In a new book published on June 17, authors Matthew D. Kim and Daniel L. Wong write about the importance of culturally contextualizing sermons to audiences so that all can hear the good news of Jesus Christ. In Finding Our Voice: A Vision for Asian North American Preaching, the authors specifically talk about preaching in the Asian North American (ANA) context and how ANA pastors can use their culture and experiences to better connect with those who are seeking God.
Aaron Lee, the assistant digital marketer for the SOLA Network, interviewed the authors. In their conversation, they talk about the importance of recognizing Asian North American (ANA) hermeneutics and theologies as well as whether the world is ready for more ANA preachers.
You can read a review of their book by the SOLA Network here. We hope that you will be blessed by their conversation. You can find the audio to the interview here.
Update: Matthew Kim led Finding Our Voice: A Vision for Asian American Preaching, a breakout session at AALC 2024.
Editor’s Note: Below is a lightly edited automated transcript of their conversation. There may be typos or grammatical errors.
Aaron
Hey everybody, this is Aaron for SOLA Network. And today I’m here with Professor Matthew Kim and Professor Daniel Wong. And we’re going to talk about this new book that they wrote together. It’s called Finding Our Voice: A Vision for Asian North American Preaching, published by Lexham Press this year in 2020. And I just want to read a little bit from the back. It says: “No one preaches in a cultural vacuum. The message of what God has done in Christ is good news to all. But to have the greatest impact on its hearers or even to be understood at all, it must be culturally contextualized. Finding Our Voice speaks clearly to an issue that has largely been ignored: preaching in Asian North American contexts. In addition to applying hermeneutics, theology, and homiletics to these overlooked contexts, Kim and Wong include examples of culturally specific sermons and instructive questions for contextualizing Christian preaching. Finding Our Voice is essential reading for all who preach and teach in Asian North American contexts, or who seek a model for contextualizing the gospel message for listeners in any cultural setting.” And I think this is a fantastic book. I’m going to write a review for SOLA and I think this is a landmark work, honestly, of what you guys have done. And so thank you for writing it. And thank you for sharing it with the world. Matthew and Daniel, would you mind introducing yourselves and maybe detailing some of your own ANA – Asian North American – experience?
Daniel
A little bit more history here, I guess. Good. I’m, and third generation American Born Chinese. Born in San Francisco. And the earliest AMA experience was going to San Francisco, Chinese Presbyterian Church there. And I guess my earliest experiences is just hearing bilingual sermons that I couldn’t understand either one, and Chinatown and different things. But after some early experiences, we actually were living in Oakland, across from San Francisco, I went to a, you know, a general American church. And later when my brother came back in high school, he went to an American Born Chinese church, essentially. It was all English, except for a minority that spoke Cantonese. So I became a Christian there around age 16. I followed my youth pastor to go into to Moody Bible Institute to Dallas Theological Seminary, and eventually found my way to Toronto for full time ministry. So for 18 years serving as a full time English ministry pastor, until I became a full time professor at Tyndale University. So I mean, I don’t think my experiences, I don’t think they’re very extreme in terms of, you know, a few racial epitaphs a few assumptions. But I think, you know, my experience in us as growing up, and then in Canada, and I, again, comparing what’s going on in US and Canada, not seeing as much, seemingly, you know, obvious systemic racism here than in Canada. But it’s interesting to have both of those experiences and, and, of course, you know, everyone has their own experiences and spectrum. So I’ll just start off with that.
Matthew
Yeah, thanks, Aaron for having us on the broadcast. I was born and raised in Chicago, I grew up in the Korean immigrant church context, and became a Christian, around 13 years old at my first youth retreat. And I know that that’s a common setting for young people to become Christians. Grew up in the Korean immigrant church and eventually found myself call to ministry came to Gordon Conwell to study for my M div, decided to go on for some further training in the UK and then came back to the states and pastored in Asian American primarily a Korean American church in Denver, Colorado, for several years before joining the faculty in 2012, to teach preaching at Gordon Conwell. What really drew me to writing the book was about thinking through my experiences. Listen, listening to Korean immigrant sermons, and it’s probably very similar in the Chinese or a Japanese immigrant context, where I felt like the preachers were often talking about the common hermeneutics and homiletics of year old American professors that they had studied under, but not really contextualized, for bicultural, or multicultural people. So that that was really the genesis of the book. And, you know, growing up in Chicago in the 70s 80s, I was picked on all the time, it was, it was a common experience that we all share, I’m sure as immigrant parents who are immigrants, and for me, it was eye opening, coming back here to the Boston area about eight years ago, and still going through the same thing, even in my 40s now getting racist comments and looks and even from my neighbors down the street. And so this experience of being marginalized or alienated, feeling no hatred, or, or being feared, by members of other cultures. I don’t think it escapes us. And I think Daniel can speak to that later on, you know, and Daniel is, I believe his mother’s side is fifth generation American. So this perpetual foreigner idea, and I will probably get into that later on. But that that really led me to the idea of writing this book. And thankfully, Daniel agreed to write it with me.
Aaron
And I’m so glad that you guys did I, you know, I resonated with a lot of what you wrote in the book. I mean, obviously, some things are different for me and Ben, and for you, but there’s a lot, that’s just the same experience that we all go through. And I think what I appreciate is that you guys really did put a lot of your personal history and you know, just just your upbringing, into the book, even things like your childhood, you put in the book, and that’s really like, what what makes our experiences unique is that they are very different, but also similar, and I can relate to it. I kind of want to just ask some questions that pertain to the book. And I think our audience, obviously, they probably didn’t read the book yet, but I do want them to check it out. And I think this conversation can hopefully give them a taste of what to expect when reading it. But also, if they do read it, they can come back to this and it will, you know, maybe even expand on some of the things that that you hinted in the book. Before you you actually talked about preaching, you know, the act of preaching itself, though, Matthew, you talked about the importance of recognizing as a hermeneutics and theologies, and I was wonder if you could just kind of introduce that that concept right now. It’s everybody.
Matthew
Sure, I mean, growing up, as we as we go through the North American seminary experience, it’s common that were taught continental European theology, which I fully agree with, in many ways. What I think was missing in thinking through how do we preach to bicultural people was thinking through hermeneutics in terms of not so much disagreeing with white people and how they read the Bible, but more having a consideration of what does it mean, for us as preachers to raise the questions that Asian American or Asian North Americans are raising, as they interpret the text? Thinking through some of the questions that they might have or considering their experiences, thinking through some of their concerns or questions as they interpret a passage. And so that’s really what I’m getting at in terms of eignet hermeneutics so that we don’t just read it as an American, we’re bicultural people, or a Canadian, we’re bicultural, whatever Asian background we come with. So thinking through some of those issues, and then A and A theologies, really having us consider what does it mean for us to incorporate some of the things that we grew up with, in terms of some of us had parents who came from Buddhist cultures or Confucian cultures, or some other religion, and that doesn’t really escape? The interactions that we have with our immigrant parents. They still retain some of that. And so what can we learn from those theologies? Obviously, there are marked differences between some of those theologies and Christianity, and we firmly agree that these religions are not the same. We believe in Christianity, that Christ is the only way. However, what are some of the considerations in terms of Asian and Asian theologies that we need to think about, that some of our listeners are steeped in or come from those kinds of backgrounds? So we want to consider some of those aspects. Yeah.
Aaron
And, you know, our audience for SOLA, you know, we do have preachers or pastors. And I think that this, this is a really important point that even though we might have been trained a certain way, maybe that wasn’t speaking to our own culture, or ethnicity. And so when we, when we interpret the text, we’re looking at it through a lens that is not our own. And when we therefore deliver a sermon, we missed that part as well, but we can talk a little bit more to that. Um, you also speak about identity, marginalization and incarnational duality. Now, those are topics that your book does go into. But how do you see these being important, and this particular moment in history?
Matthew
Yeah, I think one of the things I raise is the fact that the gospel message never changes, the Gospel is true, and it’s trustworthy, and that Christ has accomplished everything for us on our behalf. At the same time, I think that one of the things I think has been common practice in North American culture, is that we gloss over identities or ethnic identities too quickly. And perhaps we go straight to our Christian identity and not really taking into consideration, what does it mean to be an embodied person who happens to be Korean American or Chinese American, Japanese American, or Filipino American, whatever it is, our background is. And when we jump into the Christian identity too quickly, we are in many ways, separating who we are. And we can’t do that. And I think that too quickly, in especially evangelical context, we go straight to the gospel, and we minimize our ethnic differences. And that I think, has caused some of the riff, with among the different cultures, as you think about black Christians, or Hispanic Christians, or even Asian Christians in America right now, part of the reason why I think we’re struggling so much with race and fear of the other is that we haven’t talked about race, we haven’t really engaged as Christians with ethnic identity. And so to get to the next level, I think we need to acknowledge that these differences are significant, and we can’t minimize or gloss over them simply because we carry a Christian identity, which is true, but at the same time, I think we need to get into the deeper issues of race and ethnicity. incarnational duality, I think, is really a concept that, you know, obviously comes from Christian theology in terms of Jesus having two natures, and he was fully God and fully human. And in many ways, I tried to make a comparable analogy, saying that as Asian Americans, or Canadian Americans or whatever background we come with, we can’t separate the two out we are we are fully both. We are we? It’s not like I can say one day, I’m really American. Then the next day I say, I know, I’m really Korean. No, I’m both. And how do we separate those out? We can’t. And so that’s the concept behind incarnational duality, that we want to be fully embodied beings who have cultural multicultural for some of us.
Aaron
Yeah. And, you know, I Okay, you spoke to a lot of things right there. And I think that you hit it right there where I yeah, I feel that way, you know, where I know, I’m a Christian. And I feel like I’m a Christian. But I feel that I’m Asian, North American, as well. And so I do feel that tension there. And I can personally relate to the fact that you said that, you know, our churches or, you know, certain churches have not been talking about race, let alone our own ethnic identities. Right. And so yeah, I think I think there’s so much to learn there, and so much that we need to work and improve on Daniel, Daniel,
Daniel
Maybe just come back to that I like to use the analogy, the body of Christ, where, yes, we do see ourselves as part of the whole, so we could see our Christian identity. But we also see that there are parts, and we all have a particular role. So I think in that body of Christ analogy, I like that where we have each has an individual contribution, individual identity, but also we also see ourselves as part of the whole.
Aaron
Yeah, it’s so good. Daniel, I wanted to ask you, you wrote one of the chapters on preaching today. And so I want to know from you, how do you see preaching today? Good?
Daniel
That’s a great question. Well, basically, I see preaching as conveying the Word of God, in the context of the people in the congregation. So I, you know, I have my pet peeve, as we call generic sermons, you know, one sermon that applies to so many places, without being specific to the congregation. And of course, certain things can be general. But, you know, how do we speak to this people? And I think that also pertains to an aspect of this worship context that we’ll talk about in a bit as well. But I do see this, you know, preaching to this people and a preaching being an aspect of worship and so it is a response to God to the word and you know, as being gospel centered, so the preacher X posits the word to this particular audience, and of course you know, brings the preacher brings This, this context to it. And of course, preaching even though you know, Matt and I both teach in this area, and that’s more of our expertise, you know, it’s not the be all and end all. It is an aspect of, of ministry and of church life, but of course, a very important part of that. So, you know, even though some people would, you know, say that preaching is passe, it certainly still has an important role. And I think, particularly in the immigrant and Asian church, where the word is, is still considered a very important role of the preacher. And, you know, and the role of the congregation is very important. So I’ll just start off with that.
Aaron
No, that’s really good. How would you explain in your, in your book, you talk about executing the preacher, and then also the congregation. And then these will reveal certain ama characteristics, themes and topics? Maybe you can talk about that idea. But then I also wanted to ask you, how does that change across the different generations? Because I know that if you were to do that, for an older generation will be different than for the younger generation? Am I correct? In that?
Daniel
Yes, I think you’re onto something they’re very important. And, you know, as I keep on reflecting on, on what I wrote, and my experience, I do come back to that point of this exegesis of the, of the preacher or the self exegesis. I know Matt has also written about this in his, you know, cultural exegesis book. But really, the, I find that, you know, a lot of, you know, ourselves as, as AMA’s have a lot of, while I would say, difficult experiences, and the immigrant churches, which is colored a lot of the way that we view life and ministry, and maybe even, you know, the older generation. So, you know, we have to deal a lot with that before the Lord, a lot of the, you know, honor, shame, aspects of life and expectations, and all of these type of things. So that’s where, again, finding our identity in Christ, accepting who we are. And, you know, I think that’s really the starting point, a deep spirituality, and, and acceptance of who we are. And then we can move more toward an understanding of the congregation, I think more of us, as pastors are very sensitive to the congregation, people’s needs situations, but I’m not sure if we do enough self reflection to say, well, um, you know, maybe I might have some underlying anger toward situations or people. So, you know, again, I just looking in the mirror, you know, need to deal with ourselves before the Lord. And, and, of course, see how that reflects on our caring for the understanding of the congregation and their particular needs. I think, as you were pointing out, yeah, there is generational differences. And, you know, a number of people, right, and I think there is overlap in terms of preaching to the generations, I know, a number of churches, they’re actually having a junior high service, you know, a college service and a young adult serve as an adult adult service. So, you know, we do understand their needs. And I think that there is a place in time to speak to the specifics, and the type of preacher that maybe can relate more directly to them. And, of course, a time that we can speak to the whole family, you know, even the first generation or 1.5 generations. So, I think that there’s a place in time for all of this. And I know that especially our Asian churches are, are very family oriented. So we do need, you know, again, the time specific and, and the time together for ministry and context for preaching.
Aaron
Yeah, there’s so much more that we can talk about when we follow that. But you know, I’ll refer people to the book to elaborate more on these ideas. Um, both of you did mention the connection between preaching and worship. And Daniel, I think you kind of alluded to that earlier, where, you know, when we gather as a church, it’s not just the sermon, and then that’s it. You know, there’s a lot of things that make up a worship service. And I think you both touched upon, you know, preaching and worship together in these in a context. I want to ask you, I myself am a worship leader. How can worship leaders and preaching pastors work together in this effort to have, you know, a voice Santa and a vision for and a worship and preaching? Matthew or Daniel, do you want to start off?
Matthew
I worked very closely with my worship leader at my church when I was a pastor. And one of the things I think, that I could have done a better job with was thinking through, how do we make the holistic worship service integrated. And one of my colleagues at Gordon Conwell, Dave Korea has written a great book on the big idea of biblical worship. And what he gets out is the fact that every part of the worship service should tie together. And I’m wondering if even in our own ans, cultural context, church context, we can do a better job of integrating the worship songs, the offering the prayer, the sermon, the songs, that the benediction, where everything can come together. But even beyond that, I think that there needs to be some space for us to think through. How do we teach lifestyle worship? Meaning, not just it’s not just the one hour at the Sunday service? But teaching our congregants? What does it mean for us to be ama Christians, and Christians who are worshipers throughout the week? These are some of the areas I think we need some more room to grow, and to think about in the future. I don’t have all the answers. But I think we can do a better job of thinking through integrating the worship service as well as integrating the worship service into our daily life and practice. Yeah.
Daniel
The reason why I raised this issue, you know, for the book particularly was, you know, being at Urbana, and they were, I think it was in 2006. They were highlighting, okay, here’s, you know, like African American worship, this is Asian American worship. And the big discussion was, well, that, you know, Asian American worship look no different than so called me. And I’m sure that, you know, Aaron feels that as well. Right? Yeah. But I maybe I’m just raising this issue, because I just like we’re thinking through Asia, North American preaching, we’re kind of thinking like, What is distinctive about Asia, North American worship, or worship leaders? Like, is it just the Asian face or the experience that we bring to it? So, you know, I referred to one of the people who Russel Yi, who wrote worship on the way, and some of the things that he’s written about talking, initially, the spoken word, maybe testimonies I’ve seen, you know, different instruments, which are not unusual, but maybe just thinking through, you know, this incarnational? Like, how are we, you know, living, living out this worship life as a Christian? And I think some of the things like testimony or, or what we say, you know, with the songs and our choice, or how we speak, you know, tie, tie those songs together, might bring out a bit more of this. And as Matthew was saying, yes, definitely, like, the personal life of worship and worshiper and the overall context and themes of worship, which Asian churches are really often good at, and making themes of the year or focus and so forth. So you know, those might be helpful to think through it, but collaborative, for sure, you know, working together, praying together, and how we can see and seek what the Lord wants for us through worship.
Aaron
That’s so good. And I appreciate the fact that I think you both would say that there’s so much room to grow in not only music and worship, but in preaching as well, of course. And I appreciate that, that that was kind of one of the takeaways from the book is that hey, like, this is not the end all and we haven’t necessarily arrived yet. I think, much like sanctification. This is a work in progress. And we have so much room to grow together. I was wondering if you can both talk about the future. And we can just get really practical here. What has personally helped you develop as a preaching voice? Maybe what were some failures, but also some successes? And how would you encourage others to do the same in this? Maybe, Matthew, you wanna go first?
Matthew
Yeah, there’s all kinds of failures I could document. I think one of the things I think you nailed in terms of we’re a work in progress. And I think that this is really the beginning point of the conversation, where Daniel and I are trying to get us to think intentionally about these issues. And one of the things I think we’ve perhaps overlooked or assumed, is that just because I have an Asian face, I preach in an Asian way, or an Asian North American way. And we assume that if we just preach a biblical, faithful biblical sermon that is going to really reach everybody, or especially our ama listeners, and we can’t really make that assumption. I think that too often we’re we’re quick to assume things. But my, my real encouragement would be for us to really be intentional, pray, think through, what does it mean to be bicultural? Take some time to think through the American or Canadian part of us. Take some time to think through the Asian side of us and really dealing with the cultures that are there. So yeah, we are, we are, by no means saying here is our voice. That’s why it’s called Finding our voice. We’re all finding our voice together. And we want you to join in the conversation, we would love to interact with you, whoever our readers are the pastors who are faithfully preaching, if you want to send us an email or context that’s contact us some way through sola or whatever you want to do. But we’re just beginning the conversation. And we invite you to join us in this journey, as we hopefully for the next generation are to continue to grapple with these issues. And just to summarize, I think one of the issues I think, as a preachers do need to focus more on is race and ethnicity and racism. And joining with our Black and Brown Brothers and sisters, I think, is a sorely lacking aspect of our preaching that we need to develop.
Daniel
I refer to in my last in the sermon that I offer about the clay pots. And as I was thinking through that, what was the cultural context for that? So that’s why I came up with this, you know, the idea of having the rice bowl Yeah, this is the real plastic rice bowl. But for the Korean church that I spoke at, you know, I use this one, right. That connects more with a Korean and the general rice bowl. So, you know, I think that those type of, you know, cultural cues connect you saying 1.5, for a Korean context will definitely resonate with, with some, so, you know, intentionally connecting with different groupings. But I, you know, I would say that, a couple of things that I might have challenges with is, you know, maybe I’m trying too hard, you know, to connect with people. You know, and sometimes there are people who feel like, and they go to certain churches, because, you know, maybe non Asian churches, so they want to blend in, they don’t want to identify themselves, even though they are, you know, that visible minority. So, you know, sometime, they it might be hurtful for them to, to hear certain cultural illustrations, even though that’s not bad in itself. But, you know, I need to have continued to have the pastoral sensitivity, to know how and which way to connect. But I also want to point out that, you know, I have to be careful about being overly sensitive, in the sense where, you know, we are very pastoral, we care for the sheep, we don’t want to hurt the sheep. But you know, there’s, there’s time when we need to say a hard word as well as a countercultural word. And I think that there in may need, you know, I think I’ll be shy to raise that. Because you know, you want to be accepted by people, you want to be liked by people. But I think that pastoral care also means confrontation at times as well. So just a couple of things that I would just reflect on in terms of preaching and so called, you know, successes or failures. Yeah,
Aaron
Matt and Daniel, thank you so much for even challenging us here at the end. I think we’re running out of time. Is the world ready for more ANA preachers?
Daniel
I would say that it’s really needful. I think we that, that teach in seminaries or Bible colleges and so forth. You know, we’re, we used to see more going into ministry of that second, third generation, we’re not quite seeing so many, you know, and part of that, of course, is is the materialism of the world. It’s the expectation of the parents, but I think it also could be the experiences of of us who have gone through tough times and habits aspire to be pastors or preachers and maybe even hesitant for the calling. So you know, I would just just say that, you know, let’s, let’s just reflect on that, and encourage, you know, the right people for the right reasons to consider ministry and preaching. And, you know, as well as sharpening our own preaching, as we get close to the Lord, it’s an overflow of life. And, you know, again, not aiming to be the superstar or the, you know, that type of preacher, but you know, humbly to be the person that God wants us to be.
Matthew
I would say that, my prayer for all of us, I share this with my preaching class all the time, I told my preaching students, I really pray every single day that you don’t have the ambition of being famous. Satan has already put an X on your back. And you don’t need additional ways for him to attack you. We just want to be faithful. We want to be faithful to the congregation that we’ve been called to love and serve. Would it be great to have more Asian faces on the platform at preaching conferences and Pastor conferences? Sure, that’d be great. But that’s not our that’s not our reason for being that’s not the reason we’ve been called. We’ve been called to be faithful to our local church, to love them to shepherd them. And preaching is just one aspect of that. And so Is the world ready? I don’t know. I hope that I hope that Asian Americans and Asian Canadians are ready to really delve into the issues that we’ve been called to address. And if the wider world is listening and watching, praise God, and I think we can all learn from each other. So that’s my hope and goal is that we learn from each other and growing. Yeah.
Aaron
Well, thank you so much, and I appreciate the call to faithfulness. Thank you for being faithful to your callings and serving the church. In this way. I’m going to encourage everybody to get the book of course, and thank you for making yourself available for any questions and to continue the conversation as we continue to find our voice together.
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