Step By Step: Daniel K. Eng

Many well-meaning Christians, in sincere efforts to live lives more pleasing to God, seek to create so-called “multi-cultural” churches and ministries by seeking to make them multi-racial.

This is a valiant effort, to say the least. God has a desire see all the nations worship Him, that every nation, tribe, tongue, and people bring glory to Him alone.

But is a multi-racial church truly diverse? I would venture to say no, especially in America. In a country where people are mobile and have freedom of where to go, they decide to attend such a church. Thus it creates an environment where people want to be with others of different cultures. A single culture emerges: people who want to be with others of different races.

A voluntary grouping will always have a prevailing culture. It will always contain people who are similar in at least one way. The whole concept of groupings relies on that. People come together for a common purpose. It’s not truly diverse.

A basket full of apples, oranges, pears, grapes, and peaches is still a basket full of fruit.

Many of the multi-ethnic churches I see are very multi-ethnic. Often enough, they are made up of mostly young singles–college students and recent grads. Or mostly educated, white-collar individuals. Somehow their groups are “diverse” while mine isn’t. I have no qualms about these homogeneous groupings. Yet many of them have belittled my homogeneous grouping.

It’s easy to spot a church that is predominantly one ethnicity because of the way they look. In America we’ve conditioned ourselves to spot racial differences. But what about differences in age, socioeconomic status, political leanings?

I believe that there is a very prominent place for homogeneous groupings in God’s kingdom. In fact, the universal church is a heterogeneous group made up of many homogenous groups for one homogeneous purpose: to glorify God.

Ethnic diversity has become an ends for many because it’s politically correct. America has been the place of civil rights movements and affirmative action. This thinking is what makes many look down upon ethnic-specific ministries. Yet the same people would have no problem with age-specific or gender-specific groups. Men’s groups glorify God. Churches made up of primarily college students glorify God. Ethnic-specific ministries glorify God.

“Your church is not biblical.”

I grew up as an English-speaking worshipper in a Chinese-American church. When I went away to college, I started attending Boston Chinese Evangelical Church. I also started going to different Christian campus groups. The group I most identified with, was the Asian-American fellowship. More on this group in another post.

During my freshman year, I also attended (when I could) a predominantly white campus fellowship. I also befriended some other Christian students who attended another campus fellowship which was predominantly white. For some of them, I was the Asian-American Christian that they knew the best.

Upon talking about race and ethnicity in God’s kingdom, I started to learn about some of my white friends’ view of ethnic-specific ministries. “Your church is not biblical. Your (Asian) fellowship goes against what God desires.” I remember them appealing to the diverse and uncountable multitude in Revelation 7, telling me that God desires that races worship together. I heard the term “voluntary segregation”—referring to people of minority groups purposely spending time together. They communicated to me that their groups and churches were more biblical, and more pleasing to God. “Come to my church! Come and experience diversity.”

Imagine how I felt when my family, the people I cared about the most, the place where I experienced most of my spiritual growth, was accused of being displeasing to God. I felt like it was more than a little self-righteous.

It offended me greatly. In telling me to leave my church and join theirs, I felt like they were just telling me to be white. I felt belittled. I saw their mostly-white fellowships and asked myself what made them think that their groups were more biblical than my mostly-Asian-American groups. Perhaps it was because the groups I attended contained the word “Chinese” or “Asian” in their names. Even so, it’s not as if we would’ve discouraged non-Asians to come. We would’ve welcomed them—or at least I would’ve.

I would venture to suggest that everyone has experienced being a minority at some point in their life—some situation where they were not like most of the people. With it comes feelings of discomfort and self-consciousness. The truth is, as an Asian-American, I experience this everyday. Everyday I am bombarded with reminders that I am different. People treat me differently because of the way I look. I speak the same language, I wear the same clothes, eat the same food—yet because of my skin tone, hair color, and facial features, I am treated differently.

It can be tiring. Sometimes I think about what it would be like to be white in America. I know it would be easier. Sometimes I felt shame about who I was—why couldn’t I just look like everyone else? I’m thankful that God has taken me on a journey to embrace myself and the way He’s made me.

But I am still different, and I am reminded every day as I interact with society. You want diversity? I experience it everyday. I’d like my white brothers and sisters to try being an minority for an extended amount of time, and feel what ethnic minorities feel all the time in America, before condemning our ethnic-specific ministries.

It’s a lot easier for a white person to be a minority for a short amount of time. Come to my church, experience being a minority for three hours in a week. It might be a novel thing for a white person to do. But that would speak much louder than telling Asian-Americans to go to white churches.

I realize that I appreciated the times I was with others who are like me, to fit in and just be myself. It’s in the environments where I am not distracted my minority appearance that I have encountered God and been able to worship Him freely. There are others who attended my church and fellowship who would’ve been completely uncomfortable opening up to others if the group was predominantly white.

When a racial/cultural barrier is gone, it creates an environment where people could more readily experience and grow in Christ. Missionaries understand this.

Please don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that groups that are ethnically diverse are not providing this environment. What I am saying is that I have had the majority of my spiritual growth happen in ethnic-specific ministries. I should not be condemned for that.

I believe that there should be and is diversity in the body of Christ. This goes beyond race—it’s culture, language, socioeconomic status. But the body of Christ is the entire church. We should be aiming for diversity and unity among THE body, not necessarily each INDIVIDUAL body.

Are people living God-pleasing lives? Are they loving God and loving others? Are they fulfilling the Great Commission? These are the questions we should be asking. There is already enough division within the Church. Condemning homogeneous groupings, no matter how well-meaning, adds to the division.

If you would like to worship with people of different races and others want to worship with you, that’s great! I am very pleased by that. There is definitely a prominent place for that in God’s kingdom. However, there is also a prominent place for people to worship with others like them.

This month, I’m taking a three-week intensive version of Perspectives on the World Christian Movement. Most of the participants in the class are undergraduate students, part of a group that is giving students an understanding of what God is doing around the world. Taking Perspectives is part of their program. Virtually all the students in this group are white.

Mind you, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with that. However, what it has created is a dynamic that I’m not accustomed to in racially diverse Southern California. I am finding myself very self-conscious being Asian-American. It’s not a very diverse room.

And as I was daydreaming in class, it made me think about why ethnic-specific churches exist in America. Let me preface this: In this post am not promoting nor condemning their existence, I am simply exploring the reasons for their existence.

First, ethnic-specific churches exist because of languages. As waves of people have come from overseas to this country, they group together in order to speak their mother tongue and worship in a familiar fashion. Whether this worship is in Korean, Spanish, Mandarin, or Hindi, it is a wish to worship in common language that brings people to such churches. Language is the prevailing means of expression–it is the key identification for a culture and/or ethnicity. The language factor will always exist as long as immigration exists in America.

Second, ethnic-specific churches exist because of culture. Every person sees the world, especially God, through the lens of culture. Culture draws people together–it is our accustomed way of speaking, celebrating, discussing, and approaching life. Every group or geographical region has a culture. Even within Americans, we see culture differs in different parts of the country. Culture affects the way we see God. Culture also helps us worship. For many of us who are involved in ethnic-specific ministries, the comfort level we experience being with others who share our culture helps us to be free to worship God. We can experience and share our worship with others who see through the same lenses. Ethnic-specific churches, or culture-specific churches such as Evergreen SGV exist because people are finding a place to belong, many of them encountering Christ for the first time.

More on this topic later. The next post may prove to be more controversial.

Last year, at a chapel address at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Alistair Begg, citing B.B. Warfield, said that preaching is the most important part of pastoral ministry. However, George Barna, in his controversial book Revolution, boldly suggests that people’s lives are not being changed much by their attendance Sunday mornings, and that we must re-think the way we minister.

First, I disagree with Barna’s statement that people are not being transformed by their attendance on Sunday mornings. For me, it is the teaching and conviction that comes from a well-crafted message that has transformed me over the years. I have owed many of my life-changing decisions to the Spirit speaking to me through a Sunday morning message. The sermon is an integral part of the worship service, and I would venture to suggest that out of all the elements in a worship service, the absence of a sermon would be the most noticeable. In short, people have come to expect a message on Sunday morning. Here are three reasons why preaching should be considered the most important part of pastoral ministry.

First, preaching was modeled by Christ. The Beatitudes, the teaching of entering through the narrow gate, and the Lord’s Prayer all occur within the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). Jesus preached from a mountain, on a boat, and in synagogues. In fact, he announced that one of his purposes was to preach the gospel and proclaim good news (Luke 4:16).

Second, preaching was done effectively by the apostles. Peter preached at Pentecost, calling for repentance from sins, teaching the atonement made by Christ on the cross. Thousands of people were saved (Acts 2:38-41). Stephen masterfully preached, pointing to Old Testament texts, offering life-changing application (Acts 7:1-53).

Third, preaching was valued by Paul. Paul catered his messages to his audience for maximum impact. He spoke to Jews, teaching them that God was keeping His promises to them through His Son (Acts 13:16-41). On Mars Hill, Paul spoke to philosophers, appealing to their desire for new knowledge (Acts 17:30). Paul addressed a group of Jews in their own dialect (Acts 21:40). He believed that proclaiming the gospel is part of sanctification for believers (Colossians 1:28). He urged Timothy to take his teaching seriously (1 Timothy 4:16), and that those who preach are to be honored (1 Timothy 5:17).

I believe the ineffectiveness of the Sunday pulpit can be attributed to two factors. First, people in today’s television-saturated culture are more resistant to sitting through a message than they have in the past. Second, I believe pastors are not sharpening their skills to meet the needs of today’s generation.

Donald Sunukjian, professor of preaching at Talbot School of Theology and author of “Invitation to Biblical Preaching”, teaches that sermons need to be biblical, memorable, and life-changing. He emphasizes the need to have a “take-home truth” in every message—a memorable statement that the preacher wants the listener to take home, above all other things. This is the life-changing element. A preacher needs to consider what he wants the congregation to remember, even if they forget everything else from the message. After all, a message cannot be life-changing unless it is memorable.

Andy Stanley, pastor of the megachurch North Point Community Church, believes in having one point for each message. As he studies scripture, he develops one point from it, using illustrations that all point towards this one point. He has abandoned multiple-point messages to effectively bring memorable preaching that changes lives.

I do not believe that preaching needs to be a lecture. As Paul showed in Acts, we can cater our message to our audience in order to have maximum impact for God’s kingdom. Billy Graham has led countless people to Christ through his preaching. Good preaching changes lives. What we have in so many of our churches is ineffective preaching.

The modern ineffectiveness of preaching should not lead us to de-emphasize or abandon preaching. On the contrary—we should be seeking to improve and sharpen our skills, to bring about the most life change.

I have found myself curiously paying close attention to the latest news concerning the wake of the recent earthquake tragedy in China—more so than I am normally interested in current events. Yesterday’s New York Times displayed a photo that has been a particularly lasting image in my mind: a local Chinese communist leader on his hands and knees begging protestors to stop their march against the government. The angry crowd consisted of parents of children who were killed in collapsed schools. They accuse the government of cutting corners with shoddy workmanship that rendered the school buildings unsafe in earthquakes. Chinese government offices stood solidly as parents lost their only children (see China’s population control policy which limited families to having one child) in a pile of rubble. The angry parents call for severe consequences on those responsible for their lost loved ones.

You can read the article here.

Separated by thousands of miles, I found myself emotionally moved by the photo—the angry and grieving faces of the parents paired with the desperate look on the government official’s face. I wondered to myself how culpable the Chinese government should be, and how I would react as a parent in that situation.

But another feeling began to creep through my body: shame. Not shame as a human being because of the tragedy, or the supposed crimes against humanity, but shame as one of Chinese descent.

I look at this situation and see this as more fuel to feed the negative image of the Chinese government to the rest of the world. I can imagine what people would think: Those corrupt, barbaric, Chinese…they even eat their own young. Even though the allegations by the Chinese parents are towards the Chinese government, the power of identification causes this to affect their view of Chinese people as a whole.

Identification of a subset to a whole leads people to generalize about the whole set. The unfortunate connection that the Chinese government has with Chinese people, and likewise, Asian-Americans like me, causes people to extend their view—either consciously or unconsciously. This is the root of racism.

If the world sees the Chinese government as corrupt, selfish, and uncivilized, it is not just a black eye for those communist officials—it is a black eye for Chinese people, and likewise, Asian-Americans. Like it or not, we are associated with it simply because of the way we look.

I just returned from this event hosted by Evergreen Baptist Church of Los Angeles (our sister church) and hosted by Christians on Social Issues. I thought it would be helpful for me to attend this, to hear about the issue more and to see how their church would respond. The first half of the “conversation” featured a Christian Asian-American man who is gay, Gary Hayashi, along with his (married) straight female friend, Marian Sunabe. Pastor Ken Fong of Evergreen LA facilitated the discussion. The stage was set up to look like a comfortable living room, and the participants sat on couches around a coffee table. Gary spoke much about his experience as an Asian-American Christian in the church as he “came out”. Marian was a friend who reached out to Gary, caring for him. This event came about because of her simple love for her friend.

The second half of the event featured a video about an Asian-American woman who is a lesbian and her parents as they have journeyed through the situation, as well as a Japanese-American pastor who is teaching his congregation to accept and celebrate the differences of individuals within the gay and lesbian community.

The parents, Mr. and Mrs. Harold Kamiya, joined Pastor Ken, Gary, and Marian on the stage at the end, answering selected questions from the audience.

I am very glad I went to this event, though I have some mixed feelings. I am definitely more educated and less ignorant about the experiences of those who are gay and lesbian, especially those in the Asian-American church. Some of my reactions:

• We need to love as Jesus loves.
  Gary said, “Look in the gospels. (Over and over again) He stays in compassionate interaction with someone that people won’t even talk to. As long as someone is continually interacting, I don’t have anything against it.”
  Pastor Ken talked about how we need to be accepting of people. So often people just choose sides and that’s why we fight wars. Will we simply just sit down and even interact with others who are living in a way that is contrary to our belief system? It was Marian’s reaching out to Gary that helped him be more willing to share at this event.
  
  
• We need to stop being in denial.
  Gary reminded us that (those in the GLBT community) are sitting with us in the pews. They are our brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles. They are in church leadership, in the choir, at our schools and workplaces. Can we at least see that there are human beings involved?
  
  
• Let’s make sure our terminology is clear.
  Pastor Ken talked about being accepting and affirming. So did Marian. But I wonder if their definition of “affirming” is the same. Is “affirming” about one’s identity in Christ, or about condoning lifestyle? Marian said that we “need to affirm someone as God created him or her to be.” I wonder if that’s inclusive of a lifestyle that the evangelical church does not condone. After all, many of those who are gay and lesbian would agree that they have their identities wrapped up in these adjectives. To them, there may not be a separation between who they are and what they do—which many evangelical Christians have tried to separate in order to try to reconcile to others a God who is both firm on an issue and loving at the same time.
  On a related note, Gary stated emotionally that “Love the sinner and hate the sin” is one of the most offensive things he hears. He takes it to mean that the person goes out of their way to tell him that their theology is still rock solid, and puts theology above a person. “(that statement) is all about you.” Whether that is the person’s intention or not (it is not mine if I say it), it is how it makes him feel, and I realize that I need to be sensitive to how things can sound.
  
  
• Let’s be consistent.
  Pastor Ken said that we need to realize that many of the standards the evangelical church holds to people who are gay are tougher than the standards we keep amongst ourselves. Often the church accuses homosexuals as being promiscuous, not holding to family values. But what about the straight people in our congregation who are fornicating, or in adulterous or incestuous relations? “We do need to raise the bar on standards, and realize that not many (in our church) meet it,” Pastor Ken said. We are hypocrites if we have a double standard.
  
  
• Love speaks louder than words.
  No matter what theology we teach, it is love that truly makes the difference.
  I was very disappointed that the handouts, as well as the video, presented principles that were absolutely unbiblical. One stance was especially alarming. The handout, put out by the Asian Pacific Islander Pride Council (and not Evergreen LA) states “In the Bible, Jesus condemned divorce, but said not a single word about homosexuality.” The pastor in the video claimed that the only explicit teaching against homosexuality was in Leviticus, and that command is obsolete. The first statement is a logical fallacy: argument from silence. But (as my girlfriend points out), Christ is the Word, and the entire Word includes much more teaching about God’s view on homosexuality than just the Leviticus verse (Genesis 19, Romans 1:26-27, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, 1 Timothy 1:9-10).
  Having said that, I realize that no matter what our stance on the issue is, our response needs to be in love. The pastor in the video does affirm homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle, but it is his acceptance and love of the individuals, not his teaching, that ministers to them the most. So there are people who are homosexual who attend his church. Likewise, many non-Christians who say they have no problem with homosexuality often do not create a loving environment for them with distance or ignorance. All this to say: love and acceptance speaks louder than words and stances.

Overall, there were many times during the event that convicted me, and many other times that made me cringe in disagreement. I would have liked to hear Pastor Ken make a stance and give Christians some solid advice on how to act towards homosexuals, but he did not tonight. I would have liked to have more question and answer time about how we as a church could handle it. But perhaps this was not the right time for it. I am glad that we did start a conversation. I hope we will start to find more common ground. We need to trust that God will convict His people, those who are homosexual and those in the evangelical church alike, towards His will on how we should handle this.

I’ve been asked to take a new ministry direction in my pastoral internship at Evergreen SGV this summer. My part-time internship becomes full-time during the summertime, and it is designed to give me more in-depth ministry experience. I will be implementing a new system of assimilating people into our church. As our church just recently moved to our new property, we can finally put in a full welcoming and assimilation ministry (I do not have a name for it yet, suggestions are welcome).

This ministry involves three tasks:

1. Develop a plan to welcome newcomers that come to our church.
2. Disseminate information to our church through various publicity channels.
3. Encourage attendees to become more invested members of our church.

This ministry will involve moving someone from their first visit to being “plugged in” to a small group, ministry, and/or membership class. I realize that there are people who have been attending our church for years who are still not “plugged in”!

This is going to be quite a task.

Today I met with Dr. Gary McIntosh, one of my Talbot professors, whose expertise is church advising. He gave me a game plan and many action points for getting this ministry started. Someone pointed out that churches pay Dr. McIntosh a lot of money for this kind of advising, and I just used his office hours as his student for free! While the plan is almost overwhelming, I am a bit more confident about moving ahead. I’m excited about this ministry, and I’m looking forward to seeing what God will do!