Another part of the world that’s isolated from the public is the online world of Google+, in many ways yet another social network. (How’s that for a segue?) If you’re on the outside looking in and want to get an account and access Google+ , leave a comment here and I’ll invite you! You’ll get bumped to the front of the line and get in on their limited-access beta. I’ve got more invites, I don’t know how many, so it’swhile supplies last.

This June 13-15 in Seattle is the Asian American Ministry Program’s Inaugural Conference. Culture does make a difference in how theology is understood and lived. Theology is not culturally-neutral. This conference is bringing together quite the stellar lineup of Asian American ministry leaders, including: Timothy Tseng, Peter Cha, Charlene Jin Lee, Soong-Chan Rah, Eugene Cho, Ken Fong, Gideon Tsang, Young Lee Hertig, Wayne Ogimachi, Nancy Sugikawa, Paul Kim, Bo Lim, Billy Vo, and more. I’m told it’s more of a regional event, but I see no reason why it can’t be billed as a national event.

By the way, it’s Asian Pacific American heritage month, this month of May, every month of May. Not sure how much of this matters to how many of the 16 million Asian Americans. But I digress…

• Jeanette Yep – Pastor of Global and Regional Outreach at Grace Chapel; has contributed significantly to Intervarsity’s multi-ethnicity as staff-worker; co-author of Following Jesus Without Dishonoring Your Parents and editor of More Than Serving Tea: Asian American Women on Expectations, Relationships, Leadership and Faith
• Donna Dong – National Director for Multiethnic/Multicultural Ministry for Inter-Varsity Canada; has served over 30 years with Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship in Canada and the U.S.A.
• Young Lee Hertig – teaches in the Global Studies and Sociology Department at Azusa Pacific University; Southern California Regional Director of the Institute for the Study of Asian American Christianity; on coordination team for Asian American Women on Leadership (AAWOL)
• Melanie Mar Chow – Specialized Campus Minister of Asian American Christian Fellowship
• Nancy Sugikawa – Associate Pastor of Serving Ministries at Lighthouse Christian Church; contributor to Growing Healthy Asian American Churches; board member of Catalyst Leadership Center
• Nikki Toyama-Szeto – Program Director of Urbana 2009 conference; speaker for 2010 Lausanne events; co-author of More Than Serving Tea: Asian American Women on Expectations, Relationships, Leadership and Faith [preview via Google Books]
• Kathy Khang – regional director of multi-ethnic ministries for InterVarsity; active blogger at morethanservingtea.wordpress.com; co-author of More Than Serving Tea: Asian American Women on Expectations, Relationships, Leadership and Faith
• Margaret Yu – national director of leadership development, Epic Movement (Campus Crusade for Christ’s Asian American Ministries); cf. video interview about How to develop Asian American women leaders
• Sandy Moy Liu – Youth and Children’s Ministry at Chinese Bible Church of Greater Boston
• Grace May – Pastor of English Ministry at Oversea Chinese Mission (New York City)
• Sharon Koh – Associate Pastor at Evergreen Baptist Church of Los Angeles
• Hyepin Im – Founder and President of Korean Churches for Community Development [bio]
• Laura Mariko Cheifetz – Director of Leading Generations Initiative at The Fund for Theological Education; past Director of the AADVENT Project at McCormick Theological Seminary
• Helen Lee – Assistant Professor of Sociology at Cal State Fullerton, and author of The Missional Mom for Moody; co-editor of Growing Healthy Asian American Churches; co-founder of the Best Christian Workplaces Institute
• Sharon Kim – author of “A Faith of Our Own: Second Generation Spirituality in Korean American Churches” (Rutgers University Press)
• Asifa Dean, Christie Heller De Leon, Tracey Gee — co-authors of More Than Serving Tea: Asian American Women on Expectations, Relationships, Leadership and Faith
• Susan Cho Van Riesen – co-author of Following Jesus Without Dishonoring Your Parents
• Sandy Schaupp – staff development specialist with InterVarsity in the greater Los Angeles Division
• Kathy Tuan-MacLean – Area Director, Boston Graduate/Faculty Ministries of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship; blogs at PlumbingDemons.blogspot.com
• And there are many more women leaders beyond the context of a local church or parachurch ministry, including: Jane Hyun (author of Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling: Career Strategies for Asians) and Larissa Lam (singer, songwriter, TV host), Ella DeCastro Baron (author of Itchy Brown Girl Seeks Employment), to name a few.

This is an incomplete list, for starters — please add a comment with other women leaders who should be listed. While typing out the title for this blog post, I fumbled around with the word order, i.e. “women Asian American church leaders,” “Christian Asian American women leaders,” “Asian American women ministry leaders,” or “Asian American women church leaders” … I wanted to name this grouping of women leaders who were involved in vocational Christian ministry related to an Asian American context.

How can we better address the current situation of the American church leadership tier being disproportionately represented by one demographic, when the actual demographic make-up of church attendance (or locality) is far more diverse — ethnically, gender, socio-economic, etc ? How much of the Lausanne Global Conversation will percolate and change the American church?

Yes, it’s all quite complicated, with dynamics involving organizational viability, market forces & economics, regional and local distinctives, racialized history, philosophy of ministry, church growth theories, theological convictions, denominational heritage. To sweep it under the rug of the spiritual being transcendent and the inequalities of our social reality being insignificant seems quite a gnostic notion.

To remain silent about this in the public arena of the blogosphere doesn’t seem to help anything. This may well be one of those things where annual reports of measurable results may be a bit short-sighted for much-needed longer-term endeavors. The issue is not going away. When will the church engage?

You don’t have to be Asian American to attend. I’d go just to hear James Choung. When James gave a similar talk during a workshop at Urbana 09, it was standing room only and overflowing; must have had over 500 people there! I had to shoot this video sitting on the floor myself.]

THE GATHERING of Asian American church and parachurch leaders will meet again!

Save this date: Tuesday, Sept. 21, 2010
We will meet at 10:00 am at Evergreen Baptist Church-L.A. (1255 San Gabriel Blvd., Rosemead, 91770)

We will hear from James Choung, the new director of Asian American Ministries of IVCF. He will speak about his new book, TRUE STORY: A Christianity Worth Believing In.

We will be treated to a free lunch @ noon!

Again, the purpose of The Gathering is to encourage you, to re-connect with Kingdom laborers, and to make new connections. Louis Lee will also be with us to share about a new AALC in April or May, 2012.

I need your confirmation that you are coming in order to have an accurate meal count. Please email me back! If you are interested in going to this event, please e-mail Tom Steers directly at tomsteers@yahoo.com

Also, these events are always open to any key leader that you want to invite. There are 100′s of key leaders that we are not in email connection with. So, we rely heavily on you to invite others! Please do!

Just let me know attendees for our meal count!

With you for HIS eternal victories!

Tom

• Do you think there is still a vital place for a multi-generational/cultural Chinese American church? Or do you see more inclusive Asian American churches and multi-ethnic churches as the next logical phase? Do you see Chinese American churches as “just” an intermediate step between an American church and a multi-ethnic model or perhaps an end in itself?
• How would you describe the “ideal”, inter-generational immigrant Chinese church today? What does it look like to you? Multiple services in different languages? (e.g. Mandarin, Cantonese and English) Or same services with simultaneous translation in headsets? Side-by-side translation?
• What are some creative ideas to unite the different Chinese generations and cultures besides joint services?
• What in your knowledge are great examples and models of inclusive, multi-generation Chinese American churches?

Links mentioned in my video response:

• Growing Healthy Asian American Churches book, which has been reviewed & commented on here at djchuang.com, is also now on Google Books preview
• my presentation Revitalizing Asian American churches from September 2007
• list of the largest Chinese churches in the United States and Canada
• djchuang.com posts tagged “Asian American” and posts (and pages) that mention “Asian American church“

In summary, it’ll take all kinds of churches to reach all kinds of people, so there is a place for the ethnic Chinese church. The way a church does its worship services and programs will change over time, and an openness to allow creativity to flourish as a natural outflow of spirituality will discover the “right” answers for each church context. That means putting resources behind research & development, i.e. prayer, people, and money. What would you add?

There are a bunch of search engines / directories/ listings working to make this connection, for pastors looking for a ministry opportunity, and for churches looking for a pastor to fill a staff position, along with other church staff jobs. I’ll update this list as I find ‘em — (note: listing does not connote endorsement) ::

• ChurchStaffing.com – a leading source” run by Salem Web Network; free registration required to view listings and resumes; ~60,000 subscribers to weekly newsletter
• ChurchJobs.net – run by C.M. Press; sizeable database of Christian ministry job openings and resumes with visible web presence in search engines & social networks; pricing starts at $99.95/mo for posting a job listing; $39.95 for posting a resume; database is mirrored to other domain names like pastorsearchcommittee.com, christianjobs1.net, ExperiencingWorship.com, ChurchStaffSearch.com, WorshipJobs.com
• www.churchjobsonline.com – a division of ChristianCareerCenter.com; listing pricing starts at free; ~25,000 email subscribers, ~20,000 unique visitors monthly
• PastorFinder.com – run by Outreach Media Group; ~25,000 unique visitors monthly; 74% of users are currently employed
• www.pastorsearch.net – Pastor Search Network, run by The Victorious Network since 1995; ~10,000 visitors weekly
• ministrysearch.com – Christian ministry job positions; ~ 7000 visits per week
• at findingourplace.com, Jayce Tohline has indexed even more ministers & ministries listing websites; Creator Magazine has an index of web listings for Music and Worship Ministry

And, there are professional services that help make the connection for churches and staff. HelpStaff.me is run by Justin Lathrop (one of my pastor friends), who can put together a professional nationwide search for church staff positions. And, the executive search firm called Vanderbloemen Search Group facilitates ministry leadership search for larger churches. Another one is MinisterSearch.com, a full-service consulting firm for church staffing.

Aside: this ehow.com article, How to Work for a MegaChurch, gives sobering advice about working in a church setting. Set your idealism aside — “If you think working for a church will be peaceful and idyllic, you’re deluding yourself. Pastors and church staff members are as inherently flawed as the rest of the world. If your desire to work for a MegaChurch stems from the belief that you’ll be in a conflict free office environment, think again.“

Question: I am student, studying ministry. Am at the end of the third year and I would like to start my ministry after I graduate. How would you be of help to me — to find material about church planting ?

My Answer: There has been a growing number of resources about church planting in recent years. A quick Google search has many links that’ll get you started. 3 of my favorites are www.churchplantingnetwork.com + www.church-planting.net + www.rcpc.com .

As you can see, there’s lots of information online. The best place you’ll want to be is the Exponenential Conference, April 19-22, 2010, in Orlando. This is the biggest gathering of church planters and church multiplication organizations that can give you the support, coaching, and launching pad for church planting — more resources than you can count!

Todd Rhoades has been counting up the many reasons to be at Exponential — here’s a sample :

• Exponential Reason 39: Check out what bloggers are saying about the Exponential Conference at http://tinyurl.com/6rr245
• Exponential Reason 38: Brian Bloye joins over 60 other national speakers at the 2010 Exponential Conference http://tinyurl.com/6rr245
• Exponential Reason 37: Dan & Shannon Smith join over 60 other national speakers at the 2010 Exponential Conference http://tinyurl.com/6rr245
• Exponential Reason 36: Matt Carter joins over 60 other national speakers at the 2010 Exponential Conference http://tinyurl.com/6rr245
• Exponential Reason 35: 95% of last year’s attendees said they would come back. Will you join them? http://tinyurl.com/6rr245
• Exponential Reason 34: Starting a New Church Pre-Conference with Ron Sylvia http://tinyurl.com/6rr245
• Exponential Reason 33: Obe Arellano joins over 60 other national speakers at the 2010 Exponential Conference http://tinyurl.com/6rr245

part 1 above, part 2 below — talking about moving from blogger to self-hosted wordpress and a mention about #thenines free online conference for church leaders on 09/09/09 http://thenines.leadnet.org

The wetoku web app is in private beta, and I wish I could give out invite codes here. For now, you can get invite codes over at makeuseof.com.

Senior Pastor Ministry Position

Great Commission Community Church (GCCC) is seeking a Senior Pastor by Fall 2009 to lead the church into its next phase of God’s plan. This is currently the only permanent pastoral staff position within the church. Duties include: Teaching/Preaching, Leadership Training, Facilitate Advisory Board, Primary Visionary, Administrate, Small Groups

For church profile, desired characteristics, and contact, see the full document about this ministry opportunity.

As an observer and advocate of ABC ministries since the 1970s and a former youth worker in a Chinese church, can anyone educate me as to WHY there are few(er) ABC’s committing themselves for full time Christian service these days? (a) Postmodern culture? (b) Options of going into Asian American/mainstream churches and ministries? (c) Others…? We have always had a shortage. Is the shortage growing?

John Ng (Youth Pastor at First Chinese Baptist Church, Los Angeles) wrote:

There are not enough from the Chinese churches going into seminary. We need to instill the vision and dream to help our youth and young adults to contemplate and pray about full-time service in church and the mission field.

… I personally feel one of the reasons is that even Christian parents have a hard time with their children entering into ministry positions. It’s not prestigious enough, they can’t gloat to their friends, their kids can do better, etc., so it’s not encouraged but discouraged. Tokunaga’s book Invitation to Lead, says some things similar to that.

Also, I’ve known women who have graduated seminary and it’s tough finding a place to serve and work in a Chinese church, so in that respect, yes the options are much more limited. Obviously theological barriers and traditional Confuscian barriers.

I agree that parents, Christian or not, is a huge factor on whether their children will follow God’s calling, or if their children will fulfill certain career expectations for “practical” reasons. Now, I admit that I’m less interested in figuring out why, and much more interested in finding solutions. To find solutions, I’d like to see more experimenting, trial & error, research & development.

And one more thing. I’d add that developing the following would avert the apparent shortage — (1) raise the prestige and salary of pastors [if the church doesn't do it, who can?], (2) producing contextualized resources [and events], (3) starting new churches that reach the unchurched, (4) providing coaching for everyone to fulfill their God-given calling, not only those who might be pastors or missionaries.

What would ABC Pastor say? What do you think?

Fellowship of American Chinese Evangelicals (FACE) has invited me as a special guest for an ABC/English Pastors’ Fellowship Meeting, next Wednesday, June 3rd, starting at 10:00am.

The location is: Chinese Evangelical Free Church, 1111 So Atlantic Blvd, Monterey Park CA 91754

Let’s do lunch next Wednesday 6/3 in Monterey Park! Here’s wording from the FACE email invitation:

We are planning another Pastors’ Fellowship Meeting on Wednesday, June 3rd, from 10am to 1pm.

This time, we have invited DJ Chuang to share some of his findings on Asian American ministries. He has done a lot of research in this area. We hope to have time for questions and a discussion afterward. What are Asian American ministries? How should Chinese churches relate to AA ministries? What is the future of English ministries in the Chinese churches?

Lunch will be provided. Please email [cphai69@yahoo.com] to let Calvin Hai know if you are able to join us.

I’ll be sharing my observations about church ministries that are effectively reaching the next generation of English-speaking Asian Americans and Chinese Americans. There will be lots of time for discussion and interactive Q&A. [update: get a sneak preview of my powerpoint slides I'll be speaking from]

This will be an easy commute for those in the Southern California area, e.g. Los Angeles County, Orange County, even farther out to Riverside and even San Diego. Plus, the lunch will be deliciously free. Let’s connect!

[photo credit: joeandsarah]

Read the full listing via Google Docs or as a blog post at ISAAC Opportunities.

got to worship on sunday at cross timbers… celebrate a friend’s birthday + chinese new year simultaneously… breakfast w dave lee (harvest community church) later this morning…

connected with 100+ people at innovation3, a 1-time-only 1-of-a-kind event; saw bloggers and twitterers generate so much buzz that it showed up on top trends in twitter search page.. amazing how much content & conversation #i3 packed into 26 hours.. Bent Tree Bible Fellowship one amazing host w excellent people who provided vital help; so generous, so collegial..

spontaneously used 3 web tools for tech breakout session, where 2 of 3 presenters couldn’t make it, and @cynthiaware and @kentshaffer masterfully pitched in; we used skype video call, ustream, and tokbox, over wifi, with at least a dozen laptops online in room too, and no bandwidth problem, 60+ joined us online with only a real-time twitter announcement… this session coulda easily been its own conference…

will write more on a real keyboard later… one regret: didnt get to eat at Little Sichuan, oh how i like it hot & spicy..

The presentation. This presentation consisted of 59 PowerPoint slides. If I ran thru them Lessig style, no big deal, but I dwelled on many of them, skipped a few, and lost track of time. Meaning, I think I went long– I did go longer than I had planned to. As I debrief here, it dawned on me that since I first built this presentation in September 2007, I’ve added on more slides to cover frequently asked questions. Now after (maybe) 5 iterations, I’ve only added more and more slides — didn’t remove any. No wonder I went long! If I were to take Guy Kawasaki’s 10/20/30 rule of Powerpoint, get it down to 10 slides, I maybe could summarize it as:

1. The opportunity is huge and urgent to reach more Asian Americans. The population will double in less than 50 years.
2. Churches naturally have a life cycle like any organization. From time to time, church must adapt to cultural changes to revitalize, or else.
3. Ethnic Asian churches have adapted to several models of multi-generational multi-lingual churches to accommodate both Asian-language speakers and English speakers.
4. We’ve got so much more to offer. On the whole, in comparison to other racial groupings, Asian Americans are the most educated and have highest earnings. These resources have yet to be fully activated for Kingdom purposes.
5. Healthy churches grow AND reproduce.
6. In the past 10 years, there’s been an exponential growth of new churches effectively reaching next generation Asian Americans.
7. New churches doing church a new way are found all over the United States. It’s not just a “West coast” phenomena.
8. We still need more new English-speaking Asian-led churches to reach the next generation, and the unchurched majority.
9. Ask not how can we keep “them” in church. Ask how can we reach more people for Jesus.
10. It takes all kinds of churches to reach all kinds of people.

The group. About 20+ attendees, comprised of both seminary students and a handful of church leaders from area churches. Rarely do I have the opportunity to talk about the work I do and tell the stories of next gen Asian American churches, and to have an audience so interested (or it seemed to me.) Most of the time, people give me blank stares or their eyes roll back.

So, being with a rapt audience mesmerized me. I even saw 2 old friends (okay, acquaintances) I hadn’t seen for years. Best question of the night: “What do you mean by ‘Asian American’?” Several questions were along the lines of “Have you seen a church that…” My answer to that is veering more and more towards: there are all kinds of churches, and anything is possible for those who believe. And, have strong leadership, freedom to experiment, and the conviction of God’s leading.

The potential. There are seemingly few people I’ve found in all my years who are thoroughly thoughtful about how to live out our Christian faith as next generation Asian Americans. Few that are interested in discussing the long unaddressed issues of Gospel and cultures. If we don’t critique ourselves, and both Asian and American cultures, who can? It’s all too common for Christian of Asian descent to either use faith as a reinforcement for a moral lifestyle or to assimilate into mainstream culture of a “generic Gospel.”

Where I hope the conversations will go is beyond the walls of academia. I know of (and respect) a growing group of professional theologians and scholars who are working in the academy to wrestle with Asian American theologies. Keep your eye on this: some heavyweights are available to go on tour. There’s rumored negotiations to bring it to Fuller Seminary. (!)

I’d love to see thoughtful conversations flourish among the masses too. Plenty of Asian American Christians, as they’re prominence is obvious on many college campuses. To be fair, these conversations about faith & culture do happen in face-to-face gatherings once-in-a-while off-the-record. These conversations can also be had online in the open, using blogs, twitter, tokbox, chat rooms, conference calls. Break the isolation and rid the ignorance. This is readily available for non-techies and techies. The success of Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, and Google (to name a few) shows how internet has given voice to the average Joe computer user.

Let’s keep the conversations going. Let’s open it up. Let’s take it online. Let’s connect. Conversations change the world. It’s the way to take ownership of our faith, our heritage, and for our generation.