next Asian American Emergents skypecast

Our next Asian American Emergents skypecast is set for Sunday 10/29 at 9:00pm Eastern + 6:00pm Pacific. We’ll be talking about planting emerging/emergent churches for Asian Americans with our special guest Bruce Reyes-Chow, making his first appearance on the skypecast that he originally dreamed up. When we say “for Asian Americans,” that does not mean a church exclusively for Asian Americans, but that Asian Americans would be a significant and active part of a church’s leadership and its probably multiethnic congregation. And, maybe we’ll find a way to get the next generation unstuck to plant new churches without intergenernational psychological stalemates.

As for a belated and brief recap of the previous episode of our skypecast, we talked about social justice and the Asian American church. Regulars Ben Pun and Peter Ong attended along with Sivin Kit and a few random skypers who saw we were on and wanted to listen in. One even challenged us on the notion of an Asian American church, and how that seemed separatistic and even racist, asking us why we didn’t fight racism by building multiethnic churches. Well, I for one would love to build multiethnic churches, but I don’t have the gift & talent mix.

On that skypecast, we talked about ethnic Asian community needs, and an apparent tendency of some (many?) churches that serve the upper middle class in suburbs to the neglect of the poor & needy. There may be theological, political, and cultural influences at play. In Malaysia, Sivin said they use the term “social concern” as a more friendly term for how the church can/should serve the broader community.

Possible solutions to get the church more engaged in social justice: pastoral leaders must get involved, get others involved together (exposure), build relationships with organizations (partners), speak from the pulpit (e.g. Redeemer‘s Hope for New York was mentioned).