese, but I’ll admit there were some times in my life where I wished I could have been born looking like Brad Pitt or Joe Montana (nod to my NorCal upbringing) or David Cassidy. Usually it was so that I could have a girl attracted to me that wouldn’t date me because I was Japanese or so that I could avoid the words and violence associated with racism and prejudice. However, I am who I am and all that I am is for the glory of God.

However, do I want to celebrate my heritage in such a way that I need to have everyone around me be Japanese and understand my culture and my language when I’m in a Sunday church service? Is preserving my heritage in such a way something that can honor God much in the same way that the Israelites were true to their place as God’s chosen people? Did God create me as a Japanese person to engage only other Japanese people and rally us around a common cause of preserving who we are?

The Israelites were in-fact God’s chosen people. They were to inherit the earth as Abraham’s descendants. They were not to intermarry or in anyway corrupt the lineage. However, even in the Old Testament we see evidence of something that goes against this notion. Ruth was a Gentile that came to faith in the one true God. Not just any Gentile, but a Moabite and therefore hated by the Israelites. Ruth marries Boaz and bears a son that can be traced to the family line of Jesus himself.

As we see here, introducing Ruth into the Israelite culture of Judah had a profound place in history. Therefore, what is my place as a Japanese person living in the United States? Am I to segregate myself to a place where I can teach the things of God based on the context of my Japanese culture for those that will understand it because they too are Japanese? Or should I celebrate who I am in Christ and share my culture and experience with others so that they may benefit?

Let me shift to a different scenario to help me make my point. With Barack Obama’s candidacy the discussion of black church and white church came up in the media. There were some black churches (I personally dislike this label even though it is socially acceptable) where the message was preached against white America. It was almost an us-against-them mentality that was glorified. However, what if instead of trying to empower African-Americans in the church to stand up to social injustice from the caucasian world they tried to share their stories outside of the black church in a way that brought attention to what has gone on and continues to go on in their lives? How can white America know what is going on in the black community if the black community segregates themselves from the rest of us? The same is true with Asian-Americans in my opinion.

I talk to so many people today that have no clue what I go through as an Asian-American in society. So many think that racism and prejudice is a thing of the past. You wouldn’t believe how many people think I must be smart in math or must have gone to college at UCLA or Cal or that I must be an engineer or know all there is to know about computers or ask me questions about sushi. The outright hatred of me due to my Asian features has diminished greatly over the years, but the stereotypes have not. How does being exclusively with other Japanese people on Sundays help me to make a difference? What if I could take the fulfillment of one of God’s Ten Commandments to honor your mother and father to a whole ‘nother level by introducing my Japanese culture of being there for my parents in ways that aren’t the norm here in America?

I believe that God created me more to honor him and bring glory to his Son Jesus through my unique perspective of a Japanese person with my own individual experiences than he did to see me perpetuate my ethnic values and cultures at all costs. As the Great Commandment in Matthew 25 calls us to do, we are to preach the gospel to all nations and teach them what Christ has taught us. He didn’t say each nation is responsible for the preaching of the gospel to themselves. Three thousand didn’t come to Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost and believe so that they could go back to their nations and keep their faith within the borders of their individual nations. Paul didn’t preach there is neither slave nor free, Jew nor Gentile only to see us reverse that in order to preserve our ethnic culture in a new land.

I should not have the viewpoint that I am Japanese and you are not so I can perpetuate my culture and heritage in my church and you are excluded, therefore you lose out on all that you could gain through knowing and understanding who I am and what I experienced. Through knowing my struggles with racism and prejudice and the pressures I faced in school here in America you can have some insight on persecution for who I am and how I dealt and continue to deal with that now that I am a Japanese person and a Christian. You can learn how some of the values revealed to us through the Scriptures have been in place in the country of my birth even though less than 1/10th of 1 percent of its people are Christian and how that breaks my heart. You can learn how to look at me as a brother or sister in Christ with individual experiences I can bring to the table and share rather than someone you have no idea how to address since you couldn’t be as mathematical or technologically savvy as me or because you don’t like sushi or whatever.

The harsh reality is that I am different from most of you. Heck, I’m different from many Japanese people as well. However, not only do I truly believe that you can learn from me, I absolutely know that I can learn from you. Together we can celebrate all of God’s people and all that he is doing in this world as the brothers and sisters he created us to be.

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.

We must face our fears, mistrust, and ignorance and become a society of one. It is often said that Sundays are the most segregated time in America. I would tend to agree. As I watch the news on the Democratic National Convention and underlying question that is always looking my commentators is whether Obama as to overcome racism in 2008. Simply put, yes he does! Race and racism are still in existence today. However, if we try to drive racism by pointing out differences between black and white culture we are on shaky ground, yet when it comes to the church, I rarely hear anyone take issue with calling a predominantly African-American church in Atlanta, GA a black church or even talking about the black church as if it is its own denomination.

It’s not so mainstream in America, but there is such a thing as the Chinese, Korean, Japanese or more-generic Asian-American church.

Should American churches be black, Chinese, Mexican, Russian, etc.? I say yes, and no. Let me define my point:

1. For first generation immigrants that have a language barrier, yet want to be able to worship, there should be a church that exists to allow that to happen. If Russian-speaking immigrants can gather in the name of the Lord, then that is great!
2. Regardless of language or race inherently the second generation will want to assimilate into American culture and be taught English and encouraged to become Americans. Will this second generation want to stay in an ethnocentric church the rest of their lives? Their friends are diverse ethnically, their school is ethnically diverse, their workplace, etc. Why wouldn’t they want their church to be representative of their Monday-through-Saturday environment?

Looking at Jesus’ ministry on earth, we know that as a Jew he broke away from traditional custom to walk though Samaria on his way to Jerusalem. It is on a walk through Samaria that he encounters the woman at the well. The end result is that a wave of Christ followers came to know salvation even though they weren’t the chosen people of God (Jews). We also read testimony of Jesus being in the company of prostitutes, those with leprosy, and the much-hated tax collectors. Jesus didn’t care whether someone was of the “chosen” or not, because one of the primary things about his gospel was that anyone that believed in him was granted forgiveness of their sins and brought into the brotherhood of God’s people. Looking at the New Testament, most of it was written by the Apostle Paul, whom Jesus called to preach to the Gentiles (non-Jews). Greeks, Romans, Ethiopians, all would come to know the saving grace of the Lord Jesus Christ through Paul’s outreach. Paul gathered the Jews and Gentiles and assembled them into one church in the community. There were the Ephesian, Galatian, and Thessalonian churches with Jews and Gentiles in unity, not the Jewish Ephesian church, and the Greek Ephesian church on the other side of town, etc. One church, one God, one love for all.

With such examples from the Scripture, why do we so often choose to be segregated during worship? Why must we use Sundays to try and preserve our culture, when God calls us to him above everything else when we come before him in worship?

One argument I hear from some is that if God sends us an Asian-American congregation, then that is who we are to shepherd and minister to. Okay. The problem with this argument is the leader/visionary. I’ve heard (and experienced) that the church will generally take after the senior pastor. If the senior pastor is Caucasian, mid-40’s with a college degree, married and has 2.3 kids then people of similar makeup will be drawn to him/her because they can relate to each other equally. So, me being an Asian-American, it would make sense that I could attract those that have similar cultural backgrounds to me. Therefore, if as Asian-American pastor, I have to be intentional about attracting those that are different than me. Can I as an American cross cultural lines and connect with people that are Hispanic, African-American, Russian-American, etc.? If I can’t, then personally I believe I have a problem because Jesus doesn’t differentiate based on race and I should be doing the work of Jesus, not the work of myself. If the population at large still won’t accept me because I am not of their heritage, then I believe that empowering leaders within the church that represent diversity can help people overcome such personal issues. If I have an Asian-American leadership team and talk about my experiences growing up with racism and certain aspects of Japanese culture, then I am going to relate to Japanese-Americans almost exclusively. It just makes sense. However, if I preach and exemplify the gospel of Christ and do so to Hispanic, African-American, Russian-American people in my community and they see the love of Christ and not a Japanese-American, then they will be drawn in by Christ’s love and not because we are of identical cultures.

To be diverse, I have to agree with DJ Chuang’s position in his blog post and state that it does take being intentional. However, I don’t believe that this is some form of manipulation or relying on some system of diversity rather than trusting God to build his church. If God wants the church to be multi-cultural, then I believe the leadership, attitude, sermon illustrations, etc. must be ethnically/culturally/socio-economically diverse in order to facilitate this happening.

Imagine what it must be like for some Asian guy to invite an African-American unbeliever to his church only to find out that his African-American friend doesn’t fit in and isn’t really welcomed because he is not Asian. Is that the example we should be setting for unbelievers? Would Christ only want to see African-Americans saved in African-American churches? When Scripture states that Christ will return to claim his bride, do we really believe that we are to be a segregated bride seeking solace in our cultural customs rather seeking peace and joy in unity and love? Interesting complementary post to this from Laurence Tom titled, “Is your church more Chinese than Christian?“

We can only stop talking about racism when we start coming together and worshipping together with our community rather than just our cultural community. We can only stop talking about racism when we are viewed as light and love rather than black or white or brown or yellow. I believe the church is an important instrument in this process of change and that someone needs to not be afraid to be a little uncomfortable for the sake of seeing ignorance win in the battle of racism and prejudice. When we should be leading the charge for this in the church, we are the last to embrace this concept!